Mali is a large, landlocked country in West Africa, much of it lying within the Sahara Desert and the semi-arid Sahel, with the life-giving Niger River curving through its heart. Once the seat of one of the wealthiest empires in medieval history and the home of the legendary city of Timbuktu, a centre of trade and learning, Mali carries an extraordinary cultural heritage. In recent years, however, it has been troubled by conflict and instability in its vast northern deserts.
In the Middle Ages this region was the centre of great empires built on the trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and other goods. The Mali Empire, at its height one of the largest and richest states in the world, was famously ruled by Mansa Musa, whose pilgrimage to Mecca, laden with gold, became legendary. Its cities, above all Timbuktu and Djenne, grew into renowned centres of Islamic scholarship. After the later Songhai Empire fell, the area was eventually colonised by France, gaining independence in 1960.
The founding of the Mali Empire is told in the Epic of Sundiata, a great oral tradition recounting how Sundiata Keita, a prince who overcame childhood disability, rose to defeat a cruel sorcerer-king and unite the Mandinka people to build the empire. Passed down for centuries by griots, the hereditary singers and historians of West Africa, the epic preserves real memories of Mali's foundation, but its marvels and details belong to legend and oral tradition rather than to the strict historical record.
Mali is dominated by the Sahara, which covers the vast, sparsely peopled north, giving way southward to the semi-arid Sahel and then to wetter savanna in the far south. The country's lifeline is the Niger River, which loops in a great curve through its centre, creating an inland delta of marshes and floodplains that supports farming, fishing, and herding in an otherwise dry land. Most of the population lives along the river and in the more fertile south, away from the encroaching desert.
The flag of Mali has three vertical bands of green, gold, and red, the pan-African colours adopted by many newly independent nations of the continent. The green is taken to represent the fertile land and hope, the gold the country's mineral wealth, above all the gold for which its empires were famous, and the red the blood shed in the struggle for independence. The simple tricolour links Mali to the wider movement for African freedom.
The great majority of Malians are Muslims, predominantly Sunni, a faith that arrived across the Sahara more than a thousand years ago and made cities like Timbuktu famous centres of Islamic learning. Malian Islam has long been marked by tolerance and by Sufi traditions, and is often interwoven with older local customs. There are small Christian and traditional-religion minorities, and the country's rich heritage includes the spectacular mud-brick mosques, such as the great mosque of Djenne, that are masterpieces of African architecture.
Malian cuisine is hearty and based on grains suited to a dry climate, above all millet, sorghum, and rice. A common dish is to, a thick porridge of millet or sorghum flour served with sauces, while rice dishes flavoured with meat or fish, such as the West African favourite jollof, are widely enjoyed. Peanut and leaf-based sauces, grilled meat, and freshwater fish from the Niger River fill the table, in a food culture shaped by the produce of the Sahel.
Agriculture is the foundation of Mali's economy and the livelihood of most of its people, concentrated along the Niger River and in the wetter south. Cotton is the leading cash crop and a major export, earning Mali a place among Africa's significant producers, while millet, sorghum, rice, and maize are grown as staples. Herding of cattle, sheep, and goats is important in the drier lands, and gold, mined since the days of the empires, remains a vital national export.
The medieval empires of Mali and Songhai, and the golden age of Timbuktu as a centre of trade and scholarship, are sources of immense pride. After independence from France in 1960, Mali experienced periods of socialist rule and military government before democratisation. In recent years the country has been gravely destabilised by rebellions and by the spread of armed extremist groups across its northern deserts and the wider Sahel, leading to conflict, foreign intervention, and military coups.
Mali has a population of around 22 million people, made up of many ethnic groups, including the Bambara, Fulani, Songhai, and the Tuareg of the northern deserts, speaking a variety of languages with French as the official tongue. The population is young and fast-growing, concentrated in the south and along the Niger River, and largely rural. Mali is also famous for its musicians, who have brought the sounds of the Sahel and the griot tradition to audiences around the world.
