TEACHING ABOUT MALI
Originally this document was a teacher handout for a Mali Exhibit in Richmond VA, for the Standard of Learning in Virginia’s Elementary Schools.
This is a Portuguese map from the 1500s showing the world’s richest king, the Emperor Musa of Mali
DID YOU KNOW THE LION KING CREATED THE EMPIRE OF MALI? The Original Lion King was a real man called Sunjata Keita. He seized back his late father’s kingdom at the Battle of Kirina n 1235, where he defeated the Wicked Sorcerer Blacksmith King Sumanguru Kanté. He was then crowned Mansa = King of Kings.
DID YOU KNOW THERE WERE EARLIER EMPIRES IN WEST AFRICA? The Kingdom of Wagadou was created 1600 years ago by Blacksmiths called Cissé; and it grew to become the powerful Ghana Empire by the year 900. In the late 1100s Ghana became weak and the Soso Empire replaced it, led by another Blacksmith King called Sumanguru Kanté – famous for his music and for his magic.
DID YOU KNOW THAT SUNJATA’s MOTHER QUEEN SOGOLON was the second wife his father? When the father was killed in battle (we think), the son of the First Queen succeeded, and Sogolon took her young children into exile in the kingdom of Mema. It was thanks to Sogolon and the King of Mema, that Sunjata was able to raise an army at the age of 18 to recapture his kingdom.
DID YOU KNOW THAT MEN IN MALI OFTEN ADOPT THEIR MOTHER’s NAME? Originally named Prince Jata, he was known in the palace as Sogolon’s Jata, which became shortened to ‘Sunjata’ as he grew older.
Women gathered together for a wedding in Bamako, all wearing fabulous costumes. The bride in white (with bare shoulders, which you only ever see in Mali when women choose a Western-style bridal gown) is sitting in the middle at the back. The groom is perched on the arm of the settee, wearing a suit and tie.
DID YOU KNOW THAT MOTHERS ARE LIKE GODDESSES IN MALI? Your mother gives you life twice: through birth, and by feeding you milk. Milk is a sacred bond in West Africa. Any woman who has suckled a baby, becomes like a mother to that baby. And her children are treated like brothers and sisters.
DID YOU KNOW THAT TRADE ALONG THE NIGER RIVER MADE MALI RICH? Trade was the basis of Mali’s wealth and power; while fish was a major source of protein. The river served a similar function for the Ghana and Soso Empires earlier and for the Sonrai Empire later? Gold was taken north to Timbuktu in canoes, and trade goods from the Sahara (salt, silks, books from Morocco) were carried south.
DID YOU KNOW THAT SALT AND GOLD WERE IMPORTANT TRADE GOODS ? And the Sahara city of Timbuktu was one of the main trade centers. Salt was mined in the Sahara Desert, and was needed for taste, buy especially for good health in the heat of Mali, and for preserving fish. Gold was mined in the southern forest zone of Mali and what is now known as Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast).
Early evening on the Niger River near Ségou, as the sun begins to turn day into dusk. The Niger is Africa’s third largest river, after the Nile and the Congo.
DID YOU KNOW THAT TWO THIRDS OF EUROPE’s GOLD CAME FROM MALI? During the Middle Ages – from the 800s, but during the 13th and 14th centuries in particular – gold was used in Europe for coins, for jewelry and decoration. Thanks to the Emperor’s secret gold mines, the Emperor Kankou Musa in the early 1300s was the richest man in the world …. Possibly the richest man who every lived!
DID YOU KNOW THAT TIMBUKTU BEGAN TO DECLINE AFTER 1492? When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, other European ships started sailing along the coast of West Africa. It was soon easier and cheaper to carry coastal trade goods like gold and ivory, oil nuts and forest timber over the ocean than across the desert.
Night falls over the Niger River, as a commercial wooden canoe motors home after a day on the river, allowing the sunlight to ripple and churn in the boat’s wake. River transport is still the lifeblood of commerce for thousands of villages, and the river provides much of the protein that keeps Malians healthy today …. Just as it did in the time of the Mali Empire.
DID YOU KNOW THAT MALI WAS DECENTRALIZED AND DEMOCRATIC? There was a central Emperor, of course, but daily life was run by village councils on which every family was represented. The Village Chief was selected as being the best-qualified member of the village’s founding family, and he would chair the village council. This was an African form of democratic governance that lasted until European armies with guns conquered West Africa and imposed centralization.
DID YOU KNOW LAND IS COMMUNALLY OWNED IN WEST AFRICA? Land cannot be sold because it belongs to God, and is given by God to the community: it has been given for the use of those who are farming the land today, to those who went before, and to those who have not yet been born. You ‘borrow’ fields if you need more land.
List of conquests and massacres carried out by the French army as each region and city fell to their superior guns and the brutality of their repression: between 1878 when they arrived from Senegal until they finally overcame Malian resistance in 1920.
This map and its list of towns and places of martyrdom, stands in the history park on Koulouba Hill, not far from the presidential palace in Bamako, capital of the Republic of Mali.
DID YOU KNOW POLYGAMY EXISTS TO PROTECT WIDOWS AND CHILDREN? When a man dies, his family is vulnerable. His brothers have to take care of them. Traditionally therefore, a widow married one of her husband’s brothers: and because an unmarried woman has no status in traditional Malian society, normally she would marry the brother-in-law who had taken responsibility to provide her and her children with board and lodging. So she would become the second wife.
DID YOU KNOW THAT SOUTHERN PORCHES COME FROM WEST AFRICA? Houses in the Southern States of the USA very often have verandas and porches, under which people can sit and watch the world go by. This is an African style of building. Malians always sit on their porch or under their shadiest tree, or sometimes they like to rock gently in a hammock during hot afternoons, because it is too hot and airless to sit inside the house.
At the end of his life, Ali made wonderful music with the kora master Toumani Diabaté: Ali from the north of Mali and Toumani from the south of Mali. Ali was Africa’s greatest guitarist.
DID YOU KNOW THAT MOST AMERICAN MUSIC CAME FROM MALI? The people of West Africa brought the blues to America. Ali Farka Touré is often called the “Bluesman of Africa” but he always responded: “I do not play the Blues. I play the music of Timbuktu where I come from, and you Americans call it ‘blues’ music.” All the versions of American music called jazz, reggae, rock ‘n roll, soul, pop, hip hop, rap, even Bluegrass music have West African roots.
DID YOU KNOW THAT BLUE GRASS AND APPALACHIAN MUSIC is a fusion of West African rhythms and Scots-Irish rhythms?
DID YOU KNOW THAT OKRA IS THE NAME IN GHANA - and gombo is the word in Gambia - for the vegetable that the Hindus call bindhi? This vegetable reached the USA from the Malian Empire. A lot of Southern cooking in USA is really Malian food.
The world’s biggest adobe or mud-brick building is the great mosque in Djenné, the twin city and center of scholarship of Timbuktu. Here is Dan Heller’s picture of the roof in Djenné.
The Friday mosque in Timbuktu was built by Mansa Musa in the year 1326, when he returned from a great pilgrimage to Mecca. It is also made of mud brick, and is still used today.
DID YOU KNOW THAT ISLAM HAS BEEN THE MAIN RELIGION OF TIMBUKTU for more than 1,000 years? Islam crossed the desert from Morocco with the camel caravans. Islam is the only religion that emphasizes the value of commerce (the Prophet Mohammed pubH was a merchant). Commerce carries not only trade goods, but information and ideas.
DID YOU KNOW THAT NEARLY ALL AFRICANS BELIEVED IN ONE GOD thousands of years before Jesus Christ was born? Abraham found God in Africa, and that is how he took monotheism to the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims.
DID YOU KNOW THAT JEWS, CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS SHARE A RELIGION? In reality, all three are versions of the same monotheistic religion. Jesus was a Jew, and Mohamed was a Christian – but he was a Unitarian Christian, not a Trinitarian: he followed the “Arrian Heresy” which regarded the creation of the Holy Trinity at the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. to be a political, not a spiritual decision.
DID YOU KNOW THAT GOD HAS A DIFFERENT NAME IN EVERY LANGUAGE? God, of course, understands every language. The name for God varies according to language: in Arabic people call Him ‘Allah’, in French they call Him ‘Dieu’, and Malians who speak Bambara call Him ‘Nga’. The English word is ‘God’.
DID YOU KNOW THAT MALIAN CHILDREN LIVE WITH THEIR MOTHER? Some fathers have more than one wife, and families do not all sleep in the same place. The father has his own room, and each mother has hers, which she shares with her small children. When kids reach their teens, the father builds a different house for them to sleep in. Education and good behavior reflect on the mother, not the father.
DID YOU KNOW THAT MOST VILLAGE HOUSES ARE ROUND WITH ONE ROOM? In Mali the word for house = the word for room. People live out-of-doors, and use their houses to seep in, or to keep their possessions safe. If a family needs more space, they will build a new one-roomed house …. Often with a veranda for sitting outside in the shade. A compound will typically be a central surrounded by individual one-room houses, and pens for herding the livestock at night.
Market women standing in from of the great mosque in Djenné. It is the colors of Mali that make the country so spectacular.
All photos except Dan Heller’s are from Virginia Friends of Mali: Ana Edwards, Allan Levenberg, Elisabeth Drumm, Robin Poulton, and Wikipedia (a friend of everyone).