Mandinka People - History

History

The Mandinka migrated west from the Niger River basin in search of better agricultural lovely lands and more opportunities for conquest. Before that migration took place, their original homeland was south Sudan, western Ethiopia and northern Kenya. Today we still have tribes with names like Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Anuak, Afar, Hammer, Mursi, Masai etc. whom they share similar physical and phenotype characteristics with. Some scholars even suggest the migration is the result of high priests looking for refugee from The Arabs, Turks Religious cruisers, fearing prosecutions, extension and murder. The Dohgon are prime example of this situation, who created societies of culture that deals with the star system called Sirius, Orion and so on. Furthermore, listening to someone speak wolof (Senegalese dialects) one can easy identify the striking similarities between those eastern Nioloic or Omotic tribes of Africa. During this expansion, they established their rule from modern-day Gambia to Guinea. They were probably one of the original groups that inhabited the ancient city of Jenné-Jeno. The Mandés founded the empire of Kaabu, comprising twenty small kingdoms. Some upper-class or urban Mandinkas converted to Islam during the reign of the great Mansa Musa (1312–1337 AD).

The majority of the Mandinka were still animists at the beginning of the 18th century. Through a series of conflicts, primarily with the Fula-led Kingdom of Fouta Djallon and amongst sub-states of the Kaabu, about half of the Senegambian Mandinka were converted to Islam while as many as a third were sold into slavery to the Americas through capture in conflict. Today, the majority of Mandinka are Muslim. A significant portion of African-Americans in North America are descended from Mandinka people.

In eastern areas (northern Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Southern Mali), Mandinka communities are often built around long distance trade routes. These people, often called Dyula after the Mandé word for "merchant", built communities in trading centers, spaced along trade routes, and near mining and agricultural centers, beginning during the Mali Empire. These merchant networks formed the lynchpin of trade between the desert-side upper Niger River cities (Djenné and Timbuktu, for example), highland production areas (the goldfields of Bambouk or agricultural centre of Kankan), and the coast. This last link became more important with the advent of Portuguese and other European trading posts in the 17th century, and much of the overland trade connecting the coast and interior (including the African slave trade) was controlled by Dyula merchants.