Carved atal monolith (Bakor or Ekoi),

16th century. Cross River, Nigeria.

Basaltic stone, height: 84 cm.

Private collection, London.

 

 

The Askia Mohammed

 

At the same epoch, in 1493, the Sonni dynasty was overturned at Gao by a Sarakolle general, Mamadu or Mohammed Toure, of the Silla group, who became invested with the sovereignty under the title of Askia. He was the first prince of a new dynasty which was to last a century.

 

The Askia Mohammed reigned from 1493 to 1529. He was a remarkable monarch in all respects, knowing how to bring prosperity to his States, developing there a civilisation which aroused the admiration of Leo the African, who visited the Songhoy under his reign, towards 1507. Indeed, he was very well seconded by his ministers and provincial governors, notably by his brother Amar or Omar, whom he made his kanfari, that is, his principal lieutenant; but it is precisely in this choice of excellent collaborators that great kings are recognised. Giving up the system of mass levies which were practiced by the Sonni Ali the Great and which prevented the peasants from working the fields, he recruited a professional army among the slaves and prisoners of war, thus leaving the farmers on their lands all year round, the artisans at their trades and the merchants to their business. Showing a great respect for religious personages and scholars, he made of Gao, of Walata and especially of Timbuktu and of Djenné intellectual centres which radiated a brilliant luster, where the renowned writers of the Maghreb did not disdain to come to complete their studies and sometimes to settle permanently, as did the celebrated Ahmed-Baba. Jurisconsults of value, like the El-Akit and the Bagayogo, the former of the white race, the latter of the black, were educated at the schools of Timbuktu and a whole literature developed there in the 16th and 17th centuries, whose products are being revealed to us little by little with the discovery of very interesting works, edited in Arabic at that epoch by the Sarakolle or Songhoy Negroes, such as the Tarikh el-fettach and the Tarikh es-Sudan.

 

 

The askia Mohammed was in continuous relations with the Moroccan reformer Merhili, who corresponded with him on the subjects of religion and politics and came to visit him at Gao in 1502. This prince made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1497 and profited by his journey to converse at length with Soyuti and other celebrated Muslim doctors; he consecrated a sum of 100,000 gold dinars to pious alms and to the purchase of land where he had a hostel built for Sudanese pilgrims; finally he reached the height of his glory in receiving from the grand cherif of Mecca, then Moulai EI-Abbas, the investiture of Khalife “for the Tekrur country,” that is, Sudan. The sherif even went so far as to send one of his nephews, Moulai EsSekli, a native of Bagdad,to Gao as ambassador from the kingdom of the Hedjaz to the askia.

 

However, the empire of Gao reached a considerable territorial extension, mostly at the expense of the Mandinka Empire. As early as 1494 Amar, brother of Mohammed, had annexed the whole of the Massina to the Songhoy, including the Fulani kingdom of the Diallo. In 1499, after having returned from Mecca and having unsuccessfully attempted the conquest of Yatenga, the askia himself captured the Bagana; in 1501, he conquered a part of the kingdom of Diara and, in 1508, he pushed on as far as Galam, that is to say, to the country of the Bakal on the Senegal.