Kong

Kong was a market town in the grasslands of north-eastern Ivory Coast. From the fourteenth century Dyula merchants moved south from Mali and founded trading towns including Kong.

The Muslim Dyula traded gold and kola nuts between the Niger bend and Gold Coast. In 1710 their leader Seku Watara built the Kong Empire; his forces reached Sya in 1737 and campaigned to Djenné in 1739. After his death around 1745, the empire loosened into nearly autonomous Watara fiefs.