Samori Ture
Muslim cleric, and the founder and leader of the Wassoulou Empire
1830 CE to 1900 CE
Samori Ture (c. 1830 – June 2, 1900), also known as Samori Toure, Samory Touré, or Almamy Samore Lafiya Toure, is a Muslim cleric, and the founder and leader of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic empire that is in present-day north and southeastern Guinea and includes part of northeastern Sierra Leone, part of Mali, part of northern Côte d'Ivoire and part of southern Burkina Faso.
Samori Ture is a deeply religious Muslim of the Maliki jurisprudence of Sunni Islam.
Ture resists French colonial rule in West Africa from 1882 until his capture in 1898.
Samori Ture is the great-grandfather of Guinea's first president, Ahmed Sékou Touré.
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French military contingents in West Africa are sent inland to establish new posts throughout the early years of French rule.
The African population resists French penetration and settlement, even in areas where treaties of protection have been in force.
Among those offering greatest resistance is Samori Ture, who in the 1880s and 1890s is establishing an empire that extends over large parts of present-day Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Cote d'lvoire.
Samori's large, well-equipped army, which can manufacture and repair its own firearms, attracts strong support throughout the region.
The French respond to Samori's expansion of regional control with military pressure.
French campaigns against Samori, which are met with fierce resistance, intensify in the mid- 1890s until he is captured in 1898.
A series of British, French and German military officer make attempts to claim parts of what is today Burkina Faso starting in the early 1890s.
At times these colonialists and their armies fight the local peoples; at times they forge alliances with them and make treaties.
The colonialist officers and their home governments also make treaties among themselves.
Through a complex series of events what is today Burkina Faso eventually becomes a French protectorate in 1896.
The eastern and western regions, where a standoff against the forces of the powerful ruler Samori Ture complicates the situation, come under French occupation in 1897.
By 1898, the majority of the territory corresponding to Burkina Faso is nominally conquered.
The Franco-British Convention of June 14, 1898, creates the country's modern borders.
In the French territory, a war of conquest against local communities and political powers continues for about the next five years.
French domination is assured by the defeat in 1898 of the armies of Samori Touré, Mansa (or Emperor) of the Ouassoulou state and leader of Malinké descent, which gives France control of what today is Guinea and adjacent areas.