Much of North Africa consists of the Sahara Desert. Caravans of camels and donkeys could cross the desert along certain routes where there were oases or watering holes. South of the Sahara is a band that stretches across the entire length of the continent. It consists of relatively dry grassland, called the savanna. It is located between 10 degrees and 20 degrees of latitude north. This region receives only 10-15 inches of rain per year. In this region the medieval kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhai emerged. These kingdoms ranged along the length of the Niger River, which is the major river in west Africa. Three of the great natural resources of the region were kola nuts, ivory and gold. Kola nuts are a natural stimulant, with caffeine. The Arabs, the Moslems, prized them because alcohol is forbidden in Islam, but the kola nut is permitted. As a permissible stimulant it was much in demand. Ivory was obtained from elephants in the forest regions to the south.

The upper reaches of the Niger River and the Volta River contained alluvial gold that could be panned from the river or mined in trenches where the workers stood waist high in water. The problem for the people of the savanna, in their warm climate, was dehydration. And what they needed to preserve their food and ward off dehydration was salt. But there was little or no salt in the savanna. Instead, salt was mined far away in the desert, at places like Taghaza, in Morocco. Therefore the west Africans exchanged gold for the life preserving salt. The cities of the savanna became great trading centers, with flourishing commerce. Caravans brought salt and commodities from the Mediterranean and Egypt. Chinese porcelain and silk, and cowry shells from the Maldive Islands, in the Indian Ocean near India, and Venetian glass made their way to the savanna kingdoms. Black and mixed race Berber desert nomads or tribesmen called Tauregs actually controlled the caravans across the Desert. There were many different tribes of these nomads, such as the Sanhaja, Teda, Zaghawa, etc. The trip across the desert took at least 6 weeks.

The gold fields (generically called Wangara, which may have really been more than one place) were located to the south, closer to the woodlands or rain forest. The rulers of Ghana and the state of Ghana did not control the SOURCE of the gold. Instead, Ghana controlled ACCESS to the gold. They controlled the trading centers and the trading routes, and provided safe passage across their territory. If you paid, you had protection from robbers and brigands and marauders, and you had safe passage. So "paying" the tolls was like paying "insurance," or even "protection money."

The first savanna kingdom to rise was Ghana. It was located west of current day Senegal, in what is now called Mauritania. There is a country called Ghana in west Africa today, but that country is actually far south of where the original Ghana was located. Ancient Ghana is 1,000 miles away from modern-day Ghana.

Archaeological evidence reveals that the region of ancient Ghana was inhabited as early as 1500 B.C. The actual kingdom of Ghana dates from the seventh century A.D. (Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom, p. 2), which is to say the 600s A.D. (Year 1 to 99 is the first century, year 100 to 199 is the second century, 1900-1999 is the 20th century, etc,). The capital and chief trading center of Ghana was the twin city of Kumbi Saleh. Kumbi was the political center and Saleh was the commercial center (Khapoya, The African Experience, 2nd edition, p. 84). The ethnic group or tribe of people who lived in ancient Ghana were the Soninke. They spoke the Mande language. Their kinsmen, who also spoke a branch of Mande called Malinke, lived further to the east, and are called the Malinke and the Mandinka. Their region was called Mali. Other langauges in the Mande family include Bambara and Dyula, but they derive from Mande).

Arab chroniclers describe the kings of Ghana as rich in gold. Perhaps they exaggerated. In 773 A.D. the geographer al-Fazari described Ghana as "the land of gold." The people spoke of "kaya maghan," (the king of the gold) and the Arabs heard this as "ganah" or "ghana." The Arab writyer al-Bakri wrote Kitab al-Masalik wa'l Mamalik c. 1065 (see Basil Davidson, A History of West Africa, p. 141).  and said that the king of Ghana wore gold necklaces and wore clothes spun from gold thread, and he had a nugget so big he could use it to tether his horse. A tether is a weight. The royal guards had shields of gold, and the swords had handles of gold. The royal dogs supposedly had collars of gold. The rulers of Ghana placed a tax on the gold, and thrived off of the trade. Ghana became legendary because it was a major source of gold for the Arabs, who in turn traded it to Europe. No mater how embellished the claims of the Arabs might have been, the germ of truth was that the west African states did have access to sources of gold. The Europeans traded with the Arabs for gold, but until the 1300s did not know where the gold actually came from (West Africa).

Western scholars have not yet found any of the writing from ancient medieval Ghana. Not even the name of a single king of Ghana is known. The royal dynasty is said to have been named Sisse or Cisse. If they had any writing, it is lost or was all destroyed. Western scholars believe that MOST sub-Saharan African people and cultures produced NO writing before contact with the Arabs or with Europeans. All that we in the West know of Ghana comes either from archaeology (of which little has been done, and much of Mauritania is now desert) or from the accounts of Arabs.

Moslem traders were permitted to build mosques in Kumbi to practice their religion. In contrast, the people of sub-Saharan Africa were Animists. They believed in a supreme creator god, but they also believed in many lesser gods and spirits of nature. The word animus refers to a spirit. The people of sub-Saharan Africa were polytheistic, and also believed in an afterlife. After death the spirit lives on, and the ancestors or departed relatives continue to live as spirits in the spirit world or afterlife. And they also believed in reincarnation. In the Traditional Religion people have shrines where they honor the family ancestors. The Moslems regarded this as heathenism and paganism.

In 1055 war erupted between the Almoravid Moslems of Morocco and the Soninkes of Ghana. The conflict was in part religious, in that the Moslems declared a jihad or holy war against the Animist pagan Soninkes. But there was also rivalry and jealousy as to who would control the city of Awdaghast. We know that a king named Tenkamenin came to the throne of Ghana in 1062 (John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 8th edition, p. 3). In 1076 the Moroccans actually attacked Kumbi itself. Ghana was beset by a series of droughts that displaced people, and ecological hardship forced them to move. Waves of displaced people migrated into Ghana. Ghana went into decline. Let me reiterate that we know little about Ghana from the Ghanaians themselves because they relied upon oral tradition and their writings, if they had any, do not survive. So we know about them "second hand" from the Arabs. It is alleged that the Soninke kings and people remained "Animists" until the fall of Ghana.

THE RISE OF THE SOSO STATES

Under these circumstances, with the decline of Ghana, the Soso people rose to power. They had several states. Their great ruler was Sumanguru Kante. His particular state was called Kaniaga. In 1203 Sumaguru attacked Kumbi, and dealt the death blow. Ghana was destroyed as a nation, and ceased to exist.

THE EPIC OF SUNDIATA

Sumanguru turned next against the Mandinka (Malinke) people, relatives of the Soninke, who lived a little further south and east. The Mandinka people created the state of Mali. The national epic or legend of Mali says that Sumaguru defeated the king of the Mandinkas, and ordered that the king and all of his sons be put to death. One, however, was spared. He was a child who was lame, crippled, and could not walk. So he was spared because he was regarded as inconsequential, or harmless, and no threat. This son was named Sundiata Keita (Keita is the name of the royal clan). In Mande his name is Sunjata or Sundjata. Djata means lion in Mande, and so the name translates as something like "son of the lion." However Sundiata overcame his infirmity. He grew to manhood, and rallied the Mandinka people. About 1235 (Robert July, Vincent Khapoya) or 1240 (Franklin) Sundiata's forces defeated Sumanguru and Sumanguru was killed. Sundiata then created the state of Mali. Mali then took control of Kaniaga and the Soso territory as a vassal state. A vassal state is one which is subordinate to another, and usually pays taxes or tribute to the more powerful state. Sundiata became the emperor of the Mali Empire. An empire is a state that controls other subordinate states.

The Mandinkas were Animists, although Moslem traders came and dwelt among them in their cities. The rulers of Mali had the title mansa. Mansa Sundiata died in 1255, and was followed by a series of other mansas. In the time of Mali, the great trading center of the empire was Timbuktu, at the western bend of the Niger River. Another great trading center was Djenne. The Empire of Mali also expanded east to dominate Songhai as a vassal state. Its capital and trading center was called Gao, pronounced Jow.

In 1311, Mansa Abu Bakari II sent an expedition of 200 ships out into the Atlantic to explore what lay to the west. The ships never returned, but the Africans certainly were curious.

The greatest and most famous of the mansas, or emperors of Mali, was Mansa Musa. His name means Moses. He reigned from 1312-1337. He converted to Islam. In 1324-25 he took the pilgrimage to Mecca, called the hajj. With him he took 50,000 gold dinars and 100 pack camels each loaded with 300 pounds of gold. He distributed so many alms in Cairo that it depreciated the currency in Cairo for a decade. The fame of Mansa Musa was so great that in 1375 the French, in Europe, published an atlas showing Rex Melli, or the king of Mali, seated holding a nugget of gold (Africa's Glorious Legacy, p. 93-95).

At its height, in the 1200 and 1300s, Timbuktu was a city of 100,000 people. The mansas permitted the Moslems to build a university and mosque there, called Sankore. It became a great center of learning, with a legendary library. The Arabs report that cataract surgery was being performed there. Ibn Battuta visited Timbuktu in 1353.

In the 1400s Mali entered into decline. The royal princes fought with one another over who would inherit the throne. This is what is called a succession struggle. In 1433 and 1434 the Tauregs from the desert attacked. And the vassal states revolted. This combination of factors led to the eventual demise of Mali.

THE RISE OF SONGHAI

In 1433, with Mali preoccupied by the invasion by the Tauregs, Songhai revolted. About this time the princes of Songhai embraced Islam. In 1450 another vassal state called Macina revolted (also spelled Massina). The Mali Empire was unraveling. In 1468-69 Sunni Ali, the ruler of Songhai and a great warrior king, attacked and seized Timbuktu. In 1473 he sent a fleet of large canoes (warships) up the Niger River and captured the island fortress of Jenne. Mali would linger as a small state until 1650, but its day in the sun was over. After 1473, Songhai was the new kid on the block. The rise of Songhai was the eclipse of Mali. Ali drowned in the Niger River in 1492, but for his exploits is called Ali Ber, which in Arabic means "the Great." Essentially what Ali Ber did was to take over the remnants of the old Mali Empire.

The greatest of the rulers of Songhai was Askia Muhammad Toure. . He was a Soninke by birth and ethnicity, and a devout Moslem by religion. He seized the throne in 1493. He maintained a fulltime, professional army, augmented by slaves who were taken as prisoners of war. However they were well treated and paid. He suppressed the warlike Mossi people, and even seized the salt mines of Taghaza in 1502. In this way Songhai controlled both access to the gold at the southern end of the trans-Saharan trade and the salt from Taghaza near the northern end.

However this proved to be over-reaching on the part of Songhai. When Songhai deprived the Moroccans of Taghaza, it made them the bitter and eternal enemies of Songhai. Askia Muhammad Toure became blind in his old age, and was deposed by his sons in 1528. In 1591 a Moroccan army of 3,000 men, armed with guns, recaptured Taghaza. Then they crossed the desert and defeated the army of Songhai. They briefly occupied Timbuktu and Gao. The tributary or vassal states seized the opportunity to revolt. In 1591, the Empire of Songhai came to an end.

Meanwhile, by 1441, Portuguese sailors coming down the west coast of Africa had made contact with Benin. By 1483 they reached Kongo in central Africa. By 1488 the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to reach the southern tip of Africa. As the Atlantic economy rose, trade was shifted away from the trans-Saharan routes. And once the trans-Atlantic slave trade got going, most of the Africans who were taken from Africa to the New World or the Western Hemisphere came from West and central Africa, from the Atlantic side of the continent.

The Akan people of the forest region south of Ghana-Mali now traded more toward the Atlantic coast, with the Europeans. The savanna kingdoms and the Islamic world began their decline as the Atlantic economy rose.