Mali Empire

The Mali Empire was founded by Sundiata Keita, who defeated the Sosso king Sumanguru at the Battle of Kirina about 1235. From its base on the upper Niger, it grew to control the trade in gold and salt across the western Sahel, and cities such as Timbuktu and Gao came under its rule in the fourteenth century.

Mansa Musa, who reigned in the early fourteenth century, crossed the Sahara to Mecca in 1324 with so much gold that the journey was remembered in Cairo and later drawn on European maps, as here. The empire declined in the fifteenth century as provinces broke away and Songhai rose. The dates are approximate, and sources differ by a few years on its founding.