The Empire of Mali
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.
Guests
- Amira Bennison
10 episodes
Reader in the History and Culture of the Maghrib at the University of Cambridge -
Marie Rodet No other episodes
Senior Lecturer in the History of Africa at SOAS -
Kevin MacDonald No other episodes
Professor of African Archaeology Chair of the African Studies Programme at University College, London
Reading list
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In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature and Performance
R. A. Austen (ed.) (Indiana University Press, 1999) Google Books → -
Epic Traditions of Africa
Stephen Belcher (Indiana University Press, 1999) Google Books → -
Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples
David C. Conrad (ed.) (Hackett Publishing Company, 2004) Google Books → -
The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century
Ross E. Dunn (University of California Press, 2004) Google Books → -
Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge
Roxanne Euben (Princeton University Press, 2008) Google Books → -
Ibn Battuta in Black Africa
Said Hamdum & Noel King (eds.) (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2012) Google Books → -
West Africa, Islam and the Arab World
John Hunwick (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006) Google Books → -
Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants
Nehemia Levtzion & Jay Spaulding (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002) Google Books → -
Ancient Ghana and Mali
Nehemia Levtzion (Methuen, 1973) Google Books → -
Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History
N. Levtzion & J. Hopkins (Cambridge University Press, 1981) Google Books → -
Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali
D. T. Niane (Longman, 2006) Google Books → -
The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol.3
Roland Oliver (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1977) Google Books → -
Son-Jara: The Mande Epic: Mandekan/English Edition with notes and Commentary
F. D. Sisoko (trans. J. W. Johnson) (Indiana University Press, 2004) -
Sunjata: Gambian Versions of the Mande Epic
Bamba Suso & Banna Kanute (Penguin Classics, 1999) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b06kgggv
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06kgggv
Auto-category: 966.2 (African History)