Yatenga

Yatenga is the northern Mossi kingdom, a land of millet fields and dry grassland on the southern edge of the Sahel. It rose in the fourteenth century as a breakaway from the Mossi of Ouagadougou, with a cavalry army and kings, the naaba, who were known for their wars of expansion. Early on it swallowed the small Mossi state of Zondoma. Its horsemen are remembered for raiding as far as Timbuktu, and when Askia Mohammed of Songhai marched against the Mossi, Yatenga suffered its worst defeat, in 1498.

The Mossi kept their own religion and ancestor rites against both Songhai and, later, the Muslim jihad states of Massina and Sokoto. In the eighteenth century Naaba Kango, who ruled from 1754 to 1787 and is counted the greatest of Yatenga's kings, made the kingdom a power in the upper Volta country and fought Segu. He raised a new royal residence at Ouahigouya, where his tomb still stands. His successor Saaga moved the court to Ziiya, but under Naaba Tuguri, enthroned in 1806, Ouahigouya became the seat again.