Nyama

Nyama names the spiritual power that the Mandé-speaking peoples of West Africa believe to exist in nature and in every living thing. They guard and use it through initiation associations such as Chiwara and Dwo, which even Muslim Mandinka kept, and through masks, which the Dogon say were made to hold the nyama released by a death.

Many Mandé peoples had been Muslim since the 1200s, but groups such as the Bobo kept their older beliefs entire, and the Bambara did not convert until the 1800s. Around Djenné-Djenno, ancestral cults flourished among the Soninke-related peoples.