The history of the Mali Empire begins when the first Mande people entered the Manding region during the period of the Ghana Empire. After its fall, the various tribes established independent chiefdoms. In the 12th century, these were briefly conquered by the Sosso Empire under Soumaoro Kante. He was in turn defeated by a Mande coalition led by Sundiata Keita, who founded the Mali Empire.
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,, translated in . the story of the conversion of an early ruler, known to Ibn Khaldun (by 1397) as Barmandana,, translated in . and a few geographical details in the work of al-Idrisi., translated in .
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.Djibril Tamsir Niane, Sundiata; An Epic of Old Mali (Tr. G. D. Pickett, Essex: Longmans, 1965; original French, 1960) 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.A literal transcript and French translation as well as linguistic and historical annotations is found in Youssef Cissé and Wa Kamissoko, eds. and transl. Soundiata, la gloire du Mali. La grande geste du Mali, (2 vols., Paris: Karthala, 1991)
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).Maurice Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal-Niger (Soudan Français) (3 vols, Paris, 1912, reprinted 1972), 2: 56-59; 155; 162-64; 173-184. 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.
Pre-Imperial Period In the first millennium BC, early cities and towns were founded along the middle Niger River. These included Dia which reached its peak around 600 BC, and Djenne-Djenno, which was founded around 250 BC. Between roughly the 6th century BC and 1st century AD, the ancient and lucrative western trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt and slaves had emerged in earnest, gradually progressing into regional super high-way of sorts by the 3rd to 6th centuries AD, facilitating the rise of West Africa's earliest great empires.
Hunters from the Ghana Empire (or Wagadou), particularly mythical ancestors Kontron and Sanin, were the first Mandinka in the Manding region and founded the Malinké hunter brotherhood. The area was famous for the large amount of game that it sheltered, as well as its dense vegetation. The Camara (or Kamara) are said to be the first family to have lived in Manding, after having left Oualata in Wagadou due to drought. They founded the first village of the Manding, Kirikoroni, then Kirina, Siby, and Kita. Archaeological work at the site of Niani, a possible later capital of Mali, has revealed the remains of a substantial town dating back as far as the 6th century.W. Filipowiak, "L'expédition archéologique Polono-Guinéean à Niani," Africana Bulletin, 4 (1966): 116-127, L'expédition archéologique Polono-Guinéean à Niani en 1968," Africana Bulletin 11 (1970): 107-17.
The Manden city-state of Ka-ba (present-day Kangaba) served as the capital and name of the province. From at least the beginning of the 11th century, Mandinka kings ruled Manden from Ka-ba in the name of the Ghanas.Heusch, Luc de: "The Symbolic Mechanisms of Sacred Kingship: Rediscovering Frazer". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1997. The ruler was elected from among the heads of the major clans, and at this time had little real power.
Al-Bakri, writing in 1068, names two countries "Daw" and "Malal" located near the Niger and close to gold-fields, the core of the later Empire of Mali. Al-Bakri goes on to describe how the unnamed ruler of the kingdom was converted to Islam by a merchant when he witnessed the miraculous shower of rain that ended a drought, and the ruler's descendants and his nobles kept Islam, although the common people were not converted.al-Bakri in Nehemiah Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds and trans, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1981, reprint ed. Princeton, NJ,: Marcus Wiener, 2000), p. 82-83. Ibn Khaldun named the first Muslim king Barmandana.ibn Khaldun in Levtzion and Hopkins, eds, and transl. Corpus, p. 333. Historians have questioned the validity of these early conversion stories - the first, if true, presumably applied only to one of the local rulers of the balkanized pre-imperial Manding region, and the second is likely a later invention to enhance the ruling family's Islamic credentials. In al-Idrisi's account of 1154, he noted that the two towns of Daw and Malal had four days' travel between them, located in a river valley that joins the Nile (by which he meant the Niger). Malal was described as a "small town, like a large village without a surrounding wall, built on an unassailable hill of red earth."al-Idrisi in Levtzion and Hopkins, eds. and transl, Corpus, p. 108.
Wagadou's control over Manden ended in the 12th century.Lange, Dierk (1996), "The Almoravid expansion and the downfall of Ghana", Der Islam 73 (2): 313–351 The Kangaba province, free of Soninké influence, splintered into twelve kingdoms with their own faama. The leader of the confederacy, the mansa, was elected from among the clan leaders but had little real power. Gradually, centralized control grew in tandem with increased trade and the use of slave labor to enrich the monarchs.CISSOKO, Sékéné Mody. “Formations Sociales et État En Afrique Précoloniale : Approche Historique.” Présence Africaine, no. 127/128, 1983, pp. 50–71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24350899. Accessed 4 July 2023.
In approximately 1140 the Sosso kingdom of Kaniaga, a former vassal of Wagadou, began conquering the lands of its old rulers. By 1180 it had even subjugated Wagadou, forcing the Soninké to pay tribute. In 1203, the Sosso king and sorcerer Soumaoro Kanté came to power and reportedly terrorised much of Manden stealing women and goods from both Dô and Kri.
Sundjata Keita Through the oral tradition of griots, the Keita dynasty claims descent from Lawalo, one of the sons of Bilal,Niane, D. T.: "Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali". Longman, 1995. the faithful muezzin of Islam's prophet Muhammad. Historians generally regard this as a later invention, to give increased prestige to the royal family.Conrad DC. Islam in the Oral Traditions of Mali: Bilali and Surakata. The Journal of African History. 1985;26(1):33-49. doi:10.1017/S0021853700023070
Early life
According to Niane's version of the epic, Sundiata of the Keita clan was born in the early 13th century. during the rise of Kaniaga. He was the son of Niani's faama, Nare Fa (also known as Maghan Kon Fatta, meaning the handsome prince). Sundiata's mother was Maghan Kon Fatta's second wife, Sogolon Kédjou. She was a hunchback from the land of Do, south of Mali. The child of this marriage received the first name of his mother (Sogolon) and the surname of his father (Djata). Combined in the rapidly spoken language of the Mandinka, the names formed Sondjata, Sundjata or Sundiata Keita. In Ibn Khaldun's account, Sundjata is recorded as Mari Djata with "Mari" meaning "Amir" or "Prince". He also notes that Djata or "Jatah" means "lion".Ibn Khaldun in Levtzion and Hopkins, eds. and transl. Corpus, p. 333.