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The Songhai Empire was a state located in the western part of the Sahel during the 15th and 16th centuries. At its peak, it was one of the largest African empires in history. The state is known by its historiographical name, derived from its largest ethnic group and ruling elite, the Songhai people. Sonni Ali established Gao as the empire's capital, although a Songhai state had existed in and around Gao since the 11th century. Other important cities in the kingdom were Timbuktu and Djenné, where urban-centred trade flourished; they were conquered in 1468 and 1475, respectively. Initially, the Songhai Empire was ruled by the Sonni dynasty (c. 1464–1493), but it was later replaced by the Askia dynasty (1493–1591).
During the second half of the 13th century, Gao and the surrounding region had grown into an important trading center and attracted the interest of the expanding Mali Empire. Mali conquered Gao near the end of the 13th century. Gao remained under Malian command until the late 14th century. As the Mali Empire started disintegrating, the Songhai reasserted control of Gao. Songhai rulers subsequently took advantage of the weakened Mali Empire to expand Songhai rule.
Under the rule of Sonni Ali, the Songhai surpassed the Malian Empire in area, wealth, and power, absorbing vast regions of the Mali Empire. His son and successor, Sonni Bāru, was overthrown by Muhammad Ture, one of his father's generals. Ture, more commonly known as Askia the Great, instituted political and economic reforms throughout the empire.
A series of plots and coups by Askia's successors forced the empire into a period of decline and instability. Askia's relatives attempted to govern the kingdom, but political chaos and several civil wars within the empire ensured the empire's continued decline, particularly during the rule of Askia Ishaq I. The empire experienced a period of stability and a string of military successes during the reign of Askia Daoud.
Askia Ishaq II, the last ruler of the Songhai Empire, ascended to power in a long dynastic struggle following the death of Daoud. In 1590, Al-Mansur took advantage of the recent civil conflict in the empire and sent an army under the command of Judar Pasha to conquer the Songhai and gain control of the trans-Saharan trade routes. The Songhai Empire collapsed after the defeat at the Battle of Tondibi in 1591.
In ancient times, somewhere between the 9th and 3rd centuries BCE, several different groups of people collectively formed the Songhai identity, centered around the developing hub of ancient Kukiya. Among the first people to settle in the region of Gao were the Sorko people, who established small settlements on the banks of the Niger River. The Sorko fashioned boats and canoes from the wood of the cailcedrat tree, fished and hunted from their ships, and provided water-borne transport for goods and people. Another group of people that moved into the area to live off of Niger's resources were the Gao people. The Gao were hunters and specialized in hunting river animals such as crocodiles and hippopotamus.
The other group known to have inhabited the area were the Do people, talented farmers who raised crops in the fertile lands bordering the river. Before the 10th century, these early settlers were subjugated by more powerful, horse-riding Songhai speakers, who established control over the area. All these groups gradually began to speak the same language, and they and their country eventually became known as the Songhai.
The earliest dynasty of kings is obscure, and most information about it comes from an ancient cemetery near a village called Saney, close to Gao. Inscriptions on a few of the tombstones in the cemetery indicate that this dynasty ruled in the late 11th and early 12th centuries and that its rulers were given the title of Malik or Malikah (Arabic for "King" and "Queen" respectively). Other tombstones mention a second dynasty whose rulers bore the title zuwa. Only myth and legend describe the origins of the zuwa. The Tarikh al-Sudan (History of Sudan), written in Arabic around 1655, provides an early history of the Songhai as handed down through oral tradition. It reports that the founder of the Za dynasty was called Za Alayaman (also spelt Dialliaman), who originally came from Yemen and settled in the town of Kukiya. What happened to the Zuwa rulers is yet to be recorded.
The Sanhaja tribes were among the early people of the Niger Bend region. These tribes rode out of the Sahara Desert and established trading settlements near the Niger. As time passed, North African traders crossed the Sahara and joined the Tuaregs in their settlements. Both groups conducted business with the people living near the river. As trade in the region increased, the Songhai chiefs took control of the profitable trade around what would later become Gao. Trade goods included gold, salt, slaves, kola nuts, leather, dates, and ivory.
By the 10th century, the Songhai chiefs had established Gao as a small kingdom, taking control of the people living along the trade routes. Around 1300, Gao had become prosperous enough to attract the Mali Empire's attention. Mali conquered the city, profited from Gao's trade, and collected taxes from its kings until about the 1430s. Conflict in the Malian homeland made it impossible to maintain control of Gao. Ibn Battuta visited Gao in 1353 when the town was still a part of the Mali Empire. He arrived by boat from Timbuktu on his return journey from visiting the capital of the empire, writing:
Then I travelled to the town of Kawkaw, which is a great town on the Nīl [Niger], one of the finest, biggest, and most fertile cities of the Sūdān. There is much rice there, milk, chickens, fish, and the cucumber, which has no like. Its people conduct their buying and selling with cowries, like the people of Mālī.
Following the death of Mansa Sulayman in 1360, disputes over who should succeed him weakened the Mali Empire. The reign of Mari Djata II left the empire in poor financial condition, but the kingdom itself passed intact to Musa II. Mari Djata, Musa's kankoro-sigui, put down a Tuareg rebellion in Takedda and attempted to quell the Songhai rebellion in Gao. While he succeeded in Takedda, he did not re-subjugate Gao. Another round of dynastic instability in the 1380s and 90s likely allowed the Songhai to formalize their independence under Sunni Muhammad Dao. In the 1460s, Sonni Sulayman Dama attacked Méma, the Mali province west of Timbuktu.
After the death of Sulayman Dama, Sonni Ali reigned from 1464 to 1492. Unlike the previous Songhai kings, Ali sought to honour the traditional religion of his people, taught to him by his mother of the Dendi people. This earned him the reputation of a tyrant by Islamic scholars.
During his campaigns for expansion, Ali conquered several territories, repelling attacks from the Mossi to the south and conquering the Dogon people to the north. He annexed Timbuktu in 1468 after the leaders of the town asked him to help overthrow the Tuaregs, who had taken the city following the decline of Mali. When he attempted to conquer the trading town of Djenné, the townspeople resisted his efforts. After a seven-year siege, he was able to starve them into surrender, incorporating the town into his empire in 1473.
The invasion of Sonni Ali and his forces negatively impacted Timbuktu. Many Muslim accounts described him as a tyrant, including the Tarikh al-fattash, written by Songhai scholar Mahmud Kati (1468-1593). According to The Cambridge History of Africa, the Islamic historian Al-Sa'di expresses this sentiment in describing his incursion on Timbuktu:
Sunni Ali entered Timbuktu, committed gross iniquity, burned and destroyed the town, and brutally tortured many people there. When Akilu heard of the coming of Sonni Ali, he brought a thousand camels to carry the fuqaha of Sankore and went with them to Walata..... The Godless tyrant slaughtered those who remained in Timbuktu and humiliated them.
Sonni Ali created a policy against the scholars of Timbuktu, especially those of the Sankore region who were associated with the Tuareg. With his control of critical trade routes and cities such as Timbuktu, Sonni Ali increased the wealth of the Songhai Empire, which at its height would surpass the wealth of Mali.
Sonni Ali was succeeded by Askia the Great. He organized the territories his predecessor conquered and extended his power to the south and the east. Under his rule, the Songhai military possessed a full-time corps of warriors. Askia is said to have cynical attitudes towards kingdoms lacking professional fighting forces. Al-Sa'di, the chronicler who wrote the Tarikh al-Sudan, compared Askiya's army to that of his predecessor:
"he distinguished between the civilian and the army unlike Sunni Ali [1464–92] when everyone was a soldier."
He opened religious schools, constructed mosques, and opened his court to scholars and poets from throughout the Muslim world. His children went to an Islamic school, and he enforced Islamic practices but did not force religion on his people. Askia completed one of the Five Pillars of Islam by taking a hajj to Mecca, bringing a large amount of gold. He donated some of it to charity and spent the rest on gifts for the people of Mecca to display his empire's wealth. Historians from Cairo said his pilgrimage consisted of "an escort of 500 cavalry and 1000 infantry, and with him he carried 300,000 pieces of gold".
Islam was so important to him that, upon his return, he established more learning centres throughout his empire and recruited Muslim scholars from Egypt and Morocco to teach at the Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu.
He was interested in astronomy, which led to increased astronomers and observatories in the capital.
Askia initiated multiple military campaigns, including declaring Jihad against the neighbouring Mossi. He did not force them to convert to Islam after subduing them. His army consisted of war canoes, a cavalry, protective armour, iron-tipped weapons, and an organized militia.
He centralized the administration of the empire and established a bureaucracy responsible for tax collection and the administration of justice. He demanded the building of canals to enhance agriculture, eventually increasing trade. He introduced a system of weights and measures and appointed an inspector for each of Songhai's major trading centres.
During his reign, Islam became more entrenched, trans-Saharan trade flourished, and the salt mines of Taghaza were brought within the empire's boundaries.
In 1528, Askia's children revolted against him, declaring his son Askia Musa king. Following Musa's overthrow in 1531, the Songhai Empire went into decline. Following the death of Emperor Askia Daoud in 1583, a war of succession weakened the Songhai Empire and split it into two feuding factions.
During this period, Moroccan armies annihilated a Portuguese invasion at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir, but were left on the verge of economic depletion and bankruptcy, as they needed to pay for the defences used to hold off the siege. This led Sultan Ahmad I al-Mansur of the Saadi dynasty in 1591 to dispatch an invasion force south under the eunuch Judar Pasha. The Moroccan invasion of Songhai was mainly to seize and revive the trans-Saharan trade in salt, gold and slaves for their developing sugar industry. During Askia's reign, the Songhai military consisted of full-time soldiers, but the king never modernized his army. On the other hand, the invading Moroccan army included thousands of arquebusiers and eight English cannons.
Judar Pasha was a Spaniard by birth but had been captured as an infant and educated at the Saadi court. After a march across the Sahara desert, Judar's forces captured, plundered, and razed the salt mines at Taghaza and moved on to Gao. When Emperor Askia Ishaq II (r. 1588–1591) met Judar at the 1591 Battle of Tondibi, Songhai forces, despite vastly superior numbers, were routed by a cattle stampede triggered by the Saadi's gunpowder weapons. Judar proceeded to sack Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné, destroying the Songhai as a regional power. Governing so vast an empire proved too much for the Saadi dynasty. They soon relinquished control of the region, letting it splinter into dozens of smaller kingdoms.
After the empire's defeat, the nobles moved south to an area known today as Songhai in current Niger, where the Sonni dynasty had already settled. They formed smaller kingdoms such as Wanzarbe, Ayerou, Gothèye, Dargol, Téra, Sikié, Kokorou, Gorouol, Karma, Namaro and further south, the Dendi which rose to prominence shortly after.
The original Songhai Empire only included the area from the region of Timbuktu to the east of Gao. Provinces were created after a military expansion under Sonni Ali and Askiya, whose territory was divided into three military zones:
Text from the Wikipedia article “Songhai Empire”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.