Mari Djata II of Mali
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Mansa Jata, commonly referred to as Mari Jata II, possibly incorrectly, was
mansa Mansa may refer to: Places In India * Mansa, Gujarat, a town in northern Gujarat, Western India; the capital of: ** Mansa, Gujarat Assembly constituency ** Mansa State, a princely state under the Mahi Kantha Agency in India * Mansa district, P ...
of
Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...
from 1360 to 1374. He was an ineffective ruler, and his reign, recorded by the contemporary North African historian
Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...
, marked the beginning of the decline of the
Mali Empire The Mali Empire ( Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or Manden; ar, مالي, Māl ...
. Jata was the son of Mansa Maghan, and as such the grandson of
Mansa Musa Mansa Musa ( ar, منسا موسى, Mansā Mūsā; ) was the ninth ''mansa'' of the Mali Empire, which reached its territorial peak during his reign. Musa is known for his wealth and generosity. He has been subject to popular claims that he is ...
. Jata may be the same person as a figure named Jatil mentioned by Ibn Battuta. If so, he was living in exile in Kanburni during the reign of his great-uncle Mansa Suleyman, possibly because Suleyman had seized the throne from Jata's father Maghan by force. Jata then would have conspired with Suleyman's wife Qasa, who may have been his sister, to depose Suleyman. However, Qasa was found out and the coup attempt was prevented. When Suleyman died, he was succeeded by his son Qanba, who would reign for only nine months. Civil war soon broke out, of which Jata was the victor. He had consolidated power by late 1360. A delegation bearing gifts for the
Marinid The Marinid Sultanate was a Berber Muslim empire from the mid-13th to the 15th century which controlled present-day Morocco and, intermittently, other parts of North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) and of the southern Iberian Peninsula (Spain) a ...
sultan had been prepared by Suleyman, but he had died before the delegation could be sent, and the delegation spent the civil war in
Walata , settlement_type = Commune and town , image_skyline = Oualata 03.jpg , imagesize = 300px , image_caption = View of the town looking in a southeasterly direction , image ...
. Jata added gifts to the delegation, including a giraffe, and sent the delegation to
Fez Fez most often refers to: * Fez (hat), a type of felt hat commonly worn in the Ottoman Empire * Fez, Morocco (or Fes), the second largest city of Morocco Fez or FEZ may also refer to: Media * ''Fez'' (Frank Stella), a 1964 painting by the moder ...
. The delegation arrived in December 1360 or January 1361, where it was received by Sultan Abu Salim and attracted much interest among the people of Fez. Jata was regarded as a tyrannical and wasteful ruler. He was said to have sold one of the national treasures of Mali, a boulder of gold that weighed twenty qintars, for far less than it was worth. Jata contracted a sleeping sickness which increasingly incapacitated him. After two years of illness and a fourteen-year reign he died, in 1373 or 1374. He was succeeded by his son
Musa Musa may refer to: Places *Mūša, a river in Lithuania and Latvia * Musa, Azerbaijan, a village in Yardymli Rayon * Musa, Iran, a village in Ilam Province *Musa, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Iran *Musa, Kerman, Iran * Musa, Bukan, West Azerbaijan ...
; another son of his, Magha, would succeed Musa., translated in
D. T. Niane Djibril Tamsir Niane (9 January 1932 – 8 March 2021) was a Guinean historian, playwright, and short story writer. Biography Born in Conakry, Guinea, his secondary education was in Senegal and his degree from the University of Bordeaux. He was ...
identified Jata with Konkodugu Kamissa, a figure in oral tradition of Hamana, but Yves Person disputed Niane's interpretations of traditional genealogies and suggested that there is a gap in oral tradition between the middle of the 14th century and beginning of the 17th, with Sulayman being the last mansa remembered before this gap.


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* . Translated in . *, translated in * * * *. * * 1374 deaths Mansas of Mali People of the Mali Empire 14th-century monarchs in Africa Year of birth unknown Keita family {{Mansas of Mali Empire