Black Experience | Page 7

harassment from a long series of Arabic holy wars. Over a long period of time, the power of the king was reduced until the empire of Ghana finally collapsed. From its ashes emerged the basis for the creation of a new and even larger empire: the empire of Mali.
Mali, like Ghana, was built on gold. While Ghana had been under attack by the Arabs from outside, various peoples from within struck for their own freedom. The Mandinka people, who had been the middlemen in the gold trade and who had received protection from the king of Ghana, achieved their independence in 1230 A.D. They went on to use their position in the gold trade to build an empire of their own. The peak of their influence and power was achieved in the early fourteenth century under MansaKankan Musa who ruled Mali for a quarter of a century. He extended its boundaries beyond those of Ghana to include such important trading cities as Timbuktu and Gao, encompassing an area larger than that controlled by the European monarchs of that day. This empire also was based on its ability to provide stable government and a flourishing economy. An Arab traveler, Ibn Batuta, shortly after Musa's death, found complete safety of travel throughout the entire empire of Mali
Mansa Musa and, for that matter, the entire ruling class of Mali had converted to Islam. This intensified the contacts between West Africa and the Islamic world. Although several of these kings made pilgrimages to Mecca, the most spectacular was the one by Mansa Musa in 1324. On his way there, he made a prolonged visit to Cairo. While there, both his generosity in giving lavish gifts of gold to its citizens and his extravagant spending poured so much gold into the Cairo market that it caused a general inflation. It was estimated by the Arabs that his caravan included some sixty thousand people and some five hundred personal slaves. Mansa Musa took a number of Arabic scholars and skilled artisans back to West Africa with him. These scholars enhanced the university of Timbuktu which was already widely known as a center of Islamic studies. Now, besides exchanging material goods, West Africa and the Arabs became involved in a steady exchange of scholars and learning.
The success of Mali in bringing law and order to a large portion of West Africa was responsible for its decline. Having experienced the advantages of political organization, many localities sought self-government. In fact, Mansa Musa had overextended the empire. A skilled ruler like himself could manipulate it, but those who followed were not adequate to the challenge. Movements for self- government gradually eroded central authority until by 1500 Mali had lost its importance as an empire. 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. This city won its independence from Mali as early as 1375, and, within a century, it had developed into an empire. Songhay carried on a vigorous trade with the outside world and particularly with the Arabic countries. The ruling class, in particular, continued to follow the religion of Islam, but it is generally believed that the masses of the population remained faithful to the more traditional West African religions based on fetishism and ancestor worship. Two of the more powerful rulers were Suni Ali, who began his 28-year reign in 1464, and Askia Mohammed, who began his 36-year reign in 1493. Askia Mohammed was also known as Askia the Great. The security of Songhay was undermined when Arabs from Morocco invaded and captured the key trading city of Timbuktu in 1591. Thus ended the last of the three great empires of West Africa.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that those parts of West Africa which remained outside of these three empires fulfilled the usual European image of primitive savagery. On the contrary, a number of other small yet powerful states existed throughout the entire period. If this had not been so, the Europeans, as they arrived in the fifteenth century, could have pillaged West Africa at will. Instead, the Europeans were only able to establish trading stations where local kings permitted it. With the exception of a few raiding parties which seized Africans and carried them off as slaves, most slave acquisition was done through hard bargaining and a highly systematized trading process. The Europeans were never allowed to penetrate inland, and they found that they always had to treat the African kings and their agents as business equals. Many of the early European visitors, in fact,