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Mali: Present-Day Mali
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Present-day Mali, at nearly twice the size of Texas, is the largest country in West Africa. Mali is bordered by seven other countries: Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Mauritania. Most of the northern half of Mali falls within the largest desert on the planet, the Sahara. The central section of Mali is made up of semi-arid land that is part of a larger region known as the Sahel. Sahel is an Arabic word meaning, “shore,” although, in this case, it can be thought of as the shore of the desert rather than the ocean. The Sahel is nearly 3,000 miles long and from 200 to 700 miles wide in a span across the continent of Africa.
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The few written accounts about ancient Mali were recorded by Arab travelers and scholars. One of the most famous travelogues is Rihlah by the African-born Ibn Battuta (1304-1368/9), a great Arab traveler of the time. Rihlah describes life in Mali between 1352 and 1353/4 and records his travels to Anatolia (current-day Turkey), Crimea, east Africa, Persia (present-day Iran), India, Cylon, Sumatra, North Africa and perhaps China. Although other written accounts of the ancient West African empires exist, Ibn Battuta is one of the few who actually traveled to this area and wrote from personal experience.
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In addition to ethnic diversity, there are many different languages and dialects spoken in Mali. The people of Mali are largely from the Mande, a group of related West African languages and a general name of the culture common among those speaking these similar languages. The official language of present-day Mali is French, but the most widely spoken language is Bambara even among people from different ethnic groups. Songhay, Tuareg, and Arabic are common languages within those groups. The Dogon have at least 48 dialects. Unfortunately, literacy is low, only about 30 percent of people in Mali can read and write.
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The Mandé peoples settled the Sahel (including present-day Mali), and formed a succession of Sahelian kingdoms, including the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, and the Songhai Empire. Timbuktu was a key city in these empires as an outpost for trans-Saharan trade and a center for scholarship. The Songhai Empire declined under a Moroccan invasion in 1591.
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Present-Day Mali