Ouagadougou

Ouagadougou, in the Mossi language Wogodogo, is the capital of the Mossi kingdom of the same name on the plateau of the upper Volta. Its name is traditionally explained as the home of the Wagu, the Soninke group that ruled Ghana, and some accounts see a Wangara settlement here as early as 1050. In the Mossi story, the city fell to Oubri, grandson of Ouédraogo, a prince born of the princess Yennenga, and he is counted as the founder of the Ouagadougou dynasty.

The kingdom grew in the fifteenth century into the leading Mossi state, ruled by the Moogo Naaba, who sat above the kings of Tenkodogo, Fada N'gourma and Yatenga. The Moogo Naaba divided provinces among his sons as local rulers who still owed him allegiance. The Songhai askia Muhammad launched a holy war against the Mossi in 1497 and defeated them, but they would not accept Islam, and they recovered their independence after Songhai fell in 1591. The tenth Naaba, Nyadfo, was the first to live in Ouagadougou, in the mid-seventeenth century; under the twenty-first, Zombre, it became the permanent capital. Neighbouring jihad states pressed on the Mossi in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet the court kept its own rites, and the first mosque in the city was built only in the early nineteenth century, by Doulougou.

The later city of Ziniaré also lies nearby.