At the height of Ghana’s prosperity, before AD 1240, the city of Kumbi Saleh was the biggest West African city of its day, and had as many as 15,000 inhabitants or even more. About 320 kilometres north of modern Bamako, Kumbi was a twin city with two separate centres six miles apart. Although the two towns were linked by a continuum of houses, they were distinct in character and function. The one formed a Muslim quarter where North African merchants resided during their trading missions to Ghana. This was the main commercial area and the influence of North Africa was apparent in the many stone built houses, the twelve mosques for prayers and the presence of-many scholars learned in Arabic, Islamic theology and Islamic law.

So long as they obeyed the laws of Ghana and paid their taxes, the traders from North Africa were accorded safety and hospitality. This was a partnership in long-distance trade that went on for a very long time. The other “town” of Kumbi, known as Al-Ghaba, was the more important for it was the administrative centre of the Serahule Empire. Here lived the King of Ghana in his magnificent stone palace decorated with paintings and carvings and fitted with glass windows.

Close to the royal palace there was a stone mosque for the use of Muslim visitors and officials. The rest of the buildings of Al-Ghaba were constructed of mud and thatch in the traditional manner and around the whole quarter were defensive earthen walls.

The Decline and fall of the Ghana Empire

By the eleventh century, the Ghana Empire certainly presented the familiar picture of a centralised government with stable state institutions. However, in spite of statehood, splendour and wealth, Ghana was no more by 1240. The reasons for the decline and fall of Ghana were a combination of internal and external factors.

The first reason for the fall of Ghana was the way in which the Empire was organised. At its peak the Empire was made up of many states and peoples and so lacked political and cultural unity which the kings of Ghana failed to achieve. Different peoples such as the Serahule, the Susu, the Serer, the Berber and the Tubular each with its own distinctive language and cultures owed allegiance to the kings of Ghana.

Conquered states such as Futo Toro, Silla, Diara and Kaniaga, as we have seen, were left under their own traditional rulers and were only expected to pay annual tribute and contribute contingents or levies to the kings of Ghana’s army in times of war. As these conquered states and peoples were always anxious to regain their Independence, the survival of the Empire came to depend on the military strength of the central government and the ability of the reigning monarch. It follows, therefore, that if and when that military power became weakened, the empire was bound to break up into its component parts.

This, unfortunately, was what happened from the second half of the eleventh century onwards owing first to an invasion by Berber warriors from the Mauritanian Sahara, and secondly to the rise to two strong new kingdoms to the south, first the Susu kingdom and then the empire of Manding.

The Sanhaja Berbers, who started to invade Ghana after about 1050, were driven by troubles of their own mainly poverty, into striving for a share in the wealth of more prosperous neighbours. Soon after AD 1000 they began to look for a new means of livelihood.

The solution that was founded by the Berber for their survival, as is so often the case in history, took a religious form. There arose among them a devout and very strict Muslim leader called Abdulla-Ibn Yasin. He established a centre of religious teaching called a Hermitage.

He and those who followed him became known as the people of the Hermitage, Al-Murabethin, or the Almoravids. Gradually, Ibn Yassin brought the Berber communities of the far western lands under his influence. At the same time his missionaries went about converting the rulers of those states whom they could reach, especially in Futa Toro, and in this they had some success.

In 1056, moving northwards into Morocco, the Almoravids captured the important city of Sijilmasa, the main northern trading centre for West African gold. From there they went further to the north, conquering the rest of Morocco. Then they crossed the straits of Gibraltar, and took over Muslim Spain.

A southern section of the Almoravids meanwhile moved against the Empire of Ghana. Its leader, Abu Bakr, put himself at the lead of a Berber Confederation, made an alliance with the people of Futa Toro and waged a long war against Ghana.

In 1054 Abubakr and his men took the city of Audoghast. In 1076, after many battles, the Almoravids seized the capital of the Empire. But these Berber invaders could not hold the lands they had taken. There was much resistance. There were many revolts. Abu Bakr was killed while attempting to suppress one of these in 1087. By this time, however, the Ghana Empire had fallen apart.

Although the people of Ghana reconquered their capital in 1087 and regain their independence, the earlier defeats inflicted on them by the Almoravids weakened their military power which, as we said, was the force holding the different parts of the Empire together. States such as Futa Toro, Silla, Diara and Kaniaga took advantage of the situation and secured their independence. By the beginning of the twelfth century, the ancient Empire of Ghana had been reduced to metropolitan Ghana, back to its original nucleus.

The activities of the Almoravids contributed to the fall of Ghana in two other ways. First the war and conquests of the Almoravids diverted attention from the soil. The countryside was laid waste and agriculture got neglected. Ghana, therefore lost part of their fertile land and consequently part of the productivity and wealth. Secondly, the wars of the Almoravids, which affected the whole of the Western Sahara and Morocco and even extended into the Liberian peninsular, naturally disrupted the caravan trade in those regions. The inevitable result was a great decrease in the wealth of the Ghanaians.

Metropolitan Ghana, however, seemed to have regained some of its former power and splendour, and it appears the kings founded a new capital on the banks of the Niger which developed about sixty years after the Almoravids occupation into a great commercial centre. However, even this resurgent metropolitan Ghana lost its independence.

The city of Ghana became once again but a shadow of its former self and its merchants had to emigrate and found a new commercial centre called Walata to the North East. This new decisive change in the affairs of Ghana was caused by another defeat and this time a defeat inflicted by one of its own former vassal states, Kaniaga.

On regaining its independence in about 1076, Kaniaga had by 1200 developed into the strong Susu kingdom. And in 1203, its king, Sumanguru Kante, conquered Ghana and reduced it, in turn, to a tributary state. In 1235, however, Sumanguru Kante was killed by the ruler of another rising Empire Manding, and five years later the city of Ghana was raced to the ground by the Manding army.

Ibn Khaldun, the famous African philosopher and historian has described the inglorious end of Ghana in the following words:

“The domination of the people of Ghana weakened and their power declined whilst that of the veiled men of the Berber land adjoining them to the north increased. They overcame the Negroes, plundered their territories, imposed upon them the tribute and poll-tax, and forced many of them to join Islam. As a result, Ghana’s power declined and the authority of the rulers of Ghana dwindled away and the neighbouring Negro people of Susu, conquered and enslaved them and annexed their territory.

Next the people of Mali, (Manding), increasing in population, gained the ascendancy over the Negro people of the region. They conquered the Susu and took over all they possessed, both of their original territory and that of Ghana, as far as the Atlantic in the West.”

Thus, divided by Islam, politically and economically weakened by the Almoravids, defeated by the Susu and the Mandinka, the ancient Empire of Ghana disappear from the stage of history replaced by the middle of the thirteenth century, by the rising star of Manding.