Ghana grows rich as the market between the desert and the goldfields

Ghana began around the year 300 under princes described in Arab accounts as white, and their line held power for about seven centuries before Soninke rulers, who were black, took the throne. The new dynasty pushed its conquests into the desert and subdued Berber populations there. By the year 1000 the Arab geographers al Bakri and al Idrisi were describing a state of real political weight and material wealth. Ghana lived on its position between north and south. It was the depot for salt cut from the mines of Tatental in the Sahara, a substance so scarce in central Africa that it sometimes served as money alongside gold and silver, and it was the great market for gold dust and nuggets carried up from the fields south of the Senegal river. That wealth drew raiders. Abu Bakr ibn Umar, the Almoravid ruler who had taken southern Morocco and the whole Sahara, invaded the empire and destroyed it.