rk further increased the food supply and also
provided better weapons. This permitted increased military power and
political expansion. These were the necessary ingredients that led to the
building of three large and powerful empires: Ghana, Mali and Songhay.
Commerce was another factor which contributed to their development.
Governmental control of a thriving trade in both gold and salt provided
the wealth and power necessary for establishing these large empires.

Unfortunately, our knowledge about West Africa's early history is
severely limited by the lack of written records from that period. In
recent years, archaeologists have been unearthing increasing amounts of
material which contribute to our knowledge of early Africa. West Africans
tended to build their cities from nondurable materials such as wood, mud,
and grass. The area does have a rich oral tradition, including special
groups of trained men dedicated to its development and maintenance. As
oral history is always open to modification and embellishment, with no
means available for checking the original version, this material must be
used cautiously. Nevertheless, when employed in conjunction with other
sources, it does provide a rich source of information.

The earliest written records were provided by the Arabs who developed
close contact with West Africa by 800 A.D. After that, West Africans
began using Arabic themselves to record their own history. In the middle
of the fifteenth century, Europeans began regular contact with West
Africa, and they left a wide variety of written sources. While most of
these early Europeans were not men of learning, many of their records are
still valuable to the student of history.

Ghana was already a powerful empire, with a highly complex political and
social organization, when the Arabs reached it about 800 A.D. An Arabic
map of 830 A.D. has Ghana marked on it, and other contemporary Arabic
sources refer to Ghana as the land of gold. From this time on, a thriving
trade developed between Ghana and the world of Islam, including the
beginnings of a slave trade. However, this early slave trade was a
two-way affair. Al-Bakri, a contemporary Arab writer, was impressed with
the display of power and affluence of the Ghanaian king. According to
him, the king had an army of two hundred thousand warriors which included
about forty thousand men with bows and arrows. (Modern scholars know that
the real power of the Ghanaian army wa