This Section:
Bogolan Mudcloths Exhibition

Islam arrived early in Mali, through the jihad which conquered north Africa following the death of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century AD, but its influence was confined to the north of the Niger river. History and myth meet with the creation of the first Malian Empire under the legendary Sundyata Keita, whose rags to riches story is still part of oral tradition throughout the Sahel. His empire created much of the social organisation which remains very much alive to this day. It reached its pinnacle in the 14th century when the pilgrimage to Mecca by Mansa Moussa, taking with him eight tons of gold, depressed the price of gold in Mecca and Cairo for many years. It is generally believed that two thirds of the world’s gold stock was then in the hands of the Malinke Empire.

Transition to womanhood
Bogolanfini wraps are worn by young women at the time of excision (female circumcision) ceremonies. Mali remains a country with high rates of excision, despite efforts to eradicate this practice whose social and medical dangers have made it a major human rights issue. A study surveyed Malian health clinics in urban and rural areas, including Bamako, and found that 94% of the women who visited clinics had undergone some form of genital cutting – an extraordinarily high rate. Excision remains prevalent in Mali as part of the rites by which young girls are transformed into socially ‘complete’ women. Bogolanfini wraps are worn by girls and young women immediately following the excision ceremony.

The fifteenth century saw the birth of the Songhay Empire. At the height of its imperial power around 1550, Gao and Timbuktu each had a population estimated at 100,000, and Timbuktu, recognised as Islam’s holiest site, had become one of the leading universities in the world, with over 15,000 students. This golden age came to an end in 1590, when competition for control of the trans-Saharan trade routes brought an invasion from Morocco. Timbuktu was pillaged and the university destroyed.

It was not until 1880 that a European military invasion was attempted by France, and Mali was eventually incorporated into French West Africa. Mali was to be the bread-basket of the region, providing rice for French colonies along the coast, and cotton for the textile industry of France. The French presence in Mali was marked by over-ambitious irrigation projects which used forced labour and ignored local knowledge of land use and patterns of tenure. No major infrastructure remains from these imperial times, other than the irrigation network on the Niger and the railroad from Dakar to Bamako.

Malians may choose to remember the French for four reasons. First because they destroyed traditional customs such as the dina, the code of conduct which ensured the sharing of natural resources among herders, farmers and fishing communities. Second, because they forcibly conscrpited Malians to fight in two world wars. Third, because to this day French is the official language of the country, although it is spoken only by a tiny minority of educated urbanites and bureaucrats. And fourth, because the French destabilised the society of the Tuaregs by their requisition of camel herds for the war effort in 1916.The end of the European imperial age, following the second world war, brought calls for independence across Africa and Malian independence was achieved in 1960.

See part three of the Bogolan mudcloth exhibition