Analysis Of The Epic Of Sundiata

The Epic of Sundiata, which relates not only information about the Empire of Mali in the 13th and 14th centuries but also details of the ancient Mande Culture, is a valuable document that describes a period of time about which very little is known. Despite this reality, historians continue to debate the epic 's suitability as a historical source. It is clear that such a discussion revolves around the underlying question of the reliability of oral tradition; arguably, to deny the epic solely on the grounds that it relies on oral tradition constitutes a veritable disregard for a form of history that, when employed correctly, may effectively reveal important cultural values and ethics. Any source which relies on oral history generates a debate

Conrad asserts that "the practice of consulting only one or at best a few variants of the [Sundiata] corpus lessens the chance of surmounting the already formidable difficulties involved in sifting this material for useful information" and, thus, "only through comparative use of all available material can a potentially historical outline of … Mande history begin to emerge" (148, 156). For example, a common practise among Mande historians, as suggested by authors Ralph A. Austen and Jan Jansen, is to consult the oral sources of the Epic of Sundiata in conjunction with the written works of Ibn Khaldun, in order to glean a complete, or nearly complete, conceptualization of 13th and 14th century Malian history (18). The epic is clearly a valuable historical source, but this does not negate the presence of biases and other such human distortions within it which could generate a false history. By consulting the epic in collaboration with other sources, one is able, to an extent, to surmount this

Historian Kassim Kone presents a unique opinion on the question of the suitability of the epic as a historical source by suggesting that "in the Mande, people [did] not expect the [griot] to provide them with historical proofs or dates; they [expected] the [griot] to give a meaning to their lives" (157). As the narrator states, he "[teaches] kings the history of their ancestors so that the lives of the ancients might serve them as an example, for the world is old, but the future springs from the past" (Sundiata 1). In other words, through the narratives of the storytellers, descendants were able to access the wisdom and guidance of their ancestors and apply such messages in the present day. In the Sundiata Epic, values such as loyalty, bravery and religiosity emerge as integral to the Mande people, which offers historians an important insight into their psyche. Such a significant insight cannot be ignored, even if the setting or plot of the narrative is not always historical. Arguably, the Western historiographical preoccupation with facts has masked this alternative, but equally important, use of the