Bambara of the Upper Niger and Their Antelope Dance of the Farming Cults
Along the upper Niger, in the savanna heart of Mali, live the largest of the Mande peoples, farmers and warriors who kept the old gods when their kinsmen turned to
Djenne: The Largest Mud-Brick Building on Earth and the Town That Replasters It Each Year
In the heart of Mali, on the flood plains of the Niger River, stands the largest building in the world made entirely of mud. The Great Mosque of Djenne, with
Dogon of the Bandiagara Cliffs and Their World Carved Into the Rock
Along a great sandstone cliff in the heart of Mali, a people built an entire civilization into the rock. The Dogon, farmers and sculptors who took refuge on the Bandiagara
Gao and the Tomb of Askia: The Mud Pyramid of the Songhai Empire
On the banks of the Niger river in eastern Mali, where the great waterway bends closest to the Sahara, stands a strange and striking monument: a stepped pyramid of mud,
The Oldest City South of the Sahara, and It May Have Had No King: The Story of Jenné-jeno
On the floodplain of the Niger River in Mali stand the mounds of a city that rewrote the history of Africa, the oldest known urban center south of the Sahara,
The Senufo, the Master Carvers of the Savanna
The Senufo are a large group of related peoples of the West African savanna, living across the borderlands of northern Côte d’Ivoire, southern Mali and southwestern Burkina Faso. Numbering some
The Soninke, the Founders of Ancient Ghana
The Soninke, also called Sarakole or Serahuli, are a Mande people of the western Sahel, spread across Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia and neighbouring countries. Numbering some two million or
Timbuktu: The Golden City of Salt, Gold, and a Half-Million Manuscripts
For centuries the name Timbuktu has stood, in the imagination of the outside world, for the most remote place on earth. The reality is even more remarkable: a city on
