Long before Europeans drew their maps, the Sahel ran on the world’s most elegant trade: gold from the forests of the south, salt from the mines of the north, and a Soninke empire in the middle taking a cut of every caravan. They called it Wagadou. The Arabs called it Ghana — “the land of gold.”
Koumbi Saleh ★SenegalMauritania Greatest extent — stylized map 300Wagadou rises1076Almoravid blow1235Kirina — Mali succeeds1957Nkrumah takes the name Rise · zenith · fall The rise The Soninke people built Wagadou on a simple geographic insight: they sat exactly between the goldfields of the southern forests and the salt deposits of the Sahara. Gold was worthless without salt — the desert’s preservative, its currency of survival — and salt was worthless without buyers. So the Soninke did not mine either. They taxed the meeting point. Every camel-load of salt crossing north to south, every ounce of gold crossing south to north, paid the king his due.
