Senegal
Capital: Dakar · West Africa
Land of teranga (hospitality), the Jolof Empire, Sufi brotherhoods of Touba, and sabar drumming — with Gorée Island as a solemn Atlantic memorial.
Ethnic communities
- WolofJolof Empire heirs; urban culture, sabar drums, wrestling (làmb)
- SererAncient religious traditions (Roog), Sine-Saloum kingdoms
- Halpulaar (Toucouleur)Futa Toro Islamic state on the Senegal River
- Jola (Diola)Casamance rice civilizations and sacred groves
More communities of Senegal
- Mandinka — Kaabu's kora country in the south
- Soninke — Upper-river merchant-migrant towns
- Fulbe herders — Ferlo's cattle nomads
- Lebou — Cap-Vert fishers with ndëpp healing rites
- Bassari — Initiation-mask hill farmers (UNESCO landscape)
- Bedik — Cliff-village keepers of masked seasons
- Coniagui — Tenda kin of the southeastern hills
- Balanta & Manjak — Casamance rice and palm communities
- Papel — Border villages of Bissau kin
- Moorish (Naar) traders — Shopkeepers from the northern bank
- Laobe — Woodworker caste of spoons, mortars and charm
- Jakhanke — Peaceful clerical towns of the east
Languages
Major languages: Wolof, Pulaar, Serer, Diola, Mandinka, French
Language families: Niger-Congo (Atlantic, Mande)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Jolof Empire
- • Kingdoms of Sine and Saloum
- • Futa Toro
- • Kingdom of Cayor
Heritage sites
- • Island of Gorée
- • Saint-Louis
- • Senegambian stone circles
- • Bassari Country
Cultural highlights
Deep-dive community profiles
Bambara (Bamana)
Mali's largest people — farmers of the upper Niger whose Segou kingdom, chi wara antelope crests and the six graded komo initiation societies made Bamanankan the nation's lingua franca and their art a canon of world sculpture.
Open deep profile →Fulani (Fulbe)
The great pastoral nation of the Sahel — some 40 million people scattered from Senegal to Sudan, keepers of the pulaaku ethical code, founders of Islamic reform states, and among them the Wodaabe, whose Gerewol beauty festival is world-famous.
Open deep profile →Jola (Diola)
The rice-farming people of the Casamance and Lower Gambia — decentralised and fiercely independent, keepers of the awasena religion of the shrine-spirits (boekin), the great king-priest of Oussouye, and the wrestling and mask traditions of the estuary forests.
Open deep profile →Mandinka
The westernmost great branch of the Mandé world — heirs of the Mali Empire whose griots, kora harpists and farming villages carried Sunjata's legacy to the Atlantic, from the Gambia River to the Guinea highlands.
Open deep profile →Serer
Guardians of Senegal's oldest religious tradition — the people of Sine and Saloum whose pangool ancestor-saints, sacred baobabs, wrestling arenas and poet-presidents (Senghor was Serer) kept an unbroken covenant with land and sea.
Open deep profile →Soninke
Founders of Wagadu — the Ghana Empire, West Africa's first great state — whose gold-road merchants, the Wangara, seeded trade diasporas from the Sahara to the forest, and whose epic of the serpent Bida still explains the empire's fall.
Open deep profile →Wolof
Senegal's leading nation and the culture of teranga (hospitality) — heirs of the Jolof Empire, marshals of sabar drumming and làmb wrestling, whose Sufi brotherhoods and mbalax rhythms define the modern Senegambian world.
Open deep profile →