THE MALI EMPIRE
dopper0189, Black Kos, Managing Editor
Next up in our look at ancient African empires is Mali. Once one of the great centers of Islamic culture and wealth, Mali owes much of it's reputation to both its position as a major trading center, and the tax that is levied on it's control of trans-Saharan route.
The Mali Empire was a West African empire of the Mandinka people that lasted from about 1230 to 1600. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa. The Mali Empire had many profound cultural influences on West Africa, especially from the city of Timbuktu. It powerful position facilitated the spread of its language, laws and customs along the Niger River. The Mali empire extended over a large area and consisted of numerous vassal kingdoms and provinces.
The Mali Empire grew out of an area referred to by its contemporary inhabitants as Manden. Manden, named for its inhabitants the Mandinka (initially Manden’ka with "ka" meaning people of) , comprised most of present-day northern Guinea and southern Mali. The empire was originally established as a federation of Mandinka tribes called the Manden Kurufa (literally Manden Federation), but it later became an empire ruling millions of people from nearly every ethnic group in West Africa.
Unlike the empire of Ghana which we looked at last week, the Malian empire did in fact encompass parts of modern day Mali, and many of the people there are descendents of the empire's inhabitants.
The Mandinka kingdoms of Mali had already been in existance for several centuries before Sundiata’s unification as a small state just to the south of the Ghana Empire.
The Keita dynasty from which nearly every Mali emperor came traces its lineage back to Bilal, the faithful muezzin of Islam’s prophet Muhammad. (But it should be noted that it was common practice during the Middle Ages for both Christian and Muslim rulers to tie their bloodline back to a pivotal figure in their faith’s history.) So while the lineage of the Keita dynasty may be dubious at best, oral chroniclers have preserved a list of each Keita ruler from Lawalo (supposedly one of Bilal’s seven sons who settled in Mali) to Maghan Kon Fatta (father of Sundiata Keita).
During the height of imperial Ghana's power, the land of Manden became one of its provinces. The Manden city-state of Ka-ba (present-day Kangaba) served as the capital and name of this province. From at least the beginning of the 11th century, Mandinka kings known as faamas ruled Manden from Ka-ba in the name of the Ghanas.
The Lion Prince
During the rise of Kaniaga, Sundiata of the Keita clan was born around 1217 AD. Sundiata’s 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 Keita. The anglicized version of this name, Sundiata, is also popular. In Ibn Khaldun's account, Sundjata is recorded as Mari Djata with "Mari" meaning "Amir" or "Prince". He also states that Djata or "Jatah" means "lion".
Prince Sundjata was prophesized to become a great conqueror. To his parent's dread, the prince did not have a promising start. Sundiata, according to the oral traditions, did not walk until he was seven years old. However, once Sundiata did gain use of his legs he grew strong and very respected. Sadly for Sundjata, this did not occur before his father died. Despite the faama of Niani’s wishes to respect the prophecy and put Sundiata on the throne, the son from his first wife Sassouma Bérété was crowned instead. As soon as Sassouma’s son Dankaran Touman took the throne, he and his mother forced the increasingly popular Sundjata into exile along with his mother and two sisters. Before Dankaran Touman and his mother could enjoy their unimpeded power, King Soumaoro set his sights on Niani forcing Dankaran to flee to Kissidougou.
After many years in exile, first at the court of Wagadou and then at Mema, Sundiata was sought out by a Niani delegation and begged to combat the Sosso and free the kingdoms of Manden forever.
Battle of Kirina
Returning with the combined armies of Mema, Wagadou and all the rebellious Mandinka city-states, Maghan Sundiata led a revolt against the Kaniaga Kingdom around 1234. The combined forces of northern and southern Manden defeated the Sosso army at the Battle of Kirina (then known as Krina) in approximately 1235. This victory resulted in the fall of the Kaniaga kingdom and the rise of the Mali Empire. After the victory, King Soumaoro disappeared, and the Mandinka stormed the last of the Sosso cities. Maghan Sundiata was declared "faama of faamas" and received the title "mansa", which translates roughly to emperor. At the age of 18, he gained authority over all the twelve kingdoms in an alliance known as the Manden Kurufa. He was crowned under the throne name Mari Djata becoming the first Mandinka emperor.
The Manden Kurufa founded by Mari Djata I was composed of the "three freely allied states" of Mali, Mema and Wagadou plus the Twelve Doors of Mali. The twelve doors of Mali were a coalition of conquered or allied territories, mostly within Manden, with sworn allegiance to Sundiata and his descendants. Upon stabbing their spears into the ground before Sundiata’s throne, each of the twelve kings relinquished their kingdom to the Keita dynasty. In return for their submission, they became "farbas" a combination of the Mandinka words "farin" and "ba" (great farin). Farin was a general term for northern commander at the time. These farbas would rule their old kingdoms in the name of the mansa with most of the authority they held prior to joining the Manden Kurufa.
EMPEROR MANSA MUSA
Mansa Musa, was the tenth mansa, which translates as "king of kings" or "emperor", of the Malian Empire. Musa was a devout Muslim and his hajj (a pilgrimage to Mecca ordained by Allah according to core teachings of Islam), made him well-known across northern Africa and the Middle East. He belief in the religion of Islam was deep and more than just the repetition of Qur'anic verses and prayer. To Musa, Islam was the foundation of the "cultured world of the Eastern Mediterranean". He would spend much time fostering the growth of Islam in his empire.
MANSA MUSA
Musa made his pilgrimage in 1324. Mansa Musa's famous hajj (pilgrimage) placed him in history and in the attention of the entire European and Islamic world. About the time that the Aztecs began building Tenochtitlan, and the Ottoman Turks began the creation of their empire. In his caravan he brought 60,000 people dressed in fine silk and 80 camels carrying 2 tons of gold. Among this throng Mansa Musa had 12,000 servants, 500 of which carried staffs of gold. If this entourage had not caught the attention of the countries he crossed through, his generous giving would. Wherever he went he gave gold to the needy as given is required by a pillar of Islam. One writer even suggests that on every Friday during his travel he erected a mosque in the city that he found himself in. In Cairo he gave so much gold that in Egypt its value did not recover for twelve years. Before he returned to Mali, he had given away or spent so much that he was forced to borrow money from a merchant in Cairo for his return trip. Musa provided all necessities for the procession, feeding the entire company of men and animals. Musa not only gave to the cities he passed on the way to Mecca, including Cairo and Medina, but also for souvenirs. Furthermore, it has been recorded that he built a mosque each and every Friday.
Musa's journey was documented by several eyewitnesses along his route, who were in awe of his wealth and extensive procession, and records exist in a variety of sources, including journals, oral accounts and histories.
Musa is known to have visited with the Mamluk sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad of Egypt in July of 1324. Al-Omari, an ancient Muslim historian, described Mansa Musa as:
"the most powerful, the richest, the most fortunate, the most feared by his enemies and the most able to do good for those around him" in all of (West Africa).
(Ibn Battuta gives a detailed description of Mali just a few years after the reign of Mansa Musa.)
Musa's generous actions, however, inadvertently devastated the economy of the region. In the cities of Cairo, Medina and Mecca, the sudden influx of gold devalued the metal for the next decade. Prices on goods and wares super inflated in an attempt to adjust to the newfound wealth that was spreading throughout local populations. To rectify the gold market, Musa borrowed all the gold he could carry from money-lenders in Cairo, at high interest. This is the only time recorded in history that one man directly controlled the price of gold in the Mediterranean.
Culture and religion under Mansa Musa
While most of the inhabitants of Mali were not Muslim, and although he allowed them to maintain their religious diversity, Mansa Musa remained distinctly Muslim. While returning from Mecca, Mansa Musa brought back many Arab scholars and architects. Abu-Ishaq Ibrahim-es-Saheli, one of these architects, introduced new ideas into Mali architecture. With his help Mansa Musa constructed a royal palace, libraries, and mosques, and brought his trade city into international acclaim. This architect introduced to Mali a new mud construction technique that would establish a building tradition for centuries. With this technique he built the great Djingareyber Mosque at Timbuktu that stands to this day. He also built the great mosque at Jenne and a mosque in Gao that remained important for four centuries.
Djenne Mosque
(courtesy of mali muso)
Mosque in Gao
When Mansa Musa went on his hajj, he paraded his great wealth before the world. His generosity was quickly noted by European and Islamic nations alike. One contemporary, Spanish mapmaker depicted Mansa Musa seated on his thrown, gazing at a gold nugget in his right hand, holding a golden scepter in his left, and wearing a golden crown on his head. The Islamic world took notice because of his encouragement of Islam and his construction of Islamic centers of learning. These centers attracted Muslims from all over the world, including some of the greatest poets, scholars, and artists of Africa and the Middle east. This greatly increased the fame of Mali.
In the long run, partly due to Musa's conspicuous flaunting of wealth, when the ships of Portugal's Prince Henry captured Cuenta in 1415, Moorish prisoners told more details of the gold trade. Henry set his explorers down the African coast to find a route across subSaharen Africa in order to contain Islam. Containment failed as Constantinople fell in 1453 and after the successful reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula to push out Islam, Europeans turned toward the Americas. However, it had been Mali gold that provided the initial material for exploration and conquest.
Wealth of the Empire
The Mali Empire flourished because of trade above all else. It contained three immense gold mines within its borders unlike the Ghana Empire, which was only a transit point for gold. The empire taxed every ounce of gold or salt that entered its borders. By the beginning of the 14th century, Mali was the source of almost half the Old World's gold exported from mines in Bambuk, Boure and Galam. There was no standard currency throughout the realm, but several forms were prominent by region. The Sahelian and Saharan towns of the Mali Empire were organized as both staging posts in the long-distance caravan trade and trading centers for the various West African products. At Taghaza, for example, salt was exchanged; at Takedda, copper. Ibn Battuta observed the employment of slave labor in both towns. During most of his journey, Ibn Battuta traveled with a retinue that included slaves, most of whom carried goods for trade but would also be traded as slaves. On the return from Takedda to Morocco, his caravan transported 600 female slaves, suggesting that slavery was a substantial part of the commercial activity of the empire.
Gold nuggets were the exclusive property of the mansa, and were illegal to trade within his borders. All gold was immediately handed over to the imperial treasury in return for an equal value of gold dust. Gold dust had been weighed and bagged for use at least since the reign of the Ghana Empire. Mali borrowed the practice to stem inflation of the substance, since it was so prominent in the region. The most common measure for gold within the realm was the ambiguous mithqal (4.5 grams of gold). This term was used interchangeably with dinar, though it is unclear if coined currency was used in the empire. Gold dust was used all over the empire, but was not valued equally in all regions.
The next great unit of exchange in the Mali Empire was salt. Salt was as valuable if not more valuable than gold in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was cut into pieces and spent on goods with close to equal buying power throughout the empire. While it was as good as gold in the north, it was even better in the south. The people of the south needed salt for their diet, but it was extremely rare. The northern region on the other hand had no shortage of salt. Every year merchants entered Mali via Oualata with camel loads of salt to sell in Niani. According to Ibn Battuta who visited Mali in the mid 14th century, one camel load of salt sold at Walata for 8-10 mithkals of gold, but in Mali proper it earned 20-30 ducats and sometimes even 40.
Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu
Its geographical setting made it a natural meeting point for nearby west African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples from the north. Its long history as a trading outpost that linked west Africa with Berber, Arab, and Jewish traders throughout north Africa, and thereby indirectly with traders from Europe, has given it a fabled status, and in the West it was for long a metaphor for exotic, distant lands: "from here to Timbuktu."
Timbuktu's long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship. Timbuktu had one of the first universities in the world. Local scholars and collectors still boast an impressive collection of ancient Greek texts from that era. In fact, when modern scolars visit Timbuktu, they are shocked by families who have preserved these ancient works as heirloom. By the 14th century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the centre of a significant written tradition in Africa.
Manucripts from Timbuktu
(courtesy of mali muso)
Timbuktu was established by the nomadic Tuareg as early as the 10th century. Although Tuaregs founded Timbuktu, it was only as a seasonal settlement. Roaming the desert during the wet months, in summer they stayed near the flood plains of the Inner Niger Delta. Since the terrain directly at the water wasn’t suitable due to mosquitoes, a well was dug a few miles from the river.
This fabled city reached it heights during a later African empire we will explore in a future Black Kos. I mentioned it here because this is when it was founded.
Military
The number and frequency of conquests in the late 13th century and throughout the 14th century indicate the Kolonkan mansas inherited and or developed a capable military. Sundjata is credited with at least the initial organization of the Manding war machine. However, it went through radical changes before reaching the legendary proportions proclaimed by its subjects. Thanks to steady tax revenue and stable government beginning in the last quarter of the 13th century, the Mali Empire was able to project its power throughout its own extensive domain and beyond.
The Mali Empire maintained a semi-professional, full-time army in order to defend its borders. The entire nation was mobilized with each clan obligated to provide a quota of fighting age men. These men had to be of the horon (freemen) caste and appear with their own arms. Contemporary historians present during the height and decline of the Mali Empire consistently record its army at 100,000 with 10,000 of that number being made up of cavalry. With the help of the river clans, this army could be deployed throughout the realm on short notice.
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*** SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS ***
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Black Kos editors Deoliver47 and dopper0189 will be participating in the panel, Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere at Netroots Nation 2010. Along with Black Kos family member shanikka. Rounding out the group will be TexMex and navajo of the Native American Netroots. We will be on at 4:30 PM on Friday July 23rd. We hope to meet everyone who is going there.
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HAITIAN FUNDRAISER
Monday 7-12-2010 will mark the 6 month anniversary of the Haitian earthquake disaster. With the current disaster in the gulf of Mexico many people have place Haiti into the back of their minds. But we must not forget the situation there! Black Kos family member allie123 will once again be spearheading a fundraiser. Last time Daily Kos did a fundraiser for Haiti we raised $3200 (including $700 in matching funds). This time we are limiting the NGO's to the ones that we have learned are doing good work on the ground in Haiti. allie123 has a numbered Vote poster of Obama that she will auction off. We are asking everyone who can contribute, to please do so. Those who are unable to please participate and rec the diary when in comes out on 7-12.
Thank You,
Black Kos editors
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New York Times: Haitian Orphans Have Little but One Another
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More than five months after the earthquake that killed her single mother, Daphne Joseph, 14, lost her bearings a second time when she was forced to leave the makeshift orphanage where she had felt at home.
Immediately after the earthquake, she watched with horror as her mother’s mangled body was carted away in a wheelbarrow from a shattered marketplace. Dropped at the doorstep of a community aid group, she contemplated suicide.
Yet within a couple of months, displaying a resilience that many in this shattered country exhibited, Daphne righted herself. She found an improvised family in a ragtag group of fellow earthquake orphans and the adults who nurtured them. Skipping cheerily to greet a visitor in March, she announced, "I’m so much better!"
In mid-June, however, Daphne was claimed by a relative who is not really a relative — the 23-year-old common-law wife of her half brother’s father — and moved into a squalid tent city. It made her feel unmoored once again. Where did she belong? she wondered.
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Cristal and crushing poverty, $2,000 designer bags and folks living on a dollar a day. In this city of 13 million, everybody has a story. Even a JJC -- a Johnny Just Come. The Root: Letter From Lagos: Life in the Land of the Paradox.
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--I just passed from JJC status here in Lagos. A JJC is an expression bestowed upon a newcomer, a Johnny Just Come, in this city that is a series of islands.
I arrived to work in this metropolis in August 2009. Every day has been an adventure to a higher or lesser degree, especially since I drive myself -- but that's another story for another day. You see, that's the thing with Lagos. It's a place of high highs and low lows. There is little room for the middle ground. The so-called ''centre of excellence'' (according to my license plate) is all about the great paradox.
Lagos and her people inspire either passion or dissent. At 13 million strong, it's experiencing both growth and tremendous growing pains. It's a city where wealthy women carry $2,000 handbags to pick up their children from ritzy schools, comfortably installed in the back of chauffeured Mercedes Benzes. It's also a city where women clad in flip-flops pass by on foot, carrying bundles on their head and balancing babies on their backs. It's a city where $500 bottles of Cristal are popped inside the club, while drivers who wait for their ''ogas'' (bosses) outside the club drink 25-cent ''pure water'' out of plastic bags.
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The digital divide is closing. Washington Post: Pew: Blacks, Hispanics among biggest users of wireless Web.
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African Americans and Hispanics continue to be among the most avid users of the Internet over their cellphones, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.
And low-income groups are the fastest adopters of the mobile Web, showing an opportunity that wireless technology could play in helping to bridge a digital divide that has brought the Web disproportionately to wealthier communities over the past two decades.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 64 percent of African Americans surveyed last May said they access the Internet over their laptop or mobile phone, an increase from 57 percent who said they did in 2009.
That compares with 59 percent of all adults surveyed last May who said they accessed the Web wirelessly through laptops or cellphones – up from 51 percent last year. Indeed, overall use of cell phones and other gadgets is up among all demographic groups -- and youth are, no surprise, big users too.
But the survey revealed more refined data than previous surveys. Poorer households see wireless devices as their gateway to the Internet, for example. By household income, 46 percent of households earning less than $30,000 a year said they used data services on a wireless devices, an 11 percentage point increase from 2009. It's still a relatively small group, but their adoption rate is faster than those earning $30,000 to $49,000 (up two percentage points), $40,000 to $74,999 (up four percentage points), and those earning more than $75,000 (up eight percentage points).
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Prosecutors accused Johannes Mehserle of intentionally firing his handgun as he tried to handcuff Oscar J. Grant III on New Year's Day 2009. Mehserle testified that he thought he was pulling out his electric Taser weapon and not a firearm. LA Times: Former BART officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
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A former transit police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man at an Oakland train station was convicted of involuntary manslaughter Thursday, capping a racially charged case that raised fears in the Bay Area of possible violence after the verdict.
Prosecutors accused the ex-officer of intentionally firing his handgun as he tried to handcuff Oscar J. Grant III on New Year's Day 2009. Johannes Mehserle, 28, tearfully testified that the shooting was a tragic accident caused when he mistakenly grabbed his firearm instead of an electric Taser weapon during a struggle with Grant.
The shooting was captured on video by several witnesses. Mehserle, who is white, fired a single round into the back of Grant, who was black and was lying face-down on the station platform. Mehserle resigned a week after the shooting.
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The Supreme Court has decided to hear California's challenge to a federal court order -- and may hinder efforts to reduce the state's dangerously overcrowded prisons. The Root: Incarceration Nation Gets a Reprieve
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It's sometimes dispiriting to try to make sense of the Supreme Court's choices of which cases it will hear. Some cases that cry out for the court's consideration are rejected (such as a federal court's decision that a town's racial profiling is constitutional, or a federal court's decision that survivors of one of the worst race riots in the country's history cannot sue for compensation for the decimation of their town by white supremacists). Others, like former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling's "Scottsboro Boys" challenge to his trial and conviction, are surprisingly granted review by the court. So it was with some dismay that advocates of prison reform learned on June 14 that the Supreme Court had decided to hear the challenge by the state of California to a federal court order requiring the state to release thousands of prisoners to address dangerously overcrowded prisons.
It is by now well known that the over-incarceration of criminals in the United States is a disgrace that separates this country from other democracies. The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of its prisoners. The reasons are clear-cut and startling. Joblessness, poor education and family breakdown are all contributing factors to increases in crime that in part have fueled a rise in incarceration rates. But it is a series of draconian drug laws and mandatory sentencing laws that have resulted in a 500 percent increase in the nation's prison population over the last 30 years.
It's not as though increases in violent crime have justified this growth. In fact, violent crime has persistently decreased since the uptick of the 1980s and the advent of crack cocaine on the streets of our cities. We've known this since at least 2001, and recent reports indicate that decreases have continued. The dramatic increases in the prison population are due instead to the more frequent and larger incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders.
Of course, race is also a key factor in the promotion of many of these policies. Thirty-five percent of the U.S. prison population is African American, although blacks constitute only 12 percent of the nation's population. The so-called war on drugs has been fought largely within and upon black communities, and the results have been devastating. As Michelle Alexander points out in her powerful new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, largely as a result of U.S. over-incarceration policies, more African Americans are under the supervision or control of correctional facilities today than were enslaved in 1850.
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[] I Might be a Racist by swellsman
[] Murdering BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle’s Case Goes to the Jury by Adept2u
[] Detroit Republican Examiner openly admits racism, calls for "bloodshed" by kpominville
[] Criminal InJustice Kos: On Prison Abolition by Criminal InJustice Kos
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BB King - How Blue Can You Get
The front porch is now open, come inside from the heat!