The Takeover of Askia Muhammad

In the same year that Granada fell and Columbus set course, on the Niger a king was deposed who in the name of Islam had not dared to be enough.

The Year the World Tilted

1492. There are few dates whose echo resounds so loudly through world history. In January Granada falls, the last Muslim seat in Spain, after almost eight centuries of Islamic presence on the Iberian peninsula, and in March Isabella and Ferdinand sign the Alhambra Decree, which expels the Jews from Spain. In August Columbus’s ships depart from Palos, on the way to what Europe would wrongly call “a new world”, while in those same months, on the Niger, Sunni Ali Ber dies in the water of a river and in Songhay a power struggle breaks out that would shape the course of West Africa for a century.

History does not happen in isolated frames, since what ended in Spain would, via the Portuguese and Spanish sea routes, settle on the West African coast within half a century, and the competition for the gold and salt routes that Songhay at this moment dominated would, from those coasts, receive a new pressure. It is a moving moment, because on one side of the world the Muslim ummah is dealing with loss, and on the other with a new consolidation under the man who is our protagonist.

His name is Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, but history would know him by a title: Askia.

Sunni Baro Inherits the Throne

After the death of Sunni Ali, in November 1492, his son Sunni Baro inherited the throne. Baro was, as far as we know, a militarily competent man who had served under his father and knew both the army and the Songhay core region. But he made one strategic choice that would cost him his throne, because he openly chose the side of his father’s religious position: he confirmed his loyalty to the syncretistic royal religion, the bori practices and the ancestor rites.

He said, in essence, to the Ulema of Timbuktu:

This was not politically incomprehensible, since it was a confirmation of continuity, a promise to the tribes and warriors who had grown rich under Ali. But it was also an invitation to rebellion, because the Muslim aristocracy now knew exactly that under Baro there would come no reform, no purification and no reconciliation with the scholars. And within Ali’s army Baro had a rival who was listening carefully.

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr: A General with a Faith

Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr Ture in 1492 was already a grown man, probably around fifty years old, possibly older. His descent was Soninke-Ture, a family with Mande roots that came from southern Songhay regions, and he had served under Sunni Ali as one of his most capable generals, leading several important campaigns in that role. But unlike Ali, he was a convinced, practicing Muslim who prayed the five prayers, fasted Ramadan and adhered to the Maliki school of law.

Under Ali’s regime he had largely kept his religious convictions private, and Ali had kept him in service because he was militarily irreplaceable. But behind the scenes, over years, he had maintained ties with the Ulema, with scholars who lived in the margins under Ali’s rule, and with the Muslim merchants who formed the economic backbone of the Niger Bend. He was the man around whom the Muslim party could rally.

When Ali drowned and Baro spoke out for the syncretistic path, Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr saw his moment: he refused to swear loyalty to the new regime, he gathered his own troops, and he began to speak openly in the language of religious reform. Songhay had to be an Islamic empire, not only in form but in essence; the shariah had to apply, not the old customs; the Ulema had to be restored to its authority; and the throne had to be occupied by a man truly worthy of the title amir al-mu’minin, the leader of the believers.

For the Aqit family, for the Baghayogho, for all the scholarly houses that had lived in diaspora under Ali, this was the signal they had been waiting for.

The Battle: Anfao, April 1493

The military confrontation took place in April 1493, at a place called Anfao, on a day that coincides exactly with the end of the rainy season. The Tarikh al-Sudan describes the battle with a certain rhetorical buildup: on one side Baro, with an army that still carried the Sunni banners but whose loyalty had already been thinned by defectors; on the other side Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, with a smaller but more disciplined force, and with the moral advantage of a religiously justified cause.

As-Sa’di ﵀ recounts that before the battle the scholars of Timbuktu formally issued a fatwa legitimizing Muhammad’s revolt, declaring Baro a ruler whose conduct of government disqualified him and who could thus be legally deposed. This is a crucial detail, since the takeover was framed not as mutiny but as a religious duty, a jihad in the original sense of the word against an unjust ruler who called himself a Muslim.

At Anfao Baro lost; his army was scattered, he himself fled to the north, toward the Dendi region, where his family still had strongholds, and Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr entered Gao as victor.

The Title “Askia”

When Muhammad ascended the throne, he took on a new dynastic title: Askia. About the origin of this word there is discussion, and the Tarikh al-Sudan tells a tasty story alongside it, since the daughters of Sunni Ali, when they heard that the throne had been taken over, are said to have shouted “A si kiya”, which in Songhay meant approximately “he is not the heir”, a mocking cry about the usurper. Muhammad is said to have claimed that cry as his title, as a kind of ironic embrace: yes, I am not the heir of Ali’s line, I am something new.

Whether this story is historical can be doubted, and more likely “Askia” was an already existing title in the Songhay court, perhaps related to a military rank. But the story in the Tarikh al-Sudan has its own value, since it shows that the Askia dynasty explicitly positioned itself as a break and not as a continuation: a new time, new rules.

The Coalition Behind Askia

It is important to understand that Askia Muhammad was no solo project, since his takeover was supported by three clear parties.

First the Ulema of Timbuktu, foremost the Aqit and Baghayogho families, who could carry out a revenge two generations old and at the same time restore an Islamic-juridical order.

Second the Muslim merchant class, the Wangara and the Dyula and the Saharan merchants, for whom a sharia-based legal order was practically more advantageous than the arbitrary jurisprudence under Ali, because under Islamic law trade was protected, contracts enforceable and property rights regulated, while Ali had not offered that legal certainty.

Third a part of the army itself, especially the Soninke regiments and the northern Tuareg units who were dissatisfied with Baro and whom Muhammad’s military reputation brought along.

Three groups, three motives, one fused enterprising spirit, and that coalition explains why Askia’s takeover was essentially a fait accompli within weeks.

Anfao in Detail: The Battle Itself

The battle itself is worth pausing over for one moment, since it has its own drama. The Tarikh al-Sudan recounts that before the battle began the two armies stood opposite each other for several days and that negotiations were conducted: Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr sent messengers to Baro with the proposal to abdicate in favor of a regency that would stabilize the empire, but Baro refused, and his mother, according to the chronicle, was one of the voices that pushed him to combat, fearing that a peaceful transfer would destroy her son and her own position.

The battle itself was shorter and less bloody than later Songhay battles would be, and several hundreds fell. Baro’s cavalry broke under the pressure of Muhammad’s disciplined infantry, partly because it was not loyal, partly because it was tactically inferiorly arrayed, and by the end of the day Baro’s generals fled, while he himself had to escape southward with a small group of entourage.

What made this battle special was not the number of casualties but the legitimacy that Muhammad retained from it, since he had not merely won: he had won with the support of the fatwa of the Ulema, with the support of merchants, with the support of a coalition that could now claim political capital.

The First Acts

Immediately after his entry into Gao, Askia began a program of religious consolidation. He made peace with the Ulema by restoring the Aqit to honor and giving back their confiscated property, formalized the Maliki school of law as the school of law of the empire, and appointed qadis, judges, in every important city, with a clear hierarchy and accountability to the central court. He decreed that Islamic feast days were state holidays, and he banned open bori practices in the public domain, although he left them undisturbed at the private level, a pragmatic choice that his father would have appreciated for his style.

Simultaneously he began the military consolidation, since Sunni Baro was still free, in exile in the south. Askia sent expeditions after him, defeated him again in 1493, and definitively drove the Sunni line out of any position of power, so that Baro would still wander for years, possibly until his death around 1500, but without ever again posing a serious threat.

From a Songhay Empire to an Islamic One

What happened in 1492-1493 was more than a dynastic change, because it was a fundamental reorientation of the state.

Under Sunni Ali, Songhay had seen itself as a Songhay empire with a Muslim aristocracy, while under Askia Songhay became an Islamic empire with a Songhay foundation. The difference seems subtle, but it is immense, because the state ideology, the official self-representation and the center of legitimacy shifted from the old royal tradition to Islamic law and Islamic learning. The amir al-mu’minin title, which Mansa Musa a century and a half earlier in Cairo had for the first time approached for a West African sovereign, now became practically reality in Songhay.

This is why Askia Muhammad is by later historians, both Muslim and non-Muslim, often designated as “the greatest” of the West African sovereigns. That title rests not on the size of his empire, since Mali under Musa was more territorial, and not on his being the richest; it rests on his having created the most consistent Islamic state in the region, a state that in its structure, its legislation and its culture was truly Islamic.

A Critical Note

We must also remain honest: Askia’s takeover was no innocent religious reform but a coup. He killed or forced into exile men of the previous regime, he distributed land in a way that rewarded his own coalition, and he used the language of Islamic legitimacy also to anchor his own political position, so that one cannot always say where the faith ends and the politics begins.

That is no criticism, but a description of how power formation works, also in the history of Islam itself: Mu’awiya ﵁ had his own political calculus, and the Abbasids had their own. Askia stood in a long line of Muslim rulers who combined sincere piety with sharp politics, and we must not sanitize that, because if we do, we make of him a marble statue instead of a man.

The Reaction of the Saharan Trade

Something that the standard tellings often skip, and that is relevant here, is the question of how the rest of the Muslim world reacted to Askia’s takeover.

The answer is that the reaction was predominantly positive and quick, since within a few months after the victory at Anfao Maghrebi merchants began sending more caravans to Gao. The trans-Saharan trade had suffered under the uncertainties of Sunni Ali’s last years, in particular under the tensions between his rule and the Tuareg tribes that controlled the desert routes, and a new sovereign who explicitly committed himself to Islamic law was a sovereign with whom trade contracts could be made. A sovereign who bound himself to the shariah would, at least theoretically, protect the property rights of foreign Muslim merchants.

In the Tarikh al-Sudan we find mentions of delegations from Fez, from Tlemcen, from Tuat that in the first years after the takeover visited Gao, and merchants came in greater numbers, while scholars seeking patronage followed. The intellectual infrastructure of Timbuktu, which under Ali had stalled or withdrawn into diaspora, began to attract again, so that books circulated once more and teacher-student chains were restored.

This is an important point to record, since Askia’s takeover was not only a domestic coup: it was also an act of renewed integration of Songhay into the broader Islamic world economy and knowledge economy. The Maghreb had turned a syncretistic border sovereign into an ally.

The Absent Dyala

We must also acknowledge what was lost in the takeover. The syncretistic religious tradition of the Songhay, the bori, the venerating relationship with the Niger as a living power, the ancestor rites, was under Askia formally pushed back, although it continued to exist in practice, so that in villages far from Gao and Timbuktu people continued to practice their traditions, often in mixed forms with Islamic forms. The Dyala, the religious specialists of the Songhay countryside, lost court privileges but continued to function in their communities.

For a modern Muslim this can feel uncomfortable, because it concerns the presence of clearly non-Islamic practices in a country that officially called itself Islamic. But this was the reality of practically every Islamic empire in the premodern period, from the Maghreb to Java, since states convert faster than villages and laws change faster than customs. The Ulema accepts this as a long-term process and judges above all where the shariah must formally apply.

Askia understood this, since his takeover was not a campaign to religiously purify the countryside but a campaign to anchor the state Islamically, and those two things are not the same.

The Reign Still Ahead

In 1493 Askia Muhammad sat on the throne in Gao, his sword was cleaned and the Ulema was back in Timbuktu, while the coalition that had lifted him expected payment in the form of reforms, and he had every reason to make those expectations come true.

But a takeover, however successful, is not yet a reign. What Askia would build in the coming thirty-five years, until his own sons would depose him at the age of eighty, would change West Africa one piece at a time forever: his Hajj, his meeting with the Caliph, his correspondence with al-Maghili ﵀, his reform of the tax system, the army and jurisprudence, and his patronage of Timbuktu as intellectual center.

All that comes in the next article. For now it suffices to establish that on a day in 1493, somewhere near Anfao, West Africa changed face, not on the map but in structure, and that change would resonate up to the moment, a century later, when Moroccan arquebusiers would come from the desert and set everything ablaze.

But that is for another moment.

A Brief Word on 1492 as a World Year

It is worth pausing once more on what it means that all this happened in the same year in which a world-tilting moment took place in Europe. In January 1492 Granada fell, and in March the edict was issued that drove the Jews out of Spain, after which within half a year there followed also pressure on Moriscos, the Islamic minority that was forced to convert. Thousands of those expelled Spanish Muslims would find their way to Morocco, and a few generations later their descendants, with Andalusian traditions, with Spanish military knowledge and with resentment against the Christian rulers, would enter the service of another Moroccan sultan who would plan an ambitious expedition: Ahmad al-Mansur.

That expedition, as we shall see in later articles, would in 1591 deal Songhay the death blow, and it was Andalusian Morisco arquebusiers, in the majority, who under Judar Pasha trekked through the Sahara to break the empire of Askia.

The circle that was opened in 1492 by Isabella and Ferdinand would a century later be closed in the heart of Songhay. That is not a poetic exaggeration but a historical line that cannot be ignored.

While Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ascended the throne, in Spain Jewish and Muslim books were burned in stacks, Columbus was outfitted with ships and a world was overturned. These events stand in connection with each other, and that connection is worth seeing.

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Sources

• ʿAbd ar-Rahman as-Saʿdi ﵀, Tarikh as-Sudan, chapter 13 on the reign of Askia al-Hajj Muhammad: Abu Bakr Dao, Baru, succeeding his father; Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Turi, one of Sunni Ali’s senior commanders, defeating him at Danagha on 18 February 1493 and at Anku’u (Anfa’u in the Tarikh al-Fattash) near Gao on 2 April 1493 in a battle in which both armies almost annihilated each other; the cry a si kiya of Sunni Ali’s daughters and the title Askia; the new ruler as amir al-mu’minin who befriended the scholars and separated civilians from soldiers, in the translation by Hunwick, pp. 102–103 (TS ch. 13); and the death of Sunni Ali on 6 November 1492, p. 100 (TS ch. 12).
• Tarikh al-Fattash (Mahmud Kaʿti ﵀ and Ibn al-Mukhtar ﵀), in manuscript C: the three delegations that summoned Sunni Baru to Islam before the battle and his refusal, by which the chronicle presents the seizure of power as a legally prescribed jihad; and the statement that only the Bara-koi Mansa Kura stood at Muhammad’s side, as quoted in Gomez, pp. 222, 229–230.
• Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karim al-Maghili ﵀, Ajwiba (the Replies to Askia Muhammad), second and third questions: the Askia’s jihad against Sunni Ali’s following and his seizure of power as one of the most worthy jihads, and the ruling on those who pronounce the shahada yet keep serving their shrines, in the translation by Hunwick, Shariʿa in Songhay, pp. 72–73, 77–78.
• John O. Hunwick (trans.), Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: al-Saʿdi’s Taʾrikh al-sudan down to 1613 and other contemporary documents, Brill, Leiden 2003 (2nd printing; 1st printing 1999), pp. xxxix–xl, 96, 100, 102–103, 335–336.
  • pp. xxxix–xl: Sunni Baru immediately challenged after November 1492 by the Tondi-farma, governor of the Bandiagara uplands, who with the help of the Bara-koi defeated him five months later; Askia Muhammad’s descent from the Soninke clans Silla or Ture; his image in the west as a Muslim warrior removing the taint of semi-pagan rule; the authority of the Abbasid caliph of Cairo after the pilgrimage of 1497–98.
  • pp. 96, 100 (TS ch. 12): Sunni Ali repeatedly condemning his officer Askiya Muhammad to death and rescinding the order; his mother Kasay asking Nana Tinti in Timbuktu for prayer, a promise the Askia later kept; the death of Sunni Ali on 15 Muharram 898, 6 November 1492.
  • pp. 102–103 (TS ch. 13): Danagha, Anku’u and the flight of Sunni Abu Bakr to Ayar, where he remained until his death; a si kiya; the reinstatement of the Timbuktu-koi; the conquest of Diakha by Umar Komadiakha in 899; the departure on Hajj in Safar 902/1496.
  • pp. 335–336: the explanation of the title askiya as folk etymology, and the Tarikh al-Fattash observing that Askia Muhammad was not the first to bear the title; his reign from 2 April 1493 to 15 August 1529.
• Michael A. Gomez, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2018, pp. 190, 206–207, 219–226, 229–230, 236, 252, 310.
  • pp. 190, 206–207: Muhammad Ture as Tondi-farma in Sunni Ali’s upper chain of command; Kasay seeking the protection of the Aqit; the oral traditions accusing the Tondi-farma of Sunni Ali’s assassination.
  • pp. 219–220: the Askia dynasty as a return of cosmopolitanism and a new era of diplomacy; a reign of thirty-six years, 1493–1529.
  • pp. 221–223: Baru declared sunni on 20 January 1493; the battles of Danagha and Anku’u, so fierce that both armies almost annihilated each other; Baru fleeing to Ayar or Dia; the Songhay traditions presenting the battle as a victory for Islam because Baru refused to turn away from ancestral religion; the Dendi-fari Afumba and nearly all governors on Baru’s side, only the Bara-koi on Muhammad’s; the three months that point to a conspiracy planned in advance.
  • pp. 224–226: the restoration of the exiled scholars of Timbuktu as one of the Askia’s first acts; Jenne submitting; Umar’s expedition against Dia in 1494 and the creation of the office of kanfari at Tendirma; Sunni Ali’s daughters and the title Askia, in use since 1234.
  • pp. 229–230: the jihad framing of manuscript C with its three delegations; the later sanction of the coup as jihad by al-Maghili ﵀, given during a visit to Gao after 1493.
  • pp. 236, 252, 310: Mahmud ibn Umar Aqit ﵀ appointed qadi of Timbuktu in 904/1498–99; the distinction between civilians and soldiers; the Askia eighty-eight years old at his deposition in 1529, hence around fifty in 1493.
• John O. Hunwick (ed./trans.), Shariʿa in Songhay: The Replies of al-Maghili to the Questions of Askia al-Hajj Muhammad, Oxford University Press for the British Academy, Oxford 1985, pp. 41, 72–73, 77–78, 98–99.
  • p. 41: Sunni Ali died in late 1492 and within six months his son Abu Bakr had been overthrown; the new policy of placating the Muslims; the investiture by the Abbasid caliph of Cairo over the lands of Takrur.
  • pp. 72–73, 77–78: the seizure of power as one of the most worthy jihads; the three grounds for unbelief; the jihad against those who pronounce the shahada yet serve their idols.
  • pp. 98–99: the takeover as a coup d’état that ousted Ali’s son Abu Bakr (Baru); the precarious early years and the support of the Islamic western provinces; from secular usurper to legitimate Muslim amir on behalf of the caliph; the counsel of al-Suyuti ﵀ in Cairo, al-Maghili ﵀ in Gao and qadi Mahmud ﵀ in Timbuktu.