Mandinka people

Origins The history of Mandinka, as with many Mandé peoples, begins with the Ghana Empire, also known as Wagadu. Mande hunters founded communities in Manden, which would become the political and cultural center of the Mandinka, but also in Bambuk and the Senegal River valley. The Mande diaspora from Ghana extended from the Atlantic Ocean to Gao. The mythical ancestors of the Malinké and the Bambara people are Kontron and Sanin, the founding "hunter brotherhood". Manden was famous for the large number of animals and game that it sheltered, as well as its dense vegetation, so was a very popular hunting ground. The Camara (or Kamara) are believed to be the oldest family to have lived in Manden, after having left Wagadou, due to drought. They founded the first village of Manding, Kiri, then Kirina, Siby, Kita. A very large number of families that make up the Mandinka community were born in Manden. Manding is the province from which the Mali Empire started, under the leadership of Sundiata Keita. The Manden were initially a part of many fragmented kingdoms that formed after the collapse of Ghana Empire in the 11th century. Another group of Mandinka people, under Faran Kamara – the son of the king of Tabou – expanded southeast of Mali, while a third group expanded with Fakoli Kourouma. With the migration, many gold artisans and metal working Mandinka smiths settled along the coast and in the hilly Fouta Djallon and plateau areas of West Africa. Their presence and products attracted Mandinka merchants and trading caravans from north Africa and the eastern Sahel, but also brought conflicts with other ethnic groups, such as the Wolof people, particularly the Jolof Empire. The Muslim traders sought presence in the host Mandinka community, and this likely initiated proselytizing efforts to convert the Mandinka from their traditional religious beliefs into Islam. In Ghana, for example, the Almoravids had divided its capital into two parts by 1077, one part was Muslim and the other non-Muslim. The Muslim influence from North Africa had arrived in the Mandinka region before this, via Islamic trading diasporas. Through a series of conflicts, primarily with the Fula-led jihads under Imamate of Futa Jallon, many Mandinka converted to Islam. In contemporary West Africa, the Mandinka are predominantly Muslim, with a few regions where significant portions of the population are not Muslim, such as Guinea Bissau, where 35 percent of the Mandinka practice Islam, more than 20 percent are Christian, and 15 percent follow traditional beliefs. Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic Slavery Slave raiding, capture and trading in the Mandinka regions may have existed in significant numbers before the European colonial era, Slaves were part of the socially stratified Mandinka people, and several Mandinka language words, such as Jong or Jongo refer to slaves. According to Toby Green, selling slaves along with gold was already a significant part of the trans-Saharan caravan trade across the Sahel between West Africa and the Middle East after the 13th century. With the arrival of Portuguese explorers in Africa as they looked for a sea route to India, the European purchase of slaves had begun. The shipment of slaves by the Portuguese, primarily from the Jolof people, along with some Mandinka, started in the 15th century, states Green, but the earliest evidence of a trade involving Mandinka slaves is from and after 1497 CE. In parallel with the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the institution of slavery and slave-trading of West Africans into the Mediterranean region and inside Africa continued as a historic normal practice. The Portuguese considered slave sources in Guinea and Senegambia parts of Mandinka territory as belonging to them; their 16th to 18th-century slave trade-related documents refer to "our Guinea" and complain about slave traders from other European nations superseding them in the slave trade. Their slave exports from this region nearly doubled in the second half of the 18th century compared to the first, and most of these slaves disembarked in Brazil. Scholars have offered several theories on the source of the transatlantic slave trade of Mandinka people. According to Boubacar Barry, a professor of History and African Studies, chronic violence between ethnic groups such as the Mandinka people and their neighbours, combined with weapons sold by slave traders and lucrative income from slave ships to the slave sellers, fed the practice of groups raiding for captives, conducting manhunts, and taking slaves. The victimised ethnic group felt justified in retaliating. Slavery was already an accepted practice before the 15th century, when most enslaved people were taken on routes to North Africa and western Asia by Arab traders. As the demand grew, states Barry, Futa Jallon, led by an Islamic military theocracy, became one of the centers of this slavery-perpetuating violence. Farim of Kaabu (the commander of Mandinka people in Kaabu) energetically hunted for slaves on a large scale. Martin Klein (a professor of African Studies) states that Kaabu was one of the early suppliers of African slaves to European merchants. The historian Walter Rodney states that Mandinka and other ethnic groups already held slaves who had inherited slavery by birth, and who could be sold. These jihads captured the highest number of slaves to sell to Portuguese traders at the ports controlled by Mandinka people. Walter Hawthorne (a professor of African History) states that the Barry and Rodney explanation was not universally true for all of Senegambia and Guinea, where high concentrations of Mandinka people have traditionally lived. Wassoulou Empire ==Economy==