The Senegal River ( or "Senegal" - compound of the Serer term "Seen" or "Sene" or "Sen" (from Roog Seen, Supreme Deity in Serer religion) and "O Gal" (meaning "body of water")); , , , ) is a river in West Africa; much of its length marks part of the border between Senegal and Mauritania. It has a drainage basin of , a mean flow of , and an annual discharge of . Important tributaries are the Falémé River, Karakoro River, and the Gorgol River. The river divides into two branches once it passes Kaédi. The left branch, called the Doué, runs parallel to the main river to the north. After the two branches rejoin a few kilometers downstream of Podor.
In 1972, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal founded the Organisation pour la mise en valeur du fleuve Sénégal (OMVS) to manage the river basin. Guinea joined in 2005. , only very limited use was made of the river for the transportation of goods and passengers. The OMVS have looked at the feasibility of creating a navigable channel in width between the small town of Ambidédi in Mali, and Saint-Louis, a distance of . It would give landlocked Mali a direct route to the Atlantic Ocean.
The aquatic fauna in the Senegal River basin is closely associated with that of the Gambia River basin, and the two are usually combined under a single ecoregion known as the Senegal-Gambia Catchments. Only three species of frogs, and one fish are endemic to this ecoregion.
The river has two large dams along its course. The Manantali Dam in Mali, and the Maka-Diama Dam downstream on the Mauritania-Senegal border. In between is the Félou Hydroelectric Plant, built in 1927, but replaced in 2014. The construction of the Gouina Hydroelectric Plant upstream of Felou at Gouina Falls began in 2013.
Geography
The Senegal's headwaters are the Semefé (Bakoye), and Bafing rivers which both originate in Guinea; they form a small part of the Guinea–Mali border before coming together at Bafoulabé in Mali. From there, the Senegal river flows west and then north through Talari Gorges near Galougo and over the Gouina Falls, then flows more gently past Kayes, where it receives the Kolimbiné. After flowing together with the Karakoro, it prolongs the former's course along the Mali–Mauritania border for some tens of kilometers till Bakel where it flows together with the Falémé River, which also has its source in Guinea, subsequently runs along a small part of the Guinea-Mali frontier to then trace most of the Senegal-Mali border up to Bakel. The Senegal further flows through semi-arid land in the north of Senegal, forming the border with Mauritania and into the Atlantic. In Kaedi, it accepts the Gorgol from Mauritania, flowing through Boghé it reaches Richard Toll where it is joined by the Ferlo coming from inland Senegal's Lac de Guiers. It passes through Rosso and approaching its mouth, around the Senegalese island on which the city of Saint-Louis is located, to then turn south. It is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a thin strip of sand called the Langue de Barbarie before it pours into the ocean itself.
The river has two large dams along its course, the multi-purpose Manantali Dam in Mali, and the Maka-Diama Dam downstream on the Mauritania-Senegal border, near the outlet to the sea, preventing access of salt water upstream. In between Manantali and Maka-Diama is the Félou Hydroelectric Plant which was originally completed in 1927 and uses a weir. The power station was replaced in 2014. In 2013, construction of the Gouina Hydroelectric Plant upstream of Felou at Gouina Falls began.
The Senegal River has a drainage basin of , a mean flow of , and an annual discharge of ..UNH/GRDC Composite Runoff Fields V 1.0 data for Dagana. Important tributaries are the Falémé River, Karakoro River, and the Gorgol River.
Downstream of Kaédi the river divides into two branches. The left branch called the Doué runs parallel to the main river to the north. After the two branches rejoin a few kilometres downstream of Pondor. The long strip of land between the two branches is called the Île á Morfil.
In 1972, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal founded the Organisation pour la mise en valeur du fleuve Sénégal (OMVS) to manage the river basin. Guinea joined in 2005.
At the present time, only very limited use is made of the river for the transport of goods and passengers. The OMVS have looked at the feasibility of creating a navigable channel in width between the small town of Ambidédi in Mali, and Saint-Louis, a distance of . It would give landlocked Mali a direct route to the Atlantic Ocean.
The aquatic fauna in the Senegal River basin is closely associated with that of the Gambia River basin, and the two are usually combined under a single ecoregion known as the Senegal-Gambia Catchments. Although the species richness is moderately high, only three species of frogs and one fish are endemic to this ecoregion.Freshwater Ecoregions of the World (2008). Senegal-Gambia. Accessed 2 May 2011.
History
The area was previously occupied by the Serer people, who following their religious and ethnic persecution by Islamic forces in the 11th century, resulted in the Serer exodus to the south., Quote: "Serer oral tradition recounts the group's origins in the Senegal River valley, where it was part of or closely related to, the same group as the ancestors of today's Tukulor."Galvan, Dennis Charles, The State Must Be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, p. 51Berg, Elizabeth; Wan, Ruth; and Lau, Ruth (2009). Senegal. Marshall Cavendish. , p. 63Page, Willie F., Encyclopedia of African history and culture: African kingdoms (500 to 1500), pp. 209, 676. Vol.2, Facts on File (2001), Streissguth, Thomas, "Senegal in Pictures, Visual Geography", Second Series, p. 23, Twenty-First Century Books (2009), Oliver, Roland Anthony; & Fage, J. D.,; "Journal of African history", Volume 10, p. 367. Cambridge University Press (1969)Mwakikagile, Godfrey, "Ethnic Diversity and Integration in The Gambia: The Land, The People and The Culture," (2010), p. 11,
The existence of the Senegal River was known to the early Mediterranean civilizations. It or some other river was called Bambotus by Pliny the Elder (possibly from Phoenician "behemoth" for hippopotamus)Pliny, Natural History, Lib. 5, Ch.1 (p. 380) and Nias by Claudius Ptolemy. It was visited by Hanno the Carthaginian around 450 BCE at his navigation from Carthage through the pillars of Herakles to Theon Ochema (Mount Cameroon?) in the Gulf of Guinea. There was trade from here to the Mediterranean World, until the destruction of Carthage, and its west African trade net in 146 BCE.
Arab sources In the Early Middle Ages (c. 800 CE), the Senegal River restored contact with the Mediterranean world with the establishment of the Trans-Saharan trade route between Morocco and the Ghana Empire. Arab geographers, like al-Masudi of Baghdad (957), al-Bakri of Spain (1068) and al-Idrisi of Sicily (1154), provided some of the earliest descriptions of the Senegal River.A translation of al-Bakri's 1068 account is found in Levtzion & Hopkins, (2000, Corpus: (p. 77). In French, see Monteil (1968). For an attempt to reconstruct the Senegal river's course from the accounts of al-Bakri and al-Idrisi, see Cooley (1841: p. 52). Early Arab geographers believed the upper Senegal River and the upper Niger River were connected to each other, and formed a single river flowing from east to west, which they called the "Western Nile".The term "Nile" seems to have been applied quite early to the Senegal. During the Arab conquest of North Africa in the 8th century, Ifriqiyan commanders launched several expeditionary raids from the Sous valley against the desert-dwelling nomadic Berbers of Western Sahara. There is a report from an Arab commander from the 750s who claims to have reached as far south as "the Nile" (i.e. the Senegal). See Hrbek (1992: p.308). (In fact, some of the headwaters of the Senegal River are near the Niger River in Mali and Guinea.) It was believed to be either a western branch of the Egyptian Nile River or drawn from the same source (variously conjectured to some great internal lakes of the Mountains of the Moon, or Ptolemy's Gir (Γειρ)Geographia, Book IV, Chapter 6, Section 13. or the Biblical Gihon stream).e.g. Leo Africanus, p. 124
Arab geographers Abd al-Hassan Ali ibn Omar (1230), Ibn Said al-Maghribi (1274), and Abulfeda (1331), label the Senegal as the "Nile of Ghana" (Nil Gana or Nili Ganah).See R.H. Major (1868) Life of Prince Henry p. 114
As the Senegal River reached into the heart of the gold-producing Ghana Empire and later the Mali Empire, Trans-Saharan traders gave the Senegal its famous nickname as the "River of Gold". The Trans-Saharan stories about the "River of Gold" reached the ears of Sub-Alpine European merchants that frequented the ports of Morocco and the lure proved irresistible. Arab historians report at least three separate Arab maritime expeditions - the last one organized by a group of eight mughrarin ("wanderers") of Lisbon (before 1147) - that tried to sail down the Atlantic coast, possibly in an effort find the mouth of the Senegal.See Beazley (1899: p. xliv, lxxv)
Cartographic representation
Drawing from Classical legend and Arab sources, the "River of Gold" found its way into European maps in the 14th century. In the Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300), there is a river labelled "Nilus Fluvius" drawn parallel to the coast of Africa, albeit without communication with Atlantic (it ends in a lake). It depicts some giant ants digging up gold dust from its sands, with the note "Hic grandes formice auream serican [or servant] arenas"Bevan and Phillott (1873: p. 105. ("Here great ants guard gold sands"). In the mappa mundi made by Pietro Vesconte for the c. 1320 atlas of Marino Sanuto, there is an unnamed river stemming from the African interior and opening in the Atlantic ocean. The 1351 Medici-Laurentian Atlas shows both the Egyptian Nile and the western Nile stemming from the same internal mountain range, with the note that "Ilic coligitur aureaum".See João de Andrade Corvo (1882) Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa por D. João de Castro, Lisbon. p.68n. The portolan chart of Giovanni da Carignano (1310s-20s) has the river with the label, iste fluuis exit de nilo ubi multum aurum repperitur.Winter (1962: p. 18)
In the more accurately-drawn portolan charts, starting with the 1367 chart of Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano and carried on in the 1375 Catalan Atlas, the 1413 chart of the Catalan converso Mecia de Viladestes, etc. the "River of Gold" is depicted (if only speculatively), draining into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere just south of Cape Bojador. The legend of Cape Bojador as a terrifying obstacle, the 'cape of no return' to European sailors, emerged around the same time (possibly encouraged by Trans-Saharan traders who did not want to see their land route sidestepped by sea).
The river is frequently depicted with a great river island midway, the "Island of Gold", first mentioned by al-Masudi, and famously called "Wangara" by al-Idrisi and "Palolus" in the 1367 Pizzigani brothers chart. It is conjectured that this riverine "island" is in fact just the Bambuk-Buré goldfield district, which is practically surrounded on all sides by rivers - the Senegal river to the north, the Falémé River to the west, the Bakhoy to the east and the Niger and Tinkisso to the south.Delafosse (1912: v.1,p.55), Crone (1937: p.xv), Mauny (1961: p.302), Levtzion (1973: p.155). However, McIntosh (1981) suggests an alternative identification of this riverine "island" to be the Djenné area, around the bend of the Niger.