King of Diara

Who he is

Name

Not known; a Niakhate

Title

Mana Maga, king of Diara (Zara)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

The Niakhate royal clan of the Soninke

Confidence

low

Wikipedia, Kingdom of Diarra; Niane, GHA IV, p. 124.

Overlord

None known on 1 January 1200.

What it holds

• Diara town and the Kingui villages
• Tribute from Diafunu (capital Sain Demba, destroyed in the tradition when Diara rose)
• The caravan road from the Senegal gold country to Wagadu

How it was acquired

Inheritance in the Niakhate line.

Allies and rivals

Rival of the Sosso; estranged from Ghana; neighbour of Galam and Takrur.

How things stand that morning

Independent, hostile to the Sosso.

Wealth

Caravan trade, grain and herds, tribute.

Military

Soninke horsemen; no figures.

Threats

• The Sosso

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. Early thirteenth century (not pinned)Conquered by Soumaoro.Depends on: Sosso success. Stopped by: Alliance with Ghana or Mema.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Later tradition and syntheses.

On the map: The royal domain's extent is a guess round the town.

Primary sources for Diara

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 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.