Mansa Jata, commonly referred to as Mari Jata II, possibly incorrectly, known in oral histories as Konkodugu Kamissa was mansa of

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 ...

from 1360 to 1374. He was an ineffective ruler, and his reign, recorded by the contemporary North African historian

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732–808 Hijri year, AH) was an Arabs, Arab Islamic scholar, historian, philosopher and sociologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and cons ...

, marked the beginning of the decline of the

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 ...

. Jata was the son of Mansa Maghan, and as such the grandson of

Mansa Musa Mansa Musa (reigned ) was the ninth '' Mansa'' of the Mali Empire, which reached its territorial peak during his reign. Musa's reign is often regarded as the zenith of Mali's power and prestige, although he features less in Mandinka oral tradit ...

. Jata may be the same person as a figure named Jatil mentioned by Ibn Battuta. If so, he was living in exile in Kanburni during the reign of his great-uncle Mansa Suleyman, possibly because Suleyman had seized the throne from Jata's father Maghan by force. Jata then would have conspired with Suleyman's wife Qasa, who may have been his sister, to depose Suleyman. However, Qasa was found out and the coup attempt was prevented. When Suleyman died, he was succeeded by his son Qanba, who would reign for only nine months. Civil war soon broke out, of which Jata was the victor. He had consolidated power by late 1360. A delegation bearing gifts for the

Marinid The Marinid dynasty ( ) was a Berber Muslim dynasty that controlled present-day Morocco from the mid-13th to the 15th century and intermittently controlled other parts of North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) and of the southern Iberian Peninsula ...

sultan had been prepared by Suleyman, but he had died before the delegation could be sent, and the delegation spent the civil war in

Walata Oualata or Walāta () (also Biru in 17th century chronicles) is a small oasis town in southeast Mauritania, located at the eastern end of the Aoukar basin. Oualata was important as a caravan city in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as th ...

. Jata added gifts to the delegation, including a giraffe, and sent the delegation to Fez. The delegation arrived in December 1360 or January 1361, where it was received by Sultan Abu Salim and attracted much interest among the people of Fez. Jata was regarded as a tyrannical and wasteful ruler. He was said to have sold one of the national treasures of Mali, a boulder of gold that weighed twenty qintars, for far less than it was worth. Jata contracted a sleeping sickness which increasingly incapacitated him. After two years of illness and a fourteen-year reign he died, in 1373 or 1374. He was succeeded by his son

Musa Musa may refer to: Places *Mūša, a river in Lithuania and Latvia * Musa, Azerbaijan, a village in Yardymli Rayon * Musa, Iran, a village in Ilam province, Iran * Musa, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Iran * Musa Kalayeh, Gilan province, Iran * Abu M ...

; another son of his, Magha, would succeed Musa., translated in D. T. Niane identified Jata with Konkodugu Kamissa, a figure in oral tradition of Hamana, but Yves Person disputed Niane's interpretations of traditional genealogies and suggested that there is a gap in oral tradition between the middle of the 14th century and beginning of the 17th, with Sulayman being the last mansa remembered before this gap.

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* . Translated in . *, translated in * * * *. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mari Djata Ii Of Mali 1370s deaths Mansas of the Mali Empire 14th-century monarchs in Africa Year of birth unknown