King of Mema

Who he is

Name

Not known; of the Tunkara clan, if the clan of Sundiata's host held the throne a generation earlier

Title

King of Mema (Mansa or Farin in the Malinke epic)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

Tunkara (Tounkara)

Confidence

low

Niane, GHA IV, pp. 131, 134-135; fr.wikipedia Mema.

What it holds

• The Mema plain round Nampala, Akumbu and Boulel

Allies and rivals

Friend of Wagadu; wary of the Sosso.

How things stand that morning

Independent, small.

Wealth

Iron, grain, herds, fish.

Threats

• The Sosso

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The epic (for the 1230s) and archaeology.

On the map: Approximate; the royal town of Mema is not identified by archaeology.

Primary sources for Mema

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.