Samori Toure — The Leader Who Resisted the French Empire

Samori Toure (born 1835 in Sankoro, present-day Guinea) was the founder of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic state that stretched across Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. A devout Muslim of the Maliki school, he organized his empire on Islamic principles, banned alcohol and pagan customs, and applied Islamic law.

For thirteen years he resisted French colonization of the Niger region, inflicting heavy losses despite his inferior weapons. French officers nicknamed him "the Napoleon of the Sudan". He armed and even manufactured weapons locally, kept a personal guard of 500 men, and defeated several French campaigns before France resorted to alliances with local rivals.

Betrayed and captured in 1898, he was exiled to Gabon, where he died in 1900. His grandson Ahmed Sékou Touré later became the first president of independent Guinea in 1958.