Samori Ture

Samori Ture (c. 1828 – June 2, 1900), also known as Samori Toure, Samory Touré, or Almamy Samore Lafiya Toure, was a Malinke Muslim cleric, military strategist, and founder of an empire that stretched across present-day north and eastern Guinea, north-eastern Sierra Leone, southern Mali, northern Côte d'Ivoire and part of southern Burkina Faso. A deeply religious Muslim of the Maliki school of religious jurisprudence of Sunni Islam, he organized his empire and justified its expansion with Islamic principles. Ture resisted French colonial rule in West Africa from 1882 until his capture in 1898.