Medieval Mali Manden Charter

Here’s a late 14th-century illustration of the African trading route to Ghana, one of the world’s key areas of commerce and part of the Kingdom of Mali (of Mansa Musa fame). And this map is the closet pictorial representation I could find to document the constitution of the Medieval Mali Empire, because it is actually a “text” handed down through oral tradition.

In modern Mali and Guinea, the African historians/oral poets known as the griot keep suspended in memory the “document” that dates to the 1200s. What they preserve is known as the “Manden Charter,” and it was set up by the noblemen of the area to guide the realm after an important battle that established Mali as the center of power in West Africa.

Oral histories are subject to change in ways that printed documents are not, but scholars agree about the Medieval origins of the Manden Charter. Indeed, reading a transcription made in the 1990s, one can tell that it comes from a time when slavery existed, women could be married off as soon as they had their first period, and dowries were measured in cows.

On the other hand, the Manden Charter also has a preamble which advocates “social peace in diversity, the inviolability of the human being, education,” as well as food security, abolition of slave raids, and freedom to trade. As such, UNESCO has deemed it a core representation of “the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” It’s interesting to compare the Manden Charter with the near-contemporary Magna Carta from England and think about which government a female peasant would have preferred.