Diéribakoro

Diéribakoro lies in the Manding country of the upper Niger, close to Siguiri and the Tinkisso and Milo rivers, a land of wooded plains near the gold fields of Bure. Siguiri has been an important place since the time of Sundiata Keita, and oral tradition says his eldest son Nyamagan settled and ruled there. The gold panned in these rivers made Mali famous. Mansa Musa's gifts on his pilgrimage of 1324–26 caused inflation in Egypt, and his successor Maghan I, who took the throne about 1337, reigned only four years before his uncle Suleyman succeeded him in 1341.

After Suleyman's death Mali's golden age ended, and in the fifteenth century the Mossi and the rising Songhai took away its outer provinces. The mining at Bure had been drawing gold trade to the Malinke of the south and away from the older fields of Bambuk, and about 1550 Mali attacked Bighu to regain access to gold.