Ghana Empire

The Ghana Empire, known to its own people as Wagadu, was founded by the Soninke people in the western Sahel, in what is now southeastern Mauritania and western Mali. It was not in the same place as the modern country of Ghana.

Ghana's power came from position. It sat between the gold fields to the south and the salt mines and caravan routes of the Sahara to the north, and it taxed the trade that passed between them. Arab geographers who wrote about it called it the land of gold.

The word 'ghana' was a title for the king. The 11th-century writer al-Bakri described a capital made of two towns, one for the king's court and one for Muslim merchants, which archaeologists generally identify with Koumbi Saleh.

The empire weakened in the late 11th century and its territory was later absorbed into the rising Mali Empire. When the Gold Coast won independence in 1957, its leaders chose the name Ghana to honour this older empire.