Ashanti Kindom Politics And Religion

Posted by The Reunion Black Family on May 13, 2011 at 9:25 AM



Boys are trained by their fathers at the age of eight and nine. They are taught a skill of the fathers' choice. The father is also responsible for paying for school. Boys are taught to use the talking drums by their mothers' brother. Talking drums are used for learning the Ashanti language and spreading news and are also used in ceremonies. The talking drums are important to the Ashanti and there are very important rituals involved in them. Girls are taught cooking and housekeeping skills by their mothers. They also work the fields and bring in necessary items, such as water, for the group.

Marriage is very important to Ashanti communal life and it can be polygamous. Men may want more than one wife to express their willingness to be generous and support a large family. Women in the Ashanti culture will not marry without the consent of their parents. Many women do not meet their husbands until they are married. Even so, divorce is very rare in the Ashanti culture and it is a duty of parents on both sides to keep a marriage going.

The government of Ashanti is shaped like a pyramid. There is one king and he heads the Ashanti Confederacy Council, a group made of paramount chiefs. A paramount chief presides over district chiefs. A district chief presides over a District Council of Elders, which is made up of subchiefs. Villages are brought together by a subchief. Within every village there is a village head council made up of all the heads of households

The Ashanti religion is a mixture of spiritual and supernatural powers. They believe that plants, animals, and trees have souls. They also believe in fairies, witches, and forest monsters. There are a variety of religious beliefs involving ancestors, higher gods, or abosom, and ‘Nyame’, the Supreme Being of Ashanti. The Ashanti also practice many rites for marriage, death, puberty, and birth. The golden stool is sacred to the Ashanti. There is an elaborate legend surrounding it that is told by the old men of Ashanti. The golden stool is very carefully protected. No one has ever sat on it and since its arrival, it has not touched the ground. As an Ashanti symbol, the golden stool represents the worship of ancestors, well-being, and the nation of Ashanti.

The Ashanti have a wide variety of arts. Bark cloth was used for clothing before weaving was introduced. With weaving, there is cotton and silk. Women may pick cotton or spin materials into thread, but only men are allowed to weave. There are different patterns in weaving, each with its own name. Sometimes the pattern represents social status, a clan, a saying, or the sex of the one wearing it. Patterns are not always woven in the cloth. It can also be stamped on in many designs. Pottery is a skill that is taught to a daughter by the mother. There are many stages to making pots and there are many colors of clay available. The Ashanti also do woodcarving and metal casting.



Ghana succumbed to attacks by its neighbors in the eleventh century, but its name and reputation endured. In 1957 when the leaders of the former British colony of the Gold Coast sought an appropriate name for their newly independent state - the first black African nation to gain its independence from colonial rule - they named their new country after ancient Ghana. The choice was more than merely symbolic because modern Ghana, like its namesake, was equally famed for its wealth and trade in gold





Although the rulers themselves were not usually Muslims, they either brought with them or welcomed Muslims as scribes and medicine men, and Muslims also played a significant role in the trade that linked southern with northern Ghana. As a result of their presence, Islam substantially influenced the north. Muslim influence, spread by the activities of merchants and clerics, has been recorded even among the Asante to the south. Although most Ghanaians retained their traditional beliefs, the Muslims brought with them certain skills, including writing, and introduced certain beliefs and practices that became part of the culture of the peoples among whom they settled (see Christianity and Islam in Ghana , ch. 2)


Of the components that would later make up Ghana, the state of Asante was to have the most cohesive history and would exercise the greatest influence. The Asante are members of the Twi-speaking branch of the Akan people. The groups that came to constitute the core of the Asante confederacy moved north to settle in the vicinity of Lake Bosumtwi. Before the mid-seventeenth century, the Asante began an expansion under a series of militant leaders that led to the domination of surrounding peoples and to the formation of the most powerful of the states of the central forest zone

Under Chief Oti Akenten (r. ca. 1630-60), a series of successful military operations against neighboring Akan states brought a larger surrounding territory into alliance with Asante. At the end of the seventeenth century, Osei Tutu (d. 1712 or 1717) became asantehene (king of Asante). Under Osei Tutu's rule, the confederacy of Asante states was transformed into an empire with its capital at Kumasi. Political and military consolidation ensued, resulting in firmly established centralized authority. Osei Tutu was strongly influenced by the high priest, Anokye, who, tradition asserts, caused a stool of gold to descend from the sky to seal the union of Asante states. Stools already functioned as traditional symbols of chieftainship, but the Golden Stool of Asante represented the united spirit of all the allied states and established a dual allegiance that superimposed the confederacy over the individual component states. The Golden Stool remains a respected national symbol of the traditional past and figures extensively in Asante ritual

Osei Tutu permitted newly conquered territories that joined the confederation to retain their own customs and chiefs, who were given seats on the Asante state council. Tutu's gesture made the process relatively easy and nondisruptive, because most of the earlier conquests had subjugated other Akan peoples. Within the Asante portions of the confederacy, each minor state continued to exercise internal self-rule, and its chief jealously guarded the state's prerogatives against encroachment by the central authority. A strong unity developed, however, as the various communities subordinated their individual interests to central authority in matters of national concern

By the mid-eighteenth century, Asante was a highly organized state. The wars of expansion that brought the northern states of Mamprusi, Dagomba, and Gonja under Asante influence were won during the reign of Asantehene Opoku Ware I (d. 1750), successor to Osei Tutu. By the 1820s, successive rulers had extended Asante boundaries southward. Although the northern expansions linked Asante with trade networks across the desert and in Hausaland to the east, movements into the south brought the Asante into contact, sometimes antagonistic, with the coastal Fante, Ga-Adangbe, and Ewe peoples, as well as with the various European merchants whose fortresses dotted the Gold Coast.

Categories: Ghana

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Reply abubakar
7:55 PM on January 27, 2015 
There are no lies to what the writer described anything or mention something here about arab writers my brother kojo....when the writer stated this it was pertaining to the northern Ghana and its populations not southern....ashantis never won a war of conflict against any northern state in ghana till the time of Opoku ware the 1st when one brave worrior of ashanti came out to offer himself for sacrifice for the first ever victory of the akan over the northen ghana he was called boa amposem i mean the brave worrior ....after then the akan and the northerners smoked the peace pipe for long and that the tall northers (men) were used as cross bread with the akan women so as to enable them have different generes because the akans where short and dark whilst the northerners were tall and fair ridding on horse backs.....remember befor the ashanti empire there was Ghana,Mali and Songhai Empire and all this was in the northen part and not the south so these arab writers and scribes were there long before the birth of ashanti kingdom of Osei tutu the first and a slave of the Akyims.....Osei tutu learned all his tricks and rulling from the house of kings of akyim and when he was set to be used to conquer the akans he realized he was more powerfull and abled and more popular than the akyim because he was able to bring all the akans together and that would not loose the chance of being the king with and akyim priest accompanying him thus okonfu anokye.......there are more revelations stay tuned....abubakar
Reply KOjo
7:53 PM on October 30, 2014 
There are many lies and innacurate information like arabs bringing writing and stuff that is a lie. Ashantis are not muslim they mostly practice traditional religion and christianity. they have nothing to do with arabs. We looked down on islam
Reply Ermitt Williams
1:44 PM on September 26, 2011 
A Great Price
Reply brasov,poiana brasov,cazare,hotel,medieval
12:40 PM on September 26, 2011 
That was a truly great post