Mali historical timeline

Mali's history is the history of the trans-Saharan trade and of the states that grew rich on it, then of a colony, a republic, and a war. What a visitor could once see -- the mosques of Timbuktu, the mud city of Djenné, the Dogon cliffs -- is the record of the first half; the roadblocks and the advisories are the second.

Chronology

1. c. 1230 The Mali Empire, founded by Sundiata Keïta, succeeds the Ghana Empire as the largest state in West Africa, spreading its language, laws and customs along the Niger River. At its peak around 1300 it is the wealthiest country in Africa.
2. 1325 Mansa Musa visits Timbuktu around this year on his way to Mecca; the Djinguereber mosque is built under him in 1327, and the town flourishes on the trade in salt, gold and ivory, with the Sankoré madrasah as its university.
3. 1464 Sunni Ali, ruling to 1492, makes Gao the capital of the Songhai Empire as Mali weakens; the Songhai take Timbuktu. The region then passes three centuries without a great state.
4. 1591 The Songhai Empire is broken at Tondibi on 13 March. Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur of Morocco had sent a force under Judar Pasha in October 1590 on the mistaken belief that Songhai wealth came from gold mines it controlled; 1,500 cavalry and 2,500 infantry, many of them carrying arquebuses, defeated a Songhai army several times larger that had none. The mud monuments a traveller comes to see at Timbuktu, Djenné and Gao all belong to the centuries before this date rather than after it.
5. 1712 Bitòn Coulibaly expands the Bambara Empire from Ségou. The mud mosque tradition that produced Djenné's Great Mosque -- first built in the 13th century, rebuilt in 1907 -- belongs to these centuries.
6. 1893 The French take over Mali, and Timbuktu is formally incorporated into the colony of French Sudan during the 1890s. Between 1917 and 1921 the colonial administration used slave labour to dig the narrow canal linking the town to its river port at Kabara, which is the sort of detail the town's own account of itself keeps and the colonial account left out.
7. 1960 France, which seized the territory in the Scramble for Africa as French Sudan, grants independence after a brief federation with Senegal.
8. 1968 A bloodless coup on 19 November removes Modibo Keïta, the first president, and installs Moussa Traoré, who rules for 23 years. The single-party state and the austerity programmes of its last decade are the background to everything a visitor reads about Malian politics.
9. 1989 The Bandiagara Escarpment is inscribed on the World Heritage List. The sandstone cliff in Dogon country was occupied by the cave-dwelling Tellem before the Dogon arrived in the 14th century, and the villages built into the rock face are, with Timbuktu, the reason people used to travel to Mali at all.
10. 1991 Tens of thousands march in Bamako on 22 March and soldiers fire on the demonstrators, killing at least 28 and setting off days of rioting. On 26 March Lieutenant Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré deposes Traoré, and civilian government follows in 1992 after a constitutional referendum and elections. Malians date their democratic period from this month, not from 1960.
11. 2012 A Tuareg rebellion and a coup leave the government holding only the southern third of the country; the north, called Azawad by the rebels, falls to the MNLA and then to Ansar Dine, who occupy Timbuktu and destroy its mausoleums. The World Heritage sites of Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia go on the danger list. French forces intervene in Operation Serval from January 2013.
12. 2013 French and Malian troops begin retaking Timbuktu on 28 January -- 1,000 French with 200 Malian soldiers, and the town falls without a fight -- though fighting in the region lasts until 1 April. Rebel forces destroyed many of the manuscripts before leaving. What survives of the libraries, and how much of it was smuggled south to Bamako, is now central to how the town presents itself.
13. 2020 A coup removes President Keïta; a second in 2021 brings Assimi Goïta to office as interim president on 7 June. Wagner Group mercenaries deploy from the end of 2021; France and its partners withdraw their troops in 2022; Mali leaves the G5 Sahel.
14. 2023 The UN mission, MINUSMA, withdraws in December at the junta's request and hands over its twelve bases. The British advisory dates the upsurge in attacks from that withdrawal; in April 2026 armed groups strike Kidal, Gao, Kati and the approaches to Bamako's airport.

What survived, and how

The manuscripts survived because families kept them in their houses for centuries and, in 2012, hid them again. Djenné's mosque survives because the town re-plasters it every year. The Dogon villages survived on a cliff that armies could not easily reach and tourists could, until 2012. Timbuktu's mausoleums did not survive the occupation and had to be rebuilt.

The state has survived least well: five coups since independence, and a war in its second decade. The history a visitor would come for is intact; the country to visit it in is not, for now.