Culture of Mali

The culture of Mali derives from the shared experience, as a colonial and post-colonial polity, and the interaction of the numerous cultures which make up the Malian people. What is today the nation of Mali was united first in the medieval period as the Mali Empire. While the current state does not include areas in the southwest, and is expanded far to the east and northeast, the dominant roles of the Mandé peoples is shared by the modern Mali, and the empire from which it took its name.

In the east, Songhay, Bozo, and Dogon people predominate, while the Fula people, formerly nomadic, have settled in patches across the nation. Tuareg and Maure peoples continue a largely nomadic desert culture, across the north of the nation. The interaction of these communities (along with dozens of other smaller ethnicities) have created a Malian culture, marked by heterogeneity, as well as syntheses where these traditions intermix.

Mande peoples share a caste system in which certain skills (metalworking, fishing, history-keeping) are passed down through families. The rituals and cultural associations of these activities have spread far beyond the Mande communities themselves.

While the Malinké, Soninke - Sarakole, Dyula, and Bambara peoples form a Mande core (at around 50%) of Malian culture in the densely populated regions of the south and east, a mosaic of other cultures also contribute to Malian society.

The Fula people, originally nomadic but now as often village and city dwelling, are scattered in communities across the nation as they are over much of West Africa. Fula peoples were amongst the first and most fervent believers in Islam, which orders the lives of the vast majority of Malians. The Fula traditions of nomadic cattle herding has bequeathed values of mobility and independence, and at the same time created networks of mutual dependence between certain communities and cultures. The Fula transhumance cycle meant that entire Fula tribes would spend seasons living in Bambara communities, creating formalized relationships called Cousinage. This survives to this day as the Malian cultural institution known as sanankuya, or the "joking relationship". In Mali, the state of Macina, in the midst of the Inner Niger Delta was dominated by Fula people and culture.

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