Ghana, ‘the land of gold’, in al-Fazari’s writings

Al-Fazari’s works survive only in quotations by later authors. His list of countries and their dimensions, apparently from a set of astronomical tables written about 790, includes for the far west ‘the territory of Ghana, the land of gold’. ‘Ghana’ was the title of the king and came to name his capital and his kingdom, which the Soninke called Wagadu. Its origins are unknown: modern scholars favour a local origin and allow that the state may have taken shape in the Sahel, north of the gold-bearing regions, as early as the 6th century, and North Africa was probably importing West African gold even before the Arab conquest.

The mention reflects the trans-Saharan trade that grew in the 8th century, when Berber and Arab merchants from towns such as Sijilmasa and Tahert carried salt and manufactured goods south and brought back gold for the mints of the Islamic world; already in 734 an Umayyad expedition had been sent from Ifriqiya against the Sous and the ‘Sudan’. Later geographers describe Ghana more fully: al-Ya'qubi in the late 9th century calls its king very powerful, Ibn Hawqal in the 970s the richest king on earth, and al-Bakri (1068) describes a capital of two towns, one of them inhabited by Muslim merchants.

Koumbi Saleh in southern Mauritania, excavated since 1914, is often identified with the capital described by al-Bakri, but no inscription confirms this: radiocarbon dates show that the site was occupied from the late 5th century, while its stone town belongs mainly to the 11th–14th centuries, and some scholars look for the capital elsewhere. Where the capital of Ghana lay in al-Fazari’s time is unknown.