Page 26 - Empires of Medieval West Africa

t h e G h a n a E m p i r e

visitors from North Africa began referring to the Soninke state as
Ghana, but the Soninke themselves and other Mande peoples know the
ancient kingdom as Wagadu.

The legend of Wagadu

Just like other peoples of sub-Saharan West Africa, the Soninke have
their own ideas of what is important about the distant past. They prefer
to emphasize things such as family rivalries, the heroic deeds of their
ancestors, and their ancestors’ relationship with the spirit world.
The Soninke people’s ideas about their history are expressed in the
Legend of Wagadu. This is an oral tradition told by many generations
of gesere (Soninke professional storytellers and musicians). Details vary
from one version to the next, but the legend generally describes the ori-
gins and early deeds of the different Soninke clans.
The legend often begins by describing how the ancestor Dinga
came from somewhere in the Middle East. Some say he stayed for a
time at Jenne, an ancient city that still exists on the Niger River north
of Bamako, the capital of modern Mali. Dinga later moved to the town
of Dia on the Inland Delta of the Niger. There, he married and had two
sons. They became Soninke ancestors in other towns of the Sahel.
Dinga’s movements from place to place are the storytellers’ way of
explaining the presence of Soninke populations in various parts of the
Sahel. Dinga is said to have eventually arrived at a place southwest of
Nioro in today’s Mali. When he arrived there, it was dominated by genies,
or spirits, of the bush. various versions of the legend describe a kind of
magician’s duel that took place between Dinga and the genies. Dinga won
the contest and married the three daughters of the chief genie. Their sons
became the ancestors of many Soninke clans. One clan was the Cissé. It
was the Cissé that became the ruling clan of Wagadu.
In the next episode in the legend, Dinga had grown old and blind.
He decided that before he died, he wanted to pass his chiefly power
on to his oldest son, Khiné. But a younger son named Diabe Cissé dis-
guised himself as the oldest brother and tricked his father into giving
him the chiefly powers.
According to one version of the story, after Dinga died, Diabe Cissé
had to run away from his angry older brother. He hid in the wilderness.
One day a mysterious drum fell out of a tree and landed at his feet.

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