Wolof

The Wolof are the largest people of Senegambia, settled across western Senegal and the lower Gambia valley, speaking a West Atlantic language and growing millet under hereditary chiefs. One tradition holds that their ancestors arrived as the Ghana Empire collapsed in the late 1000s, and by the 1200s had pushed the Serer southward.

Their states, including Jolof, Cayor, Baol and Waalo, were Mali vassals and won independence around 1360 amid a Mali succession dispute. United under the burba of Jolof, the empire dominated trade between the Senegal and Gambia rivers. In the 1450s the Venetian traveller Cadamosto found Muslim clerics counselling rulers who had not themselves adopted Islam.

The empire broke up after the battle of Danki in 1549, leaving Jolof a reduced kingdom ringed by independent states. Rivalries among these states were sharpened by slave raiding and, in the 1700s, reformist jihads.