Yagala

Yagala lies in the upland country of the Sulimana, in the interior of Upper Guinea, where hills and valleys connect the savanna with the wetter forests of the south. Rice and millet, cattle, ironwork, hunting and gathering supported local communities, and paths carried produce between districts. Seasonal rain set the farming calendar, and a settlement on a useful route could gain political and commercial weight beyond its own fields.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Yalunka communities around Falaba built the Solimana state, a regional rival of Futa Jallon. The state drew Yalunka, Mandinka and other communities into a shared political order, and its rivalry with Futa Jallon shaped the politics of the upland valleys in which Yagala lay.