Muḥammad I Askia
Muḥammad I Askia, also spelled Mohammed I Askiya, also called Askia Muḥammad, or Muḥammad Ture, original name Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr Ture, Ture also spelled Towri, or Turée (died March 2, 1538, Gao, Songhai empire), West African statesman and military leader who usurped the throne of the Songhai empire (1493) and, in a series of conquests, greatly expanded the empire and strengthened it. He was overthrown by his son, Askia Mūsā, in 1528.
Rise to power
Both Muḥammad’s place and date of birth are unknown. For a long time, he was thought to be a Silla (a Tukulor clan of Senegal) or a Touré of Soninke origin, but it now seems that his name, as spelled in Arabic by 18th-century Timbuktu chroniclers, was Muḥammad al-Ṭūrī, or Muḥammad of the Toro (Fouta-Toro of Senegal). It is thus believed that he was probably of Tukulor origin, from a Senegalese family that had settled in Gao. The name of his clan was probably Kan, or Dyallo. Oral tradition, however, which is still very much alive, makes Mamar (Muḥammad’s popular name) out to be Sonni ʿAlī’s nephew, his sister Kasey’s son by a jinni, a supernatural being.
After the death of Sonni ʿAlī, the ruler who had solidified the Songhai empire from 1464 to 1492, Muḥammad tried, as early as February 1493, to wrest power from Sonni ʿAlī’s son Sonni Baru, who had been elected by acclamation on January 21. In the Battle of Anfao on April 12, 1493, Muḥammad’s forces, though inferior in number, were victorious. Traditional religions tinged with the esoteric Songhai Islam of the Sonnis gave way to an Islamic state whose civil code was the Qurʾān and whose official writing was Arabic. After conquering the enemy, Muḥammad assumed the title of Askia (or Askiya) in order to ridicule, it is said, the daughters of the fallen Sonnis who said of him a si tya, or “he will not be.” The name Askia became the name of the dynasty that he founded and the name of its leaders.
While Sonni ʿAlī had been a warrior, Muḥammad was above all a statesman. He set up an efficient administration of the regions conquered by his predecessor. He began by dividing Songhai into provinces and placed each under a governor. A standing army and a fleet of war canoes were organized under the command of a general and an admiral. Moreover, Muḥammad created the positions of director of finance, justice, interior, protocol, agriculture, waters and forests, and of “tribes of the white race” (Moors and Tuaregs who at that time were vassals of the Songhai and furnished them with squadrons of dromedary-mounted troops). All these officials were for the most part chosen from among the nobles and were brothers, sons, or cousins of Muḥammad.
Organization of the Songhai empire
This exemplary organization of an African state was completed by a religious organization. Although a faithful believer, Muḥammad was not very well informed in matters of religious orthodoxy and therefore took as an adviser the Moroccan reformer al-Maghīlī, persecutor of the Jews of Touat, to help him put his realm in order, in particular to recover the possessions belonging to the descendants of the defeated Sonnis and to subservient groups not converted to Islam. Establishing Islam as the official religion of the nobles was without doubt the only error of this statesman. From then on, it was no longer a popular religion but an imported one that later was to justify the conquest of the Songhai by Moroccan Muslims.
And yet it was to receive the necessary counsel directly from “God’s House” that in 1495, two years before his accession to power, Muḥammad undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca. This pilgrimage has remained famous as much for the pomp with which it was carried out as for the marvelous tales to which it gave rise. The chronicler Mahmud Kati, who accompanied Muḥammad, wrote in Taʾrīkh al-fattāsh that the jinn of Mecca had had Muḥammad named caliph and had told him what his rights were over the former vassal groups of the Sonnis. By the time he returned in 1497, he was a leader deeply converted to Islam. Next he would proceed to consolidate and enlarge Songhai.
Militarily he met with uneven success. Although between 1498 and 1502 he was victorious over the Mossi of Yatenga and the inhabitants of the Aïr (Niger), a few years later (1505–06) he undertook an unsuccessful campaign against Borgu (the present boundary region of Niger and Nigeria). And similarly, although during 1507 and 1514 he reduced the insurgent Fulani factions in Senegal and the Bornu factions near Agadez, one of his lieutenants, the Karta of Kabi, revolted against him in turn and, despite his efforts during 1516 and 1517, remained independent. As an organizer of an effective administrative system he was more successful.
During the course of his lengthy sojourns in the capital, Gao (1502–04 and 1506–07), he set up with rare talent the system of tithes and taxes, the regulation of agriculture and fishing, and the recruitment and training of his administrators and governors.
The extent of the Songhai empire of this period remains conjectural. Sadi, the Timbuktu chronicler, has said that the territory that Muḥammad conquered “by fire and sword” extended west as far as the Atlantic Ocean, northwest to the salt mines of Teghaza (on the northern border of present-day Mali), southwest as far as Bendugu (Segu), southeast to Bussa, and northeast to Agadez. It is certain that the influence of Songhai during Muḥammad’s time was considerable and extended even beyond these boundaries. All the surrounding states, whether allies or enemies, experienced its civilizing ferment.
This influence was reinforced by an indirect, though nonetheless profound, Islamic propaganda. Muslim scholars went into areas they would not have been able to penetrate without the Gao ruler’s support. And for several centuries to come, the small African states and the neighbouring leaders would take as their model the Islamic empire of Songhai and its prestigious leader, Muḥammad. Even today, according to oral tradition, Muḥammad appears as a jinni, who either took after his father or after those with whom, by a special gift, he was able to consult during his pilgrimage to Mecca.
Fall from power and death
The end of his reign was, however, tragic. Little by little his dream of an Islamized Sudan, whose emir he would be, evaporated. Even during his lifetime, his children were quarreling over the spoils. After the death of his commander in chief, Kanfari Omar, one of his brothers, in 1519, Muḥammad was no longer safe even in Gao, and the Songhai people seemed to him “as crooked as the course of the Niger River . . .” Embittered, half blind, the old man had no one left but his friend and adviser, his servant Ali Folen. The almost religious fear that he inspired gave way to contempt. Musa, his eldest son, plotted against him and in 1528 killed his new general in chief, Yaya, another of Muḥammad’s brothers, who had remained faithful to him. Musa then dispossessed his father, taking the name Askia Mūsā. He kept this title for three years before being assassinated himself by one of his brothers. Now deposed, the old Askia Muḥammad was banished to an island in the river, a place “infested with mosquitoes and toads.” There, from 1528 to 1537, he was a blind and despairing witness to the murderous quarrels of his children over the territory of Songhai.
In 1537 his third successor, his son Askia Ismaïl, recalled his father to Gao. To reward him, Muḥammad bequeathed to him his green turban and his caliph’s sabre. In 1538, during a period of temporary calm, this founder of a dynasty died. He was buried in Gao, under a pyramid of earth surmounted by wooden spikes. His tomb is still standing and has become one of the most venerated mosques in all of West Africa.
Jean Pierre Rouch
"Muḥammad I Askia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
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Mūsā I of Mali
Mūsā I of Mali, Mūsā also spelled Musa or Mousa, also called Kankan Mūsā or Mansa Musa (died 1332/37?), Mūsā I, emperor of Mali, seated on his throne, with a Tuareg on camelback facing him, …The Granger Collection, New Yorkmansa (emperor) of the West African empire of Mali from 1307 (or 1312). Mansa Mūsā left a realm notable for its extent and riches—he built the Great Mosque at Timbuktu—but he is best remembered in the Middle East and Europe for the splendour of his pilgrimage to Mecca (1324).
Pilgrimage to Mecca
Mansa Mūsā, either the grandson or the grandnephew of Sundiata, the founder of his dynasty, came to the throne in 1307. In the 17th year of his reign (1324), he set out on his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. It was this pilgrimage that awakened the world to the stupendous wealth of Mali. Cairo and Mecca received this royal personage, whose glittering procession, in the superlatives employed by Arab chroniclers, almost put Africa’s sun to shame. Traveling from his capital of Niani on the upper Niger River to Walata (Oualâta, Mauritania) and on to Tuat (now in Algeria) before making his way to Cairo, Mansa Mūsā was accompanied by an impressive caravan consisting of 60,000 men including a personal retinue of 12,000 slaves, all clad in brocade and Persian silk. The emperor himself rode on horseback and was directly preceded by 500 slaves, each carrying a gold-adorned staff. In addition, Mansa Mūsā had a baggage train of 80 camels, each carrying 300 pounds of gold.
Mansa Mūsā’s prodigious generosity and piety, as well as the fine clothes and exemplary behaviour of his followers, did not fail to create a most-favourable impression. The Cairo that Mansa Mūsā visited was ruled by one of the greatest of the Mamlūk sultans, Al-Malik al-Nāṣir. The black emperor’s great civility notwithstanding, the meeting between the two rulers might have ended in a serious diplomatic incident, for so absorbed was Mansa Mūsā in his religious observances that he was only with difficulty persuaded to pay a formal visit to the sultan. The historian al-ʿUmarī, who visited Cairo 12 years after the emperor’s visit, found the inhabitants of this city, with a population estimated at one million, still singing the praises of Mansa Mūsā. So lavish was the emperor in his spending that he flooded the Cairo market with gold, thereby causing such a decline in its value that the market some 12 years later had still not fully recovered.
Rulers of West African states had made pilgrimages to Mecca before Mansa Mūsā, but the effect of his flamboyant journey was to advertise both Mali and Mansa Mūsā well beyond the African continent and to stimulate a desire among the Muslim kingdoms of North Africa, and among many of European nations as well, to reach the source of this incredible wealth.
Conquest of Songhai kingdom
Mansa Mūsā, whose empire was one of the largest in the world at that time, is reported to have observed that it would take a year to travel from one end of his empire to the other. While this was probably an exaggeration, it is known that during his pilgrimage to Mecca one of his generals, Sagmandia (Sagaman-dir), extended the empire by capturing the Songhai capital of Gao. The Songhai kingdom measured several hundreds of miles across, so that the conquest meant the acquisition of a vast territory. The 14th-century traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭah noted that it took about four months to travel from the northern borders of the Mali empire to Niani in the south.
Great Mosque, built by Emperor Mūsā I of Mali in 1327, Timbuktu, Mali.L. Romano/DeA Picture LibraryThe emperor was so overjoyed by the new acquisition that he decided to delay his return to Niani and to visit Gao instead, there to receive the personal submission of the Songhai king and take the king’s two sons as hostages. At both Gao and Timbuktu, a Songhai city almost rivalling Gao in importance, Mansa Mūsā commissioned Abū Isḥāq al-Sāḥilī, a Granada poet and architect who had travelled with him from Mecca, to build mosques. The Gao mosque was built of burnt bricks, which had not, until then, been used as a material for building in West Africa.
Under Mansa Mūsā, Timbuktu grew to be a very important commercial city having caravan connections with Egypt and with all other important trade centres in North Africa. Side by side with the encouragement of trade and commerce, learning and the arts received royal patronage. Scholars who were mainly interested in history, Qurʾānic theology, and law were to make the mosque of Sankore in Timbuktu a teaching centre and to lay the foundations of the University of Sankore. Mansa Mūsā probably died in 1332.
Assessment
The organization and smooth administration of a purely African empire, the founding of the University of Sankore, the expansion of trade in Timbuktu, the architectural innovations in Gao, Timbuktu, and Niani and, indeed, throughout the whole of Mali and in the subsequent Songhai empire are all testimony to Mansa Mūsā’s superior administrative gifts. In addition, the moral and religious principles he had taught his subjects endured after his death.
John Coleman de Graft-Johnson
"Mūsā I of Mali". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 24 Feb. 2016
<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Musa-I-of-Mali>.