The 'Wolof (aka Jolof or Djolof') Kingdom was a West African state that was born out of the Wolof empire’s disintegration after the battle of Danki.The Jolof ( aka Wolof) Empire was a state on the coast of West Africa, located between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, which thrived from the mid-14th to mid-16th century CE “Early Wolof States - Les Anciens Royaumes Wolof (Sénégal). Volume 1: Le Grand Jolof (XIIIe–XVIe Stècle). Par Jean Boulégue. Blois: Editions Façades (diffusion Karthala, Paris)”.
The 'Wolof (aka Jolof or Djolof') Kingdom was a West African state that was born out of the Wolof empire’s disintegration after the battle of Danki.The Jolof ( aka Wolof) Empire was a state on the coast of West Africa, located between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, which thrived from the mid-14th to mid-16th century CE “Early Wolof States - Les Anciens Royaumes Wolof (Sénégal). Volume 1: Le Grand Jolof (XIIIe–XVIe Stècle). Par Jean Boulégue. Blois: Editions Façades (diffusion Karthala, Paris)”. The empire prospered on trade thanks to the two rivers providing access to the resources of the African interior and coastal traffic, commerce which included gold, hides,and ivory, which was often carried out with European merchants, notably the Portuguese and then the French. Following the break-up of the Wolof Empire in the 16th century CE, a smaller state persisted, the Wolof/Jolof Kingdom, into the 19th century CE. The Wolof language is still widely spoken today in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania. Early History:The Wolof as a people inhabited, from the 1st millennium BCE, the area between the Senegal River in the north and the Gambia River in the south. This West African region is often called Senegambia and covers what is today Senegal, Gambia, and southern Mauritania. Language and pottery both suggest that the ancestors of the Wolof had originally migrated here from central or eastern Africa. They fished, grew wet rice, and herded cattle, sheep, and goats (and later, pigs). They used iron for tools, pottery, and jewellery. The people of this area of West Africa also set up megalithic monuments and burial markers. Circles were formed some 8 metres (26 ft.) in diameter using stones up to 4 metres in height. The Wolof eventually became the most powerful tribe south of the Senegal River. This territory had once been under the nominal control of the Mali Empire (1240-1465 CE) after a successful campaign of expansion by Tiramaghan, a general of Sundiata Keita (r. 1230-1255 CE), the Mali king. The relationship between the two states is unclear, but the Wolof seem to have at least acknowledged the Mali kings as the main West African power. Wolof’s independence can be seen in the succession of their first king or burba, the semi-legendary Ndiadiane N’diaye, traditionally placed in the 13th century CE but more likely to have been in the second half of the 14th century CE. In any case, civil wars, attacks from tribes such as the Mossi people and the shift of lucrative trade routes, meant that the Mali kings slowly lost their grip on the outer regions of their empire. Around 1468 CE, King Sunni Ali (r. 1464-1492 CE) of the Songhai Empire (c. 1460 - c. 1591 CE) then conquered the ailing Mali Empire. The Songhai were only present south of the Gambia River, and this permitted the Wolof in the north to exploit one of the few vacant areas the Songhai Empire did not control in West Africa (either through direct occupation or the enforcement of tribute). By the end of the 15th century CE, the Wolof Empire consisted of the three Wolof-speaking kingdoms of Cayor (Kajoor), Walo (Waalo) and Baol (Bawol), and states populated by speakers of Serer such as Sine and Salum. Eventually, the Wolof kings expanded into the Malinke territory north of the Gambia River which included the states of Nyumi, Badibu, Nyani, and Wuli.Portuguese contact at least gives us some information on the Wolof state. We know that the king was elected by a council of elders from candidates who belonged to a certain ancestry, most likely the actual founder of the Wolof state. Some members of this council were rulers of the individual states within the Wolof confederacy. Wolof society was hierarchical with several distinct classes. The royal family was at the top, then non-royal nobles (often the children of secondary wives and concubines of royalty), and free men. The latter category was further divided into castes depending on a man’s occupation such as blacksmiths, jewellers, tailors, griots (epic storytellers), and musicians. At the bottom of society were slaves taken during wars and raids in neighbouring territories, and who were themselves divided into strata with skilled slaves at the top and unskilled agricultural labourers at the bottom. There was also a class of warriors called "ceddo", their role was to protect the empire/kingdom.The religion of the elite, at least nominally, was Islam due to its spread by Berber traders, clerics and missionaries. In contrast, most of the ordinary population remained close to their traditional animist beliefs. North African states and their middlemen the Saharan Berbers that the latter’s marabout or religious leader, Nasir al-Din (r. 1644-1674 CE) launched a holy war in 1673 CE “ As the UNESCO General History of Africa Vol. V summarises” : “ The proclamation of war was motivated by both economic and religious considerations, to reconquer the trade in grain and slaves and to convert the peoples and purify the practice of Islam…From being the religion of a minority caste of merchants and courtiers in the royal courts, it was becoming a popular resistance movement against the arbitrary power of the ruling autocracies and against the noxious effects of the Atlantic trade. (141)". Consequently, with the support of the people and those already converted to Islam, the war resulted in the sweeping away of the ruling elite in many of the successor kingdoms of the Wolof Empire. The new regimes became Muslim theocracies but they did not last long. With the death of Nasir al-Din in 1674 CE, numerous defeats, and the French intervening in support of the kingdoms, the Berbers were pushed back and the holy war fizzled out. The successor kingdoms, far from taking this as a timely reminder of their weakness as small competing states, continued to bicker and fight amongst themselves. Popular movements rallied around the idea to spread Islam, and the kingdoms, beset by other problems such as a series of famines, disintegrated as political entities by the beginning of the 18th century CE. The Wolof people were still actively involved in the coastal trading in the mid-18th century CE but the region became increasingly dominated by the French from the early 19th century CE as they and other European powers now took direct control through military conquest of the parts of Africa that interested them. The Wolof language, however, far outlasted the empire or kingdom and is today the official language in Senegal (along with French) and is widely spoken in several other West African states “Searing, J.F. "Aristocrats, Slaves, and Peasants: Power and Dependency in the Wolof States, 1700-1850." The International Journal of African Historical Studies".

Clare Crawley