The Sosso kingdom (12th to 13th centuries) briefly flourished in the void but the Islamic Mandinka Mali Empire came to prominence when Soundiata Kéïta defeated the Sosso ruler, Soumangourou Kanté at the semi-historical Battle of Kirina in c.
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al-Umari visited Cairo shortly after the Malian Mansa Kankan Musa I's pilgrimage to Mecca, and his writings are one of the primary sources for this legendary hajj.
In 1352 the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta arrived in Taghaza after a 25 day journey from Sijilmasa on his way across the Sahara to Oualata to visit the Mali Empire.
In 1285, a court slave freed by Mari Djata, the founder of the Mali Empire, who had also served as a general, usurped the throne of the Mali Empire.
The idea of a multinational unifying African state was noted in the French publication Le Monde diplomatique as a successor to the medieval African empires: the Ethiopian Empire, the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, the Benin Empire, the Kanem Empire, and other historic nation states.
Sundiata Keita (c. 1217 – c. 1255), also called Mari Djata I, founder of the Mali Empire