Mandé peoples

The Mandé peoples are the many nations of West Africa who speak Mande languages, among them the Mandinka (Malinke), Bambara, Soninke, Susu, Dyula, Mende, Kpelle and Vai. Around 60 million people speak the family's 60 to 75 languages, chiefly in Mali, Guinea, Senegal, the Gambia, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast. Mandé-speaking peoples founded some of the great states of West African history, including the Ghana and Mali empires.

The Mande languages lack the noun classes typical of the neighbouring Atlantic–Congo languages, and linguists still debate whether Mande belongs to the wider Niger–Congo family or stands alone; recent comparative studies have argued for a distant link. The linguist Valentin Vydrin places the Mande homeland in the southern Sahara, in what is now Mauritania, in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, before the region dried out. Some archaeologists associate early Mandé speakers with the Tichitt tradition of south-eastern Mauritania (about 2200–200 BCE), a society with a four-tier settlement hierarchy, millet farming and later ironworking, which later spread to the Middle Niger at sites such as Méma and Dia. Djenné-Djenno on the Niger, occupied from the third century BCE to the thirteenth century CE and among the oldest known towns of sub-Saharan Africa, is thought to have been founded by Mandé ancestors of the Bozo. How far these archaeological cultures can be tied to particular languages remains a matter of interpretation.

The Soninke, one of the oldest Mandé branches, built the Ghana Empire between the Saharan salt sources and the goldfields along the upper Senegal. Its merchants dominated trans-Saharan trade, and the tenth-century traveller Ibn Hawqal said its ruler's gold made him the richest king in the world. Ghana weakened in the eleventh century through drought, rebellion and, according to Arab tradition, Almoravid attacks. The Susu under Sumanguru then rose against it, and in 1235 the Mandinka leader Sundiata Keita defeated them and founded the Mali Empire. Later, Mansa Musa (reigned 1307–1332) made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, spending so much gold in Egypt that its value fell there. Mali was later overtaken by the Songhai Empire.

In the sixteenth century southern Mandé groups known to Europeans as the Mane moved along the coast of today's Liberia and Sierra Leone. Mandé-led states such as Kaabu and Wassoulou continued this tradition of state-building. French conquest brought long wars, and colonial borders divided Mandé communities between new territories. Since the twentieth century desertification has pushed many people southwards in search of land and work.

Most Mandé societies are patrilineal. Among the Mandinka, Soninke and Susu a traditional order of nobles, free people and hereditary craft groups developed, with blacksmiths, leatherworkers and bards known as griots or jeli, collectively called nyamakala. Status differences have eroded over time, and most people today farm or fish. The Mandinka practise sanankuya, a "joking relationship" between clans. Many western Mandé peoples have been mainly Muslim since the thirteenth century, while the Bambara largely converted only in the nineteenth century, and some groups, such as the Bobo, keep older beliefs. Among the Mende, Kpelle and Loma, the Poro and Sande societies guide young people through initiation.

Griots keep history alive in performance. The Epic of Sundiata is recited in many versions, and at Kela in Mali an official version is performed every seven years. The kora, a harp-lute of 21 or more strings, is the best-known Mandé instrument, played by jeli families. Mandé arts also include masks of the Mende and Marka, woven cloth, gold and silver jewellery, Bambara wood carving and the terracotta figures of ancient Djenné-Djenno.

Our 900 map labels a very broad area "Mandes", stretching across much of West Africa. The outline is approximate: Mandé speakers live mainly in the western part of that zone, and the map's eastern reaches go well beyond their main homelands. The Ghana Empire was then the leading Mandé state.