Dendi Kingdom

The Dendi Kingdom was the rump state of the Songhai Empire, founded on the middle Niger after Moroccan invaders destroyed the empire's core in 1591. Ruled by descendants of the Askiya dynasty, it resisted Moroccan control, survived for three centuries through frequent succession struggles, and came to an end when France deposed its last askia in 1901. Its lands lie around today's Gaya in Niger, Malanville in Benin and Kamba in Nigeria.

Dendi, a name taken from the Songhai words for "down the river", was the easternmost province of the Songhai Empire, the great West African state ruled from Gao. Its governor, the Dendi-fari, or governor of the eastern front, was one of the empire's senior officials. The region's people included the Songhai, the older Tyenga population, and Zarma, Hausa, Bariba and Fulbe communities.

In 1590 the Saadi sultan of Morocco, Ahmad al-Mansur, sent an army across the Sahara under Judar Pasha. Equipped with arquebuses and cannon, it routed a far larger Songhai army at the Battle of Tondibi on 13 March 1591. Members of the royal family fled south to Dendi. The defeated Askia Ishaq II lost his throne to his brother Muhammad Gao, whom the Moroccan commander later had killed. The Moroccans installed another brother, Sulayman, as a puppet askia, but a further brother, Nuh, son of Askia Dawud, took up the struggle in Dendi, south of modern Say, and made his base at a town called Lulami, whose site is now unknown.

Nuh fought a costly two-year guerrilla war against the pasha Mahmud ibn Zarqun, who gave up in 1594 and was killed that year by the Dogon, probably Nuh's allies. His successor kept up the pressure, and in 1599 Nuh's exhausted followers replaced him with his brother Harun. The Songhai backed a revolt of Djenné in 1609; the Moroccans retook the city, but with little support from home they gradually lost their grip on the region to Tuareg and Fulbe nomads. Dendi's own politics were turbulent. Askia Ismail took power in 1639 with Moroccan help, but when he tried to send the foreign troops away he was deposed, and that year the pasha Mesaoud sacked Lulami.

The Timbuktu chronicle Tarikh al-Sudan lists the askias of Dendi, all descended from Askia Dawud, who had ruled Songhai from 1549 to 1582, though it rarely gives dates. A later French survey preserved a dated list from Askia Hanga, who reigned from 1700 to 1761, to Askia Malla, who reigned from 1887 to 1901. According to that report, whose reliability is uncertain, the kingdom split under Askia Fodi Mayrumfa around 1800 into three small states based at Karimama, Madékali and Gaya. Reigns grew short and unstable, with repeated coups.

Islam spread only gradually, and most Dendi were Muslim by the nineteenth century, but older beliefs persisted. The Tyenga, earlier inhabitants of the area, drew authority from the Bori spirit-possession cult, and their mixing with the Songhai newcomers produced the Dendi people, who speak a Songhai dialect also called Dendi. Bori remained strong in the region until the mid-twentieth century, when it almost disappeared as Islam spread further.

When France advanced into the middle Niger in the late nineteenth century, the divided kingdom was in no position to resist. In 1901 France removed the last askia, and the territory was absorbed into French West Africa. Today the Dendi people live mainly in Niger and Benin, with a smaller community in Nigeria, and the area where the three countries meet became an important market for rice, millet and maize in the later twentieth century.

Our maps show the Dendi Kingdom from 1650 to 1880, in the years 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800, 1878 and 1880, as a small state on the Niger downstream from the former Songhai heartland.