Khalifa of Mali

Khalifa was a 13th-century Mansa of the Mali Empire mentioned by the medieval Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun. All that is known of Khalifa's life comes from a brief mention in Ibn Khaldun's Kitāb al-ʻIbar:

[Mārī Jāṭa] ruled for 25 years, according to what they relate, and when he died his son Mansā Walī ruled after him...His brother Wātī ruled after him and then a third brother, Khalīfa. Khalīfa was insane and devoted to archery and used to shoot arrows at his people and kill them wantonly so they rose against him and killed him. He was succeeded by a sibṭ [son of a daughter] of Mārī Jāṭa, called Abū Bakr, who was the son of his daughter.

Oral tradition does not mention Khalifa, which the historian Djibril Tamsir Niane attributed to oral historians often only remembering rulers who left descendants. While Ibn Khaldun's genealogy implies Sunjata had at least three sons, oral tradition varies on the number of sons Sunjata had, but many traditions claim he had only one, Yerelinkon, who corresponds to the Mansa Wali mentioned by Ibn Khaldun. However, some traditions claim that in addition to his biological son(s), Sunjata adopted the sons of his generals, though it is not specified who these adopted sons were. In any case, it is unclear whether Khalifa was actually a son of Sunjata. The historians Ralph Austen and Jan Jansen argued that Ibn Khaldun's account of Mali's history should not be taken entirely literally, as it reflects Ibn Khaldun's worldview that dynasties typically followed a four-generation cycle of decline. Khalifa, as the fourth ruler of Mali, corresponds to the fourth generation in Ibn Khaldun's theory, where the dynasty descends into tyranny and is overthrown, beginning the cycle anew.