Portuguese Contact
Beginning in the 1450s, Portugal began sending raiding parties along the Gambian coast for exploration as well as exploitation of its natural resources (products as well as people). What is now the Gambia, then known to Mali as the Tinkuru (province) or Bati, was still firmly in imperial hands. The raiding expeditions ended in disaster for the Portuguese with many killed by poison arrows. Portugal's Diego Gomez sought more peaceable relations with the people of the coast and established contact with the Mali Empire. Other European explorers, such as the Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto, also recorded contact with a still-powerful Mali Empire along the coast in 1454.
| Preceded by Musa III |
Mansa of the Mali Empire 1460s |
Succeeded by Mahmud II |
Read more about this topic: Uli II (mansa)
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“... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child’s play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)