Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to northern Iberia and south across the Sahara to destroy the Empire of Ghana, thereby
making them one of ancient West Africa's most successful empires.
Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali,
by DT Niane, is the most accessible English-language version of Mali's
founding epic; it's like listening to the
griots
(praise singers attached to the royal court) during West Africa's
glory days.
Empire of Mali
The Empire of Mali, founded in the middle of the 13th century by Sundiata Keita, leader
of the Malinké people, was perhaps the most legendary of West African empires. Such
was its wealth and prestige that it, more than any other African empire, was to spark the
outside world's interest in the continent.
Mali's heyday was the 14th century. Mali's kings controlled not only Saharan trade and
the gold mines that had fuelled the prosperity of the Empire of Ghana, but also a swath of
territory that stretched from modern-day Senegal in the west to Niger in the east. Their
ambition was matched only by the extravagance of their rule.
One such monarch, King Abubakari II, sent an expedition across the Atlantic in an at-
tempt to discover the Americas almost two centuries before Christopher Columbus. Only
one ship returned, with stories of a great river running through the ocean's heart.
Abubakari II himself led a second expedition of 200 ships. Not a single ship returned.
King Abubakari's anointed successor, King Kankan Musa (the grandnephew of Sundi-
ata Keita), would prove to be one of the most extraordinary of all African kings. Like all
of Mali's rulers, Musa was a devout Muslim and in 1324 he made his pilgrimage to
Mecca, accompanied by an entourage of more than 60,000 people and needing 500 slaves
to carry all the gold. Along the way he gave away so much of his gold as gifts that the
world gold price did not recover for 12 years - some say for a generation. His actions at-
tracted the attention of European merchants in Cairo and news spread quickly about a fab-
ulously wealthy land in the desert's heart.
Under Malian sovereignty, trans-Saharan trade reached its peak, and the wealth created
meant that Mali's main cities became major centres of finance and culture. The most not-
able was Timbuktu, where two Islamic universities were founded, and Arab architects
from Granada (in modern-day Spain) were employed to design new mosques, such as
Timbuktu's Dyingerey Ber mosque.
