In 1067, the sovereign of Bakri’s time was the Tunka Menin, who had succeeded his maternal uncle Bessi.

[begin quote] Among this people, custom and rules demand that the successor to the king be his sister’s son; for, they say, the sovereign can be sure that his nephew is indeed his sister’s son; but nothing can assure him that the son he considers his own in actuality is. [Al Bakri, Description de l’Afrique septentrionale (trans. Slane) (Algiers: Typographie Adolphe Jourdan, 1913), pp.327–328: “Description de Ghana et moeurs de ses habitants.”] [end quote]

The custom of matrilineal succession can be accepted without necessarily attaching any importance to the justification given for it, although the latter seems convincing. This explanation, very often heard in Black Africa, considerably postdates the clanic conditions of economic life which gave birth to the matriarchy. [Cf. Diop, L’Unité culturelle de l’Afrique noire, esp. ch. III.]