The Battle of Kirina, also known as the Battle of Krina or siege of Karina ( 1235), was a confrontation between Sosso king Sumanguru Kanté and Mandinka prince

Sundiata Keita Sundiata Keita ( Mandinka, Malinke: ; 1217 – c. 1255, N'Ko spelling: ; also known as Manding Diara, Lion of Mali, Sogolon Djata, son of Sogolon, Nare Maghan and Sogo Sogo Simbon Salaba) was a prince and founder of the Mali Empire. He was als ...

. Sundiata Keita's forces roundly defeated those of Sumanguru Kanté, guaranteeing the pre-eminence of Keita's new

Mali Empire The Mali Empire (Manding languages, Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or ''Manden ...

over

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

Prelude

By the late twelfth century, the formerly dominant

Ghana Empire The Ghana Empire (), also known as simply Ghana, Ghanata, or Wagadu, was an ancient western-Sahelian empire based in the modern-day southeast of Mauritania and western Mali. It is uncertain among historians when Ghana's ruling dynasty began. T ...

had collapsed, following internal strife and political intervention of the

Almoravids The Almoravid dynasty () was a Berber Muslim dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco. It established an empire that stretched over the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus, starting in the 1050s and lasting until its fall to the Almo ...

in the eleventh century. A number of smaller neighboring states rushed to fill the power void, including the Sosso people of the Kaniaga kingdom, and the

Mandinka people The Mandinka or Malinke are a West African ethnic group primarily found in southern Mali, The Gambia, southern Senegal and eastern Guinea. Numbering about 11 million, they are the largest subgroup of the Mandé peoples and one of the List of ethn ...

of the Upper

Niger Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is a unitary state Geography of Niger#Political geography, bordered by Libya to the Libya–Niger border, north-east, Chad to the Chad–Niger border, east ...

. Under the leadership of Soumaro Kanté, the Sosso seized Koumbi Saleh, former capital of the Ghana Empire, and expanded outward, conquering the Mandinka among others.

During the battle

The exiled Mandinka prince Sundiata Keita organized a coalition of smaller kingdoms to oppose the growing power of the Sosso. The opposing armies met in the Koulikoro Region of what is now

Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...

in about 1235. Sundiata Keita's forces were victorious, and marched on to raze Sosso. The date is often cited as the beginning of the Mali Empire, which would control most of West Africa for the next two centuries.

Aftermath

The story of the battle is retold in the Epic of Sundiata, widely considered Mali's

national epic A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks to or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation—not necessarily a nation state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group wi ...

. In it, Sumanguru Kanté is an evil sorcerer-king who oppresses the Mandinka people; however, when Sundiata discovers that his sacred animal is the

rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl (''Gallus gallus''), originally native to Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is now one of the most common and w ...

, he is able to wound Sumanguru Kanté with an arrow tipped by a cock's spur. The Sosso king then flees the field, disappearing into the Koulikoro mountains. A version of this story was recounted by Maximilien Quenum in his ''Légendes africaines''.

Notes

References

*Davidson, Basil. ''Africa in History''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

External links