Mossi
People of Burkina Faso and other parts of western Africa, mainly Mali and Togo. They speak Mooré, a
Gur language of the
Niger-Congo family. Mossi society, organized as in the former
Mossi states (
c. 1500 – 1895), is divided into royalty, nobles, commoners, and formerly slaves. The
morho naba ("big lord") occupies a court in
Ouagadougou. In the colonial era the Mossi acted as trading intermediaries between the forest states and the cities of the Niger. Today most of the nearly six million Mossi are sedentary farmers.
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