Al-Bakri wrote that Ghana's king took every gold nugget and his heir was his sister's son, and in 1063 a nephew took the throne over the dead king's Muslim son

Abu Ubayd al-Bakri described the kingdom of Ghana in his Book of Routes and Realms in the 11th century. He wrote that the nuggets found in all the mines of the country were reserved for the king, and only the gold dust was left for the people. The king wore a high cap decorated with gold. He sat in a domed pavilion with ten horses in gold-embroidered cloth, and pages behind him held shields and swords decorated with gold. Only the king and his heir apparent, the son of his sister, could wear sewn clothes. The king's interpreters, his treasurer and most of his ministers were Muslims, but the king kept his own religion. The tombs of past kings lay in guarded groves near the royal town. In 1063 Tunka Manin took the throne from his maternal uncle, Basi. Like Basi, he kept the traditional religion. Historians debate whether the rule of the sister's son decided it, or whether the choice was a move to pass over Basi's Muslim son, Qanmar. Al-Bakri called Tunka Manin a lover of justice and favourable to Muslims. Whether the Almoravids conquered Ghana in 1076, during his reign, is disputed. The Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (1981) gives al-Bakri's text in English.