Rise Of The Ancient African Empires

The ancient African empires focused largely on conquering and accruing territory and wealth. Mali is no exception to this mindset, although, there was something a bit different one must consider when reading about not only the rise of Mali, but also the fall. The idea that Mali rose as an Islamic empire is quite different than other ancient empires such as Ghana and the later Songhai. Not only did Mali accept Islamic ideas, it (and its leaders) focused on spreading Islamic principles to the places it would conquer. A key example of this Islamic ideology spreading was Mansa Musa, the Emperor (or Mansa) of Mali during the fourteenth century. His pilgrimage through Cairo onward to Mecca was filled with extravagance and gold. His focus on getting
Rising from the Kangaba chiefdom of the Malinke, Mali had great advantages already. Kangaba was known for its great agriculture with rice, millet, and sorghum, as well as its geographical nearness to Bure and Bambuk, the gold areas. (Boahen, 25) This closeness to such regions gave the soon to be empire an advantage to controlling the gold-flow. Comparatively, Ghana was never able to have control over gold-producing areas, which is interesting if one considers the geographical similarities of the empires of Ghana and
After Ghana fell, this left the Trans-Saharan trade left open for control. It was temporally ceased by Sumanguru Kante, ruler of the Susu Clan. However, Sundiata (also known as Mari Jata) came to conquer, backed by all the Malinke chiefs. He struck down Sumanguru at the battle of Kirina in 1235. (Boahen, 27) With the support of the Malinke chiefs, Sundiata took control, and began Mali. As the leader of the newly formed empire, Sundiata started his conquest in building the Mali empire.
From Kirina, he pressed on and occupied what was left of ancient Ghana in 1240. Next, he turned south west to the gold producing region of Bambuk, which he conquered and continued westwards to defeat the king of the Jolof. By the end of his reign, Sundiata had extended the frontiers of the small chiefdom of Kangaba to include Ghana and the Western Sahel in the north, Upper Senegal and Gambia in the west, and the gold-producing regions of Bambuk and Bure in the south, and the middle Niger in the east (Boahen,