The next destination was modern day southeast Mauritania and western Mali where they founded the Ghana empire lasting from 750 AD until 1,200 AD. The tradition of Ghana empire refers to a founder called Dingha Cisse, a man “from the east”, from the “place of Wago” in the legend of Wagadu. The empire of Ghana grew through trade and intermarriage alliances. This theory fits a society where power and wealth transferred through matrilineality, as was described by Al-Bakri when he wrote about the Kings of Ancient Ghana. Written records about the empire first appeared in 830 AD from Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, over a hundred years before the Domesday book ordered by William the Conqueror, and shortly after the death of Charlesmagne in the Kingdom of the Franks.Īl-Bakri claims the empire of Ghana traded in salt, kola nuts, gold and ivory.

The king held rights over nuggets of gold within his kingdom discovered or mined but left gold dust to all his subjects, which eliminated poverty. The kingdom had a sophisticated hierarchy comprised of the king, advised by ministers, interpreters and a treasurer, with a core region divided into cities run by governor appointees and the core region surrounded by vassal kingdoms. The vassal kings were the rulers of territorial units called kafu in Mandinka. (al-Ya’qubi in Levtzion and Hopkins, eds. 21.) The kingdom charged import and export duties.Ĭamels were used as beasts of burden and for transport over long distances. The timing of the decline of the empire of Ghana is uncertain.

Although we know that following the spread of Islam by diffusion of ideas, violence or both, some of his subjects began to identify as Muslim above nationality, at a time when the power of the Almoravid dynasty in Morocco was growing to the north. Also, Al-Bakri claimed the military might of the king of Ghana was matched by the military strength of Sila, a vassal king on the Senegalese River. By 1154, al-Idrisi claims the whole state was fully Muslim. The switch in religion eroded the religious authority of the king of Ghana and eventually another dynasty was able to subdue Ghana and annex its goldfields, the source of its wealth. Successor states of the Ghana Empire, on the upper Niger river valley, West Africa, c. The ancestors of the Akan, reportedly, this time left for Kong, in the region of the Ivory Coast of today. Around the 14 th century they moved south eastwards from Dorma to Twifo-Hemang in the North West Cape Coast. The ancestors of Akan migrated in waves, over time, between the 12 th and 14 th century to areas around modern day Ghana (not to be confused with the empire of Ghana of 750-1200AD) and the Ivory Coast.

Upper volta asante empire