Bambara People - History

History

The Bamana originated as a section of the Mandinka people, the founders of the Mali Empire in the 13th Century. Both a part of the Mandé ethnic group, whose earliest known history can be traced back to sites near Tichitt (now subsumed by the Sahara in southern Mauritania), where urban centers began as early as 2500 BC. By 250 BC a Mandé subgroup, the Bozo, founded the city of Djenne. Between 300 AD and 1100 AD the Soninke Mandé dominated the Western Sudan, leading the Ghana Empire. When the Mandé Songhai Empire dissolved after 1600 AD, many Mandé speaking groups along the upper Niger river bassin turned inward. The Bamana appeared in this milieu with the rise of the Bamana Empire in the 1740s.

While there is little consensus among modern historians and ethnologists as to the origins or meaning of the ethno-linguistic term, references to Bambara can be found from the early 18th century. In addition to its general use as a reference to an ethno-linguistic group, Bambara was also used to identify captive Africans who originated in the interior of Africa perhaps from the upper Senegal-Niger region and transported to the Americas via ports on the Senegambian coast. As early as 1730 at the slave-trading post of Gorée, the term Bambara referred simply to slaves who were already in the service of the local elites or French.

Growing from farming communities in Ouassoulou, between Sikasso and Côte d'Ivoire, Bamana age co-fraternities (called Tons) began to develop a state structure which became the Bambara Empire. In stark contrast to their Muslim neighbors, the Bamana state practised and formalised traditional polytheistic religion, though Muslim communities remained locally powerful, if excluded from the central state at Ségou.

The Bamana became the dominant cultural community in western Mali. The Bambara language, mutually intelligible with the Manding and Diola languages, has become the principal inter-ethnic language in Mali and one of the official languages of the state alongside French.