Mossi

The Mossi are a Gur-speaking people of the upper Volta basin, in Burkina Faso; their language is Mòoré and their towns included Ouagadougou and Tenkodogo. Oral tradition traces the ruling line to Yennenga, a Mamprusi warrior princess who fled north and married a Mandé hunter; her son Ouédraogo built Tenkodogo, and his grandson Oubri, ruling about 1050–1090, founded the Ouagadougou dynasty.

Dagbamba and Mandé horsemen intermarried with Gurunsi and Dogon farmers, forging a Mossi identity by about 1500 in a ranked society of the Nakomse horsemen and the spiritual Tengabisi. The Mogho Naaba at Ouagadougou presided over sister kingdoms including Yatenga.

In the fifteenth century Mossi cavalry raided as far as Timbuktu and sacked Walata; when Askia Muhammad of Songhai attacked them in 1497, the defeated Mossi kept their ancestral cults. After Songhai collapsed to Moroccan invasion in 1591, the Mossi kingdoms regained independence; early in the nineteenth century they withstood the Sokoto and Massina jihad states while admitting Muslim traders and imams.