Mansa (title)

Mansa is a Mandinka word meaning "sultan" (king) or "emperor".[1][2][3][4][5] It is particularly associated with the Keita Dynasty of the Mali Empire, which dominated West Africa from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Powers of the mansa included the right to dispense justice and to monopolize trade, particularly in gold. Sundiata Keita was the first to assume the title of mansa (emperor), which was passed down through the Keita line with few interruptions well into the 15th century. Other notable mansas include his son Wali Keita and the powerful Mansa Musa (Kankan Musa), whose hajj helped define a new direction for the Empire. The succession of the Mali Empire is primarily known through Tunisian historian ibn Khaldun's History of the Berbers.

Depiction of Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire in the 14th century, from a 1375 Catalan Atlas of the known world (mapamundi), drawn by Abraham Cresques.

See also

Further reading
  • Ibn Khaldun (1958). F. Rosenthal (ed.). The Muqaddimah (K. Ta'rikh - "History"). 1. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. p. 264-268. OCLC 956182402. (on the Kings of Mali)
  • Monteil, Ch. (1929). "Les Empires du Mali. Étude d'histoire et de sociologie soudanais". Bulletin du Comité d'études historiques et scientifiques de l'Afrique occidentale française (in French). XII (3–4): 291–447.

References
  1. An Interview with Ibn Battuta, Kathleen Knoblock, Primary Source Fluency Activities: World Cultures (In Sub-Saharan Africa), pub. Shell Education 2007 ISBN 978-1-4258-0102-1
  2. Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354, by Ibn Battuta, London 2005, p. 324 ISBN 0-415-34473-5
  3. Jansen, Jan (1998). "Hot Issues: The 1997 Kamabolon Ceremony in Kangaba (Mali)". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 31 (2): 253–278. JSTOR 221083. On page 256, Jan Jansen writes: “Mansa is generally translated as 'king,' 'ruler' or 'ancestor.' The Griaulians, however, often translate mansa as 'God,' 'the divine principle' or 'priest king,' although they never argue the choice for this translation, which has an enormous impact on their analysis of the Kamabolon ceremony.”
  4. A Grammar of the Mandingo Language: With Vocabularies, by Robert Maxwell Macbrair, London 1873, p. 5.
  5. Making America – A History of the United States, 5th edition, by Carol Berkin, Christopher Miller, Robert Cherny, James Gormly & Douglas Egerton, Boston 2011, p. 13 ISBN 978-0-618-47139-3

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