Bambara

The Bambara, or Bamana, are a Mandé people of the upper Niger basin, settled around Djenné and Ségou in central Mali. A royal Mandinka branch, they emerged after Songhai's fall around 1600. About 1640 Kaladian Coulibaly founded a kingdom at Ségou; in 1712 his descendant Bitòn Coulibaly turned the youth fraternity tòn into a standing army, took the title faama and built the Bambara Empire, taxing in cowrie shells.

His armies took Macina and Djenné and in 1751 reduced the Mali mansa to vassalage. After mid-century civil wars, former slave Ngolo Diarra seized the throne in 1766 and ruled nearly thirty years.

Unlike its Muslim neighbours, the Bambara state upheld polytheistic worship, and in 1818 Seku Amadu's Fulani jihad defeated it at Noukouma and seized Djenné and Macina for the Massina Empire. Bambara caste society ranked nobles above griots, smiths and slave-descended groups.