Page 88 - Empires of Medieval West Africa

t h e s o n i n k e p e o p l e o f t h e G h a n a E m p i r e

Personal drummers marched in front of the army command-
ers. These drums were beaten as the commanders rode to the palace
each morning to meet the king for the daily procession. As each
commander arrived at the palace gate, his drum was silenced. Four
hundred years later, during the Askia dynasty of Songhay, the high-
est-ranking army commanders had the same custom and were called
drum lords.

iSlaM in The capiTal ciTy

Much of the information in al-Bakri’s description of Ghana’s capital
involves matters of religion. He was a Muslim himself, so naturally he
was very interested in how Muslims were treated in Ghana. He said
there were a dozen mosques in the Muslim town, with a main one for
Friday prayer.
This is still the arrangement in Islamic cities today, where everyone
goes to pray together at the “Friday mosque” at two o’clock in the after-
noon. The mosques had imams (prayer leaders) who collected regular
salaries, and there were individuals called muezzins who would climb
the minaret (mosque tower) to call the people to prayer.
The Muslim town also had jurists and scholars who were authori-
ties on Muslim law, the Quran, and other religious matters. In the other
town at the king’s court, his interpreters, his treasurer, and most of his
ministers were Muslims. Near the court of justice there was a mosque
for the convenience of Muslim officials and visitors.

Soninke TradiTional religion
The name of the king’s town, which in Arabic was al-Ghaba, was asso-
ciated with traditional Soninke religion, not Islam. In Arabic, al-ghaba
means “the forest,” and this might refer to the sacred grove. In the tra-
ditional religions of societies throughout sub-Saharan West Africa, the
special location for communicating with the spirit world was a grove of
trees outside the village or town.
Most of the sacred groves are gone now, but some still exist in
remote areas. In the days of the great medieval empires of the Western
Sudan, practically every community had a sacred grove, whether or not
there were Muslims living there.
Al-Bakri said only the priests were allowed to enter the sacred
grove. This is consistent with what is known from more recent times.