History of Sierra Leone called 'Captured negroes', 'Recaptives' or 'Liberated Africans'. In 1808, the British Crown Colony of Sierra Leone was founded, with Freetown serving as the capital of British West Africa. The city's population expanded rapidly with freed slaves, who established suburbs on the Freetown Peninsula. They were joined by West Indian and African soldiers who settled in Sierra Leone after fighting for Britain in the Napoleonic Wars. In the early 1800s, Sierra Leone was a small colony extending a few kilometres (a few miles) up the peninsula from Freetown. The bulk of the territory that makes up present-day Sierra Leone was still
Sierra Leone five hundred Ahmaddiyya Mosque across Sierra Leone. Shia Muslims form a very small percentage, at less than half of one percent of Sierra Leone's Muslim population. Most of Sierra Leonean Muslims of the Sunni and Ahmadiyya sect regularly pray together in the same Mosque. The Maliki school is by far the most dominant Islamic school of jurisprudence across Sierra Leone and is based within Sunni Islam, though many Ahmadiyya Muslims in Sierra Leone also follow the Maliki Jurisprudence. The Sierra Leone Islamic Supreme Council, is the highest Islamic religious organization in Sierra Leone and is made up of the country's