King of Sosso

Who he is

Name

Not pinned: Kemoko (Sosoe Kemoko; Delafosse's Diara Kante; Camara Laye's Diarra Diarrasso) or his son Soumaoro (Sumanguru, Soumaworo) Kante, whose reign the tradition starts about 1200.

Title

King of Sosso, of the Kante clan of smiths

Since

Kemoko from about 1180 (Niane, Delafosse); Soumaoro from about 1200 (Niane after Kouyate; Delafosse)

Born

Not known for either

Family

Soumaoro's sisters Kassia (mother of Fakoli Koroma, also called Fakoli Doumbia) and Kangouba Kante; in Laye's version his father's wives Kaya, Daby and Sansoun Toure, and an uncle Bourama with nine sons whom Soumaoro set aside. The epic gives Soumaoro some 300 wives (Laye). None of this is dated.

Confidence

low

Niane, GHA IV, pp. 124-126; fr.wikipedia Soumaoro Kante; en.wikipedia Sosso Empire.

What it holds

• The royal town of Sosso (near Boron, after Fofana)
• Kaniaga, the Sahel and savanna round Mourdiah, Boron and Banamba
• The northern Beledugu
• The hill of Koulikoro above the Niger (the Nyanan of the epic)
• The fortress of Kukuba on the cliff above Bamako (Koulouba), in the tradition

How it was acquired

The Kante seized the throne from the Diarisso about 1180 (Delafosse; Niane: 'towards the end of the twelfth century').

Allies and rivals

Rivals: Ghana, Diara. Later: the Mande chiefs. Kin: the Kante smiths' clan and the Koroma (Fakoli).

How things stand that morning

Ruling Kaniaga and the northern Beledugu, at war or near war with Ghana (not pinned) and in conflict with Diara (Niane, undated).

Wealth

Iron and smiths' work; tribute of Kaniaga's villages; plunder.

Military

Horsemen and the iron of the smiths; the walls of the capital (the epic's triple enclosure); the Koulikoro hills as refuge. No figures.

Threats

• A Diara-Ghana alliance
• The Muslim merchants' hostility

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.

In 1200

1. About 1200 (not pinned)Succession of Soumaoro to Kemoko.Depends on: Kemoko's death. Stopped by: Kemoko surviving; a rival Kante claimant.

Later, on the likely course

1. About 1203 (Barth, Delafosse)Conquest of Wagadu.Depends on: Sosso strength. Stopped by: A coalition.

Where the sources disagree

• Conrad (1984): no evidence links Delafosse's Diara Kante to Soumaoro; there may have been several Kante kings.

Evidence: Oral tradition (several versions of the Sundiata epic; Kante traditions) and Ibn Khaldun's undated mention of the Susu.

On the map: The capital's site is not excavated; the drawing follows Fofana (Boron) and the epic.

Primary sources for Sosso

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 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.