Sundiata Keita

Two kinds of evidence

Sundiata (also spelled Sunjata or Soundiata, and called Mari Diata or Mari Jata) is known from two very different kinds of sources, and they support different parts of his story.

The written evidence is thin. Fourteenth-century Arabic writers, the historian Ibn Khaldun and the traveller Ibn Battuta, mention him, which is why scholars treat him as a historical person. Ibn Khaldun also lists the rulers who followed him. According to World History Encyclopedia, these Arabic writers present him as a convert to Islam, a point that Malinke oral tradition disputes. These authors wrote about a century after his death, and their accounts reflect their own assumptions about how states worked.

Almost everything else comes from the Sundiata epic, an oral tradition performed and passed down by griots, the oral historians and storytellers of the Mande world. More than 70 versions have been published. Sirio Canós-Donnay describes the epic as valuable but warns that it blends myth, symbolism and perhaps several centuries of events into a single story.

The story told by the epic

The following details come from the oral tradition and vary between versions. As a child Sundiata cannot walk. He overcomes this, in some versions goes into exile, and returns to lead the Mande clans against Sumanguru (Soumaoro) Kante, the powerful king of Sosso. The war ends with Sumanguru's defeat at the battle of Kirina, after which Sundiata is said to have laid down the legal and political foundations of the new empire.

The epic sets these events in the 13th century. The common date of 1235 for Kirina goes back to the scholar Maurice Delafosse, and Canós-Donnay notes that its basis is unclear. The Met dates the victory to about 1230–1235 and says Sundiata is said to have ruled until his death in 1255. Accounts of his death differ, some describing an arrow wound and others drowning in the Sankarani River, and his burial place is not known.

Some modern accounts credit him with the "Manden Charter" proclaimed at Kurukan Fuga. Canós-Donnay notes that this charter does not appear in earlier recorded performances and seems to be a relatively recent addition to the tradition. It is also hard to tell whether one man achieved all that the epic describes, or whether the story condenses a longer process of state building.

Legacy

Sundiata is honored as the founder of the empire that later rulers such as Mansa Musa led at its height. His memory remains part of living practice. At Kangaba in Mali, the Keita clan, who trace their descent from him, and griots of the Diabaté family keep the history of the Kamablon, a sacred house whose roof is replaced every seven years. During the ceremony, griots from nearby Kela pay homage to Sundiata and recite the oral history of the Manden. UNESCO added the ceremony to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.