Songhai: The Land of Royalty
Songhai, West African Empire, centered on the largest bend of the Niger River, that reached its zenith in the 15th and 16th centuries.
The Songhai, a fishing and trading people who originated in the Dendi region of northwestern Nigeria, gradually extended their domination upstream in the 8th century AD and by 800 had established themselves at Gao, which soon became a flourishing market town. Having come into contact with Muslims from the north, the Songhai accepted Islam, at least nominally, shortly after 1000. For some centuries they dominated the petty adjacent states while being in turn overshadowed by the powerful Mali Empire to the west.
In the late 13th century, power in Songhai was consolidated in the Sunni dynasty, which gradually gained independence from Mali and thereafter began to encroach upon the weakening Mali power. Songhai expansion was most aggressively advanced by Sunni Ali, who incorporated the eastern part of Mali into his empire, subjugating Dj�nn� in 1471. He was followed by Muhammad, of the Askia dynasty, who further extended Songhai's influence and made Tombouctou again a thriving cultural center. After his reign, however, dynastic rivalry perilously weakened the empire, while revolts and raids from neighboring states further tested its endurance. An assault by Moroccan forces equipped with firearms in 1591 was the final blow, from which the Songhai state never recovered.
Controversial Origins (ca. 1000-1450)
Early Songhay provides us with a striking example of the complexities involved in trying to interpret pre-modern West African sources correctly. Written sources were seldom produced soon after the events, which they purport to record, occurred. Typically in West Africa (and in many ancient and medieval world cultures, for that matter), several centuries of oral transmission might pass before descriptions found their way onto the written page. Songhay is no exception in this regard. Only the following can be derived with certainty from the sources dealing with Songhay: that the Songhay people were not indigenous to the eastern Niger bend, but arrived there from an original home base to the south or the east; that would be their most important city; that they valued kingship as a political structure; and that in time they were influenced by the coming of Islam to the western Sudan.
Sunni Ali (r. 1464-1492)
Demonized as an enemy of the faith by the Muslim narrative sources, yet lionized as a warrior hero in the oral tradition, Sunni Ali, who reigned from 1464 to 1492, is one of the most controversial figures of the African Middle Ages. A scion of the or line of Songhay rulers who had risen to power after the decline of Mali in the fifteenth century, Sunni Ali was responsible for converting Songhay from a restless state tied to the eastern Niger into the largest empire ever known in the western Sudan. Relying on a swift and mobile cavalry force as well as on naval control of the Niger River, Sunni Ali had conquered the agriculturally rich central Niger or including the wealthy and scholarly cities of Timbuktu and Jenne, by the 1470s. He also undertook expeditions against the Mossi and other rival kingdoms to the south.
Nor was Sunni Ali simply a successful warrior. He was well aware that a vast empire could not be held together by military conquests alone, but need an effective and efficient administrative structure as well. Indeed, the organization of Songhay government, which was developed to a great degree under Sunni Ali, differed substantially from previous Sudanic patterns of empire. These had been based more on alliances and relationships with tributary states than on the high degree of centralization characteristic of Songhay.
Muhammad Tur� (r. 1493-1528)
Paradoxically, the very apparatus most crucial for the dramatic military success of Sunni Ali--the army--was to play a key role in the downfall of the Sunni or Shi rulers of Songhay. Years of victorious campaigning, while taking a severe toll on the peoples and resources of the central Niger, had led to the development of a well-trained Songhay fighting force in which men of even modest social rank could rise to the top on the basis of talent and accomplishment. One such "new man" was a charismatic leader of both Songhay and Soninke descent and governor of one of Sunni Ali's provinces to the west, a region which had suffered much from the Shi ruler's military expeditions. Not only did Muhammad Tur� have the backing of a considerable part of the army, but as a pious Muslim the clerical urban elite of Timbuktu and other cities also favored him.
Songhay under the askiyas (1493-1591)
During the sixteenth century, Songhay developed perhaps the most complex and centralized constitutional structure ever known to the medieval Sudan. Governing a vast empire of half a million square miles demanded competent and loyal administrators who could fulfill their duties on behalf of the central government in GAO without the benefit of modern means of communication. That the Songhay askiyas were able to build a professional bureaucracy, which functioned solidly for almost a century (from the accession of Muhammad Tur� in 1493 to the Moroccan conquest of 1591) is a testament to their organizational skills and considerable personal power. Indeed, their efforts surpass those of the Frankish king Charlemagne, whose attempts to develop a complex administrative system seven centuries earlier in medieval Europe met with no lasting success.
Moroccan Hegemony? (1591-ca. 1650)
Despite its impressive administrative structure and continued expansion under Muhammad Tur� and his successor askiyas, Songhay was bound to become caught up in sea changes in world history at the dawn of the modern era. In the early sixteenth century, the vast empire of the Turks had established a strong presence in central and eastern North Africa, a presence certainly felt south of the Sahara as well. But even earlier, in the fifteenth century, the Muslim dynasties ruling Morocco in the northwest had begun to feel the effects of both internal rivalries and external pressures--the latter from European powers expanding into the Mediterranean and around the Atlantic coastline of western Africa. This period witnessed the dramatic rise of a fervently Muslim kin group from southern Morocco, the who waged a successful holy war against the reigning dynasty. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Sa'dians controlled all of Morocco. This independent Islamic state was flanked by the Christian kingdoms of Iberia to the northwest (Spain and Portugal), the immense Muslim Empire of the Ottomans to the east, and the Sudanic Empire of Songhay to the south. Sa'dian Morocco was faced by powerful neighbors on every side.