Bambara

The Bambara were a Mande people of the upper Niger, around the trading towns of Djenné and Ségou. They began as a royal section of the Mandinka; in 1337 their later empire did not yet exist.

Around 1640 Kaladian Coulibaly led a small kingdom at Ségou. In 1712 Biton Coulibaly took a youth association, turned it into an army and built the Ségou Empire. After his death in 1755 and civil wars, Ngolo Diarra seized power in 1766. At Noukouma in 1818, Seku Amadu's forces defeated the Bambara and took Djenné, stripping the empire's northern lands.