94 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY being interchangeable, and that Walata, Biru, and Aiwalatin are one, also noting the points of resemblance between the geographical description given by El Bekri of the position of Ghana, and by Ibn Batuta 300 years later of Aiwalatin, it scarcely seems to be doubtful that the Ghana of the eighth century was identical with the Aiwalatin of the fourteenth, and with the Walata of to-day.

We learn by extracts from a Haussa record, of which the original has unfortunately been destroyed, that the people of Ghana were anciently known by the name of Towrooth or Taurud, and that they claimed to have come from the territory lying between the Tigris and the Euphrates. In other words, they claimed descent from the Assyrians or the Babylonians, both peoples who had their origin in the Taurus Mountains, and reached their highest development in the Valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris. If the migration of the people of Ghana formed part of the movement impelled by the Chaldean conquest of Babylon, this would carry their settlement in Africa back to the seventh century before Christ. It may have been much earlier. When Alexander the Great took Babylon, he sent back for the information of Aristotle records of Babylonian astronomical observations extending over 1903 years. Among the peoples ruled by Ghana in the Arab period, one of the most important was known by the name of Ungara, Wangara, or Wakore, of whom many were Fulani. The Wangara, at a later date, migrated eastward into the Haussa States. This people claimed on their part to have descended from the Persians. When, at a later period, they moved eastward from Ghana to Haussaland, the province which they founded was called indifferently Wangara or Ungara. It is, therefore, interesting to find that in the Ramayana, the Indian epic, a Rajah of Ungar is mentioned among those who paid tribute to the famous Desaratha. Commentators who were in no way concerned with African history, have agreed that Ungar must have been a province of Persia