Place:Falaba, Northern, Sierra Leone

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Falaba is a rural town in Solima chiefdom, Falaba District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. The population of Falaba is largely from the Yalunka, Kuranko and couple of Mandingo ethnic groups. Falaba is virtually all Muslim and it is known for its deeply religious Muslim population . Farming is the major economic activity in Falaba.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

As the capital of Solimana, Falaba was a fortress town on the rich slave-trading routes to the western coast of Africa. It was visited in 1822 by Alexander Gordon Laing, and in 1869 by William Winwood Reade; and was thus deemed nominally British.

In 1884, Mandinka conqueror Samori joined the king of Kaliere in attacking Solimana, then under the rule of Manga Sewa. After Samori's general N'fa Ali destroyed a number of surrounding villages, the Mandingo forces began a five-month siege of Falaba itself. With the city's residents starved nearly to death, Manga Sewa could not bear the starvation of his people and for the mere fact that he was being compromised by their neighbouring villages he vow never to surrender himself to Samouri's army, so he decided to go into the gun powder house to commit suicide by lighting it up, his wife said she would not sleep with any other man beside her husband (Manga Sewa), his Yaeliba (a person who sing and praises Kings and great people) also decided to join him in the gun powder thus saying he would not praise any other King, so they both entered the Falaba gunpowder magazine and lit a torch, simultaneously killing himself and breaching Falaba's walls. Falaba was then briefly assimilated into Samori's Wassoulou Empire; following Samori's own fall several years later, it was reclaimed by the British.

The Anglo-French treaty of 1895 left the town without an affluent hinterland, and the colonial administrative post was moved from Falaba to Kabala. As a result, Falaba declined after 1895. Falaba was situated approximately thirty miles north-east of Kabala.

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