Kouroukan Fouga

Kouroukan Fouga, also spelled Kurukan Fuga, was the constitution of the Mali Empire, created after the Battle of Krina in 1235 by an assembly of nobles to organize government for the newly established empire, according to the Epic of Sundiata. Oral tradition of the jelis of Mali and Guinea holds that it established the Gbara, a federation of Mandinka clans under one government, set out how that government would operate, and established the laws by which the people would live; its name is a toponym meaning clearing on granite or lateritic rock, referring to the plain where the charter is said to have been proclaimed. In 2009, UNESCO inscribed the Manden Charter, proclaimed in Kurukan Fuga, on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.