Songhai Empire

Origins at Gao

The Songhai (also spelled Songhay) were a people of the middle Niger whose main town was Gao, in present-day Mali. A Songhai dynasty already held Gao when the forces of Mansa Musa's Mali Empire took the city in 1325. BlackPast dates the Songhai's founding of Gao to around 800 CE and records that Gao threw off Malian rule in the later 14th century, after which Songhai began expanding at Mali's expense.

Sonni Ali

The rise to empire is usually dated to 1464, when Sonni Ali (Sonni 'Ali Ber) came to power. A forceful military commander, he took much of the territory of the declining Mali Empire, including Timbuktu around 1468 and the trading city of Jenne. These conquests gave Songhai control of key stretches of the trans-Saharan trade in gold and salt. He died in 1492.

The Askia dynasty

After Sonni Ali's death, Muslim factions turned against his son and successor and installed Muhammad Ture as ruler. Taking the title Askia, he founded the Askia dynasty, which the Metropolitan Museum dates to 1492–1592. According to BlackPast, he made few new conquests but centralised the administration, appointing provincial governors and officials, and supported Islamic law and scholarship. After a pilgrimage to Mecca he made Islam the empire's official religion, and in 1495 he built the tomb complex at Gao that bears his name. Its 17-metre pyramidal mudbrick tomb is today a UNESCO World Heritage site and an important example of Sahelian earthen architecture.

Under the Askias, Songhai reached its height. Timbuktu and Jenne flourished as centres of Islamic learning and trade. Visiting in the early 16th century, the traveller Leo Africanus reported the wealth in gold held by Timbuktu's governor. Most of the empire's people, however, were farmers rather than traders. Askia Muhammad's reign ended in 1528, and later strong rulers such as Askia Dawud were followed by disputes over the succession that weakened the state.

Tondibi and after

In 1590 the Moroccan sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, seeking control of West African gold, demanded submission from Askia Ishaq II. A Moroccan force of about 4,000 men crossed the Sahara and met a much larger Songhai army at Tondibi, near Gao, in March 1591. History Today notes that the Moroccans' arquebuses and cannon were decisive: the noise of gunfire turned the cattle the Songhai had planned to stampede against the Moroccan line back into their own ranks. The Songhai army broke and Ishaq fled.

Morocco never fully controlled the region and faced constant revolts. Surviving members of the Songhai elite left Gao, set up a new capital and kept the Askia line and its traditions alive in a smaller state for generations. The fall of Songhai ended the era of the great Sahelian empires that had included Ghana and Mali.