The Kingdom of Sine (also: Sin, Siine or Siin in the Serer-Sine language) was a post-classical 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).
History
Serer Migrations
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 Futa 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."
Founding of Sine and the Jolof Empire
The actual foundation of the Kingdom of Sine is unclear, but in the 13th or 14th century Mandinka migrants entered the area from the southeast. They were led by a matrilinial clan known as the Gelwar. Near Niakhar they encountered the Serer, who had already established a system of lamanic authorities, and joined to create a Gelwaar-led state with its capital at or near a Serer lamanic estate 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.
Charles Becker notes that Gravrand had not recognised that this is actually a description of the 1867 (or 1865) Battle of Kansala although he agrees that the migration of the Guelowar can probably be explained by a war or a conflict of succession. Serer oral history says that after Maysa Wali assimilated into Serer culture and served as legal advisor to the laman council of electors, he was chosen by the lamans and people to rule.
Almost a decade later he elected the legendary Ndiadiane Ndiaye (many variations: Njaajaan Njie or N'Diadian N'Diaye) first emperor of the Jolof Empire. He was the first Senegambian king to voluntarily gave his allegiance to Ndiadiane Ndiaye and asked others to do so, thereby making Sine a vassal of the Jolof Empire. It is for this reason that scholars propose the Jolof Empire was not an empire founded by conquest but by voluntary confederacy of various states. Serer oral tradition says that Sine never paid tribute to Ndiadiane Ndiaye nor any of his descendants, that the Jolof Empire never subjugated the kingdom, and Ndiadiane Ndiaye himself received his name from the mouth of Maysa Waly. The historian Sylviane Diouf states that "Each vassal kingdom—Walo, Takrur, Kayor, Baol, Sine, Salum, Wuli, and Niani—recognized the hegemony of Jolof and paid tribute."
Middle Ages
Mbegane Ndour was the king of Sine around the turn of the 16th century (approx. 1495-1514). He defeated the Takruri marabout Moussa Eli Bana Sall, who at that time reigned over Saloum, by poisoning him with a viper. Ndour was born of the matrilineal royal clan, but out of wedlock and with a relatively unimportant father. His marriage with a princess and priestess of Baol propped up his legitimacy as well as helping him conquer Saloum.
Historian Professor Eunice A. Charles of Boston University posits that:
"About 1520 the two Sereer states to the south, Siin and Saalum, were able to throw off Jolof' s control, and the mid-sixteenth-century revolt of Kajoor marked the end of the empire. The battle of Danki [ca. 1549], vividly remembered by griots of both Jolof and Kajoor, completed the shift from political unity to a Senegambian balance of power. Bawol and Waalo followed Kajoor's example, and, although Jolof tried several times in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to reconquer Kajoor, none of its attempts was successful."