14 Facts About Ghana Empire

Ghana Empire, known as Wagadou or Awkar, was a West African empire based in the modern-day southeast of Mauritania and western Mali that existed from c 300 until c 1100.

The Ghana Empire was founded by the Soninke people, and was based in the capital city of Koumbi Saleh.

The Ghana Empire grew rich from this increased trans-Saharan trade in gold and slaves and salt, allowing for larger urban centers to develop.

Theorizing concerning the origins of Ghana Empire has been dominated by disputes between ethnohistoric accounts and archaeological interpretations.

Ghana Empire says that 22 kings ruled before the Hijra and 22 after.

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French colonial officials, notably Maurice Delafosse, whose works on West African history has been criticised by scholars such Charles Monteil, Robert Cornevin and others for being "unacceptable" and "too creative to be useful to historians" in relation to his falsification of West African genealogies, concluded that Ghana Empire had been founded by the Berbers, a nomadic group originating from the Benue River and linked them to North African and Middle Eastern origins.

The earliest descriptions of the empire are vague as to its maximum extent, though according to al-Bakri, Ghana had forced Awdaghost in the desert to accept its rule sometime between 970 and 1054.

Ibn Khaldun, a fourteenth-century North African historian who read and cited both al-Bakri and al-Idrisi, reported an ambiguous account of the country's history as related to him by 'Uthman, a faqih of Ghana Empire who took a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1394, according to which the power of Ghana Empire waned as that of the "veiled people" grew through the Almoravid movement.

Al-Idrisi's report does not give any reason to believe that the Ghana Empire was smaller or weaker than it had been in the days of al-Bakri, 75 years earlier.

Ghana Empire grew rich from the Trans-Saharan Trade by trading gold, iron and salt.

Testimony about ancient Ghana depended on how well disposed the king was to foreign travelers, from whom the majority of information on the empire comes.

Ghana Empire sits in audience or to hear grievances against officials in a domed pavilion around which stand ten horses covered with gold-embroidered materials.

Ghana Empire appears to have had a central core region and was surrounded by vassal states.

Ghana Empire's capital is believed to have been at Koumbi Saleh on the rim of the Sahara desert.