HISTORY

was located in a country called Aoukar. This term, applied by the Berbers and the Moors to several regions of chaotic appearance, is in particular the current name of the country where Oualata and Nema are built. The same author also says that the inhabitants of Ghana quenched their thirst by means of wells, which implies that no river or watercourse watered the city. Finally, Bekri, describing the paths that led from Ghana to the Niger, says that if one leaves Ghana and marches toward the place where the sun rises, one follows a route that crosses Negro dwellings and arrives at a place called Aougam, where there are fields of millet. From this place (situated presumably near Ghana and at the limit of the plantations dependent on that city), one arrives in four days at Ras-el-Ma, where the Nile (the Niger, represented in this instance by the diversion of the Faguibine) begins to flow out of the land of the Blacks (to water a region inhabited by Berbers). In another passage, Bekri reproduces information that had been provided to him by the legal scholar Abou-Mohammed Abd-el-Melek-ibn-Nakhkhâs el-Gharfa, who had traveled in these regions. According to this traveler, Ras-el-Ma—which Bekri this time calls Safongo for Sabongo or Issabongo, its Songhai name—was separated from Ghana by three staging posts, meaning one traveled there from Ghana—or rather from Aougâm, the limit of the direct dependencies of Ghana—in four days. All this information matches in a striking way to place Ghana in the triangle of Oualata-Nema-Bassikounou.

Edrissi, who wrote his geographical compilation around 1150, was inspired mainly by Bekri regarding the western part of the Sudan, but he is much more confused, and his data are often contradictory. He places Ghana at only 12 days "to the East" of Barissa or Yaressi, while Bekri situated it at 18 or 20 days from the same point and to the Northeast. It should be noted, moreover, that Edrissi professes a singular affection for the number twelve. He indicates 12 days between Tekrour and Barissa, 12 days between Barissa and Aoudaghost, 12 days between Barissa and Ghana, 12 days between Mallel and Ghana, etc. But, what is more serious, he claims that Ghana consisted