Thiès

Thiès ([tjɛs]; Arabic: ثيس, romanized: Ṯyass; Noon: Chess) is the third largest city in Senegal with a population officially estimated at 320,000 in 2005. It lies 72 km (45 mi) east of Dakar on the N2 road and at the junction of railway lines to Dakar, Bamako and St-Louis. It is the capital of Thiès Region and is a major industrial city. Before colonization, the Thiès Plateau was a wooded frontier between the kingdoms of Cayor and Baol inhabited by the Serer-Noon, an ethnic sub-group of the Serer people. The Serer-Noon still inhabit the Thiès-Nones neighborhood of the south-west city today. They speak the Noon language, one of the Cangin languages. The village of Dianxene, belonging to the kingdom of Cayor, was founded on the strategically important plateau in the 17th century. In 1860, it had only 75 inhabitants. The French founded a military post there in 1864, becoming an important force in the city's development ever since. The Spiritans founded a mission there in the late 19th century to help protect the local population from raids out of Mauretania seeking to capture slaves. In 1885, the Dakar–Saint-Louis railway, the first rail line in French West Africa, opened with a stop in Thiès.