Geography

1. The kingdom of Mali was located in West Africa. It covered present day Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone and part of Guinea. 2. Mali was in the savannah, the Niger River flowed through the empire. 3. Mali depended on agriculture; the Niger River provided water for that possibility. 4. Mali changed its environment by expanding its territory. Historian0o 1. The Mali Kingdom began when Sundiata Keita united the Manlike leaders and conquered the Sosso king Sumangoro Kante. 2. Trade led to the growth of Mali. Mali was rich in gold, silver, copper and they traded with other Africans regions and Arabs and Europeans. 3. The founder of the Mali kingdom Sundiata Keita and Mansa Musa were very important. Sundiata started the kingdom and his grandson continued to make the kingdom prosper and known around the world. 4. Mali declined because many of the conquered cities including Songhai were fighting for their independence and a lack of a strong leader. Economist 1. The roles of women were to stay home and take care of the kids. They were treated as inferior to men. 2. Men worked in farms, as merchant, and many other jobs. 3. Farming was really important because it was the source of food to all families and they can sell the rest of what they cultivated.

4. Trade was really important; they traded gold, copper, salt, silver, kola nuts with the Arabs and Europeans. Anthropologist 1. Mali was greatly influenced by Islam. 2. They created religious arts. They sculpted people, animals and had patterns in some of their arts. 3. The mosques build by the Arabs, they used geometrics shapes. 4. The art and architecture they created were all related to religion, in mosques you can see patterned shapes drawn inside of it.

ESSAY

Mali is one of the most influenced Empires in West Africa. Mali is located at the heart of the Savannah region, boarded by the Atlantic Ocean on the west which serves as a protection barrier for invaders. Mali started out as a small region. Soundiata Keita was the founder of the empire. He did so by defeating the neighboring sosso king Sumanguru Kante. He took Ghana which was on the verge of decline and added to the Mali region. There are many African oral records that tell legends about Sundiata. Some say hes the Lion king. The Empire of Mali reached its peak under the rule of Mansa Musa. When Mansa Moussa came to power, the Mali Empire already had firm control of the trade routes to the southern lands of gold and the northern lands of salt. Under Musa's reign, the goldsalt trade across the Sahara came to focus ever more closely on Timbuktu. The city's wealth, like that of many towns involved in the trans-Saharan trade route, was based largely on the trade of gold, salt, ivory, kola nuts, and slaves. Mansa Musa was a devoted Muslim; he built magnificent mosques throughout the empire to spread Islam. Mansa Moussa brought the Mali Empire to the attention of the rest of the Muslim world with his famous pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. After visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina on his pilgrimage, Moussa set out to build great mosques, vast libraries, and madrasas (Islamic universities) throughout his kingdom. Many Arab scholars, including the poet and architect, Abu-Ishaq Ibrahim-es-Saheli, who helped turn Timbuktu into a famous city of Islamic scholarship, returned with him. He asked Abu-Ishaq Ibrahim-es-Saheli to construct his royal palace and a great mosque, the

Djingareyber Mosque, at Timbuktu. Still standing today, the Djingareyber Mosque consists of nine rows of square pillars and provides prayer space for 2,000 people. During Mussa's reign Timbuktu thrived as a commercial center and flourished into a hub of Islamic learning. Even after the Mali Empire lost control over the region in the fifteenth century, Timbuktu remained the major Islamic center of sub-Saharan Africa. After the death of Mansa Musa, the power of Mali began to decline. Mali had never been an empire proper, and subject states began to break off from the Mali sphere of influence. In 1430, the Tuareg Berbers in the north seized much of Mali's territory, including the city of Timbuktu, and the Mossy kingdom to the south a decade later seized much of Mali's southern territories. Finally, the kingdom of Gao, which had been subjugated to Mali under Mansa Musa, gave rise to a Songhay kingdom that finally eclipsed the magnificent power of Mali.