Africa (6th–10th c.)Society and economy

Awdaghust and the gold of Ghana in the accounts of Ibn Hawqal

The geographer Ibn Hawqal, who travelled in the Maghreb around 950 and wrote his book in several versions, from the 960s to about 988, described Awdaghust, a Berber oasis town at the southern end of the caravan route from Sijilmasa, on whose king the rulers of Ghana and Kugha depended for salt from the lands of Islam, and Ghana, whose ruler he called the wealthiest king on earth because of his gold. His story of a merchant's bill for 42,000 dinars became the classic image of the riches of the trans-Saharan trade.

Date: between 951 and 977exact date unknown: an interval is given
Place: Awdaghust (Tegdaoust)today: Tegdaoust, Hodh El Gharbi, Mauritania · Africa
Participants: Ghana Empire, Ibn Hawqal
Threads: Africa (6th–10th c.)
Also known as: Aoudaghost; Awdaghost; Tegdaoust; Ibn Hawqal's cheque; Surat al-ard; Аудагост; Тегдауст; Картина Земли

Awdaghust, at Tegdaoust in present-day southern Mauritania, was first mentioned by al-Ya'qubi in 889–890 as the seat of a Sanhaja Berber king who raided the lands of the Sudan; excavations in 1960–1976 uncovered a town mound of some 12 hectares whose first mud-brick buildings date from the late 9th or early 10th century. In the 10th century it was the southern terminus of the caravan route across the Sahara from Sijilmasa, where the gold of the south met the salt and goods of the north.

Ibn Hawqal, who travelled in Spain and the Maghreb in 947–951, reports that Ghana lay ten days' journey from Awdaghust for a lightly loaded caravan, that the king of Awdaghust maintained relations with the ruler of Ghana — which suggests that the town was not yet part of Ghana — and that the kings of Ghana and Kugha stood in pressing need of his goodwill because of the salt that came to them from the lands of Islam. The king of Ghana, he wrote, was the wealthiest king on the face of the earth because of the gold he had amassed. To show the scale of the trade he told of a bill certifying a debt of 42,000 dinars — 40,000 in de Goeje's edition — owed by one merchant of Sijilmasa to another.

It was long accepted that Ibn Hawqal crossed the Sahara and saw this bill at Awdaghust in 951/952, which would make him the first Arab geographer to reach the land of the Sudan. Nehemia Levtzion argued in 1968 that the debtor was a Sijilmasa merchant living at Awdaghust, that Ibn Hawqal probably met the creditor in Sijilmasa and that he gathered his information north of the Sahara, mainly from that creditor. Either way, his notice shows Ghana growing rich on gold at the far end of a trade network that ran through the Berber towns of the desert to the Mediterranean. Ghana later absorbed Awdaghust, which the Almoravids sacked in 1054–1055; by the early 13th century Walata had replaced it as the southern terminus of the caravans.

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Related events

Founding of Sijilmasabetween 757 and 758 · AfricaSijilmasa was the northern end of the caravan route to Awdaghust, and the famous bill was a debt between two of its merchants
Ghana, ‘the land of gold’, in al-Fazari’s writingsc. 790 · Africain the late 8th century al-Fazari had first called Ghana ‘the land of gold’
Kanem and the Zaghawa in the writings of al-Ya'qubibetween 872 and 890 · Africathe earliest mention of Awdaghust is also al-Ya'qubi's, in his Book of Countries (889–890)
Sayf al-Dawla's Aleppo: al-Mutanabbi and the Hamdanid emirate29 October 944 – 8 February 967 · Middle East and EgyptIbn Hawqal dedicated the first version of his book to Sayf al-Dawla
Queen Gudit and the fall of Aksum (tradition)c. 960 · Africaboth the queen of the Habasha and the trade of Awdaghust are known from the same geographer, Ibn Hawqal
Sviatoslav’s campaign against the Khazars964 – between 968 and 969 · Eastern Europethe same Ibn Hawqal who described Awdaghust and Ghana reports that in AH 358 (968–969) the Rus laid waste Bulgar, Atil and Samandar

Adjacent events in the thread

The Zirids rule Ifriqiya for the Fatimids2 October 972 · Africa

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Sources

Wikipedia (English): Aoudaghost
Wikipedia (English): Ibn Hawqal
Wikipedia (English): Ghana Empire
Wikipedia (Russian): Аудагост
Wikipedia (Russian): Ибн Хаукаль
Wikipedia (Russian): Империя Гана
Levtzion N. Ibn-Ḥawqal, the Cheque, and Awdaghost // The Journal of African History. — 1968. — Vol. 9, no. 2. — P. 223–233.
Levtzion N., Hopkins J. F. P. (eds.) Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Levtzion N. Ancient Ghana and Mali. — London: Methuen, 1973.