The MOSSI PEOPLE OF TODAY’S BURKINA FASO

The MOSSI PEOPLE OF TODAY’S BURKINA FASO

The MOSSI PEOPLE OF TODAY’S BURKINA FASO
…comprises of smaller groups like the Lobi, Gurunsis, Bobo and so on in what is modern day Burkina Faso. The elites of the Mossi are reputed to have descended from Princess Yennenga, who had arrived from what is today northern parts of Ghana. She was a horse-ridding warrior who had led in the battlefields for the Mossi people and also engendered the matrilineal society of the Mossi.
Distinct classes existed among the Mossi. The ‘Nakomse'(right to rule), the ‘Nyonyose'(The ancient ones) and the ‘Tengabisi'(the people of the earth) are the major classes in a Mossi society.
The Mossi also make up a small population of Ghana, Togo, Benin republic, Mali and Cote D’Ivoire. In the 9th century CE, the Mossi people had moved further westward to conquer the lands of the Soninke people in what is today Mauritania and part of Senegal. No warfare was involved in the process. Although the Mossi were horsemen and fierce warriors like the Songhai people that had arrived the Sahel in about 400 BCE. The admixture of the Mossi and the Soninke people had produced the elite class of what became the Ghanah empire in the 11th century CE. The “inner circle” of the Mossi people was so strong that it stood above the king on the throne and could override the king if he was in error. The Ghanah empire differed, geographical, from the modern polity of The republic of Ghana in West Africa.
This had made it impossible for external forces to negatively influence the Ghanah empire and the Empire rejected islamization, even during the rise of the fanatical group known as the Almoravids from Tekrur and around the Senegal river. One of the emperors of the Ghanah empire that had characterized the influence of the “inner circle” of this society was Tenkaminem, who would ride on a horse around the capital, twice everyday to settle issues among his people. No one, no matter how low on the hierarchy of the society, left Tenkaminem’s place untill he or she was satisfied that justice he or she was satisfied that justice have be delivered on whatever issue brought to the emperor. Tenkaminem did not last long on the throne. He died during a struggle with the Susu, under Abubakar who had began a process to ‘islamized’ the whole region together with the people of the empire. Just as the Mossi had done in the 10th century CE, the Ghanah empire under Tenkaminem had rejected islamization. What followed was continuous strife between ‘islamized’ Africans and ‘un-islamized’ Africans.
In 1593 CE, the Mossi people around Bandiagara region of Mali had made it impossible for the Moroccans (and their European mercenaries, under Judar Pasha, who wanted to build a colony in West Africa), to stay behind in West Africa, due to their incessant onslaughts against the Moroccans, after the fall of the Songhai empire.
The mossi are today part of Burkina Faso, tagged by the burkinabes as the ‘land of honest people’.