LESSON 26
GHĀNA AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIESThe oldest centre of gold production in West Africa was Bambuk. Its people guarded its secret so that outsiders had to deal with them on their own terms. Takrūr, Ghāna and Gao were three states which competed for the diminishing gold of Bambuk and resold it to the Arabs. We have accounts by the Arabs of these kingdoms:
The town of Takrūr, whose people are black, like the rest of the black peoples practised the Magi religion and the worship of idols until Wārjābī ibn-Rābīs (who had a military alliance with the Berbers) became their ruler. He established the laws of Islam and converted them to these laws. Wārjābī died in 1040-1 and the people of Takrūr are Muslims today.
Silā likewise consists of two towns on the banks of the Senegal River. Its people are Muslim, having become Muslim at the hands of Wārjābī. From Silā to the town of Ghāna is the distance of 20 days' journey over land inhabited by one tribe after another. The king of Silā makes war on his pagan neighbours. The king of Silā rules over a large territory with many people and is almost a match for the king of Ghāna.
Then there is the kingdom of Ghāna, whose king is also powerful. In his land are the gold mines, and he has many other kings under him. It borders on the land of the gold mines, where great nations live. They have a boundary which anyone who wants to deal with them may not cross. When traders bringing goods reach this boundary they put their goods and cloths on it and pull back. The blacks then come with gold and leave it next to the goods and pull back. The traders return and if they are satisfied they take the gold, otherwise they go back. The blacks keep returning with more gold in this manner until the sale is completed.
Ghāna is the wealthiest king on the face of the earth. Yet he stands in pressing need of the goodwill of the kings of Awdaghust because of the salt which comes to them from the lands of Islam. They cannot do without this salt.
The town of Ghāna consists of two towns on a plain. One of them is where the Muslims live, and is a big town with 12 mosques, one of them a Friday mosque with imāms and mu'adhdhins, some of them appointed, as well as legal experts and learned men. The king's town is six miles away, and is called al-Ghāna [the grove], but dwellings cover the way between the two towns. The king has a palace and some domed buildings surrounded by a wall resembling a city wall. The king's town has one mosque, near the king's court of justice, where the Muslims pray who come there. Around the king's town are domed buildings and groves and shrines where their sorcerers, who keep their religion going, live. In these places are their idols and the tombs of their kings. The groves are guarded, and no one can enter them or know what is in them. There also is the king's prison, and if he imprisons anyone there, no news of him is ever heard. The king's interpreters are from the Muslims, likewise the treasurer and most of his ministers.
Their king wears necklaces and bracelets like the women, and puts on his head a high cap decorated with gold, and over that a turban of fine cotton. He receives people or judges grievances against officials in a domed building, around which stand ten horses with gold decorated covers. Behind the king stand ten pages holding shields and swords decorated with gold. On his right are the children of his vassal kings with fine clothes and their hair braided with gold. The governor of the town sits on the ground before the king, and around him sit the ministers. At the door of the building are specially bred dogs who guard the king and hardly ever leave his place. Around their necks are collars of gold and silver, with a number of golden and silver balls. People are called to the audience by a drum made from a long hollowed log. When the people of his religion approach him they fall on their knees and sprinkle dust over their heads; that is their way of greeting him. But Muslims greet him by clapping their hands.
Their religion is Magism and they worship idols. When their king dies they construct a huge dome of wood, putting it over the place of the grave. Then, on a stretcher with a pillow and spread, they bring him inside that dome and place beside him his ornaments, weapons and the vessels he used for eating and drinking, full of food and drink. Putting inside also the men who served him his food and drink, they then lock the door, cover the dome with mats and other items, gather together to cover the dome with earth until it becomes like a big mound, and dig a ditch around it, so that the mound can be reached only from one point. They slaughter animals for their dead and offer them alcoholic drinks.
The king gets one dīnār of gold for every donkey-load of salt coming into the country and two dīnārs when the donkey goes out. The best gold in his territory comes from the town of Ghiyārū, which is an 18 days' journey from the king's town over land settled with the continuous dwellings of Sūdān tribes. Any nuggets of gold found in the mines of his country belong to the king, while the gold dust is left for the people. It is said that the king has a nugget the size of a big stone. The king of Ghāna can call up an army of 200,000 men, with over 40,000 archers. The horses in Ghāna are small.
Beyond lies the land of Malal, whose king is known as al-Muslimānī. He got that name because his land suffered from draught year after year. The people sought for rain by making offerings of cattle until they were nearly finished, but only suffered the more from draught and hardship. The king was hosting a Muslim visitor who recited the Qur'ān and knew the Sunna. The king complained to him about what had befallen his people, and he said to him: "O King, if you only believed in God the most high and acknowledged his oneness, and in Muhammad on him be salāt and peace and acknowledged his prophethood, and accepted all the laws of Islam, I could assure you of relief from what you are suffering, and that God's mercy would cover the people of your land and that your enemies would envy you because of that." He talked on like that until the king accepted Islam with a pure intention. So he taught him how to recite some simple passages of the Qur'ān and taught him the necessary and customary practices which no one should be ignorant of. He then had him wait until the night before Friday, when he ordered him to purify himself by a complete bath. The Muslim clothed him with a cotton garment which he had, and the two went out to a little hill where the Muslim stood and did salāt and the king, on his right, followed him. They prayed for a good part of the night, the Muslim making intercessions and the king answering "Amen". When dawn came God covered the land with rain. So the king ordered the dakākīr to be smashed and the sorcerers to be expelled from his country. His Islam was sincere, as that of his children and confidants, but the people of his kingdom remained polytheists. Since then they called their kings al-muslimānī.
The town of Kawkaw (Gao) consists of two towns: that of the king and that of the Muslims. Like the Sūdān, they worship dakākīr. When the king sits down to eat they beat drums and the Sūdān women dance, with their thick hair hanging loose, and no one leaves the town until the king finishes eating; what he leaves is thrown into the Niger. People shout and scream when this happens, so that everyone knows that the king has finished eating.
If anyone is made king, he is consigned a seal, a sword and a Qur'ān, which they maintain the Commander of the Faithful sent to them. Their king is Muslim, and no one but a Muslim may rule them. The people of Kawkaw trade with salt, and that is their currency. Salt is imported from an underground mine in a Berber locality called Tūtak.
The people of Zawīla export black slaves from the black peoples. I have heard that the kings of the Blacks sell the Blacks without any pretext such as war. From Zawīla slaves are taken to Ifrīqiya and nearby places.
The Zaghāwa settled in a place called Kanem. Their houses are made of reeds, and they have no cities. Their houses are all reed huts as is also the palace of their king, whom they exalt and worship instead of Allāh. They imagine that he does not eat any food. Persons who have charge of this food secretly bring it to his house. If it happens that one of his subjects meets the camels carrying his provisions, he is killed instantly on the spot. The king has unlimited authority over his subjects and he enslaves from among them anyone he wants. Their religion is the worship of their kings, for they believe that they bring life and death, sickness and health... The Kanem people are black polytheists.
QUESTIONS
- Explain how gold trade may have influenced the religion of Takrūr.
- Compare religious toleration in Takrūr and Ghāna.
- How did slave trade become so important in Kanem and Central Africa?
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