Mossi Raids Against Mali and Songhai

Burkina Faso / Mali · 1300s–1591

“The keepers of the atlas wrote this one down so the fire would not forget it.”

For two and a half centuries the horsemen of the Mossi kingdoms rode north out of the Volta country to raid the great empires at their richest points — Timbuktu sacked in 1337 while Mali still glittered from Mansa Musa's pilgrimage, Walata struck in 1444, a full invasion turned back by Sunni Ali himself in 1483.

Jelikan · Ìtàn · A story is told at night

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.

244 tellings from the African Conflict Atlas, every one carried in the griot's own voice — empires and uprisings, taxes and stools, gold roads and broken promises. Told the way a griot tells them: by voice, by lesson, by question.

“A story, a story!”

32 fires burn through the year →

Choose a thread

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Tonight

All time

1200 CEToday

— and the circle answers: “Let it come, let it go.”

Sit by the fire.The griot remembers.

What shall the fire hear tonight?

Sit by the fire.
The griot remembers.