Samori Ture

Samory Toure (c. 1828 – June 2, 1900), also known as Samori Toure, Samory Touré, or Almamy Samore Lafiya Toure, was a Mandinka Muslim cleric, military strategist, and founder of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic empire that was 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.

Toure resisted French colonial rule in West Africa from 1882 until his capture in 1898. He was the great-grandfather of Guinea's first president, Ahmed Sékou Touré.