Saloum

The Kingdom of Saloum was the Serer state of the Senegambian coast, lasting from 1494 to 1969. Founded among the salt pans and groundnut fields of present-day Senegal, with its capital at Kahone, it grew with its sister kingdom of Sine into the twin Serer Kingdoms the French called Sine-Saloum. Its kings, the Maad, ruled farmers and fishermen through a council of nobles and priests, keeping the old Serer religion of the star-god Rog long after Islam and Christianity washed around the kingdom. Saloum traded grain, salt and cloth with Portuguese, Dutch, French and English ships, and lost men to the same ships' slave holds. The French folded the kingdom into its colony in the nineteenth century but left the kings their stools; the last reigning Maad died in 1969. The stool did not stay empty forever: in 2017 the Serer people re-established the monarchy as a traditional kingship within the republic of Senegal, and Kahone has a king again.