Mandinka

The Mandinka, or Malinke, are the largest of the Mandé peoples, farming the upper Niger savanna from Manden. They live in chief-led village communities, their griot caste the jalolu carrying history in song. As Wagadu's Ghana Empire broke apart in the eleventh century, Manden split into kingdoms until Sundiata Keita defeated the Sosso around 1235 and founded the Mali Empire under the Kouroukan Fouga charter.

In 1337 they ruled the largest state in West Africa, just after Mansa Musa, whose 1324 to 1326 pilgrimage to Mecca flooded Egypt with gold and whose patronage made Timbuktu a city of mosques and learning. Tuareg took Timbuktu in 1433, the Songhai sacked the capital in 1544, and defeat by the Moroccans at Jenne in 1599 broke the empire, ending around 1610 when the Keita withdrew to Kangaba as chiefs.

Mandinka migrants under general Tiramakhan Traore carried their speech westward and founded Kaabu; later Fulani jihads and the Atlantic slave trade reshaped scattered Mandinka kingdoms.