Mossi Kingdoms

The Mossi Kingdoms were a family of related states on the upper Volta river, in what is now Burkina Faso, that kept their independence for centuries until the French conquest of 1896. The largest was Ouagadougou, whose king, the Mogho Naaba, was regarded as the senior ruler of all the Mossi. Their royal lines trace their descent to a legendary princess, and several of the monarchies still exist today with traditional rather than sovereign authority.

Mossi origins are known mainly from oral traditions, which disagree on many details and place the founding events anywhere between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. The best-known account begins with Yennenga, a daughter of Naa Gbewaa, founder of the Dagbamba kingdoms of what is now northern Ghana. After quarrelling with her father she fled disguised as a man and met a Mandé elephant hunter, Rialé. Their son Ouédraogo, named after her horse, gathered horsemen, conquered local peoples and founded Tenkodogo. His sons and grandsons spread the dynasty to Fada N'gourma, Zondoma and elsewhere, and the mingling of the newcomers with Mandé, Ninisi and other local peoples produced the Mossi. Tradition credits Ouédraogo's grandson Oubri with founding the line that ruled from Ouagadougou.

Later rulers of Ouagadougou extended their power by placing their sons over conquered provinces as semi-autonomous governors. Branches of the dynasty also broke away: Yatenga in the north became Ouagadougou's chief rival and absorbed the older kingdom of Zondoma. As the Mossi grew stronger they came into conflict with the Mali and Songhai empires. In the fifteenth century raiders called Mossi took Timbuktu and sacked Walata, though many historians think these were a different group from Yennenga's descendants. In 1497 Askia Muhammad I of the Songhai Empire waged holy war against them; the Mossi lost the campaign but kept their own religion, and after Morocco's conquest of Songhai in 1591 they were again fully independent. By the eighteenth century their trade reached widely across West Africa.

The Mossi world centred on five main kingdoms, Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo, Fada N'gourma, Yatenga and Boussouma, with up to nineteen lesser states attached to them. Each managed its own affairs, but all shared ties of kinship, ritual and military cooperation, and each had a king, ministers and a fairly centralised administration. Society rested on a balance between two groups. The nakombse, who claimed descent from the founders, held naam, the sacred right to rule; the tengbiise, descended from earlier or absorbed peoples, could never hold naam but held tenga, authority over the land. Rulers needed both to govern.

Surrounded by Muslim states, the Mossi kept their own religion while making room for Islam. The king took part in two great yearly festivals, one honouring the royal ancestors and one offering sacrifices connected with tenga. Later jihad states such as the Massina Empire and the Sokoto Caliphate did not change this, but a sizeable Muslim community grew up, and in Ouagadougou the Mogho Naaba appointed an imam who read the Qur'an at court.

The German explorer Gottlob Krause reached the region in 1888, and in 1894 a British expedition under George Ekem Ferguson persuaded Mossi leaders to sign a protection treaty. The French ignored it and invaded in 1896. The Mogho Naaba Wobgo fled, and his brother Kouka was installed as king in alliance with the French. Wobgo eventually retired to the British Gold Coast, where he died in 1904.

Because the Mossi states were so well organised, the French ran much of their colony of Upper Volta through the existing structure, with the Mogho Naaba at its head. Kings still reign in Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo, Fada N'gourma, Boussouma and Yatenga within modern Burkina Faso, with cultural and political influence but no sovereignty.

Shown on our maps as the Mossi States, the kingdoms appear on 13 map years from 1492 to 1900, first beside the Songhai Empire and later among neighbours such as the Kong Empire. The 1900 map still draws them, although the French conquest of 1896 had already ended their independence.