40 Fun Facts About Ghana Empire

Which leader gave the newly independent Gold Coast the name of ancient Ghana in 1957?

Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to independence as Ghana, although the old empire lay hundreds of miles to the northwest and never reached the modern country.

Which animals in gold and silver collars guarded the king of ancient Ghana's audience pavilion?

Dogs of excellent pedigree hardly ever left the king's side, an 11th-century account says, and their collars were studded with balls of the same precious metals.

Which animal, new to the western Sahara in the 3rd century, made ancient Ghana's desert trade possible?

The camel turned irregular desert tracks into a trade network that linked North Africa with the West African interior by the 7th century.

When a king of ancient Ghana died, the throne passed by custom to which relative, not his own child?

His sister's son inherited because kingship in the empire ran through the female line, a system historians call matrilineal descent.

Every gold nugget in ancient Ghana belonged to the king, so his subjects could keep gold only as what?

Dust was all a commoner could keep, a rule that let the king control the supply and stop the metal losing its value.

Ancient Ghana is named after ghana, the title its own kings carried, which had which meaning?

War chief is the usual translation, and Arab traders came to use the royal title for the whole kingdom, which its own people knew as Wagadu.

The ruins of ancient Ghana's presumed capital lie far from modern Ghana, in the southeast of which country?

Mauritania holds the ruined city, which sits on the desert's edge about 30 km north of the border with Mali.

How did Muslim visitors greet the king of ancient Ghana while his own subjects fell to their knees?

By clapping their hands, Muslims showed respect without the kneeling that followers of the king's own religion performed, an 11th-century account records.

In ancient Ghana's founding legend, what kind of creature was Bida, which demanded a maiden each year?

A snake, Bida was said to repay the yearly sacrifice by keeping the kingdom of Wagadu supplied with gold.

Ancient Ghana's capital was really two towns, the merchants' one boasting twelve of which buildings?

Mosques served the Muslim traders who lived there, while the king's own walled town stood about six miles away.

Which ruined city on the rim of the Sahara is most often identified as the capital of ancient Ghana?

Koumbi Saleh has yielded stone houses but no inscription naming it as the royal city, so scholars still debate the identification.

Which West African people, who called their kingdom Wagadu, founded and ruled ancient Ghana?

Soninke clans built the empire, and when it fell their traders scattered across West Africa, some as far as modern Ghana and Guinea.

Which scholar in Muslim Spain wrote the fullest account of ancient Ghana without ever travelling there?

Al-Bakri pieced his description together from books and the reports of merchants and travellers, and a crater on the Moon now bears his name.

Which Berber movement is traditionally blamed for sacking ancient Ghana's capital around 1076?

The Almoravids were long said to have conquered the empire, but modern historians find no sign of sudden destruction in the ruins and doubt any invasion took place.

Which founder of the Mali Empire won the Battle of Kirina and absorbed ancient Ghana's old lands?

Sundiata Keita, remembered as the Lion of Mali, made the old kingdom's rulers his allies, and they kept a place of honour inside his new empire.

Which empire, ruled from Gao, was the third great West African trading empire after Ghana and Mali?

Songhai grew into one of the largest African empires in history, swallowing much of Mali just as Mali had swallowed the older kingdom.

Ancient Ghana lay in which dry belt along the southern edge of the Sahara, whose Arabic name means shore?

The Sahel takes its name from the Arabic for coast or shore, a figure of speech that treats the great desert to its north as a sea.

Arab writers placed ancient Ghana in a region whose name, meaning Land of the Blacks, now belongs to which country?

Sudan comes from bilad as-sudan, a name medieval geographers gave the whole belt of Africa south of the great desert, from the Atlantic eastwards.

A merchant bringing a donkey-load of salt into ancient Ghana paid the king one of which gold coins?

Dinar was the coin, and taking the same load out again cost two, so the king profited from salt in both directions.

Ancient Ghana filled a triangle of grassland between the Sahara, the Senegal and which other great river?

The Niger bounded the kingdom to the southeast, and easy access to both rivers and their tributaries helped its traders move goods.

Which king ruled ancient Ghana in the 1060s, when the fullest surviving account of it was written?

Tunka Manin took the throne in 1063 and kept the traditional religion of his ancestors, though most of his ministers were Muslims.

The king of ancient Ghana lived in a walled royal town called El-Ghaba, an Arabic name with which meaning?

The Forest suited a town ringed by guarded groves, where priests of the old religion lived and the kings were buried.

Which former vassal kingdom conquered ancient Ghana around 1203, only to fall itself by 1235?

Sosso built a short-lived empire on the ruins, and its king is remembered in West African epic as a villainous sorcerer.

Arab writers said ancient Ghana's gold was swapped for salt without buyer and seller meeting, a practice known as what?

Silent trade let each side leave its salt or gold and withdraw until the other was satisfied, and may have helped keep the sources of both goods secret.

Which scholar, whose name gave English the word algorithm, wrote an early mention of ancient Ghana?

Al-Khwarizmi put the kingdom on his world map in the 830s, one of the earliest written records of a state already famous for its gold.

Ibn Hawqal, who wrote of ancient Ghana's riches in the 970s, reported which document worth 42,000 gold coins?

A cheque of that size was noted by the same writer who called the kingdom's ruler the wealthiest king on the face of the earth.

In legend, a nobleman killed the guardian Bida to save a maiden, bringing which disaster on ancient Ghana?

A seven-year drought and famine followed the curse, the tradition says, and the story is how the empire's own people explained its fall.

Among followers of the king's religion in ancient Ghana, only the king and his heir could wear which?

Sewn clothes were a royal privilege, so everyone else dressed in draped robes of cotton, silk or brocade, as fine as they could afford.

Ancient Ghana's gold came largely from which goldfield region between the Senegal and Falémé rivers?

Bambuk gold was gathered from river deposits, and one Arab writer described the kingdom as having the richest mines on earth.

Which instrument, a duba made from a long hollow log, announced the king of ancient Ghana's audiences?

A drum summoned people to the domed pavilion where the king sat to hear grievances against his officials.

Which oasis trading town, a ten-day caravan journey from the capital, did ancient Ghana conquer around 990?

Awdaghust got a governor from the empire after the conquest, but fell in 1054 to desert warriors who punished it for its loyalty to the king.

The 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi put ancient Ghana's royal city on the bank of a river he called what?

The Nile was a mistake of the age, when geographers believed the great rivers of West Africa formed one stream and gave it that famous name.

Caravans carried ancient Ghana's gold north to which Moroccan oasis city, where it was struck into coins?

Sijilmasa sat at the northern end of the desert crossing and grew rich minting the gold before it moved on to Mediterranean ports.

An 11th-century account said ancient Ghana could field 200,000 men, over 40,000 of them which kind of fighter?

Archers made up at least a fifth of that host, and other writers' mentions of swords, spears and shields suggest an army that fought mostly on foot.

Besides gold, which metal, drawn into wire, served as a kind of currency in ancient Ghana?

Copper wire passed as money, and the metal was valued enough that the king set a fixed duty on every load brought in.

In an epic of ancient Ghana, Prince Gassire gives up his claim to the throne to play which instrument?

A lute that will not sound even after several of his sons die in battle finally plays when he sings of the empire.

Feathers of which bird went north across the Sahara from ancient Ghana with gold, ivory, hides and slaves?

Ostrich feathers joined the luxury goods the kings passed to desert caravans, which came south loaded with much-valued salt.

An 11th-century description of ancient Ghana's capital says the men went beardless while the women did what?

The women shaved their heads, the account says, while the king himself wore necklaces, bracelets and a tall cap trimmed with gold.

Which animals, draped in gold-embroidered fabric, ringed the pavilion where ancient Ghana's king held court?

Horses, ten of them, stood around the royal pavilion, while pages behind the king held shields and swords decorated with gold.

Archaeologists from which European country began digging at ancient Ghana's presumed capital in 1914?

France supplied the successive teams, and one of their leaders estimated the town could have held between 15,000 and 20,000 people.