Mali Empire, empire in West Africa that rose to dominance in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Mali Empire was the second and most extensive of the three great successive empires, which included the Kingdom of Ghana and Songhai. The Mali Empire served as a model of statecraft for later kingdoms long after its decline in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Mali Empire was strategically located near gold mines and the agriculturally rich interior floodplain of the Niger River. This region had been under the domination of the Ghana Empire until the middle of the 11th century. As Ghana declined, several short-lived kingdoms vied for influence over the western Sudan region. The small state of Kangaba, led by Sundiata Keita, defeated the nearby kingdom of Susu at the Battle of Kirina in 1235. The Susu had been led by the tyrannical king Sumanguru Kante. The clans of the heartland unified under Sundiata, now king of the vast region that was to become the Mali Empire. Under Sundiata and his immediate successors, Mali expanded rapidly west to the Atlantic Ocean, south deep into the forest, east beyond the Niger River, and north to the salt and copper mines of the Sahara. The city of Niani may have been the capital. At its height, Mali was a confederation of 3 independent, freely allied states (Mali, Mema, and Wagadou) and 12 garrisoned provinces. The king reserved the right to dispense justice and to monopolize trade, particularly in gold.

Mali's renown spread to the Islamic and European worlds when its king, Mansa Musa, made a pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca (in what is now Saudi Arabia) in 1324 and 1325. He brought with him hundreds of camels laden with gold. Under Mansa Musa, Islam thrived in commercial centers such as Djénné and Tombouctou (Timbuktu) and penetrated the elaborate court life. However, in the following decades, court intrigue and succession disputes sapped the strength of the extended empire. By the early 14th century, the northern towns and provinces revolted. One of the first peoples to become independent, the Songhai, began to spread along the Niger River. Much of Mali fell to the Songhai Empire during the following century. Mali's legacy is the enduring cultural affiliation shared by the Mande language group, especially Mandinka (also known as Mandingo or Malinke), Bambara, and Soninke speakers, who today occupy the greater part of West Africa.

West African history hardly begins with Mali, which was preceded not only by the kingdom of Ghana, but also by centuries of formation of other states in the vast region between the Atlantic and the upper Niger. Mali stands out, however, as one of the earliest empires of the medieval Sudan, large "mega-states" which would exercise authority over neighbors and subject peoples either by right of conquest, or treaties of alliance, or both. Moreover, embedded in the history of Mali was the birth of the or griot heritage, the great body of oral epic tradition passed down through generations of bards. These griots remained forever grateful to the memory of the earliest of Mali, who had exalted the humble trade of the wandering "singer of tales" to the heights of empire, when griots were appointed royal spokesmen and advisors. As a result of the close relationship between mansa and djeli, much more of the history of Mali has been preserved than for other peoples of the region. To better understand the early development of Mali, however, it is helpful to take a brief look at neighboring peoples and political developments in west Africa leading up to the thirteenth century.

Following a pattern that would become typical for Mali, the Soso leader did not govern as sole monarch, but ruled a federation of subject states. One such dependent kingdom was Mali, which had fallen under Soso control by the first quarter of the thirteenth century. In tradition, handed down through the great oral epic of Sundiata in its several versions, reaction to Soso rule coalesced around the person of Sundiata, a royal prince born crippled and later exiled to the north because of the intrigues of his half-brother's jealous mother, the queen."Formation01.htm" Returning to claim Mali as his inheritance, Sundiata and his allies defeated Sumanguru Kante at the battle of sometime in the 1230s. Soso hegemony was broken, and Sundiata quickly established himself as the head or mansa of a federation of states on the western Niger, centered on his capital at

Kankan Musa's reign, from 1307 to 1337, has often been seen as the "golden age" of Mali, in both literal and figurative terms. The wealth of the mansa was by now legendary; supported by a gold trade whose exports reached all the way to Europe, the royal treasury was able to fund a splendid pilgrimage to Mecca undertaken by mansa Musa in 1324. Egyptian chroniclers recorded with amazement Musa's passage through Cairo on the way to Mecca. The well-intentioned and pious mansa, no doubt mindful of the obligation to be generous to fellow Muslims, reportedly distributed enough gold in Cairo to cause marked inflation for some time. News of the wealth of Kankan Musa and his successors spread all the way to Europe, where west Africa came to be seen as a fabled land of riches. Nor was this a purely fictional conception: gold from Mali's southerly neighbors, taxed as it passed through Mali, carried across the Sahara to north African cities, and borne from there across the Mediterranean to European ports, fueled Europe's economies for centuries.

In spite of Sundiata's efforts in the thirteenth century to ensure continuity of the office of mansa within the "Strife01.htm" line, troubles with succession were latent from the beginning. Sundiata seems to have intended the mansaship to pass in fratrilineal order, from brother to brother, not father to son. Claims of sons, combined with rivalry between and within the two main family lines (descendant of Sundiata and of Manding Bory), led to a series of destructive palace intrigues from the late fourteenth century on. Weakened by such internal quarrels, Mali had other problems as well. Berbers from the desert challenged Mali's position in the trans-Saharan trade, and even captured Timbuktu in 1433. The other great nomads of the savanna belt, the pastoralist broke Malian hegemony in the region by the early sixteenth century. Mali's collapse as a major Sudanic power was sealed by the rebellion of Songhay under the leadership of the dynasty, whose fifteenth-century scion would carve a Songhay empire out of many of the lands previously under Mali's control.