Kunta (tribe)

The Kounta were instrumental in the expansion of Islam into sub-Saharan West Africa in the 15th century, and formed an urban elite in cities such as Timbuktu which were on the southern end of the Trans-Saharan trade.

[3] They are a large religious clan whose relations are the product of struggling and managing to deal with pressures such as invasions and droughts.

Starting from the 15th century and going onward, the Kunta took the Qur'anic scholarship as "a means to wealth and therefore power as controllers of the trans-Saharan trade from Morocco to Timbuktu".

While the nomadic Kunta clans were "pacified" early by French colonial forces, the urban Kounta trading and religious groups to the east were instrumental in the Fulani Jihad States of the Sokoto Caliphate, Macina, and the Segou Tijaniyya Jihad state of Umar Tall.

Some leaders of the Kunta in northeast Mali have come into conflict with Tuareg and Bambara populations in towns where they once held a near monopoly on political power.

There has even been a small ethnic Kounta insurgency,[8] begun in 2004 by a former Army Colonel, though few attacks have been staged, and the leadership has been largely rejected by the Kunta community.

Tuareg and Kunta relations have both mutual dependence and close cooperation in intermarriages, trading, and Qur'anic consultations.

Kunta groups of prestigious marabouts who dominate some parts of northern Mali economically, religiously, and politically offer higher bridewealth than most of the poorer Tuareg men can afford.

This causes the Tuareg to resent Kunta men for stealing all the most beautiful women and not needing these wives to perform laborious domestic work.

The Kunta and the Tuareg men have long competed over women to marry, interpretations of Islam, water, and for the fertility of humans, crops, and livestock.

In the year 1895 to 1896, Hourst (Lieutenant de vaisseau) made a trip to Niger having a great encounter with the Kunta.

The Kunta saw that having a relationship with the French would help them deal with authority as it has been decreasing since the passing of Ahmad al Bakkay's death.

The Kunta were located in two known areas as one group lived in the Goruma along the Niger River at Kagha and east of Timbuktu.

That same year, prior to the colonial occupation, Abidin al- Kunti and his sons had opposed this but it didn't stop the French-Kunta alliance to occur.

In the year 1899, the Kunta moved towards a formal alliance with the French by going to Timbuktu in person to show their seriousness in wanting to work with them.

Faidherbe attracted a number of Kunta clerics and merchants, he signed a treaty of peace and commerce with one of their representatives from Timbuktu.