Battle of Kirina

Around 1235, at Kirina in what is now the Koulikoro Region of Mali, a coalition led by the Mandinka prince Sundiata Keita defeated Soumaoro (or Sumanguru) Kanté, king of the Sosso. The battle is traditionally taken as the founding moment of the Mali Empire, which went on to dominate much of West Africa for some two centuries. Almost everything known about it comes from Mande oral tradition, written down long afterwards, so its date and details are approximate.

By the late twelfth century the old Ghana Empire, weakened by internal strife and by the intervention of the Almoravids a century earlier, no longer controlled the region. Rival successor states competed for its lands. One of them, the Sosso kingdom, also called Kaniaga, had begun life as a vassal of Ghana. Its king Soumaoro, who according to some accounts came to power around 1203, took the old Ghanaian capital of Koumbi Saleh and pushed south against the Mandinka chiefdoms of the upper Niger. Oral histories remember him as a harsh ruler who persecuted Muslims, causing traders to move away to Djenne and Oualata.

In the traditional story, Sundiata was the son of a Mandinka king. Driven into exile after his father's death by a jealous half-brother, he found refuge at the court of Mema, where he rose to high rank. When the Sosso overran Manden, envoys went to find him and urge him to come home. Around 1234 he returned with troops lent by the king of Mema and built an alliance of the smaller Mandinka states and other neighbours, sealed, according to the epic, by a pact made on the plain of Siby.

The two armies met at Kirina in about 1235. Sundiata's coalition won a decisive victory and then marched on the town of Sosso and destroyed it, ending the kingdom. Accounts of Soumaoro's fate differ: some say he was killed, while the epic has him flee the field and vanish into the hills of Koulikoro. A king of Jolof who may have fought on the Sosso side was later defeated by Sundiata's general Tiramakhan Traore.

The Epic of Sundiata, preserved by generations of griots and widely regarded as Mali's national epic, turns the contest into a duel of magic. Soumaoro appears as a sorcerer-king who cannot be harmed until Sundiata learns that his protective animal is the rooster; an arrow tipped with a cock's spur wounds him, and his power collapses. Historians treat these episodes as legend, but later Arab writers, notably Ibn Battuta, who visited Mali about a century afterwards, and the historian Ibn Khaldun, independently confirm that Sundiata existed.

After the victory Sundiata took the title mansa and was acknowledged as ruler over a league of twelve kingdoms. He made his capital at Niani, and his generals carried Malian power west towards Senegambia. Control of trade routes and gold fields made Mali wealthy, and later rulers such as his great-nephew Mansa Musa became famous for their riches. A body of customary law traditionally linked to his reign, the Manden Charter, is recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage.

Our 1200 map shows West Africa before the battle, and our 1279 and 1300 maps show the young Mali Empire, which lies within modern Mali, Guinea and neighbouring states.