Islamic reform movements created vast multiethnic empires in the Western Sudan

Evidence

Umar’s state was one of two vast, ethnically diverse empires to emerge in the Western Sudan after r8so, in part as a response to a new spirit of Islamic reform, which swept through the savanna. The second state was founded by Samori. Umar’s successful conquests of peoples between 1852 and r863 had allowed him to build up a state extending from, but not including, the city of Medina in the west, along both banks of the Niger River as far as Timbuktu. Such important formerly independent Bambara kingdoms as Dinguiray, Kaarta, Segu, and Masina had thus been brought firmly under his control. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 118

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the West African political landscape France confronted, defining Umar’s Tukulor Empire and its expansion.