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They say, to be sure, that the Moors destroyed Audhoghast because it paid tribute to the black town of Ghana, but this was because the town was heathen and not because it was black. On the other hand, there is a story that a Berber king overthrew one of the cities of the Sudan and all the black women committed suicide, being too proud to allow themselves to fall into the hands of white men.
With the Renaissance and the widened world of modern thought Africa came no less suddenly with her new-old gift. Shakespeare's "Ancient Pistol" cries: A foutre for the world and worldlings base! I speak of Africa and golden joys! He echoes a legend of gold from the days of Punt and Ophir to those of Ghana, the Gold Coast, and the Rand.
This would take us back approximately a thousand years to 700 B.C., or about the time that Pharaoh Necho of Egypt sent out the Phoenician expedition which circumnavigated Africa, and possibly before the time when Hanno, the Carthaginian, explored the west coast of Africa. By the middle of the eleventh century Ghana was the principal kingdom in the western Sudan.
Indigenous civilizations arose on the west coast in Yoruba and Benin, and contact of these with the Mediterranean race in the desert, and with Egyptian and Arab from the east, gave rise to centers of Negro culture in the Sudan at Ghana and Melle and in Songhay, Nupe, the Hausa states, and Bornu.
Although the period of its power and prosperity was respectable by most world empire standards, it was short-lived compared to the history of the previous empire of Ghana. Again, a new empire was to emerge from the ruins of the previous one. The Songhay empire was based on the strength of the important trading city of Gao.
Gold, skins, ivory, kola nuts, gums, honey, wheat, and cotton were exported, and the whole Mediterranean coast traded in the Sudan. Other and lesser black kingdoms like Tekrou, Silla, and Masina surrounded Ghana. In the early part of the thirteenth century the prestige of Ghana began to fall before the rising Mandingan kingdom to the west.
While most of these early Europeans were not men of learning, many of their records are still valuable to the student of history. Ghana was already a powerful empire, with a highly complex political and social organization, when the Arabs reached it about 800 A.D. An Arabic map of 830 A.D. has Ghana marked on it, and other contemporary Arabic sources refer to Ghana as the land of gold.
African leaders have spoken out on the issue of political prisoners, and the OAU is drafting its own Charter on Human Rights. Three countries in Africa Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda have returned to civilian rule during the past year. U.S. cooperation with Africa on all these matters represents a strong base on which we can build in future years.
I will not again attempt a history of the disputed word which Barbot derives from Ginahoa, the first negro region visited by the Portuguese; others from Ghana, the modern Kano; from the Jenneh or Jinne of Mungo Park; from Jenna, a coast-town once of note, governed by an officer under the 'King' of Gambia-land, and, in fine, from the Italian Genoa. The s.s.
African leaders have spoken out on the issue of political prisoners, and the OAU is drafting its own Charter on Human Rights. Three countries in Africa Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda have returned to civilian rule during the past year. U.S. cooperation with Africa on all these matters represents a strong base on which we can build in future years.