Toucouleur conqueror El Hadj Umar Tall seizes…
March 1861 CE
At the Battle of Noukouma in 1818, Bambara forces had met and been defeated by Fula Muslim fighters rallied by the jihad of Cheikou Amadu (or Seku Amadu) of Massina.
The Bamana Empire had survived but had been irreversibly weakened.
Seku Amadu's forces had decisively defeated the Bambara, taking Djenné and much of the territory around Mopti and forming into a Massina Empire.
Timbuktu had fallen as well in 1845.
The real end of the empire, however, comes at the hands of Umar Tall, who had returned from the Hajj in 1836 with the titles of El Hadj and caliph of the Tijaniyya brotherhood of the Sudan.
After a long stay in Fouta-Toro (present day Senegal), he moved to Dinguiraye (to the east of Fouta Djallon in present-day Guinea).
This became the staging ground for his 1850 jihad.
Abandoning his assault on the French colonial army after an 1857 failure to conquer Medina fort, Umar Tall strikes out against the Bamana Empire with much greater success—first Kaarta and then Ségou.
Umar Tall's mujahideen readily defeat the Bambara, seizing Ségou itself on March 10, 1861, and declaring an end to the Bamana Empire, which effectively becomes part of the Toucouleur Empire.
Umar Tall makes Ségou his capital.
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