Begho lies on the open country just north of the forest, at the point where the savanna roads from the Niger meet the forest paths: the natural market for forest goods (kola, gold, ivory) and northern goods (salt, cloth, copper and later brass).
Posnansky's excavations (University of Ghana 1970-1979, with UCLA in 1979) found at least five quarters and 1,000 to 1,500 house mounds, with a population at its height (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries) of perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 (Posnansky 2015). The oldest quarter, Nyarko, the Bono (Brong) quarter, is a proto-urban settlement dated about 965-1125 (Andah and Anquandah 1988), and the town is counted as founded in the eleventh century. On 1 January 1200 Begho stands as a growing Bono town, perhaps already a calling point for northern caravans (Crossland 1989: from about 1100); the Muslim quarter of the Mande traders (Kramo), the brass smiths' quarter (Dwinfuor) and the town's great age are later or not dated.
Who holds it
- Title
- Heads of the town's quarters
- Since
- Not known
- Confidence
- low
Lord in 1200
No lord known. The town governs itself through the heads of its quarters; Ameyaw (1979) says it was never politically subject to the later Bono king.
How things stand that morning
Self-governing, at peace as far as is known.
Council
Not known for 1200. In the later town each quarter had its own head; the Bono quarter's head would be the senior.
Communities
Bono (Brong) Akan of the Nyarko quarter. Mande-speaking Muslim traders (Wangara, Dyula, and the Ligbi of later tradition) are not shown to be present in 1200: Wikipedia's Begho page dates the Jula town to the fifteenth century (Massing 2000), and Wilks placed the Wangara arrival in the late fourteenth.
Fairs and markets
Not known for 1200. The later town had a market quarter; no market day is recorded.
Walls and castle
No walls or citadel are reported.
Trade and crafts
Farming, iron smithing (slag in every quarter), pottery; probably exchange of forest goods for northern ones. The ironworking site 4.2 km north-west, the brass working of Dwinfuor and the cloth for which Arabic sources later knew the town belong to the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.
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.
- Dry season, January to March 1200Traders from the forest and, perhaps, from the north meet at Begho.Depends on: Whether the northern route is already open (disputed). Stopped by: Nothing likely.
Where the sources disagree
- Wikipedia's Begho page and its Akan people page disagree on when Begho became a major trading town (fifteenth century or thirteenth). The site area is given as both six square miles and 13,000 hectares in the same source (Posnansky 2015 as cited).
Evidence: Excavated town with radiocarbon dates for its oldest quarter; no written source before the seventeenth century (the Bitu of the Timbuktu chronicles, if that is Begho).
Primary sources for Akan (Bono country and Begho)
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.
- Ife, Benin, Nri, the Yoruba towns and the Akan: archaeology and recorded tradition (no contemporary text; traditions written down from the 1890s). No text of any kind exists for the forest belt in 1200.
Sources and studies
- Begho (Wikipedia)
- Akan people (Wikipedia, citing Andah and Anquandah 1988, Arhin 1979, Posnansky 2015, Shinnie 2005, Konadu and Campbell 2016)
- Bono state (Wikipedia, citing Effah-Gyamfi 1974, Warren 1976, Ameyaw 1979, Crossland 1989, Compton 2017)
- M. Posnansky, Begho: Life and Times, Journal of West African History 1.2 (2015), as cited on Wikipedia; and M. Posnansky, Prelude to Akan civilization, in E. Schildkrout (ed.), The Golden Stool (1987), from the researcher's knowledge
- I. Wilks, Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Journal of African History 23 (1982); T. F. Garrard, Akan Weights and the Gold Trade (1980); from the researcher's knowledge
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.