In Our Time - The Empire of Mali

Episode Date: October 29, 2015

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Empire of Mali which flourished from 1200 to 1600 and was famous in the wider world for the wealth of rulers such as Mansa Musa. Mali was the largest empire in west Africa and for almost 400 years controlled the flow of gold from mines in the south up to the Mediterranean coast and across to the Middle East. These gold mines were the richest known deposits in the 14th Century and produced around half of the world's gold. When Mansa Musa journeyed to Cairo in 1324 as part of his Hajj, he distributed so much gold that its value depreciated by over 10%. Some of the mosques he built on his return survive, albeit rebuilt, such as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Great Mosque of Djenne. With Amira Bennison Reader in the History and Culture of the Maghrib at the University of CambridgeMarie Rodet Senior Lecturer in the History of Africa at SOASAndKevin MacDonald Professor of African Archaeology Chair of the African Studies Programme at University College, London Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, the Empire of Mali flourished during the European Middle Ages. It was larger than any empire in West Africa, before or since, and drew its power from what were then the largest gold mines in the world. Europeans knew relatively little of Mali, relying on Arab and Berber traders to bring the gold north over the Sahara. There was close to contact between Mali and Muslim culture, as Mali's rulers converted to Islam. When the 10th emperor, Manza Mousa,

made the pilgrimage to Mecca in the 14th century, he brought so much gold, he lowered its value in Cairo. He's sometimes being called the richest man the world has ever known. Knowledge of Mali's empire today, though, is hard one. Victorian explorers assumed its physical remains, like the great mosque of Jens, were signs of Arab settlement. What we know now has been pieced together from archaeology, from epic poems and from the writings of Islamic scholars and geographers.

With me to discuss the Empire of Mali are Amira Benison, reader in the history of culture of the migraib at the University of Cambridge, Kevin McDonald, Professor of African Archaeology and Chair of the African Studies Program at University College London, and Marie Rodet, Senior Lecture in the History of Africa at Soas. Amira Benison, who are the people living in the North Africa in this time, from the 12th to the 16th century? In the 12th century, northern Africa was inhabited by peoples who we collectively call the Berbers.

There'd also been a fair degree of Arab settlement, but mostly in towns. So when we're talking about the majority of the inhabitants of North African, we are talking about Berber populations from what's now Libya, across through Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. And in the 12th century, a lot of North Africa was actually ruled by the Almohad Empire, which was an empire founded by Berbers from the High Atlas Mountain in what's now, southern Morocco. Was there only says, they had settlements to Burbas.

They weren't nomadic? The Berbers is a catch-all term for the entire population. So they were tribal people for the most part. But some of them were sedentary villagers, some of them were nomads. Those who lived on the edge of the Sahara were often nomadic just because of the environment in which they lived.

and a fair number of them that were the so-called Malathamun, the veiled burbers of the desert, who were very involved in the trade across the Sahara, connecting North Africa to West Africa. So can you, well, let's talk about that because that's the most important thing

that we're getting out here. What was leading to make the difficult journey across the Sahara to this region of West Africa, Emperor Mali, as we're going to come to know it? Well, this is an interesting topic, and obviously gold is the most glamorous commodity, which was transported backwards and forwards across the desert. Can you give us some idea of the gold?

Because it's the biggest gold provider until South Africa comes along and America comes along, the biggest goal provided in the world by far. But can you be better than by far? I'm not sure that I can be better than by far, actually. We're talking about medieval history here. So it is very difficult to pinpoint amounts. but the majority of the gold currency in North Africa from the 11th century on came from West Africa.

So if you think of the gold currency of the Almoravid Empire in the 11th century, which became generalized throughout the Mediterranean, that was all West African gold. So it was a very substantial proportion of gold coming into northern Africa, moving across to the Middle East and also then filtering up to Europe. across the Mediterranean into Europe. Yes, yes. And so most of these journeys across the Sahara,

which has been quite risky, were to get the gold? Well, gold is only one element in the trade. The trade actually probably starts as a more routine kind of trade. One of the items that was required in West Africa was salt. And you could dig rock salt from mines in the Sahara Desert, located at places like Aulil or to Gaza. And it was because the West Africans wanted the salt that they were exchanging it for gold. Slaves is another commodity moving across the Sahara.

And the Berbers themselves also on a much more mundane level needed grain because they lived in an environment where they lived primarily off animal products, dairy products and meat. So they needed grain. So there are a number of different commodities in the trade, but gold is a very important one of those commodities. So this is a quite busy and productive, looking back in it in its own, an efficient series of trade routes between North Africa, across the desert to West Africa. Yes, it's a slowly building trade route.

It probably did exist in pre-Islamic times, but it flourishes particularly from the 8th and the 9th century onwards, directed by various Berber tribes, many of whom follow the Gerijite sect of Islam. and they develop these routes which do indeed become really quite busy, particularly by the 11th, 12th, 13th centuries and then into the 14th, where they seem to be sort of burgeoning with huge caravans moving backwards and forwards, not just to North Africa but also to Egypt, which is moving in towards the Middle East. Kevin MacDonald, Sundiata is identified as the first emperor of Mali from about 1235.

AD. Can you tell us something about him? Well, Sanjada was a heroic figure. He was at once a mythic and historic figure. You could sort of see him as the West African equivalent of King Arthur, or something like that. In terms of historical information, the first evidence that we have is from about 100 years after his death, a little bit more than that, from Ibn Caldun,

who tells us basically just three things, well, maybe four. First, that he was the greatest king of Mali. Second, that he conquered Soso, which was a kingdom which existed before Mali. Third, that he reigned for 25 years. And then, of course, it gives his name, which he gives as Mare Jata, which means, well, Mare means royal or king. And Jata derives from the word lion. So in that sense, Sun Jata is the original lion king.

But also, of course, he's known as Sun Jata. And in that case, the Sun is... is diminutive of his mother's name, Sougallon. Now, there's the epic of Sundata. Can you give us a brief resum of an epic? Is that possible? Yes, this is something that could be performed over an entire day. But basically, it consists of four story cycles.

The first is about his mother, who is a woman, who is also known as the Buffalo woman, who is humpbacked and probably past childbearing age, but who prophecy says, bear the greatest of all kings. And she is brought by two hunters back to the king of a kingdom called Curie, also known as Manden. And the king agrees to take her as one of his wives. And she has a child, Sunjata. And so that takes us to the second cycle of all of this, which is Sunjata's youth. He is born disabled. He can't walk. He refuses to speak. And it's only really through the

grief of this mother over all of this sort of disappointment that he stands heroically with the help of an iron rod and then grows on to have great strength enough to uproot a Beahab tree. And if you know, a Beabab tree is the largest of West African trees and offer its leaves to his mother. He becomes a great hunter and a heroic figure in this kingdom. But this leads to a lot of jealousy. So that takes us to the third part of all of this where he is forced to go into exile because of after the death of his father for fear that he'll be murdered. He succeeds in his exile. He becomes almost the adopted son of a king of another kingdom,

Mema, when he is called back home by the fact that his ancestral kingdom has been taken over by this evil sorceress figure known as Sumanguru, who he comes back, learns the magical weakness of, and conquers at the Battle of Karina becoming the first emperor of Mali. And then goes on to become the great emperor and extends the empire, Massively. How much of this do you believe to be true? The core that Sunjata existed, that he was the first emperor, I believe to be true. The elements of the Sunjata legend or epic could have been combined from many different traditional tales.

But I think, you know, there are elements of truth. And in terms of place names in the different bits of this epic as related, there are also interesting. hence as to where we might seek for material evidence. We might come back to evidence later. In fact, we certainly come back to evidence later. Marie Roday, it said that Tundjata created what's known as the Magna Carta of Mali. What's this? Well, it's what has been found out recently.

It's actually a text which is also called Ku Koukanfuga. But it's rather a recent discovery. What do you mean by recent? Well, the text was written, put down, as a script in the late 1990s officially for the first time. You have traces of this text, not really a text, but the fact that Sundata, it's claimed in the epic that Sundata organize a great assembly following is the Battle of Korea and when he won to organize the empire. You have traces of these facts in one of the first written epic, written by, sorry, by Jibril Tamthianian, who is a Guinean scholar in the 60s. But it's really in the 90s that it came to the form we know today. which became then in 2009 World Heritage Intangible.

What does it do? Sorry, the former yesterday is, what does it say? It's scholars claim, scholars from Mali and Guinea claim it's a kind of constitution of a sort of a sort of Magna Carta, dating back to the medieval times. They say it's Magna Carta, I'm just repeating what they say. Yeah. What sort of things does it say there? in the detail. Can you give us two or three clauses?

It organizes the different clans in the empire, social relations and the rules of the different clans and caste in the empire. Some scholars claim that it's a kind of human rights charter. But there is, it's a dispute. text, actually. And some scholars even claim it might be invention of tradition or reinvention, and that it's a combination of several traditions which had made a text at a very late stage. When is it claimed that it was originally written? Well, there is also dispute about the date, actually. Can you give that list of some idea of what's going on here?

The text as intangible heritage has been registered for 1236. But other scholars, Ballian scholars, claims that there was a preceding text, a hunter-horse, which is called a mandate charter. So even before 1236? Yeah, a few days before, 1222. But it's kind of interesting that they have so certain. dates because when we know about the process of retrieving medieval history, how it is hard to find really detailed dates, it's interesting that you have nowadays scholars from Mali and Guinea who are so sure about these certain dates.

Well, how did they get to 1236? That's a very specific date. Can they carve and test the paper or is there any other corroborating record? Where does that date come from? It comes from when Sundata won the Battle of Krina and following the battle, it's when he organizes big assembly with all the clans and tried to organize the empire, basically. So again, it's a date. We are not sure exactly where it comes from, but it's based mainly on oral traditions.

Thank you. Amira, how far and how quickly did Islam spread into the land control by Sundiata, spread by trade? The Berbers brought it, but how fast and when and what happened? Well, that's a very long story that predates the era of Sundiata himself. The Empire of Mali was preceded by the Empire of Ghana, and there was certainly Islamic influences within Ghana. And this is ancient Ghana, so it's not located in the same place as the modern country of Ghana. It's much further north in the Sahara, the southern Sahara. And Islam was really conveyed by the traders.

Berber traders from North Africa began to cross the Sahara for. trading purposes, they were allowed to establish settlements in sub-Saharan African towns as trading colonies. And by those means, their knowledge, their learning, their religion began to sort of percolate slightly among the pagan population. It wasn't a particularly proselytizing religion Islam, but we know that various people, the rules took it up. Why did they take it up? It's difficult to say exactly why people took up Islam. It had a certain appeal as a religion with writing. Arabic was the language used by the Berber traders,

and obviously it's a written language. So it is a machine for literacy, if you like. So it's appealing in that sense. And you do see Muslims who are literate and can write, who begin to be employed by pagan kings as scribes, as advisors, through their literacy. It also has a quite established set of rules for trading and for fair contracts,

which would also make it appealing for merchants possibly. Because the generality of faiths at that time were animistic, weren't they? Yes, West Africa is an area we would call pagan in inverted commas with animist beliefs of various kinds, ancestor cults, which continue to be very important all through this period, And although Islam spreads, and the feature, perhaps we should point out for Mali, is that it's with the Mali and emperors that you begin to see important rulers converting to Islam as well. Kevin McDonald, after achieved the heroic task of reduced epic, can you give us some idea of the range of the empire in a time of its great greatness? Right.

as it grew, it didn't reach its apagy under Syngata, it reached its apogee later. One could say under Mansa Musa, who we'll talk about later. Can you give it as to some idea of dates? By around 1,300, 1320, that sort of time, this is when Mali is at its height. And it stretches from the Atlantic, you know, what is now Senegal, all the way past the Niger bend. and so what would be the border today between Mali and Niger, say. And it's, as it expands in this, as it sort of exists in this large 2,000-kilometer suave east to west.

The western Europe size. Yes. It's also cutting across a number of different layers of environment. So in the north, obviously, you have the Sahara, and then you have the sort of semi-arid grasslands. And the southern edge of Mali would be. just in sort of the Savannah forest area. Do we know how that was organized, Kevin?

Was it organized, was it rule by sending the troops in and what sort of troops were there, or was it a confederate? What happened? There's a combination, I think. I mean, we're still reconstructing this. But I think, as usual, there's always a core of empire. And here you have governors, regional governors, who refer to as Masa,

who could be installed in key towns. to govern regions and levy tribute or taxes. And this would be at the core of Mali. But abutting Mali all the way around are all of these semi-autonomous kingdoms who owe their loyalty and pay tribute to the centre. And they're part of the empire. They're sort of sub-kings to the emperor.

So this could include things, as we'll talk about later, like Songhai, which is at the eastern extent of Mali. So it's either they send their man into Gila, the taxes and that's a key thing they want the taxes. Or they make associations, leave the people more or less as they are, and let them connect the taxes, but they want tributes paid to them. Absolutely. And of course, if things go wrong, then you send in the army. What sort of army was it?

Well, it's supposed to be an army that would have included an element of cavalry and also archers. So these would be relatively small armies, I think, by modern standards, thousands or at most tens of thousands. Much the same as armies in medieval Europe. Yes. Mary Rode, what reports are Arabic writers bringing back from Mali and when are they reporting back? Well, the first Arabic writers to just mention this part of West Africa date back to the 8th and 10th century.

So describing a few towns of the Ghana Empire, but most of them never went there. The very first Arabic writer who went to West Africa at the time of the Mali Empire is Ibn Batuta, who spent almost three months in the capital city of Mali between 1352 and 1353. So it's within touch of the great days, isn't he? Yeah, it's just after Sundata's death. It's at the time of Mansa Suleiman, who is the follower even of Mansa Moussa. So he describes at length in his writing the customs, the rituals and how he met the king, and his connection with local Arabic traders and counselors at the course.

court. But he also comes with his own biases from North Africa as an Arabic Muslim. And what is very interested in is to what extent the people of Mali follow Arabic rules and Muslim as the Islamic religion. So it's the way he approaches mostly these people. And so he goes at length in praising some parts of their customs as long as they are close to the way Islam is performed in North Africa, but at the same time criticizing very heavily what he considers pagan rituals. Do you have an impression when you read that that this is a rich, well-developed, civilized society?

Well, as I said, it's the way the document is written is full of biases. So it's hard to know what is really historical facts, what is tangible.

But at the same time, there is a kind of political purpose behind this text because it's for even Batuta, to my knowledge, it was important to prove the extent to what Islam was performed outside North Africa and to prove that Islam was almost as strong outside North Africa as it was in North Africa at the time. I see, Amira Benison. Yes, I mean, I just wanted to add to that, really,

I mean, one of the things that Ibn Batuta picks up on in terms of sort of the organisation is that the very efficient organisation of justice within the parts of Mali through which he travels and the fact that people do get redress from wrongs and that that is mediated through the representatives of the emperor of Mali. So he does see an organisation and a structure and a developed empire. Let's move on to Manza Moussa, there's supposed to be the richest man to will and all that stuff. The Tenth Emperor, he made a haj, a pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1320s.

Can you tell us something about that and what impression it had? Yes. Because that was widely reported. There were maps of him all over the place. We were on rather more solid ground here. Yeah, we're on slightly more solid ground with the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa in 13th. 24 to 5. Once West African started to convert to Islam, to perform the pilgrimage was something increasing numbers wanted to do. And there are a number of emperors who appear to have made the pilgrimage, but by far the most famous is Mansa Musa.

He travelled across the desert, reputedly with a huge caravan of slaves, servants, 80 to 100 loads of gold. and he made his way through to Egypt, which was ruled by the Mamluks at that time, and made a great impression. We don't have eyewitness reports as such, but we have the account written by Al-Umari, which was based on speaking to people who had seen Mansamusa and his entourage in Cairo.

And this is, of course, the phase where the flooding of the Egyptian market with gold is cited as a possible reason for the depreciation in the metals value, in the Middle East and Mediterranean at that moment. So he swept on there, and he must have been, can you just give us a bit more of this?

Because we've got real stuff on this. Yes, yeah. No, I mean, it's a fascinating. Do we know how many hundreds? The 500 slaves are cited. Each one is supposed to be carrying a gold stick. Is that true? And what did he, I mean, that sort of stuff?

Let's just say numbers in medieval Arabic chronicles need to be taken with a very big pinch of sort. So I wouldn't say that 500 slaves with solid gold staffs isn't necessarily true, but obviously he had a large number of slaves with gold or guilted equipment. He also had a lot of female slaves with him. But some of the other things that were noticed relate to this idea of West Africa as actually being quite civilised. The fact that his entourage, although naive about Egypt, were very polite.

They were very well dressed. They're described as sort of clean, behaving appropriately and also being very pious. And one of the major things that Mansa Moussa wanted to do during the pilgrimage appears to be to recruit religious scholars and learned personnel to take with him back to Mali. Numbers are very difficult in all chronicles, aren't there? Yes, they are. From the Old Testament to maybe the chronicles of today. Yes, yes. Kevin, you want to come in, Kevin McDonald.

One of these learned people who notionally Mansa musa brings back with him is this Andalusian, this Spanish architect by the name of Al-Sahili. And this plugs into the story that on his return from the haj, on every Friday when he stopped, he would order for a mosque to be built. And there are a number of locations in Mali where it said that there were these mosques built by Mansa Musa. including in Gao and Timbuktu and Jene. Of course, the only one of these that's still standing

is the mosque of Ginger Abar in Timbuktu. But the mosque of Jene, the current mosque, the World Heritage Site, which was built in 1907, is standing on the foundations of what might have been Mansa Moussa's mosque. This is the largest mosque in Mali. Its foundation is about 75 minutes. meters by 75 meters. It's huge structure. Did you build all these mosques?

So did they perish because of the materials that were used? Well, mud, earth and architecture is surprisingly robust. As long as you keep it replastered every year, it's possible for structures, or at least the core of structures, to endure for a long time. There are standing structures in Mali that probably date back to the 14th century. So he, but you didn't build one every Friday, by the look of it. I think that might be an exaggeration.

Yes, one of them. You've mentioned Timbuktu, which is irresistible name. It's one of the great names, isn't it, Timbuktu? Let's pass over that childhood infatuation with Timbuktu. Marie Rodeh. Tell us about Timbuktu. How did it develop under the empire and why is it important? Well, Timbuktu probably originated in the 12th century as a triag trade outpost. It was originally rather a temporary drug.

but because of its strategic position, the crossroad between the Sahara and the Sahel and on the Niger River. So it was on the edge of the desert. Yeah, exactly. And then beside a river. So it's a good trade crossing. Exactly. So it developed soon after as a main trading,

dwelling, permanent dwelling, attracting traders from North Africa, but also from the Sahel. And it was included in the Malian Empire from the 13th century. And it's from there that it developed slowly into what we know today of Timbuktu as a great trade and scholarly town. But it's actually following... Excuse me, sorry. Why did it develop into a scholarly town?

Well, actually, it's after the Malay Empire. that it really developed into a scholarly town. With, under the Songhai Empire, especially with Askeh Mohamed, who was the second king of Songai. So this is the Songhais who took over the... Yeah, exactly. In 1468, they took over Timbuktu.

And it's Soni, the first king of Songai who took over Timbuktu. And it's from there that they... well actually the following kings sponsored scholarship and mosques and probably libraries as well and what are known as universities like San Corre at the time in the 16th century. And the most we know about this city has a burgeoning place of scholarship is coming from Leo Africanus who really related to. in his writing the wealth of the city in the 16th century.

But it was known before already. Even Batuta visited shortly Timbuktu on his way to Mali. But it was not the city, burgeoning city at the time. It was about 10,000 inhabitants were under the Songhai Empire. it went as up to 100,000 inhabitants probably. 10,000 for any town in those days. It was quite big there.

But sadly, we leave Timbuktu, Amira. And how integrated was Mali becoming with a wider Islamic world in the reign of Musa? I think as a result of the performance of pilgrimage by the Hajj. Which again, let's just go back. He had a tremendous impression.

And he appeared on maps. And so he put, literally, put this place on the map because it would mean very hard to get to, except for these Berber traders, who were then often excluded from the town, so they kept it very secret, they were powerful people in this empire, they didn't want much known about themselves, and they succeeded in that until about now. I think from the late 13th on into the 14th century that there is much more integration between the Muslim and non-Muslim elements of the population, and there is this interest

in attracting scholars from the north, but also in sending scholars to be educated in the north. And by the north, I mean places like Morocco, which was under the Marina dynasty. So we know there was quite a lot of intellectual traffic between Mali and its cities and furs in Morocco. And that wasn't one-way traffic. So in addition to the mercantile traffic going backwards and forwards,

which was constantly growing and greatly stimulated by Mansa Musa's spectacular pilgrimage, you also have this constant movement of scholars backwards and forwards. And West Africa in general followed the Sunni Merliki School of Law, which was the same as the rest of North Africa, so it was drawing those two areas together. Kevin McDonnell, what combination events, there are the big questions, I'm afraid,

what combination of events brought the empire down. Well, Mali begins to decline from about 1450 A.D. onwards. It exists in some form into the 17th century. But to begin with, like so many empires, it was simply overextended. There are too many places which could become dissatisfied and could rebel. And the most important of these was the Songai area around Mardonga and which had a strong army and which began a series of campaigns from 1460 striking progressively westwards and taking more and more and more of the Empire of Mali away from the Empire's core. Was this by conquest or did people these different areas, say, joining with him? In the Tarrix, they talk about individual military campaigns which go in and subdue certain areas. And so at the same time, although the effect of this is a little bit later, it needs to be remembered that the Atlantic is coming into play, that the Portuguese who have been trying to short circuit to get around the Berber intermediaries of trade

and things like gold were trying to get south of the Sahara along the coast and thereby to enter into a direct gold trade with the south. and in 1448 they succeed in setting up a trading base at a place called Argym, which is in the Gulf of Argane today on the southern coast of Mauritania. And they go there beginning to try to engage in a gold trade, but unwittingly also set off a slave trade, which ultimately, although initially is very small scale and aimed at bringing captives back to Portugal as agricultural laborers or the Canary Islands

eventually becomes this transatlantic tragedy that we know about. Mario Day, the next empire, as Kevin's mentioned, and so of all of you, actually, was the Songue. And that histories began to be written, as I understand, about the Malian Empire about that time. So what do the Songheins history tell us about Mali? Well, as Kevin mentioned, there was a taric. Two tarics were written in the 17th century. The Tarik al-Sudan of Al-Badi was written around 1653, 1656. And the second one was a Tarik al-Fatash of Ibn al-Mupta from 1664. And, well, these taric are a specific genre, which was only. developed at the time and we don't have similar sources for before or after this. But they concentrate mostly on the Songai Empire. We have some data on the Malian Empire to make connections actually between the two empires, but also to it's actually it's a historical attempt to write

a unified narrative of West Africa and West African empires. At the time, it's a historical attempt. At the when actually short after the fall of Timbuktu, in 1591, Timbuktu was taken over by the Almarabad. So there was this attempt by local scholars to write a long history of the region, maybe in a search of self-identity and to mark themselves as a historical entity with a long history

in comparison with the new power. Amira Benson to move, sorry, I didn't think you're talking about. Amira Benson to move forward. The Europeans, as it came in, let's put it towards the 19th century, the French, and they made a point as a lot of the West European empires blooming empires, some of them learning about the place in which they found themselves and trying to draw history of them.

What did they discover and how did they interpret it about this? I think there was a tendency among not just the British but French historians of this region to see the history of West Africa very much in terms of white influence from the north and the exploitation of sub-Saharan black Africa. So, for instance, there were a lot of assumptions about the foundation of towns that this was all achieved by Berbers from the north coming south, that Islam, that literacy, that the development of more sophisticated society was all sort of something emanating from the north.

But much more recent historiography is rethinking that, or trying to deconstruct those kind of ideas and to recognise the indigenous contribution and the fact that these empires were built by West Africans themselves and developed by them and that often they were the more powerful partner. And so they had, as you said earlier, they had systems of justice which they had...

Yes, exactly. And they had their own cultures, their own ways of doing things and it's sort of inappropriate to impose value judgments on whether those were better or were. than ideas emanating from the north. But we're still faced with the, compared with this country, just for instance, like on paper written evidence, we are lushness here.

It's rather sparsed out in West Africa. So you turn to the archaeology. But what is the archaeological evidence there? Well, initially, archaeological evidence for the apogee of Mali was relatively elusive. The French, the first French, scholars in the area in the 1890s, they first thought that the center of Mali was more in central Mali, that is to say, around what is the town of Sagu today. But subsequently in the 1920s,

their view shifted to this place called Niani, which is just on the Guinea side of the Mali-Ginne border, which was then trumpeted as the capital of Mali, and there were ruins there, and these were excavated in the 1960s. But those excavations showed that this was really a later capital at the end when it was a remnant empire, probably in the 17th century. It's only been since about 2005 when field work which I've been conducting with Sedu Kamara from Mali has been able to discover, in fact, that there is an enormous density of ruins and settlement relating to Mali around Sagu. And in fact, probably the French in the 1890s and their initial accounts were right. And we have massive settlements around Sagu.

one of them, Soratomo, is the second largest known archaeological site in Mali, measuring it at about 75 hectares, which is quite substantial. We're coming to the end now, and there's a question I'd like to ask all of you, if you could be brief, I'm sorry to say, Marie. How much reliance is now being given to oral traditions, which can you tell us about that? Because there seem to be a lot of oral traditions. And what reliance?

Historians have traditionally been rather snooty about those. What about the present state of play? Yeah, well, for example, the epic of Sundata is still performed nowadays by the so-called griot, who are the specialists of oral tradition in Mali. It's a specific cast. They pass down the tradition from generation to generation. It's a very specialist knowledge. So these griot are actually passing down traditions which they say come from the 13th and 14th century?

Indeed. But what is important to bear in mind when talking about oral traditions, there are performances. They are addressed to a specific audience. So most of the time, actually, they may tell you more about a current situation because the griot of the performers try to respond and to make their performance attractive to an audience, and there is an interaction. So they adapt their knowledge.

to specific political issues. So you're rather questioning the historical reliability. What's your summary of the reliability of the oral tradition, Amira? I think an oral tradition gives you insight into individuals who are important, as Kevin had said, perhaps allusion to some places. It also can give you a sense of the overall trajectory of a people's history, but it doesn't give you detailed, actual, factual, historical influence. But there's a certain reliability about it, did you think?

I think there are elements within it, if combined with written texts, can take you forward and then combined with archaeology again, you kind of begin to put a picture of some kind together. Well, thank you very much, Mary Bennison, Mary Rodeh and Kevin McDonald. If you want to submit an idea for our programme on 3rd of December, today is the last day to do it. Next week we'll be talking about the maths and computer science problem of P

versus NP. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. So what did you leave us? I think I'd just like to comment further about oral tradition. I think one thing that we forget is how many different versions of things that there are. There are many different versions of the epic of Sunjata.

We have one that's very popular these days, which was sort of novelized by D.T. Nyan in 1960, which has become almost sort of the orthodox version. But as there are many tens of versions of the Sinjata epic, and what's also interesting on those is the geography of the epic, where it takes place, varies depending on where it's collected. So this is where the place names come in. And so there is a danger, just like, for example, with D.T. Nyan,

he places the capital and the one center of Mali in Niani. He's from around that area. But if you look at other versions, they place the capitals elsewhere. And of course, there were probably many different capitals and many different centres of power in Mali. And that's the same with the genealogy of Tundiata, which is always recalled at the beginning of the epic.

And you have as many, probably not as many versions of the genealogy of Tundiata as the versions of the epics, but you have, depending on the place it was recorded and by whom it was recalled and performed, different names in the genealogy. Some genealogies insisting on one great ancestor, the first ancestor of Sundata as being Bilal, Bilali, one of the first companions of the prophet Muhammad, who was a black freed slave, and whose descendants will have come to West Africa and then funding kingdoms and coming down the line to Sundata.

But in some other versions of the epic, Bilali doesn't appear at all because it tells you a lot about how Islam also plays a role in recalling the story. And as I was saying earlier in the program, depending on the audience and the situation in which the performance takes place, the performer will try to respond to specific contemporary issues. Like at some point, Islam becomes an important issue, political and religious issue. It's when actually Bilali will come into the picture, for example. Yeah, I mean, I think, another thing that's interesting

picking up on that is just the balance between Islam and animistic religions within these empires which it's difficult to be sure about but obviously the Islamisation of West Africa is a very

slow and gradual process over many centuries and still ongoing. And still ongoing exactly and you know it goes you know so there's still a lot of other beliefs that are very important within these empires so even though the ruler mansa Musa and others like him are

Muslim themselves culturally they're also embedded in a different world which they need to respond to as well I meant to ask you do we know anything about the character of Musa he's described as being what sort of man he was like upstanding pretty pious very interested in religion he seems to be interested in Arabic letters because Asahili, who was mentioned in the programme, this individual from Grenada, who he meets in Cairo and he takes back to Mali, was a poet, an accomplished Arabic poet. Whether he was or wasn't involved in building, there's a much bigger question mark about whether he was involved in building. Bar repute. Well, it's part of linking, you know, making the buildings prestigious, isn't it?

linking them to this Grenada, you know, the Nassarids of Granada, the Alhambra, and all these sort of imagined wonderful buildings of the Arab Islamic world. But of course the architecture, the Sudanic architectural style is very different from that. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's very innovative. It is. And indeed, you know, even copied or transformed by modern architects. You have skyscrapers or at least, you know, very tall building. In Bamako today, which are built in the Sudanic. style or copying the sedentic style.

Well, that's the irony. I mean, obviously the West Africans were building their own buildings way before this random man Asserli arrived in West Africa. You know, he's probably got nothing to do with the building in my view. Do you think there's going to be a sort of growing flow of information and interest in that part of the world?

Well, I guess that the fact that the Coongan Fuga Charter is now tangible world heritage in tangible world. World Heritage, sorry, it might even attract more potentially young scholars and interest in the region. You have also the big South African project in Timbuktu to salvage and preserve Timbuktu.

So you have growing interests around this area. We are interrupted for a BBC announcement here. There are many more history. and discussion programs from Radio 4 to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio 4.