Bambara Empire

The Bambara Empire (also Bamana Empire or Ségou Empire) was a large kingdom based at Ségou, now in Mali. The empire was founded by Bitòn Coulibaly in the early eighteenth century and lasted until an 1861 invasion by Toucouleur conqueror El Hadj Umar Tall.

1 Founders
2 The Ngolosi
3 Economy and structure
4 Jihad and fall
5 Reference
6 External links
7 Notes

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Founders

In the mid-seventeenth century, Kaladian Coulibaly founded a kingdom of the Bambara people based in Ségou. Though he made many successful conquests of neighboring tribes and kingdoms, he failed to set up siginificant administrative framework, and the new kingdom disintegrated following his death (c. 1680).

Forty years later, however, Kaladian's great-grandson, Mamary Coulibaly settled in Ségou and joined an egalitarian youth organization known as a tòn. Mamary soon reorganized the tòn as a personal army, assumed the title of bitòn, and set about subduing rival chiefs. He established control over Ségou, making it the capital of his new Bambara Empire.

Fortifying the capital with Songhai techniques, Bitòn Coulibaly built an army of several thousand men and a navy of war canoes to patrol the Niger. Coulibaly then proceeded to launch successful assaults against his neighbors, the Fulani, the Soninke, and the Mossi; he also attacked Tomboctou, though he held the city only briefly. During this time he founded the city of Bla as an outpost and armory.

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The Ngolosi

Following Bitòn Coulibaly's death in 1755, the Empire slid quickly toward anarchy. Bitòn's descendants (Dinkoro Coulibaly and Ali Coulibaly, sometimes called the "Bitsoni") proved unable to hold control of the empire, and a series of military coups ensued.

In 1766, a freed slave named Ngolo Diarra seized the throne and re-established stability, reigning for nearly thirty years of relative prosperity. The Ngolosi, his descendants, would continue to rule the Empire until its fall. Ngolo's son Mansong Diarra took the throne following his father's 1795 death and began a series of successful conquests, including that of Tomboctou (c. 1800) and the Massina region.

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Economy and structure

The Bambara Empire was structured around traditional Bambara institutions, including the kòmò, a body to resolve theological concerns. The kòmò often consulted religious sculptures in their decisions, particularly the four state boliw, large altars designed to aid the acquisition of political power.

The economy of the Bambara Empire flourished through trade, especially that of the slaves captured in their many wars. The demand for slaves then led to further fighting, leaving the Bambara in a perpetual state of war with their neighbors.

Mungo Park, passing through the Bambara capital of Ségou two years after Diarra's 1795 death, recorded a testament to the Empire's prosperity:

The view of this extensive city, the numerous canoes on the river, the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the surrounding countryside, formed altogether a prospect of civilization and magnificence that I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa.<ref>Quoted in Davidson, p245.</ref>

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Jihad and fall

Between 1818 and 1820, the Empire was severely weakened by a jihad led by the Peul imam and social reformer Seku Amadu. Seku Amadu's forces decisively defeated the Bambara, taking Djenné and much of the territory around Mopti and forming into a Massina Empire. Tomboctou would fall as well, in 1845.

The real end of the empire, however, came at the hands of El Hadj Umar Tall, a Toucouleur conqueror who swept across West Africa from Futa Jallon. Umar Tall's mujahideen readily defeated the Bambara, seizing Ségou itself on March 10, 1861, forcing the population to convert to Islam, and declaring an end to the Bambara Empire.

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