Massina Empire

The Caliphate of Hamdullahi, often called the Massina Empire, was a Sunni Muslim theocratic state in the Inner Niger Delta of present-day Mali. It emerged from the Fulani jihads of the early nineteenth century: Seku Amadu, a preacher and reformer, defeated the Bambara Empire and its allies at the Battle of Noukouma in 1818 and founded the state. In 1820 he established a new capital at Hamdullahi, meaning 'Praise God'. The caliphate was ruled by an almami chosen with the help of a Grand Council, and it developed one of the most organised governments in contemporary Africa, with a tax system, state-sponsored schools and welfare for widows and orphans. In the late 1820s it absorbed neighbouring chiefdoms such as Baraboullé and Djilgodji. By 1853 the empire was in decline, and it was destroyed in 1862 by Omar Saidou Tall of the Toucouleur Empire and his successors. Its heartland lay in the floodplain of the Niger, where agriculture, trade and Islamic scholarship supported a densely settled population. Hamdullahi's political and religious institutions long remained a reference point in the history of the western Sudan.