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History of the Mali Empire

History of an empire in West Africa from c. 1226 to 1670

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Through Mecca

The Keita dynasty ruled the Empire for its entire history, with the exception of the third mansa, Sakura, who was a freed slave who took power from one of Sundiata's sons. Upon his death, the Keita line was re-established, and soon led the empire to the peak of its wealth and renown under Mansa Musa. His pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 became legendary for the vast sums of gold that he gave as gifts and alms, to the point where it created an inflationary crisis in Egypt. Mansa Musa also extended the empire to its greatest territorial extent, re-annexing the city of Gao in the east.

After Mansa Musa's death, the empire slowly weakened. By the mid 15th century, the Sunni dynasty of Gao had established themselves as an independent power. Sunni Ali established the rival Songhai Empire and pushed the Malians out of the Niger bend region and back to their core territories in the south and west. The next century and a half saw Mali repeatedly battle the Songhai and the rising power of the Fula warlords Tenguella and his son Koli Tenguella.

When the Songhai were destroyed by a Moroccan invasion in 1593, Mansa Mahmud IV saw an opportunity to restore Malian pre-eminence in the Niger bend, but a catastrophic defeat outside Jenne in 1599 crippled his prestige. Upon his death in 1610, his sons fought over the throne and the empire splintered.

Historiography

Written sources

There are a few references to Mali in early Islamic literature. Among these are references to "Pene" and "Malal" in the work of al-Bakri in 1068, the story of the conversion of an early ruler, known to Ibn Khaldun (by 1397) as Barmandana, and a few geographical details in the work of al-Idrisi.

Much of the recorded information about the Mali Empire comes from 14th-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun, 14th-century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta and 16th-century Andalusian traveller Leo Africanus. The other major source of information comes from Mandinka oral tradition, as recorded by storytellers known as griots. Imperial Mali is also known through the account of Shihab al-'Umari, written in about 1340 by a geographer-administrator in Mamluk Egypt. His information about the empire came from visiting Malians taking the hajj, or pilgrim's voyage to Mecca. He had first-hand information from several sources, and from a second-hand source he learned of the visit of Mansa Musa. The traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited Mali in 1352 left the first account of a West African kingdom made directly by an eyewitness; the others are usually second-hand. The third great account is that of Ibn Khaldun, who wrote in the early 15th century. While the accounts are of limited length, they provide a fairly good picture of the empire at its height.

After Ibn Khaldun's death in 1406, there are no further Arab primary sources except for Leo Africanus, who wrote more than a century later. Arab interest in the Mali Empire declined after the Songhai conquered the northern regions of the empire which formed the primary contact between Mali and the Arab world.

For the later period of the Mali Empire, the major written primary sources are Portuguese accounts of the coastal provinces of Mali and neighboring societies, as well as the Tarikh al-Sudan and Tarikh al-fattash, historical documents writing in Timbuktu in the 17th century.

Oral traditions

Some of what historians have written about pre-Imperial Mali is based on oral tradition collected since the late nineteenth century. Much of the tradition focuses on the "Epic of Sunjata" a series of tales about early Mali that griots assemble into longer versions. There are several of these versions in print, the most famous of which is that of D. T. Niane, thanks to its lively narrative style and early translation into other languages. Niane's work, however, is not a literal translation of an original oral discourse, though it is surely largely based on tales told by a certain Mamadou Kouyate of Keyla. Rather, it is a reworking in literary form of Kouyate's tales. More literal versions of the tradition have since been published in French, English and Mandinka versions.

Delafosse

The French colonial administrator and historian Maurice Delafosse was one of the earliest Western historians to attempt a comprehensive history of the region in his book Haut-Sénégal-Niger (1912). He produced a fairly detailed and exact chronology of Mali. However, he never explained how he arrived at the dates he presented there, or elsewhere, and the primary sources on which he relied did not give clear indications of chronology at that level of detail. Scholars and the general public have often uncritically accepted and repeated his chronology as if it were exact, but in reality most dates in Malian history are estimates.

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