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
- 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. 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”. And on the Niger, those same months, 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. What ended in Spain would, via the Portuguese and Spanish sea routes, settle on the West African coast within half a century. The competition for the gold and salt routes that Songhay at this moment dominated would, from those coasts, receive a new pressure. You have to imagine how moving this moment is: on one side of the world the Muslim ummah is dealing with loss, on the other with a new consolidation under a man who is our protagonist tonight.
His name is Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, but history would know him by a title: Askia.
Who Was Sunni Baro?
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. He had served under his father, he knew the army, he knew the Songhay core region. But he made one strategic choice that would cost him his throne: he openly chose the side of his father’s religious position. He confirmed his loyalty to the syncretistic royal religion, the bori practices, the ancestor rites. He said, in essence, to the Ulema of Timbuktu: “Nothing changes. Under me it stays as it was under my father.”
This was not politically incomprehensible. 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, 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. He had served under Sunni Ali as one of his most capable generals, and in that role had led several important campaigns. But unlike Ali, he was a convinced, practicing Muslim. He prayed the five prayers. He fasted Ramadan. He 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, with the Muslim merchants who formed the economic backbone of the Niger Bend. He was, you should see it this way, 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. They declared Baro a ruler whose conduct of government disqualified him, and who could thus be legally deposed. This is a crucial detail: the takeover was not framed 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. 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. The Tarikh al-Sudan tells a tasty story: 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. 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: it shows that the Askia dynasty explicitly positioned itself as a break, 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. 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. Under Islamic law, trade was protected, contracts enforceable, property rights regulated. 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. Muhammad’s military reputation brought them along.
Three groups, three motives, one fused enterprising spirit. That coalition explains why Askia’s takeover was essentially a fait accompli within weeks.
Anfao in Detail: The Battle Itself
Let us pause for one moment on the battle itself, for 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. 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. Baro refused. Baro’s 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. 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. By the end of the day Baro’s generals fled, and he himself had to escape southward with a small group of entourage.
What made this battle special? Not the number of casualties. But the legitimacy that Muhammad retained from it. 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 what you may call a program of religious consolidation. He made peace with the Ulema by restoring the Aqit to honor and giving back their confiscated property. He formalized the Maliki school of law as the school of law of the empire. He 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. 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. 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. Baro would still wander for years, possibly until his death around 1500, but without ever again posing a serious threat.
What This Meant
What happened in 1492-1493 was more than a dynastic change. It was a fundamental reorientation of the state.
Under Sunni Ali, Songhay had seen itself as a Songhay empire with a Muslim aristocracy. Under Askia, Songhay became an Islamic empire with a Songhay foundation. The difference seems subtle, but it is immense. The state ideology, the official self-representation, 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. Not because he had the largest empire, for Mali under Musa was more territorial. Not because he was the richest. But because he 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 not an innocent religious reform. It was a coup. He killed or forced into exile men of the previous regime. He distributed land in a way that rewarded his own coalition. He used the language of Islamic legitimacy also to anchor his own political position, and you cannot always say where the faith ends and the politics begins.
That is no criticism. That is how power formation works, also in the history of Islam itself. Mu’awiya ﵁ had his own political calculus. 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, for if we do, we make of him a marble statue instead of a man.
The Reaction of the Saharan Trade
Something that in the standard tellings is often skipped but that for us tonight is relevant: how did the rest of the Muslim world react to Askia’s takeover?
The answer is: predominantly positively, and quickly. 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. 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. Merchants came in greater numbers. Scholars seeking patronage followed. The intellectual infrastructure of Timbuktu, which under Ali had stalled or withdrawn into diaspora, began to attract again. Books circulated again. Teacher-student chains were restored.
This is an important point to record. 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. 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 listener this can feel uncomfortable — 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. States convert faster than villages. 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. His takeover was not a campaign to religiously purify the countryside; it was a campaign to anchor the state Islamically. Those two things are not the same.
Toward the Reign Itself
In 1493 Askia Muhammad sat on the throne in Gao. His sword was cleaned. The Ulema was back in Timbuktu. 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, jurisprudence. His patronage of Timbuktu as intellectual center.
All that comes in the next article. For now it suffices to establish: 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
Let me pause one more time 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. In March the edict was issued that drove the Jews out of Spain; 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, 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; that is a historical line that we as serious narrators cannot ignore.
While Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ascended the throne, in Spain Jewish and Muslim books were burned in stacks, Columbus was outfitted with ships, a world was overturned. These events stand in connection with each other. We, as Muslims of today, may see that connection.