Latest / Mansa Musa: The Richest Man Who Ever Lived — Fexingo History
Mansa Musa's Jeliw: The Griots Who Shaped Mali
While earlier episodes explored Mansa Musa’s gold, his architectural legacy in Timbuktu, and the diplomatic letters to Cairo, Episode 266 turns inward to the human infrastructure of the Mali Empire: the jeliw. These are not merely entertainers but the living archives of West Africa, custodians of oral history who preserved genealogies, legal precedents, and political legitimacy through song and speech. We examine how the jeliw functioned as a counterweight to royal power, their role in the Kanku court alongside figures like Abraham Abbas, and how their mnemonic techniques ensured that the…
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