Nioro du Sahel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nioro du Sahel is a town in the Kayes Region of western Mali, 241 km from the city of Kayes. It is located 275 miles ( by road) north-west of the capital Bamako at 15°14'00" North, 9°35'00" West. The town has a population of 69,100 people.
Founded in the sixteenth or seventeenth century by a slave named Diawandé, Nioro attained its greatest height in the eighteenth century when it served as the capital of the Bambara kingdom of Kaarta. The town became an important trading center between Upper Senegal and the Sudan.
In the early 1850s, Toucouleur conqueror El Hadj Umar Tall invaded Kaarta, forcing the kingdom's conversion to Islam; he built a great mosque in Nioro in 1854.
The town has an airstrip.
 |
This Malian location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
