Keita of Kiri

Who he is

Name

Maghan Kon Fatta (Nare Fa Maghan, Farako Maghan Kegni, Nare Maghan Konate) or his predecessor. Niane: he 'ruled at the beginning of the thirteenth century'. His father's name is not given in the passage read; his line runs back through Mbali Nene and Simbon Bamari Tagnogokelin to Mamadi Kani (about the beginning of the twelfth century, Niane).

Title

Chief (faama; the epic says king, mansa) of Kiri, the Mande proper, first among the Mande chiefs

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

The Keita, who claim descent from Bilal, the Prophet's muezzin, through Lawalo, founder of Kiri. Konate may be the clan's real family name (the epic calls Sundiata's father Nare Maghan Konate). Wives in the epic: Sassouma Berete (mother of Dankaran Tuman, Sundiata's elder half-brother) and later Sogolon Conde of Do (mother of Sundiata, born about 1217). No child can be shown to have been born by 1 January 1200.

Confidence

low

Niane, GHA IV, pp. 127-131; Wikipedia, Sundiata Keita and Mali Empire.

What it holds

• Dakajalan (Dakadiala), the Keita's home village and later Sundiata's burial place (site sacred; not fixed exactly)
• Narena and Kiri in the Manding mountains
• Kirina on the Niger (in Niane's account; another tradition makes Kirina a Camara foundation)
• Kangaba (Ka-ba) on the Niger, in the later Keita memory
• A claim, from Mamadi Kani's time, over Do, Bako and Bure

How it was acquired

Inheritance; the tradition's Keita line goes back to Lawalo.

Allies and rivals

Marriage alliance with the Conde of Do (Sogolon); the Traore hunters bring the bride; the Camara are the old neighbours. The Sosso are not yet enemies.

How things stand that morning

Ruling Kiri; probably holding Do and Kiri together (Niane). Sundiata not born.

Wealth

Gold from Bure; farms of the Niger valley; the hunters' trade.

Military

Hunters' brotherhoods and the clans' levies; no figures.

Threats

• The Sosso
• Disputes over the succession

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. Not pinned (the 1200s-1210s)Maghan Kon Fatta marries Sogolon Conde of Do, brought by the Traore hunters; Sundiata is born about 1217.Depends on: Maghan Kon Fatta reigning and alive. Stopped by: His death or a break with Do.

Where the sources disagree

• Kirina is Keita in Niane but a Camara foundation in another tradition (fr.wikipedia Manding).
• Niani on the Sankarani is Camara country in Niane; the Keita seat in 1200 is Dakajalan-Kiri.

Evidence: Oral tradition only (Niane's synthesis; the griots of Kangaba, Kita and Keyla).

On the map: Approximate; no chiefdom border is recorded.

Primary sources for Manden

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the Sudan, Abd al-Rahman al-Sadi (about 1655, at Timbuktu). The Timbuktu tradition on the middle Niger four and a half centuries later, and the only narrative there is: the Za (Zuwa) kings of Gao and Kukiya, whose fifteenth king Za Kusoy is said to have accepted Islam in 1010 and whose successors ruled at Gao through the twelfth century; the foundation of Jenne and the conversion of its king Kunburu with his people towards the end of the sixth century of the Hijra, that is about 1200, with Jenne's early trade; and the position of Mali and Ghana as al-Sadi understood it. Read online
• The Chronicle of the Researcher, Ibn al-Mukhtar (attributed to Mahmud Kati); rewritten by Nuh ibn al-Tahir (about 1665, rewritten about 1830 to 1845). Later than the Tarikh al-Sudan and far less reliable: a seventeenth-century Timbuktu chronicle rewritten in the nineteenth century to serve the Masina caliphate, with insertions. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
• The Travels of Ibn Battuta: Egypt, the Horn, the Swahili coast and Mali, Ibn Battuta (dictated to Ibn Juzayy) (1355, at Fez). A century and a half late, but the first eyewitness of places that in 1200 are known only from hearsay: Zeila and its stench, Mogadishu with its sultan, qadi and merchant hosts, Mombasa, and Kilwa under the Mahdali sultan Abu'l-Muzaffar al-Hasan, raiding the Zanj of the mainland; and the Sahara road from Sijilmasa through Taghaza and Walata to the court of Mali under Mansa Sulayman, then Timbuktu, Gao and Takedda among the veiled Berbers. Read online
• The Epic of Sunjata, Various (Mande jeliw, the hereditary bards) (oral; the main recordings date from the twentieth century; Niane's version published 1960). Oral tradition, not a text of the period, but the only account from the Mande side of the world of 1200: the Sosso kingdom of Sumanguru (Sumaoro) Kante, which the epic shows ruling over the old Ghana lands and pressing on the Manden chiefdoms, with its smith-kings; the Manden of Sunjata's father Nare Maghan as a cluster of small chiefdoms; and the Mema, Diara and other states that sheltered the exile.
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Various (edited by N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins) (ninth to sixteenth centuries; the collection published 1981). The standard English collection of every Arabic passage on the western and central Sudan.