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538 MOLE-DAGBANE-SPEAKING PEOPLES
cavalry.) By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, datable references to wars
with Mossi appear in records of Mali and Songhay. Nevertheless, none of the
currently existing states can be reliably dated earlier than about 1480, the approximate
date for foundation of Mamprusi and Dagomba. The northern (modern)
Mossi states were founded a generation or so later. In each case, "founding"
means establishing a state over pre-existing farming groups, whose Mole-Dagbane
languages became the languages of the "Mossi" cavalry elite as well.
The various Manding-speaking peoples moved outwards from their Upper
Niger River homeland at different times. The rise of the Mali Empire and its
successors added greater importance to Manding movements. They were the
source for the diffusion of Islam into the western Sudan savanna, including the
Hausa, and their traders, the Dyula, known also as Wangara, who figure heavily
in early accounts of the West African interior (see Manding-speaking Peoples;
Dyula).
Dates for these developments are not firmly established, but it has been argued
that the Dyula from Mali brought Islam into the Volta Basin beginning in the
late fourteenth century, with the pace accelerating in the next century. The late
fifteenth century saw the founding of the Mole-Dagbane "Mossi" states out of
the somewhat earlier cavalry influx. Gonja, a state with a Mande elite south of
Dagomba, rose in the late 1500s. The first Akan state, to the south, arose roughly
contemporaneously with the Mole-Dagbane states. Hausa histories from Kano
first mention kola nuts, which come only from the Akan forests, in the early
fifteenth century. The period 1350-1600, then, saw the rise of trade between
the Akan forest peoples and the Mali Mandinka to their northwest and the Hausa
to the northeast. The traders were Muslim.
State formation was founded upon a particular technology, the military uses
of the horse. Long-distance trade, for its part, was made possible by the superior
"technology," as it were, of Islam. Islam provided two unrivaled advantages.
One was writing, which allowed superior record keeping, communication by
letter and extended spheres of influence by safe-conduct letters and certificates
of Islamic learning. Even more important, the universalist framework of Islam
and its legal codes made easier the ongoing commerce between distant and diverse
peoples.
The three components of the Mole-Dagbane societies have been long established:
peasant farmers, Muslim traders and political-military elites who both
exploited trade and made it all possible by maintaining civil and economic order.
This techno-economic view of Islam is important in understanding the essential
role of Islam in societies that were, overall, not Muslim.
Muslims were another specialized group, similar to blacksmiths, drummers,
potters and soldiers. The skills of trade and Islam were concentrated in ethnically
and clan-related descent groups. The main difference was that the Muslim's tool
kit was intellectual. Muslims lived in socially separate and distinct communities
associated with trade routes. Throughout the region lived pagan farmers, some
of whom lived within states, some not. Among them were political centers with