Djibo

Djibo lies in northern Burkina Faso, about 45 kilometres from the border with Mali. Local tradition names Sambo Nana of Douentza as its founder in the second half of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the town became the capital of the Djilgodji state. Around the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, Fulani groups entered the region and allied with local clans, a process that helped form the Jelgobe lineage.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Jelgobe leaders under two brothers defeated the rulers of Djilgodji and established emirates centred on Djibo and Baraboullé. The town's political importance was tied to pastoral movement and exchange across the Sahel. The Caliphate of Hamdullahi invaded in the 1830s and subjugated these emirates, and Djibo stayed linked to the wider movements of people, livestock and authority across the region.