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.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

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

• In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature and Performance
  R. A. Austen (ed.) (Indiana University Press, 1999)
• Epic Traditions of Africa
  Stephen Belcher (Indiana University Press, 1999)
• Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples
  David C. Conrad (ed.) (Hackett Publishing Company, 2004)
• The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century
  Ross E. Dunn (University of California Press, 2004)
• Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge
  Roxanne Euben (Princeton University Press, 2008)
• Ibn Battuta in Black Africa
  Said Hamdum & Noel King (eds.) (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2012)
• West Africa, Islam and the Arab World
  John Hunwick (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006)
• Medieval West Africa: Views from Arab Scholars and Merchants
  Nehemia Levtzion & Jay Spaulding (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002)
• Ancient Ghana and Mali
  Nehemia Levtzion (Methuen, 1973)
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History
  N. Levtzion & J. Hopkins (Cambridge University Press, 1981)
• Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali
  D. T. Niane (Longman, 2006)
• The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol.3
  Roland Oliver (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1977)
• 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)

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Programme ID: b06kgggv

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06kgggv

Auto-category: 966.2 (African History)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The Empire of Mali flourished during the European Middle Ages.