Soninke

The Soninke, also called Sarakolleh, are a Mandé people of the upper Senegal River and the Sahel edge, from Bambouk to the Futa Jallon hills. Their ancestors built the Ghana Empire, or Wagadu, whose kings ruled from Kumbi Saleh and exchanged gold for salt brought by Berber caravans. Tradition traces the ruling line to Dinga and his son Dyabe Sisse.

The Almoravid conquest of 1076 broke Wagadu's power, its rulers and people turned to Islam in the eleventh century, and by the thirteenth century the empire had dissolved, scattering Soninke clans across the western Sahel.

In 1337 their homelands around Koumbi Saleh and Bambouk lay within the Mali Empire, whose gold trade was run in good part by Soninke merchants of the Wangara confederation. Jakhanke clerics and Maraka trading towns kept Soninke influence alive under later Malian and Songhai rule.