Maninian

History

The French explorer René Caillié stopped at Minignan in 1827 on his journey from Boké, in present-day Guinea, to Timbuktu in Mali. He was travelling in a caravan transporting kola nuts to Djenné. He described the village in his book Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo. We halted towards two o'clock at Manegnan [Minignan], a village inhabited by Bambaras; it contains about eight or nine hundred inhabitants; the natives call this part of the country Foulou, and like the Wassoulos they speak the Mandingo language; I did not perceive that they had any particular dialect. They are idolaters, or rather, they are without any religion; their food and clothes are like those of the inhabitants of Wassoulo; and they are equally dirty. In 2014, the population of the sub-prefecture of Minignan was 14,521.