Sya

Sya grew from villages on the streams of the western Volta basin into a meeting place for Bobo communities and Dyula merchants. It became the centre of Gwiriko, a kingdom whose rulers and trading families tied the surrounding savanna to the commercial world of Kong and the forest country to the south.

In the early eighteenth century Famagan Ouattara established the kingdom of Gwiriko in the bend of the Mouhoun. The Ouattara family came from the Kong trading world, and Sya grew as merchants settled among its earlier Bobo-speaking inhabitants and their families. The kingdom brought a number of different peoples under its authority. The town later became known as Bobo-Dioulasso, a name reflecting the communities whose histories met there.