The Siege of Djenné

Djenné stands on an island in the inland delta of the Niger, where the river spreads into a network of channels before it turns north-east toward Timbuktu and then east to Gao. Sunni Ali Ber came to the throne at Gao in 1464 and spent his reign on the river rather than in the palace. Djenné was the fortified trading city of the delta, affiliated to Mali, and it lay upstream of everything Songhay already held.

Sunni Ali’s method was to move on water and on land at the same time. The Sorko, the boatmen of the Niger, crewed a fleet that could carry troops upstream faster than a land force could march, while the cavalry kept pace along the bank. At the confluence the Bani joins the Niger, and from there the approach to Djenné runs through shallow water that shifts between seasons. Djenné is the clearest case of the combined method in his career.

The blockade closed the water and the land together. Djenné’s defence was its ground: shallow water round the island through the dry season, and no approach at all through the wet, so a city that could not be reached could not be stormed either. What could be done was to sit on the channels and the roads and let time work. No source consulted gives the strength of either side, and none is stated here.

The siege was decided by supply and not by an assault, and it lasted long enough that the chronicles turned it into a figure. The Tarikh al-Sudan gives seven years, seven months and seven days and transmits it openly as legend. Another count inside the same tradition gives four years, one for each of the Rashidun caliphs said to guard the city’s corners. The Tarikh al-Fattash gives six months. The start year follows from whichever number is chosen, which is to say it is fixed nowhere at all.

Djenné opened rather than fell. The city came to terms in 1473 and was taken into the Songhay state, which held it until 1591, when a Saadi expedition out of Marrakesh crossed the Sahara with firearms, broke the Songhay army at Tondibi, and the middle Niger changed hands again. Tradition adds that Sunni Ali afterwards married the mother of the defeated ruler as a gesture of reconciliation. It is transmitted as tradition and not as record, and the chronicles that carry it are not neutral about the man.