Linguère

Linguère, Lingeer in Wolof, lay in the dry grassland of the Ferlo and was a capital of the Jolof Empire and of the Kingdom of Jolof that followed it. Lingeer was also the title of the queens and royal princesses of the Wolof and Serer, and many of the earliest buurbas of Jolof came from the maternal lineages of Baol. Jolof was a vassal of Mali until the latter half of the fourteenth century, then grew into the leading power of the Senegambian interior, and from the 1440s, when Portuguese ships began to call on the coast, its expansion may have been helped by buying horses from them.

After the buurba Biram Eler conquered Takrur in the 1450s, five claimants fought for the throne between about 1455 and 1489. In 1513 Koli Tenguella took Futa Toro, in 1520 the Serer kingdoms of Sine and Saloum broke away, and in 1549 the crown prince of Kayor, Amari Ngoone Sobel Fall, beat Jolof at the battle of Danki. Waalo and Baol also left, and Jolof shrank to a kingdom whose buurba kept the prestige of the old imperial title.