GHANA SITUATED IN THE REGION OF OUALATA

cally East of the Fortunate Isles, which would correspond to the Southwest of Bornu. But we know that Ibn-Saïd's latitudes are almost all more or less shifted toward the South and that his longitudes, concerning the Sudan, are only approximately accurate relative to one another. Thus, he places the mouth of his "Nile of Ghana" (the Senegal River) in the Atlantic Ocean at 14° lat. and 10°20’ long., a point that would fall about 50 kilometers south of Goumbou! But if we place his longitude of Ghana according to that which he gives for Aoudaghost (22°), we obtain a meridian passing approximately through Ras-el-Ma, which gets significantly closer to the truth.

The authors who come after Ibn-Saïd are all subsequent to the destruction of Ghana, of which they could only have spoken based on the works of their predecessors. Abulfeda (died 1331) is content to place it "at the extreme South of the Maghreb," which is accurate. As for Ibn-Khaldoun (born 1332), he limits himself to citing Edrissi and re-edits the latter's error relative to the so-called proximity of Ghana in relation to the Niger. Ibn-Batouta, who visited the Sudan around 1352, is silent on the subject of Ghana, which is quite natural since this city had not existed for a century at the time of his journey and had been replaced by Oualata. It is the same for Leo Africanus, whose journey to the Sudan took place at the beginning of the 16th century. As for Sa’di (17th century), he simply tells us that Kaya-Maghan had established his residence in Ghana, "a large city located in the land of Bagana," which agrees with the indications of Ibn-Haoukal and Bekri, provided that one does not confuse the Bagana with the current Bakounou and one places Ghana in its extreme North.

Cooley (The Negroland of the Arabs, 1841), who was often wrong in his identifications by attributing to the Niger what pertains to the Senegal, but who nonetheless made an enormous step forward in the knowledge of the ancient Sudan, demonstrates through a long and meticulous dissertation that Ghana was located in the region of Timbuktu and to the West of that city (1).

(1) Page 34 and passim.