Author Description

This collection of studies brings together in a single volume some of the results of the considerable body of recent research on the later development and organization of the larger states which played so great a part in the earlier economic, political, and cultural life of West Africa. Powerful kingdoms with complex political organization and elaborate state ritual had early developed in the wide region that lay between the Western Sahara and the Guinea Coast. Some were among the earliest societies of Tropical Africa to become known to the Mediterranean and Western Worl. They were also the first with which enduring external relations were established. From the tenth century onwards, Arabic-speaking merchants and Islamic proselytizers regularly crossed the Sahara in caravans to the courts and cities of Ghana, Mali Songhai, and Kanem, and celebrated journeys were also made to North Africa and Mecca by some of the rulers of these states.