Songhai Empire Rises

The rise of the Songhai Empire in the later fifteenth century reshaped the political map of West Africa. Under its ruler Sunni Ali, Songhai expanded from a regional kingdom on the middle Niger River into the largest state the region had yet seen, taking over the trade routes and great towns that had once made the Mali Empire wealthy. The conquest of Timbuktu, traditionally dated to the 1460s (the timeline places it at 1464, though sources give dates for Sunni Ali's campaigns only approximately), is often treated as the symbolic moment when power passed from Mali to Songhai.

Songhai had older roots. Its rulers were centered on Gao, a trading city on the Niger, and the kingdom had been a tributary of Mali during the fourteenth century. As Mali weakened through succession disputes, provincial independence, and pressure from groups such as the Tuareg and the Mossi, Songhai's leaders gained autonomy and began to look outward. Sunni Ali, who took power around 1464 according to the traditional chronology, inherited a capable state and an opportunity.

Sunni Ali is remembered mainly as a military commander. He built a mobile army that combined cavalry with a fleet of river boats, which let him project power along the Niger. He campaigned against the Mossi to the south, the Dogon and Fulani peoples, and Tuareg groups to the north. Timbuktu, a center of commerce and Islamic scholarship, came under his control after the Tuareg, who had held it, withdrew or were driven out. Later he took Djenné, reportedly after a long siege. Our best sources, the seventeenth-century chronicles written in Timbuktu, were composed by scholars who disliked him, so their portrait of him as a harsh ruler who mistreated the city's clerics may be biased. Oral traditions in Songhai remember him more favorably, as a powerful and even semi-magical leader.

Under Sunni Ali the empire came to control the Niger bend and the commerce in gold, salt, and other goods that crossed the Sahara. He appears to have governed through a mix of military provincial administration and established local religious practice, balancing Muslim elites with traditional beliefs.

After his death around 1492, his son was quickly overthrown by Askia Muhammad, who founded the Askia dynasty. Askia Muhammad strengthened the bureaucracy, promoted Islamic learning, and made a celebrated pilgrimage to Mecca. Under him and his successors, Songhai reached its height in the early sixteenth century. The empire fell in 1591 when a Moroccan army equipped with firearms defeated it at the Battle of Tondibi. Even so, Songhai left a lasting legacy as a model of large-scale state organization in West Africa, and the scholarly traditions of Timbuktu continued to be admired long after its political power faded.