The Soninke people are a West African Mande-speaking ethnic group found in Mali, southern Mauritania, eastern Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea. They speak the Soninke language, also called the Serakhulle or Azer language, which is one of the Mande languages.
Soninke people were the founders of the ancient empire of Ghana or Wagadou c. 200–1240 CE, Subgroups of Soninke include the Jakhanke, Maraka and Wangara. When the Ghana empire was destroyed, the resulting diaspora brought Soninkes to Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinée-Conakry, modern-day Republic of Ghana, Kano in Nigeria, and Guinea-Bissau where some of this trading diaspora was called Wangara.
Diobé, ruler of Soninke colonial era town of Bakel, with his advisors (1887-1888)
Soninke warriors
A Soninke man in 1890, sketched by M. Philippe
A Soninke woman, an 1853 sketch by David Boilat
Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over 1,241,238 square kilometres (479,245 sq mi). The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east by Niger, to the northwest by Mauritania, to the south by Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, and to the west by Guinea and Senegal. The population of Mali is 21.9 million, 67% of which was estimated to be under the age of 25 in 2017. Its capital and largest city is Bamako. The country has 13 official languages, of which Bambara is the most commonly spoken.
The pages above are from Timbuktu Manuscripts written in Sudani script (a form of Arabic) from the Mali Empire showing established knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. Today there are close to a million of these manuscripts found in Timbuktu alone.
Griots of Sambala, king of Médina (Fula people, Mali), 1890
Cotton being processed in Niono into 180 kg (400 lb) bales for export to other parts of Africa and to France, c. 1950
WWI Commemorative Monument to the "Armée Noire"