Ghana is one of the earliest known Negro empires in recorded history. It was a West African Empire located in the area of present day southeastern Mauritania, and Western Mali.
It was first mentioned by an Arab geographer, Al-Fazari, in AD 773 in his book Al- Masudi, where he referred to it as a “land of gold”.
Ghana is also found on the Islamic world map produced by a Persian geographer, Mohammed Kwarizmi in the 9th century. The Arab traveller Al- Bakri, writing in AD 1067, made it known that the name ‘Ghana’ was the title of the Soninke kingdom called Aoukar (this means war chief). It was the visiting Arabs and people from other parts of Sudan who referred to the kingdom by the title of its kings; and by the 9th century, Aoukar was popularly known as ‘Ghana’.
It is not yet certain when Ghana was founded. But from Arabs sources, particularly the Tarikh as Sudan, it appears to have been founded by a Soninke dynasty between 300 - 400AD.
The Ghana Empire was situated on the grasslands north of the headwaters of the rivers Senegal and Niger. Its capital, Kumbi Saleh, is said to have been founded by Kaya Maghan who is reputed to have overthrown the immigrant minority ruling class of ‘whites’ about 770AD (those are the products of inter-marriages between Berbers settlers and Negro indigenes) and established a pure Soninke dynasty.