Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Ta'rikh Al-Sudan down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents

"I had to put John’s work in there. John was the preeminent scholar on Songhai. He was one of my mentors. I took my PhD at the University of Chicago. John was at Northwestern while I was at Chicago and so I studied with him and I’m entirely indebted to him for my interest in Songhai. He has produced a lot of material. This is just one of the things that he wrote. And it’s actually a translation of part of Tarihk al-Sudan . It’s an excellent translation of this source. But the translation is preceded by a very important, long essay that seeks to knit together the constitutive elements of Songhai history. That’s why I chose this book. Literally, ‘a History of the Blacks’. It is one of the chronicles written in West Africa, completed in the 17th century. The Tarikh al-Sudan actually focuses on developments in Timbuktu. There is a very brief mention of the interior history and then it gets right into the goings-on in Timbuktu. There is political history embedded in Tarikh al-Sudan . But then it also moves beyond the moment of the Moroccan conquest of Songhai in 1591, and it moves into the post-1591 period. It moves into a discussion of the early Moroccan occupation of Timbuktu and this period of the Arma, which is a reference to the fact that the Moroccans will come into Timbuktu and conquer largely because they have rifles. There is also a discussion of what we refer to as the puppet Askias. The Askias were a dynasty established by Muhammad Ture who overthrew Sunni Ali and his son, who were the legitimate rulers. He established this dynasty, the Askia Dynasty, in conjunction with very powerful collaborators in Timbuktu. And so when Songhai is defeated in 1591, there’s an attempt to continue to control parts of Songhai through a series of Askias, who are referred to as puppet Askias because they are controlled by Moroccan forces in Timbuktu. “Songhai shrivels until, basically, it is just represented by the territory immediately around Timbuktu. So, 1591 is really the death knell for Songhai” What we see happen post-1591 is the gradual diminution of Moroccan authority over what’s happening at Timbuktu. The Moroccans in Morocco gradually lose interest in what’s happening in Timbuktu. It’s not what they thought it was going to be. They thought they were going to go in there and find large caches of gold to finance their wars in Iberia. In fact that was not the case. They did not really understand the dynamics of the gold trade, so they lost interest. What you have is an indigenisation of those Moroccans who remain in Timbuktu and their descendants. They intermarried with families in what was Songhai and they become more and more independent of Morocco. But there’s an atrophying of power and Songhai shrivels until, basically, it is just represented by the territory immediately around Timbuktu. So, 1591 is really the death knell for Songhai. I’m not saying what happens thereafter is of no interest or consequence, but it’s a very different political formation. Since Levtzion’s 1973 work there had been no extended discussion of this period. That’s quite a long time. So, there was a need to revisit this place and period. In my exploration of the materials I argue that what we have is an unfolding of institutions and conventions. We need to understand that governance is in formation, that social conventions are in formation and that notions of power and gender relations are in formation. The institution of slavery is unfolding. What we see in looking at developments from Ghana through Songhai is a series of social, political and cultural movements that represent a very dynamic period in the history of West Africa. I’m trying to understand how that takes place. In the secondary literature on West Africa is the notion that, when we get to the 18th and 19th centuries, West Africa, at least in the savanna and Sahel, undergoes a series of religious and political reforms as a result of a series of holy wars, or jihads. These result in the establishment of theocracies toward the end of the 17th century in what is now eastern Senegal and the highlands of what is now Guinea and, from the 1770s, in the Middle Senegal Valley. There is the establishment of the so-called Sokoto Caliphate in what is now Northern Nigeria from 1804 to 1812 and the conquests of el-Hadj Omar in the mid-19th century, which span the area from the Middle Senegal Valley all the way to Timbuktu. There are developments in Macina and the establishment of the Hamdullahi Caliphate in the 1810s. There is a lot of activity. What I see, however, looking at Ghana earlier on, is a period of similar activity along the Senegal Valley—the Middle Senegal Valley and Upper Senegal Valley—very early, in the 11th century. And so I revisit the whole question of the Almoravids. The Almoravids take off and will constitute the dynasty that establishes Berber control of portions of North Africa and portions of Iberia. But what’s interesting to me is that the Amoravids have their start in the Middle Senegal Valley. I revisit that question and the consequences for the Middle and Upper Senegal Valley of the Almoravid movement. What I argue is that there is, indeed, this tradition of reform and that this, arguably, has antecedents in the 11th and 12th centuries with the re-formation of Ghana as a kind of reformed state, although I’m not saying that it was a theocracy by any means. I move on to a discussion of Sunjata, where I’m trying to revisit the role of the oral traditions, but the point there is that, in the 14th century under Mansa Musa, we have this expansive state. It’s an empire that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Niger Valley. This is an extraordinary moment in West African history and it represents a moment in which West Africa aspires to be a world power. I’m suggesting that the hajj of Mansa Musa is an exploration of how Mali moves from being a regional power to a trans-regional power and into a world player. I argue that Mali was constrained because its center was in the savanna and so it was constrained by a huge desert to the north, and by the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It tried to overcome those constraints, but was unable to do so, mainly because it had not achieved a level of technological innovation that would have allowed it to navigate the Atlantic successfully, nor is it in control of the trans-Saharan trade. So it’s kind of landlocked and unable to experience its full potential. “This is a polyethnic state, and a multicultural state. This is the first time that we see this in West Africa and there were some very interesting political experiments going on” Songhai inherits the mantle from Mali. Although Mail continued on in some form, it gradually diminishes as Songhai rises. With Songhai we see another imperial formation and we see a real interest in experimentation with how the state comes together. I would argue that you see for the first time the notion of a quasi-citizenship under Askia Muhammad, where we see the emergence of a new political identity in which prior loyalties to ethnicity or to religious communities are superseded by an allegiance to the state. This is a polyethnic state, and a multicultural state. This is the first time that we see this in West Africa and there were some very interesting political experiments going on. The relationship between ‘mosque and state’ as opposed to ‘church and state’ is something that is explored and worked out, that is a relationship between Gao, the imperial center, and Timbuktu primarily, and Jenne secondarily, as centers of spiritual power. All of that is worked through. There is a notion of expansion under Mansa Musa in particular. There’s this notion that Mali is aspiring to, perhaps, reach the Mediterranean, to effect a partnership with Egypt in North Africa. We don’t see a similar kind of attitude displayed with Songhai. What happens with Songhai is that it is overtaken by the turmoil within the ruling dynasty. It’s very unfortunate because this turmoil effectively results in fratricidal infighting that weakened the state at the very moment that the Moroccans were becoming more interested in Songhai and at the very moment that Europeans are beginning to circumnavigate the West African littoral. I argue that there is a situation in which, at the very moment that West Africa needs a champion and at the moment when Songhai best qualifies as that champion in relation to external threats, Songhai was imploding. And the consequence was the Moroccan conquest of 1591."