Sosso Empire

The Sosso Empire, also written as Soso or Susu, or alternatively Kaniaga, was kingdom of West Africa that originated as a vassal of the Ghana Empire before breaking away and conquering their former overlords. Inhabited by the Soninke ancestors of the modern-day Sosso people, it was centered in the region south of Wagadou and north of Beledougou. The empire peaked under the reign of Soumaoro Kante, who was defeated by the rising Mali Empire of Sundiata Keita.

Etymology
Sosso was north of the Manding region, heartland of the Mande peoples. They therefore referred to it as 'Kenieka', meaning north. In Soninke this became 'Kaniaga'. The term 'Sosso' may come from the word for horse, as the kingdom had a monopoly on the horse trade vis-a-vis its southern neighbors. The capital was also called Sosso or Susu, and a village of that name still exists in Mali, near Boron in the Koulikoro Region.

History
The Sosso originated as a group of slaves of the Kaya Magha of the Ghana Empire who likely served as the king's bureaucracy and army governing the province/vassal state of Kaniaga.

According to Ibn Khaldun, the power of Ghana waned as that of the "veiled people" grew through the Almoravid movement. In 1054 they captured the royal seat of Aoudaghost and many subject peoples broke away, including the Sosso. Their leader, Gumana Fade, was either a member of the royal Cisse clan or a provincial governor.

Maurice Delafosse asserted that Diarisso dynasty ruled Kaniaga until 1180, when a series of weak-willed and quarrelous brothers brought the kingdom to its knees through civil war until they were overthrown by a mercenary general, Kemoko or Diarra Kante. Basing himself in the city of Susu north of Bamako, he unified the Kaniaga region and began to dominate the Soninke-inhabited southern provinces of Ghana. Diarra Kante's son Soumaoro Kante succeeded him as king in the late 12th or early 13th century.

Soumaoro Kante
Under Soumaoro's (or Soumangourou's) rule, the Sosso empire reached its zenith. He forced the Ghana to pay him tribute, an event that Delafosse dates to approximately 1203. He conquered Diarra and Gajaaga and subdued the Mandinka chieftaincies to the south, where the important goldfields of Bure were located.

Soumaoro is remembered in Mande oral histories as a cruel, harsh leader. Many Soninke people left the region to escape his rule, and religious persecution drove Muslim traders to abandon Koumbi Saleh for Djenne and Oualata. He beheaded Muslim kings who opposed him.

At the Battle of Kirina (c. 1235) the Mandinka prince Sundiata Keita led a coalition of smaller states to soundly defeat the Sosso and kill Soumaoro. Sundiata marched on to the city of Susu itself and destroyed it, marking the kingdom's end. The region was then incorporated into Sundiata's Mali Empire.

Historicity
Oral histories, not to mention the Western written histories derived from them, can compress events and people from different periods into single narratives, obscuring the historical facts. Many key questions are unclear today, such as whether Gumana Fade was a governor or a prince, whether the Diarissos ruled Kaniaga at all, whether Diarra was a Kante and what his relationship to the Diarisso dynasty and Soumaoro were, and others. The essential and universal themes are, however, that Soumaoro came from a slave background and that these former slave clans were establishing themselves as political powers as the Ghana empire declined.