Mohammed I Askia

King of the Songhai Empire (r. 1493-1528)

• Born: c. 1442
• Birthplace: Probably near Gao, Songhai Empire (now in Mali)
• Died: 1538
• Place of death: Near Gao, Songhai Empire (now in Mali)

Mohammed I Askia greatly expanded and consolidated the Songhai Empire, which dominated much of West Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His policies resulted in a rapid expansion of trade and the imposition of the stamp of Islamic civilization on the empire.

Early Life

Mohammed I Askia (moh-HAH-mehd AS-kyah) was born Mohammed Ture ibn Abi Bakr, probably of parents of the Soninke people. Although the Soninke frequently are cited as the source of the royal lineage of ancient Ghana, a large West African kingdom that flourished before 1000, most Soninke, including Mohammed’s clan, were subject in the fifteenth century to the Songhai Empire , centered at the Niger River entrepôt of Gao.

Mohammed’s family was of a military caste, providing soldiers and officers for the Songhai cavalry regiments. His childhood and education no doubt reflected that experience. He probably received systematic religious instruction in some Islamic institution as a child. In early adulthood, Mohammed became a trusted lieutenant in the service of the Songhai emperor, SonniՙAlī. Mohammed’s early years were a time of unprecedented expansion and turmoil for Songhai. Although oral dynastic history of Songhai goes back to the eighth or ninth century, prior to the fifteenth Songhai had been only a small principality.

SonniՙAlī’s leadership transformed Songhai into a regional influence. Taking advantage of the progressive disintegration of its powerful western neighbor Mali, after 1450, his forces swept westward, capturing the fabled city of Timbuktu, pushing back the Saharan nomads who menaced the river towns, and punishing recalcitrant Mossi chieftains to the south. In the process of forming an empire, however, SonniՙAlī revealed a streak of barbaric cruelty. Furthermore, many of the newly conquered areas west of Songhai proper were heavily Islamic and thought to be culturally more sophisticated than Songhai itself, and often related more to North African than sub-Saharan ethnic types. SonniՙAlī’s vicious temperament and cavalier attitude toward Islam set his subjects to plotting. His death in 1492, before consolidation of Songhai’s considerable territorial gains could be completed, prepared the way for Mohammed to emerge as a national leader.

Life’s Work

In April, 1493, Mohammed allied himself with the Muslim clerics and disaffected Muslim portions of the empire against SonniՙAlī’s son and would-be successor, whose support lay primarily in the Songhai homeland. Ethnic and religious divisions ran deep in the ranks of the large Songhai army. Mohammed avoided what otherwise might have become a bloody and prolonged civil war by staging a coup, seizing the capital, and forcing SonniՙAlī’s son into exile. He took the dynastic title of askia (askiya).

Mohammed’s first task was to obtain recognition as the legitimate ruler of Songhai. That he achieved, at least initially, by purging or deporting as many members of earlier Songhai dynastic lines as possible. His long-term strategy, however, involved cultivation of tighter alliances with Muslim intellectuals and clerics. Mohammed viewed Islam as the logical counterpoint in Songhai to the power and influence of the traditional priesthood and political leadership. He lavished attention, gifts, and titles on Muslim notables, particularly those in the newly conquered, western part of the empire. He also strove to develop the city of Timbuktu already known for its concentration of Muslim clerics and scholars into a first-rate center of learning, a cultural focus that could rival the traditional religious center of Kukia in the eastern Songhai homeland.

Mohammed must have perceived the enormous advantages of Islam in transforming Songhai from a peripheral state into a partner in what was, in the sixteenth century, the world’s most diverse and extensive civilization and commercial network. Songhai, and its predecessors Ghana and Mali, depended on the export of gold and ivory to North Africa for hard currency, and on crucial imports such as horses for cavalry. There is evidence too that, by Mohammed’s time, the presence of European trading stations on the West African coast was beginning to affect traditional commercial networks in the region.

For these reasons, doubtless also as an expression of his own piety, Mohammed in late 1496 undertook the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca. The expedition was a stupendous effort to eclipse the pomp and splendor of the pilgrimage by Mansa Mūsā some 175 years earlier. In Egypt, the titular ՙAbbāsid caliph bestowed on Mohammed the title caliph of the Blacks. In addition to donating enormous amounts of gold to the poor and needy, Mohammed endowed a hostel for future pilgrims from West Africa. Mohammed was away nearly two years, which suggests that he was firmly in control of affairs in Songhai.

Mohammed’s hajj was a boon to the fortunes of Islam in West Africa. He established visibility for the kingdom and returned determined to purify the practices of West African Muslims and bring them into line with orthodoxy. The hajj attracted scholars and religious notables from all over the Middle East; many accompanied Mohammed back to Songhai and greatly strengthened the scholarly community there. Timbuktu, in particular, developed an international reputation as an academic and religious center. Farther to the west, amid the serpentine courses of the Niger floodplain, protected from invasion by the annual inundation, the city of Djenné developed a reputation throughout West Africa comparable to that of Timbuktu.

Mohammed continued to expand Songhai’s frontiers, often in the cause of a jihad, or holy war. His soldiers battled the Mossi tribes of modern Burkina Faso to the south and captured most of the important salt mines and oases in the Sahara as far as the frontiers of modern Algeria and Libya. Even some of the powerful Hausa city-states of northern Nigeria fell under Mohammed’s sway. The Songhai army featured a mobile cavalry and levies of conscripts, very likely the first such standing army in Africa, supported by a strong riverine navy on the Niger. (Firearms, however, though apparently known, were not used by the Songhai forces.) By the end of Mohammed’s active reign, these forces had created what most likely was the largest political entity in African history to that time.

The administrative structure of Songhai shows little of the Islamic influence so pervasive in other facets of the state. It was a simple system of provincial governors responsible to Mohammed. There was a ministerial council of sorts but with little real power and usually dominated by members of the royal family in any case. The court protocol that was reported by foreign travelers among them the famous Leo Africanus suggests that Mohammed continued to behave as a traditional West African king, wielding almost absolute power. Despite his commitment to Islam, there is no evidence of persecution of unbelievers. Gao, in fact, became a haven for Jewish refugees from the Saharan oases when persecution broke out there in the early sixteenth century. Many of Mohammed’s gestures toward traditionalism may have resulted from the fact that the people of the Songhai capital of Gao continued to resist Islamic influence.

Signs of despotism reappeared in Mohammed’s later years. Moreover, the large and unprecedented administrative apparatus of the court and provincial government had to be supported by a growing system of landed aristocrats, a network of royal estates producing food and military supplies through slavery and forced labor. Newly conquered peoples found themselves assigned to the production of weapons and armor or to service to the army. Others plied the Niger to produce fish for the court.

In his declining years, Mohammed lost his grip on the empire. In order to foster the continued growth of Islam, the king had designated a western governor as successor, but his ambitious sons were determined to seize power. In 1528, they deposed Mohammed, who was already blind and infirm, exiling him to an island in the Niger. Nearly a decade of turmoil elapsed before the Askia rivals settled on a system of succession and power sharing.

Significance

Mohammed I Askia belongs to a tradition of warrior-kings who periodically unified and integrated the Niger basin and adjacent areas, a tradition beginning perhaps as early as 800. This periodic unification greatly affected the economic history of lands around the Mediterranean, especially with respect to the export of gold and other precious commodities. In the Niger region itself, it established a level of political order and stability necessary for commerce to thrive. In the period of Mohammed, as well as in earlier decades when Mali was prominent, Islam made important advances, which conferred a measure of cultural unity on the region and also stimulated interaction with the outside world.

Mohammed himself was among the foremost of the unifiers, administrators, and purveyors of Islam. Evidence from the era of his predecessor, SonniՙAlī, strongly suggests that Islam was in decline, actively challenged by pagan and traditional elements in West African society. Given the importance of Muslim merchants in the economic life of the region, it is also likely that the Niger basin was in a state of economic disarray owing to the disintegration of Mali and growing hostility to outsiders. These trends Mohammed dramatically reversed, restoring and greatly expanding commerce and drawing the Niger basin closer than ever before to the world economy. His contributions toward an Islamic cultural order laid the foundations for the eventual emergence of Islam as a mass religion in West Africa.

Mohammed’s Askia Dynasty continued after his death. His sons ruled ably for fifty years in the mid-sixteenth century, during which time Songhai maintained relations with the newly established Ottoman Empire in North Africa, and Songhai was able to withstand some of the commercial turmoil resulting from increased European activity on the African coast.

On the other hand, the limits of Mohammed’s Islamic campaign in Songhai are clear. Neither he nor his successors managed to close the gap between the predominantly Muslim west and the still-pagan Songhai heartland in the eastern part of the empire. Civil war eventually resulted in a disastrous reverse for Mohammed’s Islamic edifice in 1588. Three years later, an invasion from Morocco brought the empire crashing down and the Askia Dynasty to a humiliating close.

Bibliography

Boahen, A. Adu, Jacob F. Ade Ajayi, and Michael Tidy. Topics in West African History. 2d ed. Burnt Mill, England: Longman Group, 1986. An excellent description of Songhai within the wider context of medieval West African history.

Bovill, E. W., and Robin Hallet. The Golden Trade of the Moors. 2d ed., rev. 1958. Reprint. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Weiner, 1999. An excellent treatment of medieval West African history and its connections with European events. Gives a detailed account of the rise of Songhai and the contributions of its major rulers.

Hale, Thomas A. Scribe, Griot, and Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990. Comparative study of written Arabic narratives from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a modern francophone Malian novel, and an oral epic telling of Mohammed’s rule. The epic, newly recorded, transcribed, and translated, is reproduced in its entirety. Includes one photographic plate, map, bibliography, and index.

Hunwick, J. O. “Religion and State in the Songhay Empire.” In Islam in Tropical Africa, edited by I. M. Lewis. London: Oxford University Press, 1966. Discusses the tensions between Islamic and pagan religious and philosophical ideas in Songhai and how the major rulers borrowed and elaborated on ideas from both sources to organize and administer the empire.

Hunwick, J. O., ed. and trans. Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Saՙdi’s “Ta՚rīkh al-Sūdān” Down to 1613, and Other Contemporary Documents. Boston: Brill, 2003. Translation and analysis of a chronicle of the Songhai court and other primary documents recording the acts of Mohammed and his successors. Includes illustrations, genealogical tables, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Kaba, Lansine. “The Pen, the Sword, and the Crown: Islam and Revolution in Songhay Reconsidered, 1464-1493.” Journal of African History 25 (1984): 241-256. Traces the rise of Songhai to changing trade patterns and discusses SonniՙAlī’s antagonism toward Muslim elites which, by contrast, Mohammed supported and used to build his administration.

Malio, Nouhou, et al. The Epic of Askia Mohammed. Translated, edited, and annotated by Thomas A. Hale. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Newly annotated and revised translation of the epic first published in Hale’s book, together with a new introductory essay. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Pardo, Anne W. “The Songhay Empire Under Sonni Ali and Askia Muhammad: A Study in Comparisons and Contrasts.” In Aspects of West African Islam, edited by Daniel F. McCall. Boston: Boston University Press, 1971. An unusually critical treatment of chronicles and other sources in an effort to determine the precise ideological and religious attitudes of SonniՙAlī and Mohammed.

Saad, Elias. A Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables, 1400-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. An important study of social and intellectual life in precolonial West Africa. Provides extensive coverage of the zenith of Songhai civilization in the early sixteenth century, using indigenous chronicles and a wide variety of other documentary sources.

Trimingham, J. Spencer. A History of Islam in West Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. One of the most painstaking studies of the development of Islamic influence and practices in the region. Particularly harsh on Sonni ՙAlī and critical of other accounts suggesting a high level of Islamic intellectual activity in Songhai and the center of learning in Timbuktu.