Researching Mali....

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Is not that easy.  Of course, if you want material on Western military history; or to a slightly lesser extent Arabic derived Muslim armies?  No problem.  Step south of the Sahara, and the material relating to before the colonial period is rather limited.

First off there are few good books on the subject, partly as there are few if any written histories or contemporary accounts out there.  It is possible there is more in French, but at this early stage in my project I've not been able to track that level of material down.  I've grabbed a couple of the limited English language material available; W.E Conton's West Africa in History Vol.1 and John Parker's African History: a Very Short Introduction; but beyond those there seems to be a split between material for the very casual reader and heavy academic volumes little concerned with military history.

At this point you have to give a nod to Wikipedia, who thanks to the enthusiasm of amateurs, and the inclusion of chunks of knowledge from other languages, can off a decent primer on many subjects.  It's generally reasonable material, as long as you check your sources!

No surprise, there are no ranges already available for the period and region, my intent now being to produce an army for the Manden Kurufaba, or Mali Empire, I have no obvious shortcuts to a fair amount of conversion work.  I did discover an article on the Mali Empire in Wargames Illustrated, issue 375, but the writer had done scarcely more research than I've managed in the past two weeks, and the mandatory pictures of figures were simply of Muslim warriors with vague 'I guess these would do with a different paint' statements attached.  Harrumph.

However, There are lots of models for 'Darkest Africa'  And some of these will work as a basis for some of the forces; also undeniably some Arab styled models will work as a good starting point, for cavalry especially.  However few if any of the plastic figures out there appear to meet my needs...

Image research was my next stage, to see what inspired, get some history together, and to work out how I could use the models out there. I'd direct the interested parties to my Pinterest board of West African Images:

 

I'm a big fan of Pinterest; it often beats Google for a general image search, as plenty of people are likely to already have curated what you are after, making is quicker to get a decent response.  And once you set up your own account, you can easily pin images straight from another site or search to you Pinterest board, from where you can always refer back to it.

I've managed to gather 40 or so images, and accompanying notes to give me some ideas, and from these, I've moved to my next stage in any project that 'breaks new ground'  Doing some of my own illustrations to get a feel for what I want to end up with:

Native Bowmen make up a large portion of the army

Heavy cavalry were some 10% of the army

Mali is an excellent basis for my purposes.  One of the Wealthiest Empires in History, having vast gold reserves; formally Muslim but with distinct African appearance and traits, and with many 'Pagan' troops fielded from the southern tribes and nations.  The Empire lasted some four centuries, conquering vast swathes of Sub-Saharan Africa, and having a semi-professional field army of around 100,000 men.  Plenty to get to grips with.  But as stated the source material for design is limited; hence the need for the working sketches above.  The Bowmen is easy, and as a basis for these I've opted to start with Foundry Africans:

DA084

These will need some added detail, but being pretty clean of anything that doesn't work, they are and Ideal start.

The cavalry and Spearmen are a mix of Tuareg and African influences, and so will be more of a challenge  No one range seems to be a perfect match - not least as the region only tends to get covered once the French Foreign Legion is involved - but I think the real fun will come from making something unique, so I'm okay with that.

Then there is the opportunity to add real oddball units like Knights in Full Padded Armour and masked forest tribesmen with poisoned javelins.  Even potentially a leader on a Litter. 

Aside from pushing some representation into my collection, and learning a lot of new, fascinating history, these are the sort of elements that get me excited for a project like this.

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