59

The Kings of Songhay

? third century to 1000/? ninth century to 1592

The Savannah zone of Mali along the Niger bend and to its west

1. The Zas or Zuwas of Gao

2. The Sis or Sonnis

3. The Askiyas

The Songhay (a name of unknown origin) are a group of peoples of mixed origins living along the shores of the northern part of the Niger bend, where a town, possibly on the right bank of the river, and a principality of Gao or Kawkaw are mentioned in Arabic historical sources of the ninth century. Al-Sa‘dī relates a tradition that it was the fifteenth Za, Kosoy, who in the eleventh century became the first convert to Islam, being called Muslim Dam ‘the voluntary Muslim’. After c. 674/c. 1275 there came a new line of the Sis or Sonnis, begun by ‘Alī Golom, who freed Gao from the domination of Mali (see above, no. 58). However, when Ibn Baṭṭūṭa was in Kawkaw in 754/1353, he implied that it came within the political sphere of Mali at that time; it seems from his account that in Kawkaw, as elsewhere it was the ruling classes and the merchants who were Muslim, while the mass of people were still animists.

At the end of the fourteenth century, Songhay became completely independent of Mali, and a powerful empire, with both military and naval forces, was built up by Sonni ‘Alī the Great, penultimate ruler of the Si line and the real founder of the Songhay empire. Shortly after Sonni ‘Alī’s death, his commander Muḥammad Ture, of Soninke origin, seized the throne and founded a new dynasty of his own, that of the Askiyas. Under him, Islam became the imperial cult, and Timbuktu developed as a centre of Islamic learning. Like the rulers of Mali, Muḥammad Ture made the Pilgrimage to Mecca in 901–2/1496–7, and there received from the Sharīf ‘Abbās investiture as ruler of Takrūr (stricto sensu, a region on the Senegal River, but extensively used also in mediaeval Islamic usage for the western Sudan, bilād al-Takrūr, in general). He extended Songhay power westwards to Senegal and the old lands of Ghana, and in the east raided Hausaland, and set up a flexible, decentralised provincial administration for his empire. His successors proved quarrelsome and less capable. After the reign of his son Dāwūd, the kingdom fell victim to the disciplined army, using its firearms to good effect, sent against Gao by the Sa‘did sultan of Morocco Aḥmad al-Manṣūr al-Dhahabī (see above, no. 20), covetous of the famed wealth of the Sudan (999/1591). The three main towns of Gao, Timbuktu and Jenne fell to the invaders. The middle Niger region fell into political fragmentation and disorder. The Moroccan pashas or governors of Timbuktu ruled over only a limited area, and after c. 1070/c. 1660 direct Moroccan authority there seems to have lapsed.

EI² ‘Songhay’ (J. O. Hunwick).

J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 83–103.

Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali, 84–93.