Kingdom · West Africa: the Sudan and Guinea · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Mema

Mema (Méma) is the dry old delta of the Niger west of Lake Debo and north of Macina, a land of mounds and abandoned channels round modern Nampala and Boulel.

Archaeology (Togola, MacDonald) shows a dense iron-smelting and farming society there from about 400; the Akumbu mounds were lived on from about 400 to about 1400. Mema was one of the smallest Soninke states and once a province of Ghana. Niane says the Soninke provinces of Wagadu, Bakhunu, Kaniaga and Mema were ravaged by civil war in the twelfth century, and that Soninke loyal to the old rites fled to Mema from the strife in Wagadu.

In the Sundiata epic Mema's king, Mansa Tunkara, shelters Sundiata and gives him command, and Mema and Wagadu are the only provinces whose rulers keep the title of king in the Mali empire. On 1 January 1200 Mema is a small independent kingdom under a Tunkara king, name not known.

Who rules

Name
Not known for 1200: a king of the Tunkara (Tounkara) clan. The king who receives the young Sundiata in exile, a generation later, is Mansa Tunkara (Niane).
Title
King of Mema (the epic calls him Mansa Tunkara or Mema Farin Tunkara)
Since
Not pinned
Born
Not known
Family
The Tunkara, a Soninke royal clan.
Confidence
low

Niane, UNESCO GHA IV, pp. 120, 124, 131, 134-135; fr.wikipedia Mema (Togola 2008).

Overlord

None known for 1200; once a province of Ghana.

What the realm holds

  • The Mema plain round Nampala, Boulel, Akumbu and Kolima
  • The western edge of the inland delta towards Lake Debo (shared with the Bozo fishing villages)
  • Pastures towards the Sahel of Sokolo

How it was acquired

A Soninke kingdom of unknown age, once under Ghana.

Allies and rivals

Friend of Wagadu and, a generation later, of the Mande (Sundiata's host); threatened by the Sosso. Neighbours: Jenne and the delta towns to the south-east, the Tuareg and the lake villages to the north-east.

The realm that morning

Independent, small, with refugees from Wagadu's troubles among its people. Name of the king not known.

Threats

  • The Sosso
  • Drought and the drying of the old channels

Army

Not known. In the epic Mema's horsemen ride with Sundiata to Kirina (about 1235).

Trade

Iron (the Mema was a great iron-smelting district in the first millennium; Toladie's smelting is earlier, about 430-670), grain, fish from the delta edge, herds; the road from Wagadu to the Niger at the lakes and to Jenne.

Relations

Traditional religion with Muslim merchants is likely; not pinned.

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. 1200 and after (not pinned)Mema keeps its independence while the Sosso fight Ghana and Diara.Depends on: The Sosso turning west and north first. Stopped by: A Sosso campaign east.

Where the sources disagree

  • Mema as a kingdom is attested only by the Sundiata epic (for the 1220s-1230s) and later Malian practice; for 1200 it rests on archaeology and on Niane's account of the twelfth-century Soninke civil war.

Evidence: Archaeology (Togola's and MacDonald's surveys and excavations) and oral tradition; no written source for 1200.

On the map: The extent of the kingdom is unknown; the drawing follows the archaeological Mema region.

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.

Sources and studies

  1. D. T. Niane, 'Mali and the second Mandingo expansion', UNESCO General History of Africa IV (1984), pp. 117-171 (read through archive.org search-inside)
  2. Wikipedia (fr), Mema (Togola 2008; MacDonald; Levtzion 1973)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.