Dia

Dia stands at the western edge of the inland Niger delta, among floodplains shaped by the seasonal rise of the river. Its settlement mounds preserve the remains of a long urban history, older than the better-known towns of Djenné and Timbuktu. Dia also became associated with Muslim scholarship and with the Jakhanke clerical communities whose traditions look back to the town.

Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries Jakhanke communities began to spread from Dia to other parts of West Africa. They established centres of learning as far west as Senegambia, carrying religious knowledge and ties of kinship with them. Dia remained a place of memory for these dispersed communities, as well as a settlement within the productive waterways of the Niger delta.