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Trade routes of Islam
More archaeological research, especially into the Iron Age, will undoubtedly do much toward resolving present uncertainties about the early history of modern Ghana, but, for the moment, little more can be said than that the traditions of many of the states into which the country was divided before it came under British rule refer to their people having immigrated to them within the last 600 years either from the north or northwest or from the east or northeast. Such traditions link up with other evidence to suggest that the area that is now Ghana was for many centuries a meeting place for two great streams of western African history. Ultimately, these streams stemmed from the existence of two major trans-Saharan routes, a western one linking the headwaters of the Niger and Sénégal rivers to Morocco and a more central one linking the region between the Niger Bend and Lake Chad with Tunisia and Tripoli. At the end of the western route arose the great Mande states, notably the empires of Ghana and Mali, while around the more easterly termini developed Songhai, the Hausa states, and Bornu. There is evidence that parts of modern Ghana north of the forest were being reached by Mande traders (seeking gold dust) by the 14th century and by Hausa merchants (desiring kola nuts) by the 16th century. In this way the inhabitants of what is now Ghana were influenced by the new wealth and cross-fertilization of ideas that arose in the great empires of the western Sudan following the development of Islamic civilization in northern Africa.
It is against this background that the traditions of origin of the Ghanaian states must be viewed. It would seem that the first states of the Akan-speaking peoples who now inhabit most of the forest and coastlands were founded about the 13th century by the settlement, just north of the forest, of migrants coming from the direction of Mande; that the dominant states of northern Ghana, Dagomba, Mamprusi, and their satellites were established by the 15th century by invaders from the Hausa region; that a little later the founders of the Ga and Ewe states of the southeast began to arrive from what is now Nigeria by a more southerly route; and that Gonja, in the centre, was created by Mande conquerors about the beginning of the 17th century.
Tradition tends to present these migrations as movements of whole peoples. In certain instances—for example, Dagomba, Mamprusi, and Gonja—it can be shown that the traditions relate in fact to comparatively small bands of invaders who used military and political techniques acquired farther north to impose their rule on already established populations whose own organization was based more on community of kin than on allegiance to political sovereigns. It is probable that the first Akan states—e.g., such influential states as Bono and Banda north of the forest or the smaller states founded on the coast by migration down the Volta River—were also established in this way. The later Akan infiltration into the forest, which then was probably sparsely inhabited, and the Ga and Ewe settlement of the southeast may have been more of mass movements, though in the latter case it is known that the immigrants met and absorbed earlier inhabitants.
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