Baï

Baï belongs to the Djenné country in Mali's Inland Niger Delta, a broad floodplain where channels, lagoons and seasonal pastures change shape during the year. Djenné itself became an island in the flood season, approached by causeways, and served as the administrative centre of its cercle within Mopti Region. The countryside around Baï shared in the movement of water and goods that made the wider delta one of western Africa's great meeting places. Djenné's rise was closely tied to Timbuktu.

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, much of the trans-Saharan commerce in salt, gold and enslaved people moving through Timbuktu also passed through Djenné. The wealth supported Islamic scholarship, and both towns became important centres of learning. Djenné also commanded routes reaching the Benadir world and distant Atlantic markets, connecting merchants from Sahelian societies, North Africa and the Niger Valley. The town's architecture used the earth of the floodplain.

South of the settlement lay Djenné-Djenno, among the oldest known towns in sub-Saharan Africa. From the fifteenth century, conflicts and alliances drew Djenné into the Songhai Empire, and the city retained a major trading role under Sonni Ali. Later Atlantic commerce weakened the older desert routes and with them the prosperity of this river market world.