Introduce your students to the Gold Road Map using the detailed instructions and student handouts on How to use The Gold Road available through the Digital Toolkit.
Once online, ask your students to read or listen to the Welcome Message on the site in order to answer the question Why is this online map titled “The Gold Road?” and complete page 1 of the Why the Gold Road Question Sheet
Explain to students that you will be spending the class block introducing them to the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhai and that there will be key words you will allow them to explore on the map during the class period. If there are concerns for classroom focus and/or management as this requires moving flexibly from whole group to small group you may also want to consider displaying one map and having students come up to the board or device to interact rather than doing so independently.
Read aloud the following overview of the great kingdoms to students. As you read, pause to ask and answer clarifying questions and pause at bolded words to allow students time to explore The Gold Road map (searching or toggling over words will bring up definitions and details). Students should both note and share their findings. You may opt to provide students with blank paper or provide the overview as a handout for them to jot or annotate their findings on.
Coined by Brenda Randolph (Howard University), the Gold Road celebrates the histories of trade and exchange that linked West African Sahel to the Mediterranean region and to the Arabian peninsula from the 5th to the 15th century, allowing for the development of the great kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. The kingdoms were organized into polities that subsumed smaller polities within them. These great empires thrived in West Africa from the years 500-1591 and their kingdoms represent an era of consolidated West African power and wealth for over a thousand years.
- Ghana-The first (500-1235) empire was a confederation of different Soninke peoples that gained power because it controlled routes through which gold was traded. Ghana maintained its indigenous religion but also began to Islamize in the 9th century, which is why its capital, Kumbi-Saleh, is composed of two cities – one Islamic city with a mosque, and another one for the king for ancestral religions, which allowed the king to maintain connection with the peasants and pastoralists. Archeological findings indicate that trade with the Muslim northerners was peaceful and that they entertained good relations. Ghana began losing its power because it depended on Amazigh Sanhaja traders who eventually took over the important trade city/stopover of Awdaghust through Almoravid (Amazigh) empire expansion from the North.
- Mali-Ghana was succeeded by the kingdom of Mali in 1235. Mali was similar to Ghana as a polity of ethnic confederation of Mande peoples which expanded its territory by absorbing different groups. Its leaders converted to Islam to a greater extent than Ghana’s leaders. Islam helped Mali’s rulers to gain legitimacy with the groups they incorporated within itself, and to gain recognition from the broader world. Mali’s rulers went on pilgrimage to Cairo and Mecca. In Mali, the city of Timbuktu became a center for knowledge production and science, housing thousands of manuscripts in private libraries. Mali prospered through taxes on all goods brought into the empire. Famous rulers of Mali are Sunjata, the founder of the Mali empire and Mansa Musa, his great nephew.
- Songhai-Mali’s empire lost its power starting in the 1300s after the death of Mansa Musa in 1337 when successive claims and grabs of the throne weakened Mali, allowing the Songhai coming from the East to take over, led by a great ruler named Sonyi/Sunni Ali Beeri. Similar to the Mali kingdom, Sonyi Ali Beeri took over territories of neighboring groups and expanded their territory. The Songhai ruled from 1469-1591 when it was conquered by the army of Sultan Al Mansur from Morocco, led by Judar Pasha. The fall of the Songhai empire was a pivotal turning point for West Africa because it ushered in a chaotic era of political fragmentation and war between small states and chieftaincies. This political vulnerability, in turn helped make way for the Transatlantic enslavement and trade of peoples.