Marka
Languages
Marka language
Religion
Islam
Related ethnic groups
Bambara people and Soninke people
Wood pigment mid-20th-century face mask of the Marka people in Burkina Faso in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum

The Marka (also Marka Dafing, Meka, or Maraka) people are a Mande people of northwest Mali. They speak the Marka language, a Manding language. Some of the Maraka (Dafin people are found in Ghana.

History

The Marka originated from Soninke people from Wagadu Empire who migrated to the middle Niger between the 11th and 13th centuries. The term 'Maraka' means 'men who rule' in Bambara, which may have originated as a term for the colonists from Wagadu or merely as a term of respect.[1]: 171 

Relatively geographically constrained compared to other trading communities such as the Jakhanke and Dyula people, they founded Nyamina and Sansanding during this early period, and Barouéli and Banamba in the 19th century.[1]: 171  All four were at various times prominent trading and religious centers.

Muslim merchant communities at the time of the Bambara Empire, the Maraka largely controlled the desert-side trade between the Sahel and nomadic Berbers and Moors of the Sahara. Their economy was based on slave plantation agriculture growing food and cotton to be traded.[1]: 173  The Bambara integrated Maraka communities into their state structure, and Maraka trading posts and plantations multiplied in the Segu based state and its Kaarta vassals in the 18th and early 19th centuries. When the pagan Bambara empire was defeated by the Maraka's fellow Muslim Umar Tall in the 1850s, the Maraka's unique trade and landholdings concessions suffered damage from which they never recovered.

Today

Today there are only around 25,000 Marka speakers, and they are largely integrated amongst their Soninke and Bambara neighbors.

Culture

The Marka people are adherents of Islam.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Roberts, Richard (1980). "Long distance trade and production: Sinsani in the nineteenth century". Journal of African History. 21 (2): 169–188. doi:10.1017/S0021853700018156. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Levtzion, Nehemia; Pouwels, Randall (2000). The History of Islam in Africa. Ohio University Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-8214-4461-0.
  • Richard L. Roberts. Warriors, Merchants and Slaves: The State and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley 1700-1914. Stanford University Press (1987), ISBN 0-8047-1378-2.
  • Richard L. Roberts. Production and Reproduction of Warrior States: Segu Bambara and Segu Tokolor, c. 1712-1890. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 13,No. 3 (1980),pp. 389–419.
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