King of Ghana

Who he is

Name

Not known. Al-Idrisi (1154) knew a Muslim king who claimed descent from al-Hasan b. Ali; the Soninke tradition names the royal clan Cisse and the king of Sundiata's time Soumaba Cisse; Delafosse's list makes the throne Kante (Diara Kante, 1180-1202) on this date. None of these can be pinned to 1 January 1200.

Title

Ghana, king of Wagadu (Kaya Maghan in the later tradition)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

Not known. In al-Bakri's time the heir was the king's sister's son.

Confidence

low

Wikipedia, Ghana Empire and Sosso Empire; Niane, GHA IV.

Overlord

None in law; under growing Sosso pressure, perhaps already Sosso-dominated (the letter of 1199).

What it holds

• The royal town and the Muslim town of the capital (Kumbi Saleh, if that is the site)
• The Awkar villages and wells round the capital
• The market tolls on salt and goods; the right to the gold nuggets
• The service of the Soninke clan heads of Wagadu

How it was acquired

Inheritance in the old royal line (not pinned).

Allies and rivals

Rivals: the Sosso king (Kemoko or Soumaoro), the Niakhate king of Diara. Correspondent and sometime antagonist: the Almohad governor of Sijilmasa (quarrel over merchants, 1199).

How things stand that morning

Reigning, under pressure; his relation to the Sosso that morning is not pinned.

Wealth

Salt and gold tolls, the gold nuggets, tribute in kind from the villages, slaves.

Military

The cavalry of the Soninke nobles and the village bowmen; no figures. No fortresses are known except the walls of the town.

Threats

• The Sosso
• The flight of the Muslim merchants
• Drought

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. About 1203 (Barth, Delafosse); not pinnedBecomes the tributary of the Sosso king.Depends on: Sosso victory. Stopped by: Allies (Diara, Mema, the Mande) or a Sosso defeat.

Where the sources disagree

• Delafosse's list (Diara Kante 1180-1202) would make the king of Ghana on this date a Sosso; rejected by Conrad (1984) and not followed here.

Evidence: No contemporary name; inferences from al-Idrisi (1154), the 1199 letter and later tradition.

On the map: A circle of land round the presumed capital; no source draws the royal domain.

Primary sources for Ghana

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the Sudan, Abd al-Rahman al-Sadi (about 1655, at Timbuktu). The Timbuktu tradition on the middle Niger four and a half centuries later, and the only narrative there is: the Za (Zuwa) kings of Gao and Kukiya, whose fifteenth king Za Kusoy is said to have accepted Islam in 1010 and whose successors ruled at Gao through the twelfth century; the foundation of Jenne and the conversion of its king Kunburu with his people towards the end of the sixth century of the Hijra, that is about 1200, with Jenne's early trade; and the position of Mali and Ghana as al-Sadi understood it. Read online
• The Chronicle of the Researcher, Ibn al-Mukhtar (attributed to Mahmud Kati); rewritten by Nuh ibn al-Tahir (about 1665, rewritten about 1830 to 1845). Later than the Tarikh al-Sudan and far less reliable: a seventeenth-century Timbuktu chronicle rewritten in the nineteenth century to serve the Masina caliphate, with insertions. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• The Book of Geography, Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Zuhri (about 1140 to 1150, at Granada). A short Andalusi geography fifty years before 1200 with notices on the Sahara and the Sudan that are independent of al-Bakri: the Lamtuna and the veiled Sanhaja, Sijilmasa and the gold road, and Ghana, which al-Zuhri says accepted Islam at the time of the Almoravid movement (he gives the year 469 of the Hijra, 1076 to 1077), the only source for that statement.
• The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
• The Picture of the Earth, Ibn Hawqal (about 977, revised to about 988). Two centuries old by 1200 but the only early geographer who had crossed the Sahara himself: he was at Sijilmasa and Awdaghust in 951, saw the gold trade and the famous cheque for 42,000 dinars, and described the king of Ghana as the richest on earth, with notes on the veiled Sanhaja, the Ibadi towns, the Fezzan, Nubia and Alodia, and the Zanj. Read online
• Dictionary of Countries: the entries on Africa, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Mosul and Aleppo). Entries written within a generation of 1200 from earlier books and from informants: Maqdishu (Mogadishu), described as a town of the Barbar (Somali) on the edge of the Zanj country with no single ruler but elders for each group, the earliest notice of the town; Manbasa (Mombasa), Lanjuya (Zanzibar) and the Zanj coast; Zayla, Barbara and the Dahlak islands; Dunqula (Dongola) and the Nubians; the Beja; Kanem, Zaghawa, Ghana, Kawkaw and the Sudan, mostly from al-Bakri and al-Idrisi; and the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Read online
• The Book of Examination of the Wonders of the Cities (1191). The nearest geographical survey to 1200: a description of the Almohad lands written nine years earlier, town by town, from Alexandria and Barqa through Tripoli, Gabès, Mahdia, Tunis, Bougie, Tlemcen, Fez, Marrakesh and Sijilmasa, with a section on the Sahara routes and the Sudan (Ghana, Zafun, Kawkaw). Read online

4 more in the sources library for West Africa: the Sudan and Guinea.