Hamdullahi

Hamdullahi, also written Hamdallahi or Hamdallaye from the Arabic for praise to God, is a town site in the Mopti Region of Mali, about 21 km southeast of the city of Mopti. It was founded around 1820 by Seku Amadu and served as the capital of the nineteenth-century Fula empire of Massina. The town fell on 16 March 1862 to the Toucouleur conqueror El Hadj Umar Tall after three major battles, and Umar Tall then destroyed the city, which ended the Massina Empire in practice. The settlement lay east of the Bani River and west of the Bandiagara plateau, was enclosed by sun-dried mudbrick walls and covered 244 hectares. The mosque and the palace of Seku Amadu stood side by side at its centre, and the mosque has been rebuilt and reopened in 2004. One scholarly estimate puts its nineteenth-century population at around 11,200, mostly Fula.