Upper Senegal and Niger, Vol. 2

Barth, whose scientific conscience is well-known to us and who generally did not advance anything that he had not verified in advance, believed he could place Ghana at 18° North latitude and 7° West longitude from Greenwich, which situates this city in the Aoukar and in the vicinity of Oualata (1). Finally, Coppolani, whose competence cannot be denied by anyone in this circumstance, identified Ghana with Néma or at the very least with a location very close to Néma, as results from handwritten notes drafted by him which are kept in Saint-Louis in the archives of Mauritania (2).

After all these testimonies, it is perhaps useless to waste time refuting an error that has gained a few followers and which consisted of placing Ghana in the vicinity of the Niger, in the region comprised between Bamako, Banamba, and Ségou: this error originated first from an excessive faith placed in the information of Edrissi and secondarily from the inaccurate interpretation given to a paragraph of the Tarikh-es-Soudan. A reading of Ibn-Haoukal and Bekri would have sufficed to cause the rejection of Edrissi’s fanciful indication. As for the paragraph of Sa'di to which I am alluding, it is translated thus by M. Houdas (3):

"Melli is the name of a great country, very vast, which is located in the extreme west on the side of the Atlantic Ocean. Qalamagha was the first prince who reigned in this region. The capital was Ghana, a great city located in the land of Bâghena."

One has wanted to deduce from this that Ghana should be identified with Mali, a city obviously situated near the Niger at approximately the latitude of Ségou, as results in particular from the testimony of Ibn-Batouta, who visited it and stayed there for quite a long time. But absolutely nothing, in the passage in question, authorizes such an identification which, moreover, all the documentation we possess on the Sudan of the Middle Ages renders otherwise impossible. Sa'di, in my opinion, simply wanted to say that the first prince

(1) The same author places Aoudaghost at approximately the same latitude and at 11° West longitude from Greenwich, which corresponds exactly to the position that I myself give to this city, between Kiffa and Tichit.
(2) Information communicated by Commander Gaden.
(3) Page 18.