Ahmadu Tall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ahmadu Tall was a Toucouleur imam of Ségou in the nineteenth century. Ahmadu's father, El Hadj Umar Tall, conquered Ségou (then the heart of the Bambara Empire) on March 10, 1861. Not long after, he began his conquest of the Fula empire of Massina, leaving Ahmadu as the imam of Ségou.

After Umar Tall's 1864 death, his nephew Tidiani Tall succeeded him as head of the Toucouleur Empire. Ahmadu continued to act as imam, suppressing the rebellions of several neighboring cities but quarrelling increasingly with his brothers. The French colonial army invaded the empire in the 1880s and 1890s, taking Ségou in 1892 and forcing Ahmadu to flee to Sokoto in present-day Nigeria.