Mandinka people

Not to be confused with the larger Mandé peoples or the unrelated Dinka people of Sudan.
Mandinka
Mansa Musa's visit to Mecca in 1324 CE with large amounts of gold attracted Middle Eastern Muslims and Europeans to Mali.[1][2]
Total population
c. 11 million[3]
Regions with significant populations
 Guinea3,786,101 (29.4%)[4]
 Mali1,772,102 (8.8%)[5]
 Senegal900,617 (5.6%)[6]
 The Gambia700,568 (34.4%)[7]
 Ghana647,458 (2%)[8]
 Guinea-Bissau212,269 (14.7%)[9]
 Liberia166,849 (3.2%)[10]
 Sierra Leone160,080 (2.3%)[11]
Languages

Western Maninka, Eastern Maninka, Kita Maninka language, Mandinka

Religion
Sunni Islam (Almost entirely)[12]
Related ethnic groups
Other Mandé peoples, especially the Bambara, Dioula, Yalunka, and Khassonké

The Mandinka or Malinke[note 1] are a West African ethnic group primarily found in southern Mali, The Gambia, southern Senegal and eastern Guinea.[19] Numbering about 11 million,[20][21] 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. Virtually all of Mandinka people are adherent to Islam, mostly based on the Maliki jurisprudence. They are predominantly subsistence farmers and live in rural villages. Their largest urban center is Bamako, the capital of Mali.[22]

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.[23] Nowadays, the Mandinka inhabit the West Sudanian savanna region extending from The Gambia and the Casamance region in Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Guinea Bissau. Although widespread, the Mandinka constitute the largest ethnic group only in the countries of Mali, Guinea and The Gambia.[24] Most Mandinka live in family-related compounds in traditional rural villages. Their traditional society has featured socially stratified castes.[16]: 43–44 [25][26] Mandinka communities have been fairly autonomous and self-ruled, being led by a chief and group of elders. Mandinka has been an oral society, where mythologies, history and knowledge are verbally transmitted from one generation to the next.[27] 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).[28]

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, many Muslim and non-Muslim Mandinka people, along with numerous other African ethnic groups, were captured, enslaved and shipped 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, the Southern United States and, to a lesser extent, the Caribbean.[29]

  1. ^ "Mansa Musa Makes His Hajj, Displaying Mali's Wealth in Gold and Becoming the First Sub-Saharan African Widely Known among Europeans | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com.
  2. ^ Richard Brent Turner (2003). Islam in the African-American Experience. Indiana University Press. pp. 18–19. ISBN 0-253-21630-3.
  3. ^ "PGGPopulation". www.pggpopulation.org. Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB). 2017. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  4. ^ "Africa: Guinea The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov. 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  5. ^ "Africa: Mali - The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov. 27 April 2021. Retrieved 1 May 2021.
  6. ^ "Africa: Senegal The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov. 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  7. ^ National Population Commission Secretariat (30 April 2005). "2013 Population and Housing Census: Spatial Distribution" (PDF). Gambia Bureau of Statistics. The Republic of The Gambia. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 January 2018. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  8. ^ "Ghana", The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 2022-01-18, retrieved 2022-02-02
  9. ^ "Recenseamento Geral da População e Habitação 2009 Características Socioculturais" (PDF). Instituto Nacional de Estatística Guiné-Bissau. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
  10. ^ "Africa: Liberia The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov. 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  11. ^ "Sierra Leone 2015 Population and Housing Census National Analytical Report" (PDF). Statistics Sierra Leone. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
  12. ^ "Mandinka Tribe- 10 Interesting Details About This West African ethnic Group". 10 June 2021.
  13. ^ Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo (2005). Slavery and African ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the links. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 38–51. ISBN 978-0-8078-2973-8.
  14. ^ Nugent, Paul (October 2008). "Putting the History Back into Ethnicity: Enslavement, Religion, and Cultural Brokerage in the Construction of Mandinka/Jola and Ewe/Agotime Identities in West Africa, c. 1650–1930". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 50 (4): 920–948. doi:10.1017/S001041750800039X. hdl:20.500.11820/d25ddd7d-d41a-4994-bc6d-855e39f12342. ISSN 1475-2999. S2CID 145235778. Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  15. ^ Eberhard, David M; Simons, Gary F; Fennig, Charles D, eds. (2021). "Mandinka". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Online version) (24th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  16. ^ a b Mwakikagile, Godfrey (2010). The Gambia and its people: Ethnic identities and cultural integration in Africa (1st ed.). Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: New Africa Press. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-9987-16-023-5. Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  17. ^ Schaffer, Matt (2005). "Bound to Africa: The Mandinka Legacy in the New World". History in Africa. 32: 321–369. doi:10.1353/hia.2005.0021. ISSN 0361-5413. JSTOR 20065748. S2CID 52045769.
  18. ^ "Malinke | people". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-04-22.
  19. ^ Olson, James Stuart; Meur, Charles (1996). The Peoples of Africa: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-27918-8.
  20. ^ Nicholls, Robert Wyndham (2012-09-14). The Jumbies' Playing Ground: Old World Influences on Afro-Creole Masquerades in the Eastern Caribbean. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-4968-0118-0.
  21. ^ Mendy, Peter Michael Karibe; Richard A. Lobban Jr (2013). Historical dictionary of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (Fourth ed.). Lanham: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-8027-6. OCLC 861559444.
  22. ^ James Stuart Olson (1996). The Peoples of Africa: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary. Greenwood. pp. 366–367. ISBN 978-0-313-27918-8.
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference ref1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Anthony Appiah; Henry Louis Gates (2010). Encyclopedia of Africa. Oxford University Press. pp. 135–136. ISBN 978-0-19-533770-9.
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference hughesstrata was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ Cite error: The named reference hopkinsmandinka was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  27. ^ Donald Wright (1978). "Koli Tengela in Sonko Traditions of Origin: an Example of the Process of Change in Mandinka Oral Tradition". History in Africa. 5. Cambridge University Press: 257–271. doi:10.2307/3171489. JSTOR 3171489. S2CID 162959732.
  28. ^ Pettersson, Anders; Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla; Petersson, Margareta; Helgesson, Stefan (2006). Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective. Walter de Gruyter. p. 271. ISBN 978-3-11-018932-2.
  29. ^ Matt Schaffer (2005). "Bound to Africa: The Mandingo Legacy in the New World". History in Africa. 32: 321–369. doi:10.1353/hia.2005.0021. S2CID 52045769. Retrieved June 1, 2016., Quote: "The identification of Mande influence in the South [United States], the Caribbean and Brazil, must also be conditioned with a huge reality—ethnic diversity. Slaves from hundreds of ethnic groups from all over Africa came into the South and the rest of the Americas along with the Mandinka/Mande."


Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).