The Mandinka or Malinke<!--Please do not reinsert the ethnonyms listed at Note 1. They can be easily found there for reference, but they have fallen out of common use in both general and academic discourse. Also, they make the first sentence very cluttered and hard to follow.--> are a West African ethnic group primarily found in southern Mali, The Gambia<!-- Keep this with capitalized The; it is the official name of the country -->, southern Senegal and eastern Guinea. Numbering about 15 million, they are the largest subgroup of the Mandé peoples and one of the largest ethnolinguistic groups in Africa. They speak the Manding languages in the Mande language family, which are a lingua franca in much of West Africa. They are predominantly subsistence farmers and live in rural villages. Their largest urban center is Bamako, the capital of Mali.
The Mandinka are the descendants of the Mali Empire, which rose to power in the 13th century under the rule of king Sundiata Keita, who founded an empire that would go on to span a large part of West Africa. They migrated west from the Niger River in search of better agricultural lands and more opportunities for conquest. Most Mandinka live in family-related compounds in traditional rural villages. Their traditional society has featured socially stratified castes. Their music and literary traditions are preserved by a caste of griots, known locally as jalolu (singular, jali), as well as guilds and brotherhoods like the donso (hunters).
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, many Mandinka people, along with numerous other African ethnic groups, were captured within Africa, often by African polities and traders, and sold to European slavers who transported them across the Atlantic to the Americas. They intermixed with slaves and workers of other ethnicities, creating a Creole culture. The Mandinka people significantly influenced the African heritage of descended peoples now found in Brazil, Cape Verde, the Southern United States and, to a lesser extent, the Caribbean.
History
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 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.
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|+ style="text-align: center;" | Slave shipment between 1501 and 1867, by region