Sonni Ali

Sonni Ali, also called Sonni Ali Ber ("the Great"), ruled the Songhai kingdom on the middle Niger from about 1464 to 1492. A tireless soldier, he turned a regional state centred on Gao into the largest power in West Africa, taking Timbuktu and Djenné from the declining Mali Empire. Muslim chroniclers remembered him as a tyrant, and historians still debate how far that picture is fair.

Sonni Ali belonged to the Sonni (or Sunni) dynasty, which ruled Songhai from Gao and had probably made it independent of Mali in the late 14th century. His father, Sonni Muhammad Da'o, appears in the later king lists as a Sonni ruler. His mother came from a rural area where the old Songhai religion remained strong, and he grew up in that world as well as receiving a Muslim education. His year of birth is not recorded. He came to the throne around 1464, after the death of Sonni Sulayman Dama.

When Sonni Ali became king, Songhai already controlled a long stretch of the Niger valley. His first great prize was Timbuktu, which had been in Tuareg hands since Mali lost it. Around 1468–69 the town's leader asked for Songhai help against the Tuareg, and Sonni Ali took the city. He then turned on Djenné, the trading town of the inland Niger delta. Its people held out for years, by one account for seven, and surrendered only when starved; the conquest is usually dated to 1473, though some accounts give 1475.

To campaign along the river he built up a fleet of boats on the Niger, the beginning of the Songhai navy. He even tried to dig a canal towards Walata, far to the west, so that his boats could reach it, but abandoned the project in 1483 to drive back an invasion by the Mossi from the south. He also fought the Fulani of Massina and other nomadic groups, and campaigned against the Dogon. Gao remained his main capital, though he moved his court to other towns as his wars required. Several dikes built during his reign improved irrigation and farming.

Sonni Ali ruled both Muslim townspeople and rural populations who followed traditional beliefs, and he kept a foot in both worlds. He prayed, fasted and gave alms, but he also honoured the old religion, and he did not impose sharia. His harsh treatment of the scholars of Timbuktu, whom he associated with the Tuareg, earned him lasting hostility. The chronicle Tarikh al-Sudan accuses him of burning the town and slaughtering its people, and the scholar al-Maghili claimed he worshipped idols. Modern historians note that the chroniclers wrote for the Askia dynasty that overthrew his family, that even they admit he respected some scholars, and that funeral stones from Kukiya cast doubt on their verdict.

Sonni Ali died on 6 November 1492, but how is uncertain. The Tarikh al-Sudan says he drowned while crossing a river; oral tradition holds that he was killed by Muhammad Ture, his sister's son and one of his generals. His son Sonni Baru was proclaimed king by the army, but Muhammad Ture challenged him on the grounds that he was not a true Muslim, defeated him and took power. As Askia Muhammad, he built on Sonni Ali's conquests and made Songhai a strongly Islamic state.

Our 1492 and 1500 maps show the Songhai Empire at the end of Sonni Ali's reign and just after it, spread along the Niger across what is now Mali and Niger.