Ghana (Wagadu)

Who rules

Name

Not known. No source names the king who reigned on 1 January 1200. Al-Idrisi (1154) describes a Muslim king who claimed descent from al-Hasan, the Prophet's grandson. The later Soninke tradition gives the royal clan as the Cisse (Sisse) and names Soumaba Cisse as king of Wagadu in Sundiata's time (the 1230s). Delafosse's list (1912), repeated on Wikipedia, makes a Sosso, Diara Kante, ruler of Ghana from 1180 to 1202 and Soumaba Cisse a Sosso vassal from 1203; that list has no support in the Arabic sources and Conrad (1984) showed it mixes unrelated traditions.

Title

King of Ghana (ghana was the king's title in al-Bakri; the later Soninke tradition remembers the kings as Kaya Maghan, 'master of gold', and the kingdom as Wagadu)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

Not known for 1200. Al-Bakri (1068) says the kingship passed to the son of the king's sister (Tunka Manin succeeded his maternal uncle Basi in 1063); whether that rule still held in 1200, after the conversion, is not known.

Confidence

low

Al-Bakri (1068), al-Idrisi (1154), the letter of the Almohad governor of Sijilmasa of 1199 (Levtzion 1981), Ibn Khaldun (late 14th century) and al-Umari (1330s) as cited on Wikipedia, Ghana Empire and Sosso Empire; Niane in UNESCO GHA IV.

Overlord

None in law. The king answers to no outside power; the Abbasid caliph is far away and the Almohads of Marrakesh deal with him as a neighbouring king. In practice the rising Sosso kingdom presses him, and a letter of 1199 suggests that the 'king of Ghana' the Almohads wrote to was no longer a Muslim, which some read as a sign that the Sosso already dominated him.

What the realm holds

• The Awkar (Aoukar) and the southern Hodh round the capital (Kumbi Saleh), the heart of Wagadu
• The Sahel south of the capital towards Nara and Goumbou (the Wagadu of the later tradition), contested with the Sosso
• A claim over Biru (Walata) and Nema, the Soninke towns on the escarpments of the Hodh, where the Massufa Sanhaja hold the desert
• The salt and gold market of the capital and the tolls on loads of salt and goods (al-Bakri: one dinar on a donkey-load of salt coming in, two going out)
• Old claims, no longer real, over the Soninke provinces that are now kingdoms (Diara, Mema, Kaniaga) and over Awdaghust, lost to the Almoravids in 1054-55

How it was acquired

An ancient kingship: al-Fazari mentions Ghana as 'the land of gold' in the late eighth century. The tradition puts its founder Dinga Cisse or Kaya Maghan Cisse far back. Islam came with the Almoravid period (about 1076 for the court's conversion, by al-Zuhri's account).

Allies and rivals

Rivals: the Sosso of Kaniaga under the Kante smiths' dynasty (the most dangerous); Diara (Zara) of the Niakhate, which took Ghana's southern lands; Takrur, which has taken the salt trade of the coast (Awlil) and the trade of the Senegal; the Massufa Sanhaja of the desert, who carry the caravans and can choke them. Trading partners: the Almohad governors of Sijilmasa and the Ibadi and Maliki merchants of Tadmekka, Wargla and Sijilmasa. Mema and the Mande chiefs are, in the later tradition, the friends of Wagadu against the Sosso.

The realm that morning

A king reigns, name not known, in a capital that is still a living town. The kingdom holds the Awkar and the southern Hodh but is hemmed in: Diara to the south-west, the Sosso to the south, Mema to the south-east, the Massufa in the desert to the north. A quarrel with the Almohad governor of Sijilmasa over merchants held in Ghana was open in 1199. Whether the Sosso already dominate the king on 1 January 1200 is not pinned: the letter of 1199 points that way, Delafosse's list says the Kante already ruled from 1180, while Barth's and Delafosse's date for the Sosso conquest (about 1203) puts it a little later.

Threats

• The Sosso under the Kante (Kemoko, or his son Soumaoro, who the epic says begins to reign about 1200), who are about to overrun Wagadu
• The loss of the gold trade to Takrur and to the Niger route through Jenne and the lakes
• The drying of the Sahel, remembered in the legend of the serpent Bida and the seven-year drought that ended Wagadu
• A trade war with the Almohad governor of Sijilmasa if the merchants' quarrel of 1199 is not settled
• The Massufa of the desert, who carry the caravans and can turn them to Walata or Takrur

Ruler and household

Not known for 1200. Al-Bakri (1068) describes the court as it then was: the king judged in a domed pavilion with gold-trimmed horses, shields and swords; the sons of vassal kings stood beside him with gold plaited in their hair; a governor of the city and ministers sat before him; dogs with gold collars guarded the door; the drum (daba) called the people. Muslim interpreters, the treasurer and most ministers were Muslims.

Al-Idrisi (1154) describes a Muslim king of Alid descent with a palace built in 510 AH (1116-17). What remains of this ceremonial in 1200 is not recorded.

Officers

Not known for 1200. In al-Bakri's time the king's interpreters, his treasurer and most of his ministers were Muslims, and a governor ruled the city.

Army

No figure for 1200. Al-Bakri (1068) credits Ghana with a very large host of bowmen; no later source gives a number. The cavalry of the Soninke nobles and the archers of the villages are the likely core.

Trade

The salt of the Sahara (by 1200 from Ijil in the west and the Taghaza field to the north, both in the Massufa's country) comes south by camel caravan and is exchanged for gold dust (tibr) from the south: from Bambuk and Galam (Takrur's side) and from Bure on the upper Niger (the Mande's side). The king took the gold nuggets and left the dust to the people (al-Bakri). Copper, cloth, horses, dates and books come from the north; slaves taken in raids on the Lamlam peoples to the south go north (al-Idrisi says the people of Ghana, Takrur, Silla and Barisa raid the Lamlam).

Relations

With Islam: the court has been Muslim since the late eleventh century and in 1154 claimed descent from the Prophet's family; scholars of Ghana were known in al-Andalus (al-Zuhri). The letter of 1199 speaks of a difference in religion between the Almohad governor and the king of Ghana. With the Almohads: correspondence through the governor of Sijilmasa; a quarrel over merchants. With the Sosso: hostile. With Diara: estranged; Diara was once Ghana's province.

Coinage

No coins of Ghana's own are known. Gold dust by weight is the currency of the great trade; the north mints the gold into Almohad dinars.

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. 1200-1203 (Barth's and Delafosse's date: about 1203; Ibn Khaldun gives no date)The Sosso take Wagadu and make its king their tributary; the Muslim merchants begin to leave the capital, many in time for Biru (Walata).Depends on: The Sosso king being strong enough and free of war with Diara and the Mande; Ghana finding no ally. Stopped by: An alliance of Ghana with Diara, Mema or the Mande chiefs; a defeat of the Sosso; Almohad or Massufa help.
2. December 1199 to April 1200 (the dry season)The salt caravans of the Massufa arrive from the north and the gold from the south; this is the season of trade, of tribute and of war.Depends on: Peace on the roads and the end of the quarrel over the merchants held in Ghana. Stopped by: War with the Sosso cutting the southern roads, or a breach with Sijilmasa.
3. July to September 1200 (the rains)The rains fill the pools of the Awkar; the farming season; armies stay at home.Depends on: A normal year. Stopped by: Drought, which the tradition makes the cause of Wagadu's fall.

Where the sources disagree

• Delafosse's king list (Kambine Diaresso 1087-1090, Suleiman, Bannu Bubu, Magan Wagadou, Gane, Musa, Birama 1160-1180, Diara Kante 1180-1202, then Soumaba Cisse as a Sosso vassal 1203-1235) is repeated on Wikipedia. It rests on a mixture of oral traditions; Conrad (1984) and the Sosso Empire article reject it. No Arabic source names any king of Ghana after Tunka Manin (1063).
• The letter of 1199 from the Almohad governor of Sijilmasa to 'the king of the Sudan in Ghana' speaks of a difference of religion; Levtzion (1981) read this as possible evidence of Sosso dominance by 1199. If so, the Sosso conquest of Wagadu is already a fact on 1 January 1200, and the campaign may prefer that reading.
• The move of Ghana's Muslim merchants to Walata in 1224 is Delafosse's date; the Ta'rikh al-Sudan (Houdas's translation) says only that trade was once at Biru and that Timbuktu's rise ruined it, with no date.
• Whether Kumbi Saleh is Ghana's capital is increasingly disputed; al-Idrisi put the royal town on a river, which may mean a newer royal seat.

Evidence: The written evidence closest to 1200 is al-Idrisi (1154) and one letter of 1199; everything later (Ibn Khaldun, the Ta'rikh al-Sudan, the Wagadu legends, the Sundiata epic) is undated or reconstructed. Archaeology at Kumbi Saleh shows a living town through the period.

On the map: The extent of Ghana in 1200 is a reconstruction from the position of its neighbours: no source draws its borders. The southern edge towards the Sosso was a moving frontier.

Primary sources for this realm

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
• The Book of Routes and Realms: the Description of North Africa, al-Bakri (Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Bakri) (1068, at Cordoba). Old by 1200 but still the standard description of the Sahara and the Sudan that the Almohad-period writers copied: Ghana under Tunka Manin with its twin towns and its Muslim quarter, Awdaghust, Tadmakka, Kawkaw, Takrur and Sila, the gold trade and the routes from Sijilmasa and the Dar'a; the Ibadi towns of the Jarid and the Fezzan; the Berber peoples of the Maghreb. Read online
• The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. Read online
• The Epic of Sunjata, Various (Mande jeliw, the hereditary bards) (oral; the main recordings date from the twentieth century; Niane's version published 1960). Oral tradition, not a text of the period, but the only account from the Mande side of the world of 1200: the Sosso kingdom of Sumanguru (Sumaoro) Kante, which the epic shows ruling over the old Ghana lands and pressing on the Manden chiefdoms, with its smith-kings; the Manden of Sunjata's father Nare Maghan as a cluster of small chiefdoms; and the Mema, Diara and other states that sheltered the exile.
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Various (edited by N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins) (ninth to sixteenth centuries; the collection published 1981). The standard English collection of every Arabic passage on the western and central Sudan.