Segou is a city on the Niger River in south-central Mali, about 235 kilometres northeast of Bamako, established in 1620 and now capital of both the Segou Cercle and Segou Region. Around 1650 Kaladian Coulibaly founded a kingdom there, later expanded by Mamary Coulibaly into the Bambara Empire by 1712; explorer Mungo Park praised the city's prosperity on his 1797 visit before it fell to the Toucouleur leader El Hadj Oumar Tall in 1861 and French forces in 1890. Its population was 130,690 at the 2009 census, making it Mali's fifth largest town, and it is known today for pottery, bogolan mud-cloth weaving and fishing.
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