Decentralized Kong
From about 1740 until the destruction of Kong in 1898, a politically decentralized state existed with its center in the city of Kong. The alliances that held the Empire together under Seku largely dissipated and the state was held together largely through linked settlements and outposts ruled by different members of a merchant class located in Kong. Kong became a regional commercial center and a center for Islamic studies during this period.
Crucial to the organization of the Kong empire was the existence of a merchant class that directed many of the political aspects. These merchants were significant for the trade they directed but also because each merchant family established a series of key trading outposts along key routes protected by slave warriors. These war houses thus protected the trade routes for the merchants and also allowed raiding and organized warfare to occur largely directed by the merchants. Two of the most important houses were those linked to the lineage of Seku and Famaga. The chieftains linking their lineage to Seku often took the name Wattara to signify this relationship.
With these crucial routes controlled, Kong became a center of trade for both gold and kola nuts. This increased the importance of the cities and the ability for the private merchant armies to grow significantly larger.
The city became notable for a large number of Islamic clerics and scholars in the city and for regular mosque construction throughout the Empire. However, the importance to Islam did not impact the ruling aristocracy in their management of state: they derived no legitimacy from Islam, they did not implement Sharia, and were thus fundamentally different from the jihad states of West Africa. Importantly, the warrior class created in the Empire, the sonangi, were not adherents to Islam and as time grew on, largely lived in separate communities practicing animist faiths. Augustus Henry Keane wrote in 1907 that "Nor is Kong a hotbed of Moslem fanaticism, as has also been supposed; but on the contrary, a place distinguished, one might almost say, by its religious indifference, or at all events by its tolerant spirit and wise respect for all the religious views of the surrounding indigenous populations."
Ethnic relations remained largely split between the Mandé merchants and urban citizens and the Senufo agricultural population. There were few attempts to create an ethnically homogenous population by the leadership and thus these ethnic groups existed largely with one another, and other immigrant populations.
Although politically decentralized, the empire did continue to assert control over territory. In 1840, the empire took limited control over the gold trade out of Lobi country.
Read more about this topic: Kong Empire