96 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY The town of Ghana, which, after the sack of Audoghast by the Almoravides, became the royal residence of the kings, was composed, according to El Bekri, of two towns situated in a plain. One town was Mussulman and the other pagan. The king himself was a pagan, and lived in the pagan town. The Mussulman town was very large, and contained no less than twelve mosques. All these mosques had their imams, their tnoweddins, and their salaried readers. There were also schools and centres of learning, and according to the author of the Tarikk-es- Soudan, the town, besides being the meetingplace of commercial caravans from all parts of the world, was *'the resort of the learned, the rich, and the pious of all nations." They came, he says, from Egypt, from Augila, from the Fezzan, from Ghadames, from Taouat, from Dra, from Sidjilmessa, from Sus, from Bitou, and other places. This account is fully borne out by later writers. El Edrisi, writing in 1153, describes the king's residence as being a well-built castle, thoroughly fortified, decorated inside with sculptures and pictures, and having glass windows. El Bekri makes no mention of glass, but says that the king's residence in the pagan town consisted of a ** castle" surrounded by native huts. He mentions that the buildings generally were composed of stone and acacia wood. The native town was six miles distant from the Mussulman town, but the whole space was covered by suburbs, consisting of stone houses standing in gardens.

In the native town there was one mosque for the use of Mohammedans occupied on duty round the king. The king's principal ministers and advisers were at this time Mohammedans, and he and his heir-presumptive wore Mohammedan dress, but the religion of the country was still devoutly pagan, and all other persons of native religion, except the king and his heir, wore robes of cotton, silk, or brocade, according to their means. The local religion, evidently different from the paganism now practised among the lower class tribes upon the coast, had yet certain points of resemblance.

I