Nioro du Sahel

Nioro du Sahel, often called simply Nioro, is a town and urban commune in the Nioro Region of western Mali, 241 kilometres from Kayes and 443 kilometres by road northwest of Bamako. The commune had 109,565 residents in 2023, and the town has an airstrip. It was founded around 1240 by a Diawambé slave named Beydari Tamboura and was made the capital of the Bambara kingdom of Kaarta by king Bodian Moriba, becoming an important trading centre between Upper Senegal and the Sudan. In 1855 the Toucouleur conqueror El Hadj Umar Tall seized it and made it his capital, building a great mosque in 1856. The French took the town in January 1891, and from 1910 it became the centre of Hamallism, a Sufi movement founded by Sheikh Hamallah that was violently repressed by the colonial authorities. During the independence struggle Nioro was a political stronghold of the Sudanese Union, African Democratic Rally.