Kingdom of Sine

The Kingdom of Sine (also: Sin or Siin in Serer-Sine language) was a pre-colonial Serer kingdom along the north bank of the Saloum River delta in modern Senegal. The inhabitants are called Siin-Siin or Sine-Sine (a Serer plural form or Serer-demonym, e.g. Bawol-Bawol and Saloum-Saloum / Saluum-Saluum, inhabitants of Baol and Saloum respectively).

According to the historian David Galvan, "The oral historical record, written accounts by early Arab and European explorers, and physical anthropological evidence suggest that the various Serer peoples migrated south from the Fuuta Tooro region (Senegal River valley) beginning around the eleventh century, when Islam first came across the Sahara." Over generations these people, possibly Pulaar speaking herders originally, migrated through Wolof areas and entered the Siin and Saluum river valleys. This lengthy period of Wolof-Serer contact has left us unsure of the origins of shared "terminology, institutions, political structures, and practices."

Professor Étienne Van de Walle gave a slightly later date, writing that "The formation of the Sereer ethnicity goes back to the thirteenth century, when a group came from the Senegal River valley in the north fleeing Islam, and near Niakhar met another group of Mandinka origin, called the Gelwar, who were coming from the southeast (Gravrand 1983). The actual Sereer ethnic group is a mixture of the two groups, and this may explain their complex bilinear kinship system".}

The actual foundation of the Kingdom of Sine is unclear, but in the late 14th century Mandinka migrants entered the area. They were led by a matrilineal clan known as the Gelwaar. Here they encountered the Serer, who had already established a system of lamanic authorities, and established a Gelwaar led state with its capital in or near a Serer lamanic estate centred at Mbissel.

Father Henry Gravrand reports an oral tradition that one Maad a Sinig Maysa Wali Jaxateh Manneh (many variations: Maysa Wali Jon; Maissa Wali Jon; etc.), fleeing with his family from Kaabu following a battle in 1335 which he calls The Battle of Troubang, was granted asylum by the Serer nobility of Sine.

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