Mali: Sundiata, Mansa Musa, Timbuktu
The Mande world, Sundiata Keita and the Kurukan Fuga, the epic and the griots who keep it, the empire's reach from the Atlantic to the Niger bend, Mansa Musa's hajj of 1324 and the Catalan Atlas of 1375, Timbuktu and Djenné as centres of learning, Ibn Battuta's visit, and decline.
An empire known through song and chronicle
[oral tradition] The Sundiata epic tells of a prince who could not walk as a child, was exiled, and returned to defeat the sorcerer-king Sumanguru. The Kurukan Fuga, a gathering said to have organised Mali's clans and obligations after the victory, is remembered in Mande tradition and was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible heritage (2009).
Mali's fame reached Europe: the Catalan Atlas of 1375 shows Mansa Musa enthroned holding a gold nugget. The Timbuktu manuscripts, hundreds of thousands of documents on law, theology, astronomy and medicine copied mostly from the 16th century onwards, testify to the scholarly culture that grew there; many were hidden and saved during the 2012 occupation of the city.
D.T. Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (1960, English 1965); Ibn Battuta, Rihla, in Levtzion and Hopkins (1981); al-Umari, Masalik al-absar; Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (1973); Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne (eds.), The Meanings of Timbuktu (2008).