The Royal African Society

A Note on the Origins of Ghana

Author(s): Eva L. R. Meyerowitz
Source: African Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 205 (Oct., 1952), pp. 319-323
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/718785 .
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 A NOTE ON THE ORIGINS OF GHANA 3I9

A Note on the Originsof Ghana

By EVA L. R. MEYEROWITZ
We are to-dayin thepresenceof a contemporary myth,the beliefof GoldCoast
patriotsthattheydescend fromtheatciext Ghanakingdom,whichwasdisrupted
nine centgriesago. Certainleaders,like Dr. J. B. Danquah,go further,and
declarethat the names Akan and Ghanaderivefrom the SumertanAkkad,
this assertionwithmanyreconditelinguisticparallels,and cqxltural
bqxttressing
resemblances like the seven-dayweek. Mrs. Meyerowitzis one of the leading
authoritiesor theearlyhistoryof theGoldCoast,axd she was irlvitedto writea
shor!noteon the s?sbject in thelight of modernresearchnotabZyby R. Maqxty,
who thinksthat thereare only the slightestchancesof the link betweenAkan
and Ghana,whosetrue descendantsare the Sarakoldor Soninke,frst in the
Mactna,thenat Djenne.
THE ruins of a great town with buildings in stone were recently dis-
1 covered at Koumbi Saleh in the western Sudan, situated about 200
miles (330 km.) north of Bamako and roughly 250 miles west of Timbuktu.
They are believed to be those of Ghana capital of an ancient kingdom, of
which the mediaeval Arab writers E1 Bekri (IIth century) and E1 Idrisi
(Isth century) told such fabulous stories.
E1 Bekri, we know, never visited Africa himself and his accounts are based
on infol-mation collected-from the Barbary merchants who, being engaged in
the gold trade, had occasion to frequent Ghana. He describes the capital as
consisting of two separate towns: one, which he calls E1 Ghaba, being the
seat of the pagan king, and the other inhabited by Muslims. Their town
contained many fine buildings in stone and about a dozen mosques, the
resort of many distinguished jurists and learned scholars.
E1 Ghaba, he further informs us, means forestand took its name from the
groves with which the pagan town was surrounded. They were the burial
places of the kings each being buried in a tumulus-and the prisons from
which no one was ever known to return. On an occasion of an audience, the
king seated himself in a pavilion the door of which was guarded by hounds
who wore collars of silver and gold with golden bells, while the royal horses
in golden trappings were stationed outside. The king sat on a throne stool;
he wore a golden helmet and was adorned with golden jewellery; to his
nght, the sons of the princes of the kingdom were assembled, magniScently
attired and with gold ornaments plaited into their hair. Pages carried shields
and golden-hilted swords. The govemor of the city and the ministers sat
on the ground before the king. It was the custom of the Muslims to show their
respect to the king by clapping their hands.
E1 Idrisi tells us that Ghana was the largest town and the most important
market in the western Sudan. The foundation of its great prosperity was gold,
which was in such abundant supply that to prevent the price falling too low,
all nuggets were declared to be the property of the crown, leaving only gold
dust available for the trade.

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320 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
These short accounts of Ghana, translated from the Arabic into French
during the last century, were first made known to the English public through
Lady Lugard's bookJ A TropicaZ Dependercy.The book was read also with
great interest by the educated in the Gold Coast, above all by Dr. J. B.
Danquah, to-day one of the great national leaders of his people, the Akan,
of whom the Ashanti are the best known to the Europeans. He immediately
recognised in the description of the court of the king of Ghana that of an
Akan king. Moreover the Gold Coast was once famous for its great trade in
gold; the castles along the coast, built by the Portuguese, English, Dutch
arld other European nations, are evidence of this. Also in the Gold Coast
nuggets were reserved for the treasuries of the Akan kings and only gold dust
was used in the trade.
To a European, who has visited the Gold Coast, the likeness between the
court of the kings of Ghana and that of the Akan kings is not immediately
obvious because, although the kings and chiefs are still magnificently attired
and covered with golden jewellery and the sword-bearers carry the gold-
hilted swords, the pavilion, Muslims, and the royal horses and dogs are
missing. One has to go outside the forest zone to find the whole picture.
For instance, at Bondugu, capital of the Gyaman kingdom, a small Akan
kingdom in the French Ivory Coast, I was received by the king and his
splendid court in a pavilion which stood iIl the palace grounds. Before the
king and outside the paviliorl, the MuslimssatJ as in Ghana, on a huge carpet
on the ground, among them the governor of the Muslim city. They also
clapped their hands when they wished to express approval of what the king
said. The horses and dogs were missing because the king and his chiefs
to-day prefer motor cars for transport and hunting on a large scale came to
an end under European occupation and the interest in dogs died.
The Akan kings are still buried in groves, but mausoleums in which the
coffins of the kings and queen mothers are kept, have taken the place of the
tumuli. However, in the Gonja country once ruled by Akan kings, many fine
tumuli can still be found. The greatest is at Daboya, the burial place of the
last king of that state before it came under the rule of the present kings of
Gonja. About the prisons in the groves I received information at Bono-
Takyiman, the capital of a small Akan kingdom, once a vassal state of
Ashanti. There prior to the Ashanti conquest (I740), pnsoners, convicted
criminals, were kept chained to logs in the groves which contained the royal
mausoleums. Once a yeat, at the beginning of the New Year festival, they
were taken out, and invited by the king to a feast held in front of the palace.
Half the prisoners would receive poisoned food without their suspecting it.
After the meal the prisoners were divided into two groups and led away.
Those who had received the poisoned food were brought to the place of
execution to die; the others had to return to the groves, where sooner or later
they were sacrificed at the death of a king, queenmother or princes and
princesses eligible for kingship and queenmothership.
In the Gold Coast there are about eighty great, small and very small Akan
states. The people remember well that in the past their ancestors were the
citizens of one great kingdom which, according to tradition, lay in the north

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 A NOTE ON THE ORIGINS OF GHANA

in the westernSudan. To-daywith their nationalfeelingsfully awake,it is 32I

their dreamto unite again and form one rlation. It is the specialmerit of
Dr. Danquahto have givendirectionto this dreamby claimingGhanaas the
ancestralkingdomof his people. Afterhe had read Lady Lugard'sbook he
studied, duringhis stay in England (I934-6), the Arab authorsand others
with referenceto Ghanaand, finallyconvincedthat he was right, startedto
preachhis beliefs on his returnto his country. As presidentof the Gold
CoastYouth Conferencehe had ampleoccasionto influencethe young, and
when, ten years later, he foundedthe Gold Coast ConventionParty, the
beliefin Ghanahad becomeso wide-spreadthat everyAkansaw himselfas a

descendantof the ancient race of Ghana. Ghanahad becomethe symbolof the

Akan movementfor self-government, a magicwordthat wipedaway, to use
Dr. Danquah'sown words,the conquestby the British and the colonialdegrada-
followed it.
tion tAlat
Whatis the substancebehindthe vision?
To returnagain to the historicalGhana The town is said to have been
foundedby a white people, and had, accordingto the Tarikh-es-Sudan, 44
kingsbeforethe kingdomwas conquered,about 790 A.D., by a black people,
who had come fromDia or Gyana,situatedon the Niger bend. There has
beenmuchspeculationas to who thosewhite peoplewere,but sincewe know
nothingabout this early Ghana,all these are mereconjecturesand we have
21 AA 51

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322 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

to wait for further excavations before this question can be cleared up. Of
the black people who conquered Ghana we have more inforrnation. These
were by origin Dia-Lemta, Guan and Gara, the latter being the ancestors of
the Soninke people. They left the Niger bend when "brothers" of theirs
from the eastern Sahara, defeated by Arabicised Berbers, came to find new
homes in their kingdom. Judging from similar happenings, the influx of
thousands of people meant famine, since the primitive economy of the
countries could not support such great numbers of refugees. One can assume
therefore that it was famine that drove MaghanDiabe Sisse with his followers
from home. He founded first a kingdom further up the Niger river, and
finally invaded Ghana and made himself, or possibly his successor, King of
Ghana.
In I076 the capital of Ghana was destroyed after the conquest of the
country by the Almoravids, islamised Berbers and Arabs from North Africa.
The king of Ghana was permitted to retain his throne but his kingdom was
shorn of all dependencies, including the goldfields, and became a vassal
state. The people had to become Muslims; those who objected moved away
to join "brothers" in other countries or to found new states, which usually
meant the conquest of another. The fortunes of Ghana declined still further
when in I203 King Sumanguru of Susu seized and occupied Ghana. Finally
in I224 a great exodus took place of its principal citizens, who despaired of
ever again being able to build up their trade. They marched out into the
desert under a sheikh from Mecca and settled at a camping ground of cara-
vans called Walata, over a hundred miles to the north. Sixteen years later
the little that had remained of Ghana was destroyed by Sundiata, the founder
of the Mali kingdom, who had made himself master of the Susu.
So much for Ghana. In I009-I0, according to the Tarikh-es-Sudan, the
Dia kingdom or Gyana, was destroyed by the Azawad who were islamised
Berbers from the southem fringe of the Sahara. The people, as in Ghana,
had to become Muslims, and the king, possibly a son of the last king by a
Songhay mother, moved from Gunghia, Guan-gya or Guan-Dia, the capital,
to Gao on the Niger. Thousands of refugees fled south and founded new
states. One of them was in Mossi and stretched down to the Northern
Territories of the Gold Coast. When this was destroyed by peoples from the
eastern border, again thousands of refugees fled south, and beyond the Black
Volta river they founded the Bono kingdom in I300. These are known to-day
as the Brong people, a branch of the Akan. To them also belong the Fante,
the Eguafo people and the Afutu, who founded at the same time their states
along the coast of the Gold Coast.
Another kingdom founded by the refugees from Dia, was that of Kumbu,
whose capital, Kong, was built at the source of the Black Volta river in the
northern French Ivory Coast. Situated about 300 miles south-east of Ghana,
it is very possible that these absorbed a fair number of refugees when Ghana
was destroyed in I076 and again in I203 and I240. It is also not out of the
question that the Ghana refugees conquered their "brothers" and thus
founded a new state. However, the Kumbu kingdom also was destroyed
(about I480) and again thousands of refugees looked for new homes. They

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 NORTHERN RHODESIA AND FEDERATION 323

streamed into the Gold Coast where they founded the T- fo-Heman kingdom,
about 40 miles north of San Jorge da Mina (Elmina Castle) which the Portu-
guese had built in I48I. The Portuguese called their kingdom Acanes and
they are the real Akan people of the Gold Coast. Still the Djabi (Diabi)
people on the coast are the only Akan who have it in their tradition that they
came Irom Walata, the last Ghana capital. Their town Shamaa may have
been named after Chama, as the country round Walata was called.
So Dr. Danquah may be right when he maintains that Ghana people were
among the ancestors of the Akan, particularly also as the name Kumbu is
reminiscent of Kumbi (Koumbi Saleh), which, according to the Tarikh-el-
Fettach, was the real name of the capital of Ghana during the reign of the
black dynasty. Ghana, it should be understood, was not the name of the
kingdom, but the dynastic title of the kings which the Barbary merchants
extended to Aukar, the country, i.e. the kingdom of the Ghana. It is not
impossible that Ghana, as it is written in Arabic, was the same as Gyana
meaning descendantof Gya or Dia. Dia, in turn, was the dynastic title of the
kings of Dia, the ancestral kingdom of both the Ghana, founded by the black
dynasty; and, according to all traditions, of the Akan.
Referenscs
E1 Bekri, Descriprionde l'Afriqueseptentrionale,trad. Slane, Algiers, I9I3 Edrissi
Descriprionde l'Afrique et de l'Espagne,trad. R. Dozy, Leyden, I866-Lady Lugard
(Flora L. Shaw), A TropicalDependency,London, I905-Es Sa'di, Tarikh-es-Sudan
trad. 0. Houdas, Paris I900-Kati Mahmoud, Tarikh-es-Fettach,trans. O. Houdas
Paris I9I3 . L. R. Meyerowitz,Akan Traditionsof Oin, to be published shortly by
Faberand Faber.

NorthernRhodesiaandFederation
By MAJORH. K. McKEE, C.B.E., M.C.
A Joint Meeting was heZdon Thursday, May 2gth, I952, when the Com-
missiorer for NorthernRhodesia spoke in his private capacity. The Chair was
taken by Mr. R. S. Hudson, Head of the African StudsesBranch in the Colonial
OWce.
Historical
I would like first to give you a brief outline of the past 30 years in Northern
Rhodesia but pIease don't be alarmed, because I propose to divide it into
three decades and I propose to say it all in three minutes-not a very easy
task.
Just keep in mind that there were no white people in Northern Rhodesia i
I900, just over 50 years ago. The decade between I920 and I930 was interest-
ing for its lack of industrial development in its early part.
The European population was about 3000.

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