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We do not know at what epoch or exactly by whom was founded the kingdom which later gave birth to the Empire of Ghana. Local traditions, confirmed by the works of scholars of Timbuktu and of Arab historians, only let us conjecture that this State goes back at least to the 4th century CE, that its first sovereigns belonged to the white race and that, a certain time after the Hegira, the power passed into the hands of a family of the black race belonging to the Sarakolle people. Arab authors, moreover, inform us that the Empire of Ghana was flourishing in the 9th and the 10th centuries CE, that its decline began towards the middle of the 11th century under the conquering and destructive movement of the Almoravides, that its debris fell under the yoke of the Mandinka and that its capital, last vestige of its sunken glory, ceased to exist after about the middle of the 13th century.

This capital, whose name is mentioned for the first time, it seems, in the Golden Prairies of Masudi, who died in 956, was visited in the second half of the 10th century by the celebrated Arab geographer lbn-Haukal, and Bekri gives a fairly detailed description of it in the following century. It was called Ghana only by the foreigners and notably the Arabs, who made it known by this name in Europe and Asia. This was not its name but, as Bekri expressly says and as Sudanese traditions confirm, one of the titles borne by the sovereign, who was further designated by that of kaya-maga or simply maga or magan (the master) or again by that of tounka (the prince). The city itself was known to the inhabitants under the name of Kumbi-Kumbi (the butte or tumulus), by which even today its site is pointed out. It is situated between Goumbu and Walata, about a hundred kilometres to the north-northeast of the first of these localities, in a region of the Hodh which the Moors call Howker or Howkar (a geographical term common to many sub-Saharan regions), the Mandinka and the Bambara calling it Bagana or Mara, the Kassonke Bakhunu, and the Sarakolle Wagadu.[7] It extends in a general fashion to the north and to the northeast of Goumbu.

The explorer Bonnel de Mezieres, who visited and excavated this locality in 1914, found there the vestiges of a great city corresponding very exactly to that described by Bekri, with ruins of hewn stone constructions, sometimes sculptured. The region where Ghana or Kumbi was built is now very arid. In truth, it rains there every year, but there are no rivers and, except at a few points where pools or sheets of not very deep subterranean water exist, the vegetation, although fairly thick in spots, is reduced to thin pasturage, gum-trees, and other spiny bushes. The region contains no village and is traversed only by nomadic Moors and hunters of the Nemadi or Nimadi tribe. But very numerous and extended traces of former habitations and burial places which turn up at every instant, show that the country was formerly inhabited, in part at least, by sedentary peoples, and lead us to suppose that it was better watered than it is today and more suitable for tillage. Besides, Bekri speaks of vast and prosperous fields which extended to the east of Ghana and local traditions are unanimous in attributing the decline of the kingdom and the dispersion of its inhabitants to the drying up of the Wagadu and consequent famine. It is probable that these circumstances had much more influence on the end of the Empire of Ghana than the successive pillages to which the city was subjected by the Almoravides in 1076, by the king of Soso, Sumanguru Kannte, in 1203, and finally by the king of the Mandinka, Sundiata Kelta, towards 1240. A populous city and a flourishing State survived pillage and defeat, but could not resist lack of water and nourishment.

At that distant epoch when they lent themselves to tillage and a sedentary life, the Bagana or Wagadu and most of the sub-Saharan districts which we unite today under the name of Hodh in the east and Mauritania in the west, must have been inhabited by the Negroes, more or less mixed with Negrillos and white natives of North Africa. These Negroes formed an ensemble, fairly disparate perhaps in certain aspects, which Moorish traditions generally designate by the term Bafur; from them have without doubt gone forth, by ramification, the Songhoy or Songai towards the east, the Serers towards the west and, towards the centre, a great people called Gangara (Gangari in the singular) by the Moors, Wangara by Arab authors and writers of Timbuktu, and more recently comprising, as its principal divisions, the Mandinka properly speaking or the Malinke, the Bambara, and the Jula.

It is in this region and among these Bafur, undoubtedly already ramified, that the immigrants of the Semitic race treated in the last chapter probably settled, as they pass for having colonised particularly the Massina and the Wagadu, and for having founded the kingdom and the city of Ghana. As we have seen, these immigrants probably also included farmers and shepherds. However considerable their number, it was certainly very inferior to that of the Negroes in the midst of whom they settled and over whom they established their domination. There must have been, from the very beginning, a number of unions between the whites and the blacks and of these unions were born, it seems, two very important populations, each of which, in turn, was to play a role of the first order in the history of the western and central Sudan and in the development of its civilisation.

Even in Ghana, in the Wagadu, in the Massina, and at still other places, the union of the Semites, for the most part sedentary, with the Wangara, who were considerably more numerous than the former, probably engendered the people who give themselves the name of Sarakolle, that is to say, “white men”, in memory of one of their ancestors. They are called by several Sudanese tribes Soninke, by the Moors Assuanik; the Bambara denominate them Mara-ka or Marka (people of the Mara or Wagadu) and the Arab authors and the Songhoy of Timbuktu designate them by the term Wakore. These people spoke a language closely related to that of the Wangara; it became the customary language of Ghana and is still today that of the Sarakolle of the Sahel and of Senegal, of the sedentary inhabitants of the black race called Azer or Ahl-Masine (people of the Massina), of certain oases such as Tichit, and finally of some tribes who have either adopted the errant habits of their Moorish neighbours or conserved those of their white ancestors, for example, the Guirganke shepherds and also, it is believed, of the Nemadi hunters.

To the west of Ghana, in the region of the Termes pastures, the mixture of the nomadic Semites with the Serers and especially the long cohabitation of these Semites in the midst of the Serers must have given birth to the Fulani or Fulbe people, who speak a language quite near to that of the Serers and who later swarmed towards the Massina and, on the other side, towards the Tagant and the Futa-Toro. They later sent forth groups to the southwest into the Futa-Jallon, to the east and to the southeast in the bend of the Niger, to Hausaland, Adamawa, and other countries neighbouring Lake Chad.

However, in Ghana itself, after a succession of princes of the white race who, according to the Tarikh es-Sudon, must have numbered 44, of whom 22 came before the Hegira and 22 after it, but of whom the last, according to the Tarikh el-Fettach, was contemporary with Mohammed, the power passed to the Sarakolle dynasty of the Sisse which perhaps, as its present descendants claim, was related to the dynasty of the white race and, in a way, constituted only a continuation of it, more or less mixed with Negro blood. However that be, it is under the reign of these Sisse, whom Masudi and other Arab authors formally claim to have been Negroes, that the State of Ghana attained its apogee. In the testimony of Bekri, of Yakut and of Ibn-Khaldoun, its power made itself felt from the 9th century over the Zenaga or Sanhaja Berbers (Lemtuna, Goddala or Jeddala, Messufa, Lemta, etc.) who had shortly before pushed their southern advance-guards as far as the Hodh and into what is now Mauritania. Howdaghost, the capital of these Berbers, undoubtedly situated to the southwest and not far from Tichit, was vassal to the Negro king of Ghana and paid tribute to him; an attempt at independence on the part of the chief of the Lemtuna led, about 990, to an expedition of the king of Ghana, who captured Howdaghost and reaffirmed his authority over the sedentary Berbers and over the “veiled Zenaga” of the desert, as several Arab authors express themselves.

To the south, the dependencies of Ghana stretched to the other side of the Senegal river and as far as the gold mines of the Faleme and of the Bambuk, whose product fed the treasury of the Sisse and served to operate fruitful exchanges with Moroccan caravans coming from Tafilalit and from the Dara; they extended even as far as Manding, on the upper Niger. Towards the east, the limits of the kingdom reached nearly to the region of the lakes situated to the west of Timbuktu. To the north, its influence was felt in the very heart of the Sahara and its renown had penetrated as far as Cairo and Baghdad.

However, at the beginning of the 11th century, Islam began to penetrate the Berbers of the Sahara and the edge of Sudan, the majority of whom until then seem to have practiced a religion which was a mixture of Christianity and paganism. Towards 1040, a movement of Islamic propaganda took birth among portions of the Lemtuna tribe, which principally inhabited the Tagant and the district of Howdaghost, and that of the Goddala or Jeddala, who led a nomadic life between the Mauritanian Adrar and the Atlantic and formed a sort of federation with the former. From a monastery situated on an island of the lower Senegal or in the proximity of its outlet, the famous sect of the Almoravides (al-morabetine, the “marabouts”, etymologically “those who close themselves up in a ribbat or monastery”), set out to preach Islam and to wage war from Sudan to Spain.

Zoomorphic head, 8th-9th century.

Central Angola.

Wood, 50.5 × 15.5 cm.

Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.

Representing an animal with a snout, eyes, and small round ears, this is probably the oldest wooden sculpture of central Africa, if not sub-Saharan Africa. While reminiscent of an aardvark, the figure could also represent a zebra, warthog, hippopotamus, or a composite of an imaginary animal. The two small holes on top of the head and at the end of the tail, likely bored with a red-hot iron, were likely filled with hair-like fibres. Overall, it may have been used as a horizontal mask or headdress.

If this, in fact, represents an aardvark, it would not be surprising to learn that the figure had been buried purposefully, as the burrowing abilities are revered.

Statuettes (Djenné), 12th-15th century.

Terracotta, height of the horsemen: 44 cm, height of the kneeling figure: 36 cm.

Private collection.

Very rare and of a high quality, these figures appear to represent horsemen, one on a horse and the other on a buffalo. The bearded horseman on the horse likely represents a chief, while the other, holding a bow, is probably a soldier. It is impossible to know what function these statues served.

The kneeling man is a common archetype in Djenné art. His hieratic position and specific detailing point out the sophistication and refinement of this civilisation, which we can only learn about based on artistic artefacts.

Anthropomorphic mask (Wum).

North-Western Province, Cameroon.

Wood, 24 × 21 × 33 cm.

Charles and Kent Davis.

This mask is a beautiful example of the stylistic area in the west, between Wum and Fungom. For each festival, a large number of masks, juju, are used to celebrate the dry season’s sorghum harvest, the great December festival, or the funerals of noble people. More reminiscent of the Wum style, the compact, geometrical shape, its wide open mouth, dilated nostrils, and bulging, emotionally devoid eyes are carved from a very hard wood.