Diara

Who rules

Name

Not known: a king of the Niakhate (Nyakhate) line. No king's name survives before the last Niakhate, Seriba, who lost the throne to the Diawara in the early fifteenth century.

Title

King of Diara (the Niakhate kings are called Mana Maga in the Soninke tradition; the Ta'rikh al-Fattash calls the ruler of the country the Kaniaga-faren in the sixteenth century)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

The Niakhate, a Soninke royal clan.

Confidence

low

Wikipedia, Kingdom of Diarra (Niane 1984; Delafosse 1941; Levtzion 1977; Cisse 2007); Niane, UNESCO GHA IV, p. 124.

Overlord

None on 1 January 1200, as far as is known. Diara was once a province of Ghana; it falls under the Sosso in the early thirteenth century and then under Mali.

What the realm holds

• The town of Diara (the modern village of Diarra, north-east of Nioro du Sahel) and the Kingui round it
• Diafunu (the Yelimane country), tributary
• The Sahel of the Kaarta between the Kingui and the Beledugu (claimed; the boundary with the Sosso is not known)

How it was acquired

Founded after the Almoravid capture of Awdaghust (1054-55), in the second half of the eleventh century (the Wikipedia infobox's 1054 has no source); the Niakhate broke away from Ghana.

Allies and rivals

Rival of the Sosso (Niane) and heir, with them, of Ghana's southern lands. Neighbour of Takrur and Galam on the Senegal (Delafosse's claim that Diara conquered Takrur is unsupported for 1200). Relations with Ghana itself: estranged.

The realm that morning

An independent Soninke kingdom under a Niakhate king whose name is lost, hostile to the Sosso. Not yet conquered by Soumaoro.

Threats

• The Sosso
• The loss of the Senegal trade to Takrur and Galam

Army

Not known; a Soninke cavalry kingdom like its neighbours.

Trade

Caravan trade between the Senegal gold country (Bambuk and Galam) and the Sahel; grain and herds of the Kingui. Under the later Diawara Diara was a caravan centre.

Relations

Traditional religion, by the Wikipedia article; the Soninke merchant clerics of the region were Muslims. Not pinned for 1200.

Coinage

None; cowries are named as the currency in later times.

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)War with the Sosso ends in Diara's conquest by Soumaoro.Depends on: Sosso success against Ghana first. Stopped by: A Diara alliance with Ghana or Mema.

Where the sources disagree

• The founding date 1054 in the Wikipedia infobox has no source; the text says only 'the eleventh century'.
• Kaniaga is used for Diara by some writers and for the Sosso kingdom by others (Fofana 2007; Niane 1984).

Evidence: Later tradition and modern syntheses only (Delafosse, Niane, Levtzion, Cisse). The town is real and the Niakhate dynasty is well remembered, but nothing is dated for 1200.

On the map: Drawn from the modern regions that keep the old names (Kingui round Nioro, Diafunu round Yelimane). The southern edge with the Sosso and the western edge with Galam are guesses.

Primary sources for this realm

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.