Sikasso

關於Sikasso

Sikasso is a city in the south of Mali and the capital of the Sikasso Cercle and the Sikasso Region. It is Mali's second largest city with 225,753 residents in the 2009 census. The city is a large centre and trading port, and was the capital of the Kénédougou Kingdom between 1877 and 1898.

Sikasso was a small village until 1870, when Tieba Traoré, whose mother came from Sikasso, became Faama of the Kénédougou Kingdom and moved the capital there. He established his palace on the sacred Mamelon hill (now home to a water tower) and constructed a massive tata to defend against the attacks of both the Malinke conqueror Samori Ture and the French colonial army. This made Sikasso the largest fortified city ever built in west Africa.

Sikasso withstood a 15-month siege by Ture from 1887 to 1888 before the French, allies of Kenedougou against Ture, relieved the city. Despite this, the French contrived a diplomatic crisis to attack in 1898. They began a major artillery barrage against the tata on April 15th 1898, and the city fell on May 1st amid furious house-to-house fighting. Babemba Traore, Tieba's brother who had succeeded him as faama, ordered...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.