Page 39 - Empires of Medieval West Africa

E m p i r E s o f m E d i E v a l w E s t a f r i c a

movement. Some Sanhaja clans continued to rebel. But most of them
joined the alliance and were united into an effective political federation
of desert clans.
As soon as Yasin knew he had a strong enough army, he returned
to the lands of the Juddala clan and killed the ones who had rebelled
against him. By 1048, the Almoravids had become the most powerful
force in the Western Sahara. But they still had many battles ahead of
them. In 1054 they recaptured Awdaghust from the Soninke of Ghana.
In the same year, they marched north through the Sahara and captured
the great trading city of Sijilmasa in southern Morocco, where gold
coins were minted.
In 1056, the Almoravids learned Sijilmasa had been taken back by
the Zanata, its former rulers. Yasin and most of his army marched north
to recapture that city. But in the south the Juddala had revolted again.
Umar, the Lamtuna chief, had to stay behind to face the Juddala, and
was killed in the fighting. His brother, Abu Bakr ibn Umar (d. 1087),
took his place as supreme military commander of the Almoravids.
In 1059, on one of many later Almoravid campaigns, the move-
ment’s founder, Yasin, was killed.

The alMoravid iMpacT on ghana

In 1056, when the Almoravids captured Awdaghust from Ghana, the
Zanata merchants there were punished for having cooperated with
the Soninke. Many Soninke of Ghana had held on to their traditional
religious rituals with the sacred serpent and other spirits. But because
of the powerful Almoravid influence, in the following years they were
converted, sometimes by force, to Islam.
The Almoravid commander Abu Bakr died in 1087. He was
replaced by six men from among his sons and nephews. The six men
fought with one another in a power struggle that destroyed Almoravid
unity. This cost them whatever advantage they had gained over the
Soninke. As a result, by around 1100 Ghana regained its commercial
and political dominance.
The Arab geographer al-Idrisi (1099–1166), writing in 1154 (quoted
in Levtzion and Hopkins), thought of “Ghana” as a single city. He
described it as “the greatest of all the towns of the Sudan in respect
of area, the most populous, and with the most extensive trade.” Some
modern scholars believe this is supported by archaeological digs at a

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