Almost nothing is known of Ayuba beyond the story attached to his name. Local tradition in Larabanga, in Ghana's Savannah Region, remembers him as a Muslim trader travelling the old caravan routes north from the Ashanti forest, who stopped to rest near a stone still shown to visitors today. He is said to have dreamed there that he was commanded to build a mosque, and to have woken to find its foundations already laid — a story that explains an origin nobody recorded at the time rather than one that can be independently verified. What is not legend is that a mosque of this form has stood at Larabanga since at least the early modern period, making it the oldest in Ghana. Ayuba is said to be buried beside it, his grave marked by a baobab the community has protected for generations.
