100 Things You Did Not Know About Life in the Songhai Empire
Editorial Staff
| February 16, 2015
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1. West Africa’s Niger River provided bigger and better harvests than the Nile. According to Major Felix Dubois, a pioneering French scholar on the Songhai Empire: ‘What the Nile has done for Egypt, the Niger has accomplished for the Sudan (i.e. West Africa). In the course of a year we witness the same striking and opposed pictures. The cultivation is as facile as that of Egypt, and is due to the same regular rise and fall of the river. But the Niger shows an even greater munificence in its gifts than does its brother of Eastern Africa.’
2. Ancient West Africa was highly urbanised. Professor Roderick McIntosh, an archaeologist whose specialism is West Africa, reported evidence that Mali’s Middle Niger region had an indigenous urbanism as dense and expansive as those of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Iraq. This urban culture dated back to the first millennium BC.
3. Some of these early cities were large. According to the BBC in The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu, at least one of these pre-Islamic cities was twice as large as Timbuktu at its height.
4. Warfare did not exist in the early period. A contributor to the BBC programme, Douglas Park, mentioned that archaeologists have found no evidence of warfare from these early cities. The evidence suggests that the people lived peaceably over many centuries.
5. Old Djenné, one of these early cities, had an iron industry from almost the foundation period of that city which was around 250 BC.
6. We know what the early urbanites were eating. According to archaeologists, in Old Djenné, the earliest inhabitants cooked and ate perch and catfish, and supplemented this with the flesh of crocodiles, tortoises and waterfowl. They also ate rice, sorghum and millet.
7. Even before the era of kings, the horse was an important animal among the Songhai. According to French historian, Jean Beraud-Villars: ‘They learned to use the horse, which will play a very important role in their history.’
8. Alayaman was the first documented king of Songhai ruling from 690 AD. He founded the Zuwa Dynasty, the first of three ruling Songhai Dynasties. He ruled from the ancient Songhai city of Kukiya.
9. The Songhai ruler based at the rival city of Gao or Kawkaw was the most powerful man in West Africa in the ninth century. According to Al Yaqubi writing in 872 AD: ‘Kawkaw is the greatest sovereignty of the Negroes, the most important and influential, to whom all the kingdoms pay allegiance … Subject to this (king) are a number of kingdoms which pay him allegiance and acknowledge his overlordship … Among them is the kingdom of Maraw which is extensive, whose king has a capital called al-Haya; and the kingdoms of Murdiya, al-Harbar, Sanhaja, Nadhkarir, Al-Zayanir, Arwar, Taqarut. All these are dependencies of the kingdom of Kawkaw.’
10. Kusoy, the fifteenth member of the Zuwa Dynasty, became Kukiya’s first Islamic king. Converting to Islam in 1009 or 1010, he appointed Muslims to governmental positions.
11. The insignia of the Songhai rulers consisted of a sword, a seal and a Koran by the eleventh century period – all sent from the Umayyad Dynasty ruling in Spain. By this period, Kawkaw and Kukiya were under one common ruler.
12. Salt was the Songhai currency. They mined it in the Berber territories and carried it south by caravan. There were royal storehouses for salt.
13. The Zuwa Dynasty had royal burials with tombstones of Spanish marble. Many of these exquisite tombstones continue to survive today.
14. The city of Gao had glass windows. Dr Tim Insoll of Cambridge University recovered an artefact in a 1993 excavation and later exhibited it in the British Museum. The caption connected to this artefact read as follows ‘Fragments of alabaster window surrounds and a piece of pink window glass. Gao 10th – 14th centuries.’
15. Gao was an important city of trade and business. According to Al Idrissi, a Moorish geographer, Gao was a ‘populous, unwalled, commercial and industrial town, in which were to be found the produce of all arts and trades necessary for the use of its inhabitants.’
16. The Zuwa Dynasty had interesting court rituals. The playing of drums signified to the public that the king was eating and thus all activity in the capital stopped. Dancers with hair plaited like rats tails performed the hair dance and entertained the ruler as he ate. Following the royal meal, they threw the remains of the food into the nearby river. At this point, the royal drummers played a different rhythm which sent a message to the public that they could resume business as usual. At this point, members of the court gathered and sent out a loud cheer.
17. The First Songhai Empire had a well organised army. Al Idrissi in 1153 wrote: ‘The king of Kawkaw … has a large bodyguard, a considerable retinue, generals and armies, complete with uniforms and fine decorations. They ride horses and camels, and are brave and overawe the neighbouring tribes who surround their land.’
18. The First Songhai Empire had a powerful merchant caste. Al Idrissi wrote: ‘[T]heir merchants dress in tunics and gowns with turbans around their heads and ornaments of gold. The nobles and notables, who wear the izar [i.e. a head-wrap derived from a mouth veil], have dealings with the merchants and sit in with them and advance them goods in return for a share in the profits.’
19. Traditional religions were practised and had a public presence. Al Bakri, writing in 1067, mentions that, despite the Emperor being a Muslim, the people of Kawkaw had icons similar to those adored by other Negroes. In the sixteenth century, temples dedicated to the worship of the traditional deities remained standing in Gao and Djenné.
20. The terracotta art of Old Djenné was sculpted by women artists. According to Dr Peter Garlake, a distinguished scholar of African antiquities, African societies made a rigid division between metallurgy as a male preserve and pottery as a female preserve. This division occurs across Africa and remains a long-lived tradition. This ultimately means that the terracotta art of the Niger Inland Delta (and across Africa in general) was the work of female artists.
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21. Mansa Musa I, emperor of Mali, conquered Songhai in 1325. The First Songhai Empire collapsed and it was absorbed into the Mali Empire. This ended the first great era of Songhai history.
22. Despite being colonised, Gao continued to be a great city. Ibn Battuta, a fourteenth century visitor, described Gao as ‘one of the finest cities of the blacks.’
23. Cowrie shells replaced salt as the principal currency during this period but both currencies remained in use. Ibn Battuta tells us that 1,150 cowries equalled one golden dinar in value. Also 1,200 cowries equalled one large mithqal of gold.
24. The Sunni Dynasty, the second Songhai ruling house, declared the Songhai independent of the Mali Empire. Unfortunately scholars cannot agree on what date this event happened. Some give the date as 1355. Others say 1375.
25. The Songhai Kingdom expanded into the Second Songhai Empire under Sulayman, the seventeenth member of the Sunni Dynasty. Among other territories, Sulayman seized the province of Mina in Masina in the mid fifteenth century.