Kaladian Coulibaly was a

West African West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, ...

ruler who founded one of the first large Bambara kingdoms, centered on

Ségou Ségou (; bm, ߛߋߓߎ, italic=no, ) is a town and an urban commune in south-central Mali that lies northeast of Bamako on the right bank of the River Niger. The town is the capital of the Ségou Cercle and the Ségou Region. With 130,690 ...

in what is now

Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mal ...

. Around 1650, Coulibaly's kingdom was one of the dominant forces in the region. Though it lacked a systematic framework and thus failed to outlast his death (c. 1680), his great-grandson

Bitòn Coulibaly Bitòn Coulibaly (1689?–1755), also known as Mamary Coulibaly, founded the Bambara Empire in what is now Mali's Ségou Region and Mopti Region. Biography Great-grandson of former Ségou king Kaladian Coulibaly, Mamary Coulibaly settl ...

would found a more stable Bambara Empire fifty years later on the same spot.

References

*Davidson, Basil. ''Africa in History''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

External links

Timeline of Western Sudan
Coulibaly, Kaladian 17th-century African people {{Mali-bio-stub