Kingdom of Wuli

Wuli, spelled Ouli in French, was a Mandinka kingdom on the north bank of the Gambia River, in what is now eastern Gambia and the Tambacounda region of Senegal. It began as one of the earliest satellite states of the Mali Empire and later paid tribute to the Jolof Empire, before becoming fully independent in the 1520s under Mansa Jalali Wali. Jalali founded his capital at Jalalikunda in the north of the country and recruited new inhabitants, among them the Jatta family, who settled at Tambacounda, and the Baro family at Barrow Kunda. He was killed fighting Niani, but left behind the strongest state on the north bank of the Gambia. Wuli controlled a crossroads where salt, gold, manufactures and other goods moved between the upper Niger valley and the coast, and its rulers and Muslim juula traders grew rich on the slave trade. When that trade ended in the 1820s the kingdom turned to groundnut production, while the Soninke-Marabout Wars of the nineteenth century brought repeated raids from Bundu and other Islamic states. In 1889 Wuli was divided between the British and French colonial empires.