Ancient Ghana and Mali

"This was the first publication in English that sought to recreate, or get at the histories of Ghana and Mali by bringing together the external sources written in Arabic about these places in periods and connecting them with the oral traditions, in particular with respect to Ghana. We have to credit Levtzion with being one of the first people to construct a narrative and to try to connect these threads that, prior to the publication of this book in 1973, were a little disconnected. For example, with respect to Ghana—what we’re calling Ghana—you had the traditions, the oral traditions of the region, that refer to the kingdom of Wagadou. At the same time, you had West African chronicles that refer to the kingdom of Kayamagha and then you had the Arabic literature referring to Ghana—the land of gold. Levtzion was one of the first people to really bring those references together and to argue that they’re all talking about Ghana. So he was one of the first to regularise our use of ‘Ghana’ and understand the ways in which the different types of sources connect with each other. They are also written in Arabic. Those sources are the Tarikh al-Fattash and Tarikh al-Sudan , ‘The History of the Seeker’ and ‘The History of the Blacks’. They were written in West Africa in Arabic. We’re having a debate over the circumstances and authorship and the productive phases of Tarikh al-Fattash. Scholars are not necessarily in agreement about that and I’m probably the outlier. We can have that conversation when we get on to African Dominion . But those are the 17th century chronicles that relate to Ghana as well as Mali. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Levtzion brings these things together in a very effective fashion. It’s not so much of a polished narrative, in that it’s very clear as you read the book that he’s working through the materials. It’s an exercise in forensics, in trying to match the different sources and trying to give meaning to the sources. But he certainly laid the foundation and it’s a very important book. He certainly builds on Bovill’s thesis that both regions, West Africa and North Africa, benefited from the trans-Saharan trade, particularly in gold, captives and other kinds of commodity. It’s clear that this trans-Saharan commerce was critical to both regions. But also, with Levtzion, we have a more scholarly treatment of the influence and infusion of Islam in the region. We have a better sense, as well, of notions of governance in the region. And there is, arguably—there may be those who disagree with me—in Levtzion the influence of the earlier orientalists who worked on West Africa, in particular people like Delafosse , who saw Ghana-Mali-Songhai as a kind of continuum. We’re talking about different parts of West Africa, with the centers of these states progressively moving from west to east and they represent the coming to power of different ethnic groups—the Soninke in Ghana, the Mandinka in Mali and then the Songhai, which is a reference to both the state, as well the language and a demographic. But these earlier orientalists saw a thread and they argued for something that they called ‘Sudanic governance’. They saw these states as emblematic of a continuity of a particular theory of governance. You see some of that in Levtzion. No. What I argue in African Dominion is that, in fact, there was not one Ghana, but at least a couple of Ghanas and that, prior to the third quarter of the 11th century, the governance of Ghana was in the hands of non-Muslim people who practised an ancestral religion. But, as we move into the 12th century and beyond, we have a state—or a couple of states—that may have enjoyed some prominence but that began to decline. They are now Muslim polities, in that they are ruled by Muslim rulers. When it comes to Mali and the founding of the Mali Empire in around 1230 by Sunjata, there’s a debate to be had. It’s clear that Islam is operative in the society, but it is less clear that Sunjata was himself Muslim. There is evidence that he was and that he wasn’t. There’s a notion that he may have attempted to practise a kind of mixture of ancestral religion and Islam. “We have this convention of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. And, in some contexts that makes sense. In other contexts it really does violence to the realities of these regions” It’s really not until we get to Mansa Musa that it’s very clear that the state is in the hands of a Muslim ruler. He effected a series of reforms while he was in power that resulted in Mali acquiring and enjoying a reputation as a Muslim state, both in West Africa and outside of West Africa. Songhai as well was governed by Muslims. However, once again, that notion has to be attenuated because there’s controversy with respect to one of the rulers, Sunni Ali, as to whether or not he was Muslim. But theoretically the expectation was that Muslims should be in power in Songhai."