Upper Senegal and Niger, Vol. 2

CHAPTER II

The Empire of Ghana

It is materially impossible to present as a whole, by synchronic slices, the history of the various countries that constitute the colony of Upper Senegal-Niger today, as these countries have never formed a single whole. I thought the best method would be to examine one after the other the principal indigenous states that succeeded one another or coexisted in the different regions of the French Sudan. Since one must adopt some order, I will place the monographs of these states according to the date on which each of them appeared for the first time on the stage of history. Thus, I find myself starting with the Empire of Ghana (1).

I. — The Location of Ghana.

As I said when speaking of the origins of the Fulani and the Soninke, the ancient city of Ghana was located in the extreme North of the Bagana, in the Aoukar, not far from the current localities of Nema and Oualata, the first of which was undoubtedly contemporary with Ghana, and the second of which succeeded the former as the metropolis of the Saharan Sudan. I believe that by placing Ghana slightly to the East and South of Nema and on the line joining Oualata

(1) See the map of the ancient empire of Ghana, page 57.