On the edge of the Sahara, the ruins of Koumbi Saleh lie in pale stone and dust, about 10 kilometres apart in the accounts of al-Bakri in 1067/1068, yet joined then by continuous habitations. Today the site in southeast Mauritania feels open to the wind, but once it was the heart of Ghana, or Wagadu, a western-Sahelian power in modern-day Mauritania and Mali.

The rulers took the title Ghana, meaning warrior or war chief, and another title, Kaya Maghan, king of gold. Oral traditions place the Soninke ancestor Dinga coming from the east, while written records first name the dynasty in 830, when Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī noted it. By the 11th century, al-Bakri had gathered merchants’ reports and described a kingdom already rich, organised, and feared.

Its rise was tied to the camel, introduced to the western Sahara in the 3rd century CE, and to trade routes that opened after the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 7th century. Ghana controlled the flow of gold north and salt south without owning the goldfields themselves, and by the 8th and 9th centuries it was strong enough for al-Fazārī to call it the Land of Gold, and for al-Ya'qubi to speak of several kings under its authority.

At its height, the empire reached beyond its core to places such as Takrur, Awdaghust, and regions like Adrar and Hodh. In 990 it conquered Awdaghust and installed a governor there. Under Bassi and then Tunka Manin, who succeeded in 1063, Ghana drew Muslim merchants, scholars, jurists, and interpreters into its courts, even while its kings remained tied to older customs and matrilineal succession.

Al-Bakri’s account from 1067/1068 gives the clearest picture of power in motion. He describes the king seated in a domed pavilion, with ten horses, ten armed pages, ministers on the ground, and dogs at the door wearing gold and silver collars. He also says the ruler buried his predecessors in tumuli with their belongings, and that the capital had a Muslim quarter with twelve mosques, scholars, scribes, and a Friday mosque.

The empire’s later centuries were shaped by pressure from the Almoravids, the drying Sahel, and the drift of trade south towards the Niger and west towards the Senegal. Awdaghust fell in 1054. Ghana converted to Islam around 1076, and in 1083 it sought Almoravid help against Tadmekka and Silla. By the 12th century, al-Idrisi still called its capital the greatest town of the Sudan, but the core was weakening.

By the 13th century Ghana had become a vassal of the rising Mali Empire. The Sosso seized it by 1203, and later tradition links its recovery to Sundiata Keita and the Battle of Kirina in 1235, when Soumaba Cisse became an ally of Mali. Koumbi Saleh was abandoned in the 15th century, yet the name returned in 1957, when Kwame Nkrumah chose Ghana for the new Gold Coast state.