Ghana Empire Timeline

According to Kati's Tarikh al-Fettash, in a section probably composed around 1580 but citing the chief judge Ida al-Massini who lived somewhat earlier, twenty kings ruled Ghana before the advent of Islam.

Image source: Tarikh al-fattash

Awdaghost, at the time a seat of the king, fell to the Almoravids in 1054, an early sign of Almoravid expansion into Ghana's sphere of influence.

Image source: Aoudaghost

Ghana Bassi died in 1063, and was succeeded by his nephew Tunka Manin, who ruled at the height of the empire's fame in Arabic sources.

A tradition in historiography maintains that Ghana was conquered by the Almoravid dynasty in 1076–77, but this interpretation has been sharply questioned by modern scholars such as Conrad and Fisher (1982), who argued it is merely perpetuated folklore.

Image source: Almoravid dynasty

In 1083, Ghana requested the help of the Almoravids to attack and conquer Tadmekka, Silla, an unidentified town named NSLA, and may have reached Gao, helping to spread Sunni orthodoxy there as well.

Ghana had developed higher learning institutions by the 11th century, with the first reference coming from Al-Bakri who mentioned the empire's scholars and jurists.

Whether the Almoravids conquered Ghana or not, the country certainly did convert to Islam around 1076.

Image source: Islam in Africa

Al-Idrisi, whose account was written in 1154, has the country fully Muslim by that date. He also described Ghana's royal city as lying on a riverbank, a river he called the 'Nile,' following the custom of confusing the Niger and Senegal Rivers.

Image source: Muhammad al-Idrisi

Al-Sharishi, writing in the late 12th century, mentions the spread of Islam among Ghana's inhabitants and makes note of their schools. Further mentions of their schools were made during the later part of the 12th century.

Chronicles by al-Idrisi in the 11th century and Ibn Said in the 13th noted that rulers of Ghana traced their descent from the clan of Muhammad, either through his protector Abi Talib or through his son-in-law Ali.

Image source: Omar ibn Said

Ibn Khaldun reported an ambiguous account of the country's history as related to him by 'Uthman, a faqih of Ghana who took a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1394, according to which the power of Ghana waned as that of the 'veiled people' grew through the Almoravid movement.

Image source: Ibn Khaldun

By 1203, the Sosso had risen against their masters and conquered Ghana, establishing a short-lived empire.

According to much later traditions from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Diara Kante of Sosso took control of Koumbi Saleh and established the Diarisso dynasty.

After Soumaoro's defeat at the Battle of Kirina in 1235 (a date assigned arbitrarily by Delafosse, who also gave 1235 for Diara Kante's takeover), the new rulers of Koumbi Saleh became permanent allies of the Mali Empire.

After centuries of prosperity, the empire began its decline in the second millennium, and would finally become a vassal state of the rising Mali Empire at some point in the 13th century.

Image source: Mali Empire

In its last centuries, Ghana increasingly lost control of the gold trade to the Mali Empire and relied on slave raiding and trading as a principal economic activity.

Koumbi Saleh was abandoned sometime in the 15th century, marking the end of the old imperial capital.

In the 16th century many notables of the Saadi Kingdom of Morocco, in an attempt to dissuade al-Mansur from fighting Songhai, argued that none of the previous Moroccan dynasties had ever attempted such an expedition into the Sudan.

Image source: Ahmad al-Mansur

A 17th-century chronicle written in Timbuktu, the Tarikh al-fattash, gave the name of the empire's capital as 'Koumbi'.

The site of Koumbi Saleh was excavated in 1949–50 by Paul Thomassey and Raymond Mauny, and by another French team in 1975–81.

Beginning in the mid 20th century as more archeological data became available, scholars began to favor a purely local origin for Ghana. Modern works bring together archaeology, geographical sources written between 830 and 1400 CE, the Tarikhs from the 16th and 17th centuries, and oral traditions.

In 1957, the Gold Coast, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah named itself Ghana upon independence, honoring the medieval empire.

Image source: Ghana

In 1969 Patrick Munson excavated at Dhar Tichitt (a site associated with the ancestors of the Soninke), which clearly reflected a complex culture that was present by 1600 BCE and had architectural and material cultural elements similar to those found at Koumbi Saleh.

Image source: Dhar Tichitt