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In 1068 the Andalusian geographer al-Bakri, working from merchants' reports, described the king of Ghana taxing every donkey-load of salt (one gold dinar coming in, two going out) and keeping every gold nugget from his mines for himself, leaving only gold dust to the people, lest gold lose its value. He records that the king's interpreters, treasurer and most ministers were Muslims.
The mechanism
THE CLOCK
How it was checked
- EvidenceT5 INDEPENDENT SECULAR; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
- Letter eraTHE CAPTURE 313 to 1302
- SourcesRECORD — al-Bakri on Ghana, from J. F. P. Hopkins (trans.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (1981), excerpt at John Jay College, CUNY; Britannica, 'Ghana (historical West African empire)'; Wikipedia, 'Abu Abdullah al-Bakri' (composition date 1068) · checked 19 September: Al Akhawayn University, 'Early Arab Accounts of West Africa' (al-Bakri and al-Umari from Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 1981, pp. 79-81 and 269-73), PDF