Wolof people

The Wolof are the Niger-Congo people of Senegambia, the largest ethnicity of Senegal at nearly forty percent, with kin in Gambia and Mauritania. Their Atlantic language gave English the very word Wolof. Documented since the 15th century, when Cadamosto found well-ordered Islamic chiefships advised by Muslim counselors, the Wolof built the medieval Wolof Empire (Jolof) that ruled the Senegambian plain, its cavalry and salt trade feared from the river to the dunes. Casted society of nobles, artisans, griots and the enslaved ordered town life; peanut fields and fishing pirogues feed it today. Adherents of Islam since the kingdom's founding by their own account, the Wolof follow the Mouride brotherhood of Touba, whose Grand Magal pilgrimage gathers millions. Dakar's medinas, Saint-Louis island and the pink waters of Retba keep Wolof country at the centre of Atlantic Africa. Touba's Grand Magal feeds millions of pilgrims every rainy season, and Wolof fishermen's pirogues crowd the coast at dawn.