Moreover, all Arab businessmen who come to Ghana to do business must pass through here and pay taxes on imported goods. What is the concept of import taxes? In fact, this is a concept of income between countries, and is usually established

Given that the strengths of the two parties are about the same, there are of course other individual situations.

Normally, if outsiders sell their goods to Ghana, they will pay a certain amount of tax based on the quantity and type of the goods when entering the city. This money is usually used by the Kingdom of Ghana to build the army.

Or other expenses are also one of the sources of wealth for a strong empire. Can everyone understand this situation? In this way, when the country is strong, it can also protect the residents of the country. But under normal circumstances, these taxes

Most of it will be stolen by people at the lower level.

But this situation can also lead to, for example, after all the items brought by the Arabs to Ghana were taxed, the item was originally a gold coin, but now a gold coin tax is collected. Then when the Arabs sell it to Ghanaian civilians,

This item was originally worth one gold coin, but now it may cost ten gold coins. This value will double, and then the Arabs will use this business method to exchange the wealth in the hands of Ghanaian civilians for a completely unequal value.

Go. However, if Ghanaians go to Arab places to do business, they can resell goods in the same way. This is legal and is a system established by the top leaders of countless countries.

Then back to our original topic, Beckley and his friends now saw Odagast, and the Arabs in the entire caravan suddenly burst into cheers, because they finally walked out of the room filled with dry death.

The Sahara Desert. So now everyone cheered up, drove the camels, and arrived at the city at a very fast speed.

Arriving at the city gate of Odagast, many caravans were queuing up in an orderly manner, waiting to enter the city. Standing at the city gate was the Ghanaian tax officer, who was responsible for collecting taxes on goods entering Ghana. According to

It is stipulated that every time a merchant imports a load of salt, this load refers to the goods carried by a camel. A load of salt is levied one gold coin, but a load of salt is levied two gold coins.

Five gold coins were charged for copper, ten gold coins for a load of groceries, and so on. After a while, it was the turn of Beckley's friend's caravan to pay the tax. The tax officer carefully inspected all the goods they carried.

After collecting the corresponding gold coins, they were allowed to enter the city.

However, the trading place for goods is not actually in Odagast, but in Quimbi, the capital of Ghana, which is a little north of Baco, the capital of our modern Republic of Mali. So Beckley and his friends took a break here.

After that, I bought some water and continued to rush to Quinby non-stop.

Beckley was riding a camel at this time, observing the customs and customs of Ghana very carefully. On both sides of the road leading to Quimbi, there were many villages, and the villages were all built with round thatched houses. Black people's

Men don't grow beards, and women don't grow hair. Because this place is too hot, the clothes are relatively thin, especially women. There are even some women who are really thinly dressed. We can also see that it is very impressive.

Mesmerized boobs.

Another thing is that people in Ghana are currently holding various farm tools and working hard in the fields. The crops are growing well. From here, it is not difficult to see that the agriculture here is very developed. And in

There were more Ghanaians, that is, black people, digging for gold by the river. After asking his friends, Beckley learned that the large pieces of gold mined from the mountains in Ghana belong to Ghana.

It is owned by the king, and other people have no ownership rights. The wealth obtained from this gold is spent by the king and the nobles. And the common people can only get a small amount of gold from the sand and gravel by the river. It is not difficult for us to see from here.

It turns out that the common people here don't seem to be living a very good life. For example, the king owns a lot of gold, and the largest piece can be used as a horse bolt.

After several days of trekking, Beckley and his friend's caravan finally arrived at Quimbi. Quimbi is the capital of Ghana. It has a population of about 30,000 and is a very large city with very wide streets.

, a tall building. After a friend’s introduction, Beckley learned that the city of Quimbi was originally divided into two parts. One part was for the residence of Arabs who came to Ghana to do business, and the other part was where the king of Ghana lived.

It is composed of very tall palaces and some domed palaces. Speaking of this, it is not difficult to see again that in fact, the civilians in Ghana seem to have no human rights, and even the capital is not allowed for ordinary civilians to live.

Just as Beckley was digesting what he saw and heard, he suddenly heard a cheerful drum beat. All the people on the street quickly stood on both sides of the street, watching the drum beat with great excitement.

direction. The friend pulled Beckley while standing on the roadside, and said to Beckley: This is the King's Parade.

I saw two rows of high-spirited soldiers, holding spears and walking in front to clear the way, ordering the people to avoid it. The king was riding a tall horse, wearing a very tall gold crown on his head, and a gold necklace around his neck.

, wearing a gold bracelet on his wrist, and the clothes on his body were even more inlaid with gold. Beckley took a closer look at this time and saw that the king's saddle was made of pure gold! This is truly the king of the land of gold!

Early in the morning of the next day, Beckley and his friends came to the market to do business. The market was a large open space, and the merchants put salt, copper, cloth and other items on the ground, and then left. After a while, the Ghanaian

Just walk up to the goods they like, put down a certain amount of gold, and then leave. At this time, the Arabs will return to their goods. If they feel satisfied, then they will take the gold and leave. If

The Arab felt dissatisfied and went back. The Ghanaian came over again. If he saw that the gold next to the goods had been taken away, it meant that the deal was concluded and he would take the goods away. If the gold was not taken away, he would

It means that the owner of the goods dislikes the low price and asks for more money. At this time, Ghanaians can choose to continue to add money or give up the purchase. The Arabs call this way of doing business: dumb trading.

Beckley's friends were very satisfied with his transaction, so after a few days, they purchased local ivory and other items, and then returned to the country. After Beckley returned to the country, based on what he had done in the Kingdom of Gold,

After seeing and hearing what he saw, he wrote the book "Africa Seeing and Hearing", which also became an earlier record of ancient African civilization.

Okay, that’s it for our understanding of a different form of trade during this period. After all, the Kingdom of Ghana seems to be pretty good. Anyway, the king is not as cruel as other empires. Maybe the king himself is very rich.

Right? There is no shortage of money at all, so there is no need to exploit the civilians cruelly. He just does not let the civilians enter his palace area, and the king does not care about the small amount of gold by the river. So far, the civilians of the entire Kingdom of Ghana, they do not

It’s not that he didn’t have enough food to eat and he didn’t have enough clothes to cover his body. On the contrary, his life was quite good. Compared with other empires in this period, it was indeed like this. Empires in other places were fighting wars everywhere, either externally or in civil war.

But why is there no one attacking the Kingdom of Ghana, which is the Golden City? In fact, it is not difficult to imagine that it takes several months to walk through the Sahara Desert. At present, only Arabs riding camels can come here, and only a small number of people can come.

, even if we get the gold, do we have to transport it back? Does this mean we have to go through the Sahara Desert again? Is this a joke? God knows how many soldiers will die on the way when crossing the Sahara Desert.

Therefore, even though Ghana is the Golden Kingdom, the cost of burning, killing, and looting the Kingdom of Ghana is really too high, and there are many unstable factors. Therefore, the Sahara Desert has actually been protecting the Kingdom of Ghana from outsiders in disguise.

The burning, killing and looting of the empire.

Although we are discussing the trade situation of the Kingdom of Ghana, we also saw the peaceful state of the Kingdom of Ghana in this era of cannibalism. Then we continue to return to the topic of the empire. At this time, we mainly talk about what we have not talked about before.

Some important topics, such as the part about the Christian Pope, let’s talk about it together now, because according to my personal ideological point of view, this part of the Pope still belongs to the war part. In fact, the Pope has also changed his taste a long time ago. In fact, Christianity

After Emperor Constantine issued an order to become the state religion of Rome, Christianity completely changed from that time on.

In previous periods on earth, whether in our place in China or in various empires in the West, the emperor or king was the head of a country, and that was true. But we have also talked about some special situations, that is

The Christian pope emptied the power of the Roman emperor, so let’s talk about this issue in detail now. Because at this time, the most powerful person is no longer the emperor or king, but the pope. But why does this happen?

This has been briefly analyzed in the late Roman Empire that we discussed before. For example, the Roman Emperor Constantine vigorously promoted Christianity in order to mentally control the people and consolidate his own ruling power. Christianity is also the

Because of this, it developed more quickly and vigorously, and it soon spread throughout the Roman Empire and even to other countries. According to the situation of the Roman Empire at that time, the provinces of the Roman Empire were divided into
Chapter completed!