Samori Ture

Samori Ture (c. 1830–1900) was the founder of the Wassoulou Empire in West Africa and its ruler from 1878 to 1898. His state spanned parts of present-day Guinea, north-eastern Sierra Leone, southern Mali, northern Côte d'Ivoire and part of southern Burkina Faso. ^{1 2}

He began as a Dyula (Muslim Mandinka) trader, embraced Islam as a young man, then gathered an army and built a state that drew its legitimacy from Islam: in 1884 Islam was proclaimed the state religion and he took the title Almamy — high imam. He resisted French expansion for sixteen years (1882–1898) until his capture; he died in exile in Gabon in 1900. ^{1 2}

Most sources date his birth to about 1830, while the English article's short description and the Arabic article's infobox give 1828; he was born at Manyambaladugu, and Wikidata also lists Sanankoro, where his family moved in his childhood. ^{1 3 4}

He was born at Manyambaladugu (in present-day Guinea), the son of the Dyula merchant Kemo Lanfia Ture and of Sokhona Camara; the family moved to Sanankoro, where he grew up. ^{1 2}

In 1853 his mother was captured by the Cissé, and Samori offered himself in exchange for her, serving the Cissé for seven years — "seven years, seven months and seven days", as the tradition quoted in the articles has it. During that service he converted to Islam, a turning point the articles record. ^{1 2}

After his release he built his own military force from the 1860s, won the battle of Saman-saman in 1873, and in 1875 entered a theocratic alliance with the Kaba clerics of Kankan; he deepened his Islamic learning under the Mauritanian teacher Sidiki Cherif. ^{1 2}

Between the late 1860s and 1878 he subdued the Wassoulou country, the Buré gold fields and the orbits of Kankan and Norassoba, and was proclaimed Faama (ruler) in 1878. His empire was an Islamic state in the western Sudan — the country between the Niger, Senegal and the Guinea forest — governed in provinces by relatives and commanders, with Qur'anic schools in its villages. ^{1 2}

The French article dates his adoption of the title Almamy to 1873–74 and records that between 1881 and 1894 he maintained political commissars drawn from the marabouts across his provinces. The English article, following Fofana, dates the formal proclamation of Islam as state religion — and with it the Almamy title — to a council in July 1884. ^{2 1}

At the July 1884 council Islam was proclaimed the religion of the state and Samori took the title Almamy, and a campaign against animist practices began. In 1885 forced conversions and the destruction of sacred sites provoked rebellion; the populations massacred his garrisons at Siondougou and Fulala, and his commander Keme Brema suppressed the revolt brutally by 1887. ¹

The French article describes this Islamisation as an institutional programme spread over years — state mosques and schools, imams and marabout commissars — and records that his allies among Kankan's ulema, including its governor Karamoko Dayawara, backed the project. The German article describes Islam as the ideology on which the empire and its legitimacy rested. ^{2 5}

As to his own affiliation, the English article's lead calls him "a deeply religious Muslim of the Maliki school of fiqh of Sunni Islam" — the only sentence in the four language editions that names a school for him. The French article's infobox records his religion as Islam, with no school; the Arabic article repeats the English sentence in translation; and Wikidata records Islam without specification. The museum therefore records no school for him and leaves his faith unclassified in the data record, with the basis stated there. ^{1 2 3 4}

Contact with France turned to war in 1882: Samori won at Samaya on 26 February 1882, fighting continued (Woyowayanko, 1883), and the Treaty of Kenieba Koura of 28 March 1886 drew the frontier on the Niger, followed by the Treaty of Niako in February 1889. His son and heir Djaoulen-Karamo was sent to France in 1886 on a diplomatic mission. ^{1 2}

His fifteen-month siege of Sikasso, capital of the Kenedougou, failed in 1887–88. France resumed the offensive: Colonel Archinard took Kankan on 11 April 1891 and an evacuated Bissandougou, and Samori answered with manoeuvre warfare and scorched earth, shifting his base east by decision of the Frankonedou council of 9 May 1892. ^{1 2}

He destroyed the trading city of Kong on 23 May 1897 after the revolt of its Dyula merchants (following Fofana), defeated the British at Wa (Dokita) in 1897, and the French commander Braulot was killed at Bouna on 20 August 1897. When Sikasso fell to France on 1 May 1898, Samori marched west toward Liberia, and thousands of his followers starved on the way. ^{1 2}

Captain Henri Gouraud captured him at Guelemou on 29 September 1898, without a fight. He was exiled first to Kayes, then to Saint-Louis, where he attempted suicide; he was deported to Gabon on 5 February 1899 and died of pneumonia on 2 June 1900 — on Missanga Island near Ndjolé according to the English article's infobox, at Ndjolé according to the French article and Wikidata. His tomb is today at the Camayanne Mausoleum in Conakry. ^{1 2 4}

This section reports the assessments as the sources attribute them; the museum issues no verdict of its own. In French colonial writing Samori was France's last great adversary in West Africa, and colonial propaganda at times presented him as a tyrant who devastated the country, casting the French victory as a deliverance of the population from his violence. ^{2 1}

After independence he was recast as a hero and martyr of resistance: Ahmed Sékou Touré, his great-grandson and Guinea's first president, presented him as a state-builder who founded a nation, and national memory in Guinea, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire honours him as such. ^{1 2}

The historian Peterson (Journal of African History, 2008) notes, however, that communities in southern Mali remember him as a tyrant on account of his forced-conversion campaigns and their massacres, and that the post-colonial rehabilitation pushed that memory aside. The articles also record balanced military assessments: a gifted commander of guerrilla and manoeuvre warfare who held off a better-armed European power for sixteen years while building an administration, schools and a standing army. ^{1 2}

• English Wikipedia article on Samori Ture (revision 1368174597); French Wikipedia article «Samori Touré» (revision 232438102); Arabic Wikipedia article «ساموري توري» (revision 72107867); German Wikipedia article (revision 267873916); Wikidata item Q469314. There is no Urdu Wikipedia article on him.
• Conflicts recorded in the text: the birth year (c. 1830 vs 1828), the birthplace (Manyambaladugu vs Sanankoro in Wikidata), the dating of the Almamy title (1873–74 in the French article vs the July 1884 proclamation in the English article, following Fofana), and the place of death (Missanga Island vs Ndjolé).