Ségou Empire

From its capital on the Niger River in today's Mali, the Bamana (Bambara) state of Ségou dominated much of the middle Niger for about 150 years. Built into an empire by Biton Coulibaly from 1712, it was one of the largest West African powers of the eighteenth century and, with Kaarta, one of the main states to emerge in the region after the fall of the Songhai Empire. It ended when the forces of El Hadj Umar Tall took Ségou in 1861.

The empire grew out of an earlier Bambara kingdom at Ségou. Around the middle of the seventeenth century (sources give 1640 or 1652), a leader named Kaladian Coulibaly took power there and conquered neighbouring peoples, but he built no lasting administration, and his realm fell apart after his death.

In 1712 Kaladian's great-grandson Mamari Coulibaly was chosen to lead a ton, an association of young men of the same age. He turned it into a personal army, strengthened by runaway slaves, took the title bitòn and swept aside the old order, becoming the first faama, or king, of Ségou. He fortified the capital, raised an army of conscripts known as the ton djon and a fleet of war canoes on the Niger, and introduced taxes paid in cowrie shells. After repelling an invasion from the Kong Empire in 1725, he campaigned against Fulani, Soninke and Mossi neighbours, taking Macina, Djenné and Bamako and briefly Timbuktu. In 1751 he made the ruler of the remaining Mali Empire at Niani his vassal.

Biton's death in 1755 brought a decade of instability: one successor was assassinated, another, a devout Muslim who tried to convert the state, was deposed, and army leaders ruled for several years. In 1766 Ngolo Diarra, a former slave who had risen to lead the ton djon, seized power and brought back stability; by different reckonings he reigned for between twenty and thirty years, a time of prosperity in which he went on to conquer Timbuktu and Massina. His descendants, the Ngolosi, ruled until the end. Under his son Mansong Diarra, who took the throne around 1790, Ségou was a busy city of perhaps 30,000 people on both banks of the river. The Scottish explorer Mungo Park passed through in 1797.

Any faama who could control the ton djon was in practice an absolute ruler, rewarding loyal soldiers with state property. A council of 40 men swore obedience to him, relatives held key posts and the king led important religious cults. The army allowed able men of humble birth to rise. Wealth came above all from trade, and especially from captives taken in constant wars; many were sold to European traders on the Senegal and Gambia rivers, while others worked for the state as labourers or soldiers. Muslim maraka merchants traded guns, horses, salt, gold, cloth and cowries across the Sahara and towards the coast.

After Mansong died in 1808 the empire slowly weakened. In 1818 it was defeated at Noukouma by Fula fighters of Seku Amadu's jihad, who went on to found the Massina Empire and take Djenné. After 1839 kings followed each other quickly as army chiefs meddled in succession. In 1859 the Toucouleur leader El Hadj Umar Tall declared jihad on Ségou; he took Nyamina in May 1860, defeated the Bamana army at Witala that September and entered Ségou on 10 March 1861, ending the empire. Ségou then became a seat of Umar's Tukulor Empire, where Ahmadu Tall was installed as faama.

Our 1715, 1783 and 1800 maps show the Ségou Empire, labelled Segu, on the upper Niger. By 1783 it sits beside Kaarta to the west, the Mossi Kingdoms to the south-east and the Kong Empire to the south.