Mali Empire

The Mali Empire ruled much of West Africa from roughly 1235 to 1610. It began as a small Mandinka kingdom along the upper Niger River, in the Manding region, and grew as the earlier Ghana Empire declined and trade routes moved south. The empire’s early history before the 1200s is murky, with conflicting accounts from Arab writers and oral traditions. The first ruler with reliable written records is Sundiata Keita, a warrior-prince of the Keita line. He was called on to free his people from the Sosso Empire’s king, Soumaoro Kanté, and his victory over Sosso around 1235 marked Mali’s rise as a major power, with the Kouroukan Fouga serving as its constitution.

After Sundiata’s death around 1255, Mali’s rulers took the title *mansa*. In 1285, a former slave named Sakura, who had become a general, seized power in a coup. Once he died, the Keita dynasty returned with Mansa Gao (c. 1300–1305). Mansa Musa took the throne around 1312. His famous pilgrimage to Mecca from 1324 to 1326 was so lavish with gold gifts that it caused inflation in Egypt. His son Maghan I succeeded him around 1337 but was deposed by his uncle Suleyman in 1341. During Suleyman’s 19-year reign, the traveler Ibn Battuta visited Mali. Suleyman’s death ended Mali’s golden age and started a slow decline.

The Tarikh al-Sudan notes Mali was still a sizable state in the 1400s. The Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto and Portuguese traders confirmed that people along the Gambia River still answered to Mali’s mansa. When Leo Africanus visited in the early 1500s, he described Mali as a kingdom of considerable size. But from 1507 onward, neighboring states like Diarra, Great Fulo, Yatenga, and the Songhai Empire chipped away at its borders. In 1544/45, the Songhai attacked the capital but failed to conquer the empire. Mali briefly revived in the late 1500s and hoped to exploit Songhai’s collapse after the 1593 Moroccan invasion, but a disastrous defeat outside Djenne in 1599 ended those hopes. The empire then quickly fell apart into independent chiefdoms, and the Keitas retreated to Kangaba, where they became local chiefs.

Most recorded information about the Mali Empire comes from the 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century traveler Ibn Battuta, and the 16th-century traveler Leo Africanus. Mandinka oral tradition, preserved by storytellers called griots, is another major source. The geographer Shihab al-‘Umari, writing in Egypt around 1340, gathered details from Malians on pilgrimage to Mecca, including second-hand reports of Mansa Musa’s visit. Ibn Battuta’s 1352 visit provides the first eyewitness account of a West African kingdom; the others are mostly second-hand. Ibn Khaldun wrote in the early 1400s. Though these accounts are brief, they give a fair picture of the empire at its height. After Ibn Khaldun died in 1406, no further Arab primary sources appear until Leo Africanus, over a century later. Arab interest faded after the Songhai conquered Mali’s northern regions, which had been the main link to the Arab world. For Mali’s later period, the key written sources are Portuguese accounts of its coastal provinces and neighboring societies.

The name *Mali*—also spelled *Mandé*, *Manden*, *Mande-Bissa*, and *Manding*—comes from different pronunciations in various languages. Medieval Arab geographers recorded it as *Mālī*. *Mali* is the Fula form; in Manding languages, *Manden* or *Manding* refers to the empire’s heartland. Medieval sources disagree on whether *Mali* names a town or a region. Ibn Battuta called the capital city *Mali*. The 1375 Catalan Atlas shows a “city of Melly” in West Africa. Leo Africanus said the capital was called *Melli*. But al-Umari gives *Mali* as the name of the capital province, and Ibn Khaldun uses *Mali* for a people, each giving different names for the capital. Whether it started as a town or region, the name came to apply to the whole empire. Another idea links *Mali* to the Mandé word for “hippopotamus,” an animal significant to the Keitas, with *Mandé* meaning “little manatee.” A legend says Sundiata turned into a hippopotamus. Locals reject these ideas, and they don’t match the apparent link between *Mali* and *Mandé*.