Gonja people

The Gonja are a Guan people who have been influenced by Dagbon, Akan, Mande and Hausa people. With the fall of the Songhai Empire (c. 1600), the Mande Ngbanya clan moved south, crossing the Black Volta and founding their capital city at Yagbum under the leadership of Naba'a.{{cite book|last=Wilks |first=Ivor|chapter=Wangara, Akan, and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries|editor1-last=Bakewell|editor1-first=Peter|title=Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas|date=1997|publisher=Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Limited|location=Aldershot|pages=29–30}} The Gonja kingdom was originally divided into sections overseen by male siblings of Sumaila Ndewura Jakpa including their children and grandchildren.

File:The National Archives UK - CO 1069-43-87-1-001.jpg

Precolonial Gonja society was stratified into castes, with a ruling class, a Muslim trader class, an animist commoner class, and a slave class. Its economy depended largely on trade in slaves from Central Africa''The Evolution of War: A Study of Its Role in Early Societies' by Maurice R. Davie and kola nuts, particularly through the market town of Salaga, sometimes called the "Timbuktu of the South."

The Gonja language, properly called Ngbanya or Ngbanyito,Mary E. Kropp Dakubu (ed.), The Languages of Ghana, page 77 is a Tano language within the Kwa languages family, closely related to Akan languages.[https://books.google.com/books?id=w8vzkqDsv-IC&dq=Central+Tano+languages&pg=PA4 Aspect and Modality in Kwa Languages]. books.google.com. Google Books.

Most Gonja are Muslims but still incorporate traditional practices and beliefs.{{Cite book |last1=Braimah |first1=J. A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffYbAQAAMAAJ |title=History and Traditions of the Gonja |last2=Tomlinson |first2=H. H. |last3=Amankwatia |first3=Osafroadu |date=1997 |publisher=University of Calgary Press |isbn=978-1-895176-38-4 |pages=23 |language=en}} The Gonja converted to Islam around the 18th century due to the influence of Muslim missionaries that settled in the region. The healing powers attributed to the Muslims and perceived strength of Islamic prayers aided in facilitating conversions. Trading connections also helped in converting the Gonja chiefs and locals to adopt the religion.

• Rulers of the Northern state of Gonja
• Gonja (kingdom)

{{Reflist}}

• Jack Goody, "The social organisation of the LoWiili", Oxford University Press, 1956
• Jack Goody, The Ethnology of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, West of the White Volta, 1958
• Jack Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors: A study of the mortuary customs of the Lodagaa of West Africa, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1962
• Jack Goody and J.A. Braimah, "Salaga: The Struggle for Power", London, Longmans, 1967
• Jack Goody, The Myth of the Bagre, Oxford University Press, 1972
• Goody, Esther and Jack Goody. "The Circulation of Women and Children in Northern Ghana." Man, New Series. 2.2 (1967): 226-248.
• Wilks, Ivor. "Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries II: The Struggle for Trade." Journal of African History 23:4 (1982): 463-472.

• [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=gjn Ethnologue entry on Gonja language]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090115025941/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4495/ Gonja Association of North America] (archived 15 January 2009)
• [http://www.gonjalandyouth.com/ Official website of the Gonja Association of Ghana]

{{Ethnic groups of Ghana}}

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Category:Ethnic groups in Ghana

Category:History of Ghana