So remarkable was the kingdom of Ghana during the age of Africa’s great empires that Arab and North African visitors praised it as a model for other rulers. Even in modern times, ancient Ghana holds a central place in Africa’s historical consciousness. When the Gold Coast colony gained its independence from British colonial rule in 1957, its new political leaders paid tribute to their heritage by naming their new country Ghana. Although modern Ghana lies far from the site of the old kingdom, the name was selected to signify the rebirth of ancient Ghana’s illustrious past.

The Soninke people inhabited the nucleus of the territory that became the Ghanaian kingdom. They called their ruler ghana, or war chief. By the late eighth century Muslim traders and other foreigners applied the king’s title to the region where the Soninke lived, the kingdom south of the Sahara. The Soninke themselves called their land Wagadou (WAH-guh-doo). Only the southern part of Wagadou received enough rainfall to be agriculturally productive, and it was here that the civilization of Ghana developed (see Map 10.2). Skillful farming and efficient irrigation systems led to abundant crop production, which eventually supported a population of as many as two hundred thousand.

The Soninke name for their king — war chief — aptly describes the king’s major preoccupation in the tenth century. In 992 Ghana captured the Berber town of Awdaghost, strategically situated on the trans-Saharan trade route. Thereafter Ghana controlled the southern portion of a major caravan route. Before the year 1000 Ghana’s rulers had extended their influence almost to the Atlantic coast and had captured a number of small kingdoms in the south and east. By the early eleventh century the Ghanaian king exercised sway over a territory approximately the size of Texas. No other power in the western Sudan could successfully challenge him.

Throughout this vast West African territory, all authority sprang from the king. Religious ceremonies and court rituals emphasized the king’s sacredness and were intended to strengthen his authority. The king’s position was hereditary in the matrilineal line — that is, the ruling king’s heir was one of the king’s sister’s sons (presumably the eldest or fittest for battle). According to the eleventh-century Spanish Muslim geographer al-Bakri (1040?–1094), “This is their custom . . . the kingdom is inherited only by the son of the king’s sister. He the king has no doubt that his successor is a son of his sister, while he is not certain that his son is in fact his own.”4

A council of ministers assisted the king in the work of government, and from the ninth century on most of these ministers were Muslims. Detailed evidence about the early Ghanaian bureaucracy has not survived, but scholars suspect that separate agencies were responsible for taxation, royal property, foreigners, forests, and the army. The royal administration was well served by ideas, skills, and especially literacy brought from the North African and Arab Muslim worlds. The king and his people, however, clung to their ancestral religion and basic cultural institutions.

The Ghanaian king held court in the large and vibrant city of Koumbi Saleh, which al-Bakri actually describes as two towns — one in which the king and the royal court lived, and the other Muslim. Al-Bakri provides a valuable description of the Muslim part of the town in the eleventh century:

The city of Ghana consists of two towns lying on a plain, one of which is inhabited by Muslims and is large, possessing twelve mosques — one of which is a congregational mosque for Friday prayer; each has its imam, its muezzin and paid reciters of the Quran. The town possesses a large number of jurisconsults and learned men.5

Either to protect themselves or to preserve their special identity, the Muslims of Koumbi Saleh lived separately from the African artisans and tradespeople. Ghana’s Muslim community was large and prosperous, as indicated by the twelve mosques. Muslim religious leaders exercised civil authority over their fellow Muslims. The imam was the religious leader who conducted the ritual worship, especially the main prayer service on Fridays (see “The Caliphate and the Split Between Shi’a and Sunni Alliances” in Chapter 9). The muezzin led the prayer responses after the imam; he needed a strong voice so that those at a distance and the women in the harems, or enclosures, could hear (see “Women in Classical Islamic Society” in Chapter 9). The presence of religious leaders and other learned Muslims suggests that Koumbi Saleh was a city of vigorous intellectual activity.

Al-Bakri also described the royal court:

The town inhabited by the king is six miles from the Muslim one and is called Al Ghana. . . . The residence of the king consists of a palace and a number of dome-shaped dwellings, all of them surrounded by a strong enclosure, like a city wall. In the town . . . is a mosque, where Muslims who come on diplomatic missions to the king pray.6

The king adorns himself, as do the women here, with necklaces and bracelets; on their heads they wear caps decorated with gold, sewn on material of fine cotton stuffing. When he holds court in order to hear the people’s complaints and to do justice, he sits in a pavilion around which stand ten horses wearing golden trappings; behind him ten pages stand, holding shields and swords decorated with gold; at his right are the sons of the chiefs of the country, splendidly dressed and with their hair sprinkled with gold. . . . When the king’s coreligionists appear before him, they fall on their knees and toss dust on their heads — this is their way of greeting their sovereign. Muslims show respect by clapping their hands.7

Justice derived from the king, who heard cases at court or on his travels throughout his kingdom. As al-Bakri recounts:

When a man is accused of denying a debt or of having shed blood or some other crime, a headman (village chief) takes a thin piece of wood, which is sour and bitter to taste, and pours upon it some water which he then gives to the defendant to drink. If the man vomits, his innocence is recognized and he is congratulated. If he does not vomit and the drink remains in his stomach, the accusation is accepted as justified.8

This appeal to the supernatural for judgment was similar to the justice by ordeal that prevailed among the Germanic peoples of western Europe at the same time (discussed in Chapter 14). Complicated cases were appealed to the king, who often relied on the advice of Muslim legal experts.

The king’s elaborate court, the administrative machinery he built, and the extensive territories he governed were all expensive. To support the kingdom, the royal estates — some hereditary, others conquered in war — produced annual revenue, mostly in the form of foodstuffs for the royal household. The king also received tribute annually from subordinate chieftains. Customs duties on goods entering and leaving the country generated revenues as well. Salt was the largest import. Berber merchants paid a tax to the king on the cloth, metalwork, weapons, and other goods they brought into the country from North Africa; in return these traders received royal protection from bandits. African traders bringing gold into Ghana from the south also paid the customs duty.

Finally, the royal treasury held a monopoly on the export of gold. The gold industry was undoubtedly the king’s largest source of income. Medieval Ghana’s fame rested on gold. The ninth-century Persian geographer al-Ya-qubi wrote, “Its king is mighty, and in his lands are gold mines. Under his authority are various other kingdoms — and in all this region there is gold.”9

The governing aristocracy — the king, his court, and Muslim administrators — occupied the highest rung on the Ghanaian social ladder. On the next rung stood the merchant class. Considerably below the merchants stood the farmers, cattle breeders, gold mine supervisors, and skilled craftsmen and weavers — what today might be called the middle class. Some merchants and miners must have enjoyed great wealth, but, as in all aristocratic societies, money alone did not grant prestige. High status was based on blood and royal service. On the social ladder’s lowest rung were slaves, who worked in households, on farms, and in the mines. As in Asian and European societies of the time, slaves accounted for only a small percentage of the population.

Apart from these social classes stood the army. According to al-Bakri, “The king of Ghana can put 200,000 warriors in the field, more than 40,000 being armed with bow and arrow.” Like most medieval estimates, this is probably a gross exaggeration. Ghana’s king maintained at his palace a standing force of a thousand men, comparable to the bodyguards of the Roman emperors. These thoroughly disciplined, well-armed, totally loyal troops protected the king and the royal court. They lived in special compounds, enjoyed the king’s favor, and sometimes acted as his personal ambassadors to subordinate rulers. In wartime this regular army was augmented by levies of soldiers from conquered peoples and by the use of slaves and free reserves. The force that the king could field was sizable, if not as substantial as al-Bakri estimated.

The reasons for ancient Ghana’s decline are still a matter of much debate. By al-Bakri’s time there were other increasingly powerful neighbors, such as the Mandinka, to challenge Ghana’s influence in the region. The most commonly accepted theory for Ghana’s rapid decline held, however, that the Berber Almoravid dynasty of North Africa invaded and conquered Ghana around 1100 and forced its rulers and people to convert to Islam. Some historians examining this issue have concluded that while Almoravid and Islamic pressures certainly disrupted the empire, weakening it enough for its incorporation into the rising Mali empire, there was no Almoravid military invasion and subsequent forced conversion to Islam.10