SEVEN
West Africa
Early seventh century to mid-ninth century/early thirteenth century to mid-fifteenth century
The central and western parts of modern Mali; northern Guinea; Gambia; and Senegal
| 627/1230 | Mari Sun Dyāta (Mārī Jāṭa) I, son of Nare fa Maghan |
| 653/1255 | Mansā Ulī or Ule, son of Mari Sun Dyāta |
| 668/1270 | Mansā Wātī, son of Mari Sun Dyāta |
| 672/1274 | Mansā Khalīfa, son of Mari Sun Dyāta |
| 673/1275 | Mansā Abū Bakr I, called Bata-Mande-Bori, grandson of Mari Sun Dyāta by one of his daughters and adopted son of Mari Sun Dyāta |
| 684/1285 | Sabakura or Sākūra, freed slave of the royal family |
| 699/1300 | Mansā Gaw or Qū, son of Mansā Ulī |
| 704/1305 | Mansā Mamadu or Muḥammad, son of Mansā Gaw, d. 712/1312 |
| 709/1310 | Mansā Abū Bakr II, descendant of Sun Mari Dyāta I’s brother Bakari or Abū Bakr |
| 712/1312 | Mansā Mūsā I, son of Abū Bakr II |
| 737/1337 | Mansā Maghan or Maghā I, Muḥammad, son of Mūsā I |
| 742/1341 | Mansā Sulaymān, brother of Mūsā I |
| 761/1360 | Mansā Kamba or Qanba or Qāsā, son of Sulaymān |
| 762/1361 | Mansā Mari Dyāta or Mārī Jāṭa II, son of Maghan I |
| 775/1374 | Mansā Mūsā II, son of Mari Dyāta II |
| 789/1382 | Mansā Maghan II, son of Mari Dyāta II |
| 790 or 791/ | |
| 1388 or 1389 | Usurpation of the Sandigi or Ṣandiki, i.e. vizier |
| 792/1390 | Mansā Maghan III, Maḥmūd, descendant of Gaw |
Succession strife and chaos, ended by the ascendancy of the Songhay kingdom in the mid-ninth/mid-fifteenth century |
Mali was the successor, as dominant power in West Africa, to the Soninke kingdom of Ghana, which lay mainly in the Sāḥil to the north of the upper Niger (in the western part of modern Mali and in the south-eastern corner of Mauritania), with its capital, Ghana, possibly to be identified with Kumbi Ṣāliḥ (in the extreme south of modern Mauritania). Ghana had been famed among the Muslim geographers and historians since the eighth century as a prime source of gold. It does not seem that, as was earlier thought, Ghana was directly conquered in the later eleventh century by the Berber Almoravids (see above, no. 14), but it may have been other Berbers from the direction of the Sahara who, in collusion with indigenous Black African opposition elements, brought about the undoubted decline of Ghana in the twelfth century and the spread of Islam in this originally totally pagan land. At the beginning of the next century, the pagan Soninkes of Soso captured the capital of Ghana. The rule of the Soso represented an anti-Islamic reaction in the upper Niger region, but it was followed by a successful Malinke or Mandinka struggle against Soso domination led by Sun Mari Dyāta, a chief of the Keita clan, who then became head of all the Malinke with the title of Mansā.
It was Sun Dyāta’s successors who made Mali into a powerful kingdom, with its capital probably located at Nyane on the Sankarani, a right-bank affluent of the upper Niger (although the site of the capital of Mali apparently varied at different times). It developed strong cultural and religious links with the Islamic lands of North Africa and Egypt, with diplomatic and religious connections with the Marīnids of Morocco (see above, no. 16) and the Mamlūks of Egypt (see above, no. 31). Several of the kings of Mali made the Pilgrimage to Arabia, with that of Mansā Mūsā I (in whose reign Mali was visited by the Moroccan traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa) achieving special fame. Even so, animist concepts remained strong beneath the veneer of official and ruling-class Islam, and the local form of Islam developed clear syncretist elements within it. There was a flourishing trans-Saharan commerce in such items as gold and slaves, with Timbuktu, near the northernmost point of the Niger bend and probably in origin a Touareg settlement, developing in the fourteenth century as a terminus for the caravan traffic and as a significant intellectual centre of Islamic learning.
In the later fourteenth century, Mali was weakened by succession disputes, Early in the next century, it lost Timbuktu and much of the Sāḥil zone to the Touaregs, and was threatened by the rise of Songhay (see below, no. 59), which stripped Mali of its eastern and central lands, so that it became confined to the Malinke heartland in approximately what is now western Mali and Guinea, where it survived as a power of only local significance; it withstood Moroccan pressure at the end of the sixteenth century, but by 1081/1670 it was eclipsed by the rising Bambara states of Segu and Karta.
EI1 ‘Soso’ (Maurice Delafosse); EI2 ‘Ghāna’ (R. Cornevin), ‘Mali’ (N. Levtzion).
J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, London 1962, 47–83, with a chronological table at p. 236.
Nehemia Levtzion, ‘The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century kings of Mali’, Journal of African History, 3 (1963), 341–53, with a genealogical table at p. 353.
idem, Ancient Ghana and Mali, London 1973, chs 5–7, with a genealogical table at p. 71.
M. Ly Tall, L’empire du Mali, Dakar 1977.
? third century to 1000/? ninth century to 1592
The Savannah zone of Mali along the Niger bend and to its west
| ? third/ninth century | Alyaman |
| fifth/eleventh century | Kosoy or Kosay Muslim Dam. |
Some fourteen or sixteen further rulers, often with divergent names, enumerated in the Arabic chronicles, that by the family of Maḥmūd al-Kātī, the Ta’rīkh al-Fattāsh, and that by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sa‘dī’s Ta’rīkh al-Sūdan, ending with the Za Bisi Baro or Ber. |
| ? c. 674/c. 1275 | ‘Alī Golom or Kolon |
| ? | Salmān Nari |
| ? | Ibrāhīm Kabayao |
| c. 720/c. 1320 | ‘Uthmān Gifo or Kanafa |
Some twelve or fifteen successive rulers, often with divergent names, enumerated in the Ta’rīkh al-Fattāsh and the Ta’rīkh al-Sūdān, but both ending with: |
|
| ? | Sulaymān Dama or Dandi |
| 868 or 869/ | |
| 1464 or 1465 | ‘Alī, son of Si Ma Gogo or Maḥmūd Da’o, called Ber ‘the Great’ |
| 897–8/1492–3 | Abū Bakr or Bakari or Baru, son of ‘Alī Ber |
| 898/1493 | Muḥammad Ture, son of Abū Bakr, called Askiya or Sikiya, d. 945/1538 |
| 934/1528 | Mūsā, son of Muḥammad Ture |
| 937/1531 | Muḥammad II Benkan, son of ‘Umar Kamdiagu |
| 943/1537 | Ismā‘īl, son of Muḥammad Ture |
| 946/1539 | Isḥāq I |
| 956/1549 | Dāwūd, son of Muḥammad Ture |
| 990/1582 | Muḥammad III |
| 994/1586 | Muḥammad IV Bani, son of Dāwūd |
| 996/1588 | Isḥāq II |
| 999/1591 | Moroccan conquest |
| 999–1000/1591–2 | Muḥammad Gao or Kawkaw, killed by the Moroccans, who then set up puppet Askiyas |
The Songhay (a name of unknown origin) are a group of peoples of mixed origins living along the shores of the northern part of the Niger bend, where a town, possibly on the right bank of the river, and a principality of Gao or Kawkaw are mentioned in Arabic historical sources of the ninth century. Al-Sa‘dī relates a tradition that it was the fifteenth Za, Kosoy, who in the eleventh century became the first convert to Islam, being called Muslim Dam ‘the voluntary Muslim’. After c. 674/c. 1275 there came a new line of the Sis or Sonnis, begun by ‘Alī Golom, who freed Gao from the domination of Mali (see above, no. 58). However, when Ibn Baṭṭūṭa was in Kawkaw in 754/1353, he implied that it came within the political sphere of Mali at that time; it seems from his account that in Kawkaw, as elsewhere it was the ruling classes and the merchants who were Muslim, while the mass of people were still animists.
At the end of the fourteenth century, Songhay became completely independent of Mali, and a powerful empire, with both military and naval forces, was built up by Sonni ‘Alī the Great, penultimate ruler of the Si line and the real founder of the Songhay empire. Shortly after Sonni ‘Alī’s death, his commander Muḥammad Ture, of Soninke origin, seized the throne and founded a new dynasty of his own, that of the Askiyas. Under him, Islam became the imperial cult, and Timbuktu developed as a centre of Islamic learning. Like the rulers of Mali, Muḥammad Ture made the Pilgrimage to Mecca in 901–2/1496–7, and there received from the Sharīf ‘Abbās investiture as ruler of Takrūr (stricto sensu, a region on the Senegal River, but extensively used also in mediaeval Islamic usage for the western Sudan, bilād al-Takrūr, in general). He extended Songhay power westwards to Senegal and the old lands of Ghana, and in the east raided Hausaland, and set up a flexible, decentralised provincial administration for his empire. His successors proved quarrelsome and less capable. After the reign of his son Dāwūd, the kingdom fell victim to the disciplined army, using its firearms to good effect, sent against Gao by the Sa‘did sultan of Morocco Aḥmad al-Manṣūr al-Dhahabī (see above, no. 20), covetous of the famed wealth of the Sudan (999/1591). The three main towns of Gao, Timbuktu and Jenne fell to the invaders. The middle Niger region fell into political fragmentation and disorder. The Moroccan pashas or governors of Timbuktu ruled over only a limited area, and after c. 1070/c. 1660 direct Moroccan authority there seems to have lapsed.
EI2 ‘Songhay’ (J. O. Hunwick).
J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 83–103.
Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali, 84–93.
60
THE RULERS OF KANEM AND BORNU OR BORNO
? third century-/? ninth century-
East-central Sudan
1. The ‘red’ (i.e. white) Sayfī (Sefuwa) or Yazanī rulers of Kanem
| c. 478/c. 1085 | Hume or Ume Jilmi son of Selema, the first Muslim ruler of his line, according to the Bornu King List |
| 490/1097 | Dunama Umemi Muḥammad, son of Hume |
| 546/1151 | ‘Uthmān Biri, son of Dunama |
| 569/1174 | ‘Abdallāh Bikur b. ‘Uthmān |
| 590/1194 | ‘Abd al-Jalīl (Jīl) or Selema b. ‘Abdallāh |
| 618–57/1221–59 | Dunama Dibalemi, Muḥammad, son of Selema, the first Muslim ruler of his line according to al-Maqrīzī |
2. The ‘black’ Sultans of Kanem
3. The new line of Sultans in Bornu, the Mais or rulers, claiming Sayfī descent
| 875/1470 | ‘Alī Ghāzī Kanuri b. Dunama |
| 908/1503 | Idrīs Katagarmabe b. ‘Alī, with suzerainty over Kanem also |
| 931/1525 | Muḥammad b. Idrīs |
| 951/1544 | ‘Alī b. Idrīs |
| 953/1546 | Dunama Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, brother of ‘Alī |
| 970/1563 | ‘Abdallāh b. Dunama Muḥammad (? initially with ‘Alī Fannami b. Muḥammad as regent) |
| 977/1569 | Idrīs Alawma b. ‘Alī, in Kanem also (? initially with ‘Ā’isha (Aisa) Kili Ngirmarama, as Magira or Queen-Mother) |
| c. 1012/c. 1603 | Muḥammad b. Idrīs |
| c. 1027/c. 1618 | Ibrāhīm b. Idrīs |
| c. 1034/c. 1625 | ‘Umar b. Idrīs |
| 1055–95/1645–84 | ‘Alī |
| c. 1110/c. 1699 | Dunama b. ‘Alī |
| c. 1138/c. 1726 | Ḥamdūn b. Dunama |
| c. 1143/c. 1731 | Muḥammad Ergama b. Ḥamdūn |
| 1160/1747 | Dunama Gana b. ? Muḥammad |
| 1163/1750 | ‘Alī b. Ḥamdūn |
| 1205/1791 | Aḥmad b. ‘Alī, dispossessed from Bornu by the Fulani jihād 1223/1808, fled to Kanem and restored with Kanemi help |
| 1223/1808 | Dunama Lefiami b. Aḥmad, under Kanemi suzerainty, first reign |
| 1226/1811 | Muḥammad Ngileruma b. ‘Alī b. Ḥamdūn |
| 1229/1814 | Dunama Lefiami, second reign |
| 1232/1817 | Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad, k. by the Kanemis 1262/1846 |
| 1262/1846 | ‘Alī b. Ibrāhīm, k. in battle, last of the Sayfī Mais |
4. The Kanembu line of Shaykhs or Shehus of Bornu and Dikwa
(a) The Shehus in Bornu, reinstated by the British
| 1320/1902 | Bukar Garbai b. Ibrāhīm (previously, Shehu of Dikwa) |
| 1340/1922 | ‘Umar Sanda Kura b. Ibrāhīm |
| 1354-?/1937-? | ‘Umar Sanda Kiarimi b. Muḥammad Amīn Kiari (previously, Shehu of Dikwa) |
(b) The Shehus and Mais in Dikwa, reinstated by the French
| 1318/1900 | Shehu ‘Umar Sanda Kura b. Ibrāhīm, first reign |
| 1319/1901 | Shehu Bukar Garbai b. Ibrāhīm (later, Shehu of Bornu) |
| 1320/1902 | Shehu ‘Umar Sanda Mandarama b. Bukar I Kura, first reign |
| 1323/1905 | Shehu Ibrāhīm b. Bukar I Kura |
| 1324/1906 | Shehu ‘Umar Sanda Mandarama b. Bukar I Kura, second reign |
| 1335/1917 | Shehu ‘Umar Sanda Kiarimi b. Muḥammad Amīn Kiari (later, Shehu of Bornu) |
| 1356/1937 | Mai Abba Muṣṭafā I or Masta b. Muḥammad Amīn Kiari |
| 1369/1950 | Mai Bukar b. Shehu ‘Umar Sanda Kiarimi |
| 1371/1952 | Mai Abba Muṣṭafā II or Masta b. Shehu Sanda Mandarama |
| 1373-?/1954-? | Mai ‘Umar Abba Yarema b. Shehu Ibrāhīm |
During Islamic times, the histories of Kanem and Bornu have been intertwined, but together they have formed one of the oldest and certainly the most enduring of Muslim states in West Africa. Kanem lay to the east of Lake Chad, in what is now the Republic of Chad, while Bornu lay to the south-west of the lake, in what is now north-eastern Nigeria.
Already in Umayyad times, Arab raiders are reputed to have penetrated to Fezzan in southern Libya and to Tibesti and the region of the Tubu people in what is now northern Chad, but Kanem seems to have been founded by the Saharan nomadic people of the Zaghāwa. Islam was probably introduced into Kanem from the north by the Tubu during the eleventh century, when we find a dynasty ruling there which apparently claimed a spurious descent from the pre-Islamic Ḥimyarite prince of South Arabia, Sayf b. Dhī Yazan. There were connections across the Sahara with Egypt and North Africa, with a traffic in black slaves, and Dunama Dabalemi in 655/1257 sent a famed present of a giraffe to the Ḥafṣid ruler in Tunis (see above, no. 18).
By the end of the fourteenth century, these Sayfī rulers of Kanem had been forced to move to Bornu by the ascendancy in Kanem of a rival clan, the Bulālas (? Bilālīs). The Sayfīs, now in Bornu, were refounded as the Mais or rulers by ‘Alī Ghāzī, with their new capital at N’gazargamu (Qaṣr Gomo) to the west of Lake Chad, and this remained the capital until 1811. The rulers of Bornu subsequently regained Kanem, and extended their power westwards into Hausaland, north-westwards to the Aïr and north-eastwards against the Tubu. In the later sixteenth century they discovered the value in warfare of firearms, and imported Turkish musketeers, and they also began to make their state more consciously Islamic by introducing the prescriptions of the Sharī‘a in certain spheres. Over the next two centuries, however, Bornu remained either static or in a state of decline, under pressure from the Hausas and the Touaregs of the Sahara. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Fulani jihād (see below, no. 61) affected Bornu adversely, with the Mais being denounced as inadequate Muslims, so that in 1224/1809 Aḥmad b. ‘Alī had to appeal to Muḥammad Amīn al-Kānemī for help against the Fulbe. Al-Kānemī’s intervention marked the reduction of the Sayfīs of Bornu to the status of fainéants, and after 1262/1846 the line of the Kanembu Shaykhs or Shehus, religious scholars in origin, assumed legitimate power there. Bornu was occupied by the invader from Wadai, Rābiḥ, for several years, but soon after the restoration of the Kanembus in Bornu and the sister-sultanate of Dikwa after Rābiḥ’s death in 1318/1900, its territory was divided between the colonial powers of Britain, Germany and France. The Shehus of Bornu and the Mais of Dikwa still survive as local potentates within the North-eastern State of the present Nigerian Republic, which has its administrative centre at Maiduguru.
Complete harmonisation of the lists of Bornu kings, prepared by various Western scholars (German, French and British, starting with Barth in the 1850s) from the records of court scribes in Bornu, is not easy, although there is a remarkable degree of agreement as to names of rulers, if not of lengths of their rule. The list and dates given above follow such sources as those in the Bibliography below, with especial use of the work of Hogben and Kirk-Greene and of the concordance of dates and names prepared by Cohen.
EI1 ‘Bornū’ (G. Yver); EI2 ‘Bornū’ (C. E. J. Whitting), ‘Kanem’ (G. Yver*).
Y. Urvoy, Histoire de l’empire de Bornou, Paris 1949.
J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 104–26, 207–13.
S. J. Hogben and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, The Emirates of Northern Nigeria: A Preliminary Survey of their Historical Traditions, London 1966, 307–42, with a list of rulers and a genealogical table for Bornu at pp. 341–2 and a genealogical table for Dikwa at p. 353.
Ronald Cohen, ‘The Bornu king lists’, in Boston University Papers on Africa. II. African history, ed. Jeffrey Butler, Boston 1966, 41–83, with a list of rulers at pp. 80–3.
J. F. A. Ajayi and M. Crowder, History of West Africa, 2nd edn, London 1976, I, chs 6 (J. O. Hunwick) and 13 (R. A. Adelẹyẹ), II, ch. 4 (R. Cohen and L. Brenner).
H. Montgomery-Massingberd (ed.), Burke’s Royal Families of the World. II. Africa and the Middle East, London 1980, 178–80.
61
THE FULANI RULERS IN HAUSALAND, AS SULTANS AND CALIPHS OF SOKOTO
1218– /1804–
Northern Nigeria and the adjacent Niger valley
| 1218/1804 | ‘Uthmān b. Fūdī (Usumanu dan Fodio), proclaimed his hijra and jihād in this year, d. 1232/1817 |
| 1223/1808 |
|
| 1232/1817 | Muḥammad Bello, called Mai Wurno, with ‘Abdallāh, d. 1243/1828, as co-ruler |
| 1253/1837 | Abū Bakr ‘Atīq (Atiku) b. ‘Uthmān, called Mai Katuru |
| 1258/1842 | ‘Alī (Aliyu) Babba b. Muḥammad Bello, called Mai Cinaka |
| 1275/1859 | Aḥmad (Ahmadu) or Zaraku b. Abī Bakr ‘Atīq, called Mai Cimola |
| 1283/1866 | ‘Alī Karām (Aliyu Karami) b. Muḥammad Bello |
| 1284/1867 | Aḥmad (Ahmadu Rafaye) b. ‘Uthmān b. Fūdī |
| 1290/1873 | Abū Bakr ‘Atīq (Atiku na Rabah) b. Muḥammad Bello |
| 1294/1877 | Mu‘ādh (Mu’azu, Moyasa) Ahmadu b. Muḥammad Bello |
| 1298/1881 | ‘Umar (Umaru) b. ‘Alī Babba |
| 1308/1891 | ‘Abd al-Raḥmān (Danyen Kasko) b. Abū Bakr ‘Atīq |
| 1320/1902 | Muḥammad Ṭāhir I b. Aḥmad ‘Atīq |
| 1321/1903 | Muḥammad Ṭāhir II b. ‘Alī Babba |
| (1322/1904 | British capture of Sokoto) |
| 1333/1915 | Muḥammad b. Aḥmad ‘Atīq, called Mai Turare |
| 1342/1924 | Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad ‘Atīq, called Tambari |
| 1349/1930 | Ḥasan b. Mu‘ādh Aḥmad |
| 1357–/1938– | Abū Bakr b. Shehu b. Mu‘ādh Aḥmad |
From the later eighteenth century, the position of Islam in West Africa began to be transformed by the appearance of militant, puritanical movements, sometimes with millenarian elements, among the Fulani or Fulbe of western Sudan, in the Futa Jallon plateau region where the Niger and Senegal Rivers rise. This revivalist current was taken up by the Tokolors of Futa Toro, to the south of the Senegal River, where various Imāms or almamis of the Tokolor religious classes established their secular power until the arrival of the French at the end of the nineteenth century; notable among these were Ḥamadu Bari of Masina on the upper Niger and al-Ḥājj ‘Umar b. Sa‘īd Tal in the upper Niger–upper Senegal region. Within these religious movements, the motivating power of Ṣūfī orders, such as the Qādiriyya and the Tijāniyya, was notable.
From Gobir in Hausaland there arose the Tokolor religious leader ‘Uthmān b. Fūdī (fodio ‘learned, holy man’), who began to preach jihād against those whom he regarded as lax Muslims, those compromised, in his view, with the surrounding paganism, and against the animist majority of black Africans. He assumed the ancient title implying political and religious leadership of the Muslim community, ‘Commander of the Faithful’, Amīr al-Mu’minīn, in Hausa Sarkin Musulmi, a title still born by his descendants in Sokoto (who have been also known as ‘caliphs’, following ‘Uthmān’s designation of himself as ‘Commander of the Faithful’, and sultans). With his Fulani followers, ‘Uthmān wore down the uncoordinated resistance of most of the Hausa states, and individual Fulani leaders carved out for themselves principalities as far east as the Adamwa plateau of northern Cameroons, often adopting the title of amīr or lamidu.
His descendants, beginning with Muḥammad Bello, erected a states system which was inevitably based on the old Hausa ones which they had dispossessed, but with new centres of power such as Sokoto or Sakwato, founded in 1224/1909, and where ‘Uthmān’s tomb became a noted place of pilgrimage. The original religious impetus of the jihād was gradually lost, and Fulani rule degenerated into an undisguised slave-raiding economy, causing devastation, depopulation and misery. With power in the hands of local governors, only the religious authority of the rulers in Sokoto was acknowledged. At the end of the nineteenth century, the colonial powers Britain, France and Germany converged on Hausaland and divided it up. British troops entered Sokoto without resistance in 1322/1904, and it thereafter came within the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria which had been set up four years previously. The line of sultans in Sokoto continued, however, under the British policy of indirect rule, namely maintenance of the ruling structures in Nigeria, and into the present Republican period. Sokoto is now the administrative capital of the North-western State of the Nigerian Republic.
EI2 ‘Sokoto’ D. M. Last, ‘Fulbe’ (R. Cornevin).
J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 160–207.
S. J. Hogben and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, The Emirates of Northern Nigeria: A Preliminary Survey of their Historical Traditions, 367–417, with a genealogical table at p. 414.
D. Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate, London 1967.
H. A. S. Johnston, The Fulani Empire of Sokoto, London 1967.
J. F. A. Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds), History of West Africa, 2nd edn, II, ch. 3 (R. A. Adeleye).
H. Montgomery-Massingberd (ed.), Burke’s Royal Families of the World. II. Africa and the Middle East, 192–4.