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Kouroukan Fouga


According to the Epic of Sundiata,Kouroukan Fouga or Kurukan Fuga was the constitution of the Mali Empire created after the Battle of Krina (1235) by an assembly of nobles to create a government for the newly established empire. According to oral tradition of the griot poets of Mali and Guinea, the Kouroukan Fouga established the federation of Mandinka clans under one government, outlined how it would operate and established the laws by which the people would live. The name Kurukan Fuga is a toponym, translating to "clearing on granite / lateritic rock", referring to the plain near the town of Ka-ba (present day Kangaba) where the narrative has Sundiata Keita present the charter.

The "Manden Charter, proclaimed in Kurukan Fuga", was inscribed in 2009 (4.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity kept by UNESCO.

The earliest extant versions of the Epic of Sundiata were collected in the 1890s, and the first close transcription dates to 1967. As an instance of oral history, the epic does not exist in a fixed form.

An attempt to "reconstruct" the Kouroukan Fouga from oral tradition was made in 1998, in a regional workshop held in Kankan, Guinea, with the aim of publishing and preserving the oral history related to the area's djeli or griots. Assisted by modern communicators and Guinea linguists under the supervision of Siriman Kouyaté, the workshop transcribed and translated the laws and edicts preserved in different regions from the core of the Mali Empire.

Kouyaté judged his reconstruction as being "a relatively faithful reproduction of a charter created in the fourteenth century".Djibril Tamsir Niane in an interview went as far as claiming the reconstruction was a "declaration on the rights of man" drafted "in 1236".


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