I've been reworking some old ideas for a surviving Songhai Empire...
I) Rise
The death of Emperor Askia Daoud in 1582 left the Songhai Empire weak. Upon his death, the empire plunged into a civil war as Daoud’s three sons struggled for the throne. Between 1582 and 1599, three Emperors reigned in Songhai, each deposed by the last. In 1588, Ishaq II took the reins of a weakened kingdom while its enemies circled like vultures. Two years after Ishaq took the throne, the Saadi Dynasty of Morocco turned its eyes south and saw an opportunity to conquer the Songhai and gain control over its salt, gold and slaves.
Morocco dispatched an army under the command of Judar Pasha, a convert to Islam from the diminishing Muslim territories on the Iberian Peninsula, to destroy Songhai power. Caravans crossed the vast expanse of the Sahara routinely, and the Sultan of Morocco was convinced a well-equipped army could do the same. Supported by a train of eight thousand camels, the Moroccan force of fifteen hundred cavalry, three thousand arquebus-armed infantry and several pieces of artillery, set out across the desert in October of 1590.
From the beginning of the expedition, the Moroccan Army was plagued by a series of inconveniences. In the middle of November, a dust storm blanketed the advancing army, scattering its units into the wind and separating them from their supply trains. Without water and unable to find any oases, many of the soldiers died from exposure to the desert. The supply train itself managed to cross the desert mostly intact, but the fighting men of Morocco. The fate of Judar Pasha remains unknown. All that is certain is that when the remnants of his army finished their epic and tragic crossing of the Sahara in January of 1591, Pasha was nowhere to be seen.
Many of the Moroccan fire arms proved useless after the treacherous crossing. Dust and fine grains of sand clogged the barrels and wheel-lock mechanisms. Of the six cannon that began the journey, four were lost to the desert for all time. Scattered soldiers approached settlements on the northern edge of Songhai more as refugees than conquerors. They sought not gold or ivory, but water. In February, the surviving third of the Moroccan army reached Taghaza, once a vital source of salt. After centuries of mining, the salt deposits gradually decreased. By the time of the Moroccan invasion, alternate sources of salt were discovered at Taoudinni, some one hundred fifty kilometers southeast.
Taghaza fell mostly because of surprise than the prowess of an exhausted invasion force. The Moroccans paused immediately after capturing the town to take time to rest after their traumatic crossing and to reorganize the survivors. It was obvious to any surviving officer that the army was in no shape to wage war against the Songhai, even with its superior weapons. The Moroccans were so exhausted when they attacked that they failed to prevent a number of messengers from escaping to carry word of the invasion back to the capital.
One word reach Emperor Askia Ishaq II in Gao, the Emperor immediately called forth a force of twenty thousand foot soldiers and fourteen thousand cavalry. The army might appear at first glance to be overkill for such a rag-tag contingent of Moroccans, but Ishaq operated under the belief that the force that took Taghaza was but a vanguard of a much larger invasion. Moroccan firearms proved to compensate for their smaller numbers. Charge after charge of Songhai cavalry was turned back by their thunderous lances. Gunpowder proved such an advantage that had the Moroccan Army arrived in full force, it is entirely possible they could have defeated Ishaq and broken the Songhai Empire forever.
Instead, even with three Songhai killed for each Moroccan, the surviving Moroccans surrendered on March 2. Just over five hundred surviving soldiers were taken away from the battlefield to be sold into slavery. An even bigger prize than broken soldiers was the supply train taken shortly after the Battle of Taghaza. It included weapons, gunpowder and hundreds of craftsmen needed to support the army. The Emperor took these men as his personal spoils of the war, employing their skills to strengthen the state as well as his own position. Not too long before the Moroccan invasion, brother fought brother for the throne in Gao.
News of the defeat slowly trickled back to Morocco, where it was greeted with shock in the Sultan’s palace. Immediate fear of a Songhai invasion swept across the nation. Sultan Ahmed al-Mansur found his own position weakened by a loss. True, the actual number of soldiers loss was not enough to bring about the downfall of an entire Sultanate, but the humiliating defeat did cause a great loss of face for the Sultan. Worse still, the dust storm that scattered the army could only be the will of Allah. His own domestic enemies might seize upon this as an opportunity to move against him.
Fear of invasion was not entirely misplaced. Emperor Ishaq ordered his own expedition across the Sahara to strike back at the enemy. It was reasoned that if an army could cross the desert from north to south, then it could do the same in reverse. Ishaq’s initial plans called for a merely punitive venture, revenge for the sacking of Taghaza. In November 1591, twenty thousand Songhai soldiers set out across the desert, some wielding the same firearms that Moroccans sought to use in the conquest of Songhai.
The Songhai soldiers proved less adept at the weapons, but enough fired in a volley still took its toll. The defenders of Sijilmasa were better trained with these weapons, and inflicted more than twice as many casualties as they received. The Songhai Expedition won the day out of sheer numbers, using attrition to wear down the defenders. Once the city fell, the expedition proceeded to sack it, shipping its wealth and half its population back to Songhai. Sijilmasa sat upon an important trade route across the Sahara, and its destruction lead to a steady decline in Morocco’s position in the Trans-Sahara Trade, while Algiers rose to fill the void on the north end of the trade routes.
For the start of the 17th Century, the Emperor sought new trade routes for the Songhai. For too long Morocco was the primary, and occasionally only, trade partner for the Empire. Morocco served as a middleman between Songhai and the markets of the Mediterranean. What Ishaq desired was direct contact with the markets. Contact was sporadic with the coastal traders, since Songhai had no port on the sea. It largest and most famous port, Timbuktu, sat upon the Niger River, well inland from the sea. Navigation between river and sea was always hazardous, owing to the tidal swamp nature of the Niger Delta. Nevertheless, it served as a major trading center as well as the Songhai’s most learned city. Scholars from across West Africa, and even throughout the Islamic World, travelled there to trade in ideas.
Portuguese ships did manage to sail to Timbuktu on occasion, but those occasions were few and far between. The hazard and cost of going directly to the heart of Songhai often outweighed the profits and Portuguese merchants preferred to do business with coastal nations. What these white traders wanted most from Africans were the Africans themselves. Endemic warfare between the tribes and nations of West Africa lead to thousands upon thousands of captives being sold into slavery. These luckless individuals either ended up in local markets or where traded to Europeans for weapons or trade goods such as fine cloth or barrels of rums.
Captured Moroccan firearms were handed over to Songhai blacksmiths to duplicate. The barrels were simple enough, but the more complex firing mechanism gave the smiths trouble. Songhai arquebuses proved to be of inferior quality to European models, as big as danger to user as to its intended target. Production of gunpowder proved more successful. Before his death in 1602, Ishaq II ordered alchemists and savants across the empire to begin production of the black powder.
For better access to the coastal trade, the Empire strengthened its hold on the Gambia River, allying where possible and conquering when necessary. Conquest gave the added bonus of captives, which were traded to the Portuguese for higher-quality European arms. Adding to the captive tribesmen, Emperor Mohammed III began to sell the Empire’s criminals to the white man. The practice in Songhai was to use indentured servitude as punishment for various crimes. Those convicted of property crimes were sentenced to a length of service into the house they offended. Compared to other parts of the world in the 17th Century, slavery in the Songhai Empire was relatively benign, with slaves occasionally marrying into the families they served and being released from servitude in a higher social standing than when they started. This in not to say the slave status was desirable for any Muslim in Songhai, and it did not always end on such positive terms, but it proved far more humane than those enslaved to Europeans.
What awaited the condemned on the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean Island were horrors far beyond their wildest nightmares. When the jails failed to satisfy Portuguese demand or net sufficient weapons, the Emperor ordered that villages and tribes within the Empire to supply their own criminals to the foreign slave markets. If that failed to quench Portugal’s demand, as it often did, wars were waged upon traditional enemies and neighboring states. The first victims to the Songhai’s demand for foreign goods were the Mossi Kingdoms to the south of Songhai. It was not the first time the Songhai and Mossi waged war. More than a century earlier, starting in 1497, Emperor Mohammed I attempted to spread Islam to the Mossi. Though victorious in the conquests, Mohammed failed to impose Islam upon the Mossi.
The southern neighbors regained their independence in the 1580s, when civil war reached epidemic proportions within the Empire. With the Mossi also trading with the Europeans, they were seen as a threat as well as a source of slaves. This gave Mohammed III twice the incentive to conquer them. Mohammed was not without mercy, but when a Mossi village resisted fiercely, it was depopulated after conquest, its people forever exiled from their homeland. Along with thousands of captives, the Songhai also appropriated enemy weapons. Empty villages did not stay empty for long; once the conquest was complete, Mohammed encouraged Muslim Songhai to colonize the infidel lands to the south.
The Portuguese brought more than weapons and goods when they came to Africa; they brought their faith along with them. Weapons and trade goods the Songhai wanted, but the Muslin state had zero interest in Christianity. Between 1603 and 1643, Jesuit missionaries converted tens of thousands within the southern and western reached of the Empire. The Portuguese presence in the Gambia protected many converted, but those in the south ran the risks of being punished as apostate, captured and sold into slavery. The Emperor attempted to stop the conversions by force. A Songhai expedition down the Gambia River was turned back by a small number of fortified Portuguese and their cannon. Songhai blacksmiths could replicate small arms to an extent, but they still had a ways to go in perfecting domestic artillery.
Attacks on the Jesuits resulted in a halt of trade with Portugal, and with the Europeans arming the neighboring enemies of the Songhai. These alternative traders brought retribution to the Songhai Empire, raiding deep into its western frontier and hauling off thousands of subjects to the Portuguese markets. Mohammed III desperately sought a new trade partner, one that could serve as a balance against the Portuguese in West Africa, as well as abroad. To the relief of the Emperor, Portugal, during its period of union with Spain, was in fierce competition with the rising Dutch Republic. The Dutch had recently allied themselves with the Kingdom of Kandy on the distant island of Ceylon, and expelled the Portuguese from said island.
Mohammed III learned that the infidels in Kandy allied themselves with the Dutch infidels, because the Dutch had no interest in subverting them to the Dutch faith. The Dutch Republic and its merchants were interested on in trade. In 1643, the aging Emperor entered into a commercial and military alliance with the recently founded West-Afrikaansche Compagnie, and from there proceeded to push back the tide of Portuguese influence.
Over the course of a twenty year period, between 1650 and 1670, the Songhai Empire fought a series of short, successful wars, reducing neighbors to the west and south to mere tributary states. According to WAC figures, the number of prisoners purchased from Songhai exceeded fifty thousand during this period. The number of slaves taken in 1661 alone was so great that it depressed the value of slaves in the West Indies. In fact, the supply so outstripped demand that the Dutch, and later English, began to offer less and less for captive Africans.
The increase in price for firearms, as well innovation in firearm technology, allowed for the Songhai to no longer be dependent upon Europe for its weapons. The flintlock mechanism proved far more reliable and simpler than earlier wheel locks. Domestic muskets were still of lower quality than those produced in Europe, but they more than made up for it in sheer numbers. The entire Songhai Army found itself equipped with muskets, including shorter-barreled carbines for cavalry. Reloading them on the ride proved a daunting task, and many horsemen retained their swords for charges.
When the demand for slaves picked up once again in 1673, Emperor Omar ordered an invasion of the Gambia. The Gambia was nominally in tribute to Songhai, but heavy Portuguese influence allowed for the states along the Gambia to resist Songhai invasion. With Songhai no longer a trading partner, the Portuguese turned to these other states for a supply of slaves, and began to arm them in trade. During the rainy season of 1674, Songhai weapons proved to have the edge, for African smiths built their weapons with heavy rains in mind. However, just because a weapon can handle the rain, did not mean the ammunition would fare well, as much of the black powder was ruined in torrential downpours.
The Songhai Army found itself resoundedly defeated at the confluence of the Gambia and Sandougou Rivers that same year. With the army committed so far away, subjects in the south rose up in rebellion. Upon taking the throne in 1659, Oman decreed the Sharia to be the one true law of the Empire, and strongly encouraged all subjects to convert. The attempt to unify the Empire through religion backfired when the pagans and infidels of Mali drove or wiped out the Songhai’s garrisons, with clear European support.
As civil war threatened to break out all across the Empire, Emperor Oman showed one too many weaknesses, causing his brother Ishmael to launch his own coup, becoming Emperor Ishmael II. The new Emperor recalled the armies from the west, effectively abandoning any navigational control of the Gambia, and waged a fierce war upon the pagan rebels. In December of 1676, Ismail went beyond his brother’s ‘strong encouragement’ and stated that all freemen of Songhai would convert to the one true faith. His long decree ended in declaring a Jihad against the Malians. With thirty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry, the Songhai descended upon Mali.
Ishmael’s decree raised alarms in the slaver industry, as his decree included clauses that no Muslim could ever be sold to a foreigner. They were still subject to servitude as punishment for crimes, but only in domestic use. Even these sentences would be far less than those of non-Muslims committing the same crimes. Slaves willing to convert to Islam would also be spared the horrors of slavery on the far shores of the Atlantic.
The Malians were not to be preempted. With European weapons, along with Jesuits eager to penetrate Songhai’s borders to save souls, the Malians stormed and captured the city of Djenne. Thousands of the Emperor’s loyal subjects fled the city and thousands more were killed or sold into slavery, destined for the plantations of Brazil. The Malian rebels pushed further north, only to found themselves decisively defeated upon the savanna on May 7, 1677, when the Songhai, commanded by General Moruk Abdul surrounded the Malians in three columns. The Malians were nearly killed to the last, with only a few captives seeing the light of Islam and throwing themselves on the Emperor’s mercy as new converts. The Jesuits were shown nor offered any quarter, and all were summarily executed.
Two weeks after the crushing defeat, Moruk marched into Djenne. Surviving Malian soldiers did their best to deny Songhai the city. Much of the city was built from stone and mud brick, but those parts not were razed to the ground. Upon hearing the news, the Emperor decided the city would be rebuilt even grander than before, with a mosque erected at its heart that would rival those in Timbuktu, Gao and even distant Istanbul. Has Ishmael ever seen the Haiga Sofia, he would know a goal of surpassing it was lofty beyond his ability. The mosque would be dedicated to unifying all the peoples of the Empire under the banner of Islam.
The decree was premature. Upon marching southwest into the rain forest, army discipline and order began to wane. Worse luck yet, the Songhai found themselves facing European soldiers and mercenaries who fought as allies of the pagans. Ishmael attempted to gain the support of his most valued trading partner, the Dutch Republic, only to learn they were weakened by their own wars against the English. The lightning fast victory on open grasslands gave way to a prolonged form of warfare in the jungle, where Songhai soldiers found themselves reduced to using melee weapons when powder stocks exhausted themselves.
After ten years of conflict, the Emperor was forced to face facts. After the loss of treasure and manpower through attrition, the southwestern lands would not remain under Songhai control. Though there was no formal peace treaty, a resurgent Portugal extended its protection over a newly revived and partially Christianized Kingdom of Mali. Malian protection, as well as control over the lower Gambia locked the Songhai from access to the sea, except via the Niger River. With his former Dutch allies in decline, Ishmael decided that he could not rely solely upon the white man for maritime commerce. Songhai must have its own merchant fleet.
I) Rise
The death of Emperor Askia Daoud in 1582 left the Songhai Empire weak. Upon his death, the empire plunged into a civil war as Daoud’s three sons struggled for the throne. Between 1582 and 1599, three Emperors reigned in Songhai, each deposed by the last. In 1588, Ishaq II took the reins of a weakened kingdom while its enemies circled like vultures. Two years after Ishaq took the throne, the Saadi Dynasty of Morocco turned its eyes south and saw an opportunity to conquer the Songhai and gain control over its salt, gold and slaves.
Morocco dispatched an army under the command of Judar Pasha, a convert to Islam from the diminishing Muslim territories on the Iberian Peninsula, to destroy Songhai power. Caravans crossed the vast expanse of the Sahara routinely, and the Sultan of Morocco was convinced a well-equipped army could do the same. Supported by a train of eight thousand camels, the Moroccan force of fifteen hundred cavalry, three thousand arquebus-armed infantry and several pieces of artillery, set out across the desert in October of 1590.
From the beginning of the expedition, the Moroccan Army was plagued by a series of inconveniences. In the middle of November, a dust storm blanketed the advancing army, scattering its units into the wind and separating them from their supply trains. Without water and unable to find any oases, many of the soldiers died from exposure to the desert. The supply train itself managed to cross the desert mostly intact, but the fighting men of Morocco. The fate of Judar Pasha remains unknown. All that is certain is that when the remnants of his army finished their epic and tragic crossing of the Sahara in January of 1591, Pasha was nowhere to be seen.
Many of the Moroccan fire arms proved useless after the treacherous crossing. Dust and fine grains of sand clogged the barrels and wheel-lock mechanisms. Of the six cannon that began the journey, four were lost to the desert for all time. Scattered soldiers approached settlements on the northern edge of Songhai more as refugees than conquerors. They sought not gold or ivory, but water. In February, the surviving third of the Moroccan army reached Taghaza, once a vital source of salt. After centuries of mining, the salt deposits gradually decreased. By the time of the Moroccan invasion, alternate sources of salt were discovered at Taoudinni, some one hundred fifty kilometers southeast.
Taghaza fell mostly because of surprise than the prowess of an exhausted invasion force. The Moroccans paused immediately after capturing the town to take time to rest after their traumatic crossing and to reorganize the survivors. It was obvious to any surviving officer that the army was in no shape to wage war against the Songhai, even with its superior weapons. The Moroccans were so exhausted when they attacked that they failed to prevent a number of messengers from escaping to carry word of the invasion back to the capital.
One word reach Emperor Askia Ishaq II in Gao, the Emperor immediately called forth a force of twenty thousand foot soldiers and fourteen thousand cavalry. The army might appear at first glance to be overkill for such a rag-tag contingent of Moroccans, but Ishaq operated under the belief that the force that took Taghaza was but a vanguard of a much larger invasion. Moroccan firearms proved to compensate for their smaller numbers. Charge after charge of Songhai cavalry was turned back by their thunderous lances. Gunpowder proved such an advantage that had the Moroccan Army arrived in full force, it is entirely possible they could have defeated Ishaq and broken the Songhai Empire forever.
Instead, even with three Songhai killed for each Moroccan, the surviving Moroccans surrendered on March 2. Just over five hundred surviving soldiers were taken away from the battlefield to be sold into slavery. An even bigger prize than broken soldiers was the supply train taken shortly after the Battle of Taghaza. It included weapons, gunpowder and hundreds of craftsmen needed to support the army. The Emperor took these men as his personal spoils of the war, employing their skills to strengthen the state as well as his own position. Not too long before the Moroccan invasion, brother fought brother for the throne in Gao.
News of the defeat slowly trickled back to Morocco, where it was greeted with shock in the Sultan’s palace. Immediate fear of a Songhai invasion swept across the nation. Sultan Ahmed al-Mansur found his own position weakened by a loss. True, the actual number of soldiers loss was not enough to bring about the downfall of an entire Sultanate, but the humiliating defeat did cause a great loss of face for the Sultan. Worse still, the dust storm that scattered the army could only be the will of Allah. His own domestic enemies might seize upon this as an opportunity to move against him.
Fear of invasion was not entirely misplaced. Emperor Ishaq ordered his own expedition across the Sahara to strike back at the enemy. It was reasoned that if an army could cross the desert from north to south, then it could do the same in reverse. Ishaq’s initial plans called for a merely punitive venture, revenge for the sacking of Taghaza. In November 1591, twenty thousand Songhai soldiers set out across the desert, some wielding the same firearms that Moroccans sought to use in the conquest of Songhai.
The Songhai soldiers proved less adept at the weapons, but enough fired in a volley still took its toll. The defenders of Sijilmasa were better trained with these weapons, and inflicted more than twice as many casualties as they received. The Songhai Expedition won the day out of sheer numbers, using attrition to wear down the defenders. Once the city fell, the expedition proceeded to sack it, shipping its wealth and half its population back to Songhai. Sijilmasa sat upon an important trade route across the Sahara, and its destruction lead to a steady decline in Morocco’s position in the Trans-Sahara Trade, while Algiers rose to fill the void on the north end of the trade routes.
For the start of the 17th Century, the Emperor sought new trade routes for the Songhai. For too long Morocco was the primary, and occasionally only, trade partner for the Empire. Morocco served as a middleman between Songhai and the markets of the Mediterranean. What Ishaq desired was direct contact with the markets. Contact was sporadic with the coastal traders, since Songhai had no port on the sea. It largest and most famous port, Timbuktu, sat upon the Niger River, well inland from the sea. Navigation between river and sea was always hazardous, owing to the tidal swamp nature of the Niger Delta. Nevertheless, it served as a major trading center as well as the Songhai’s most learned city. Scholars from across West Africa, and even throughout the Islamic World, travelled there to trade in ideas.
Portuguese ships did manage to sail to Timbuktu on occasion, but those occasions were few and far between. The hazard and cost of going directly to the heart of Songhai often outweighed the profits and Portuguese merchants preferred to do business with coastal nations. What these white traders wanted most from Africans were the Africans themselves. Endemic warfare between the tribes and nations of West Africa lead to thousands upon thousands of captives being sold into slavery. These luckless individuals either ended up in local markets or where traded to Europeans for weapons or trade goods such as fine cloth or barrels of rums.
Captured Moroccan firearms were handed over to Songhai blacksmiths to duplicate. The barrels were simple enough, but the more complex firing mechanism gave the smiths trouble. Songhai arquebuses proved to be of inferior quality to European models, as big as danger to user as to its intended target. Production of gunpowder proved more successful. Before his death in 1602, Ishaq II ordered alchemists and savants across the empire to begin production of the black powder.
For better access to the coastal trade, the Empire strengthened its hold on the Gambia River, allying where possible and conquering when necessary. Conquest gave the added bonus of captives, which were traded to the Portuguese for higher-quality European arms. Adding to the captive tribesmen, Emperor Mohammed III began to sell the Empire’s criminals to the white man. The practice in Songhai was to use indentured servitude as punishment for various crimes. Those convicted of property crimes were sentenced to a length of service into the house they offended. Compared to other parts of the world in the 17th Century, slavery in the Songhai Empire was relatively benign, with slaves occasionally marrying into the families they served and being released from servitude in a higher social standing than when they started. This in not to say the slave status was desirable for any Muslim in Songhai, and it did not always end on such positive terms, but it proved far more humane than those enslaved to Europeans.
What awaited the condemned on the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean Island were horrors far beyond their wildest nightmares. When the jails failed to satisfy Portuguese demand or net sufficient weapons, the Emperor ordered that villages and tribes within the Empire to supply their own criminals to the foreign slave markets. If that failed to quench Portugal’s demand, as it often did, wars were waged upon traditional enemies and neighboring states. The first victims to the Songhai’s demand for foreign goods were the Mossi Kingdoms to the south of Songhai. It was not the first time the Songhai and Mossi waged war. More than a century earlier, starting in 1497, Emperor Mohammed I attempted to spread Islam to the Mossi. Though victorious in the conquests, Mohammed failed to impose Islam upon the Mossi.
The southern neighbors regained their independence in the 1580s, when civil war reached epidemic proportions within the Empire. With the Mossi also trading with the Europeans, they were seen as a threat as well as a source of slaves. This gave Mohammed III twice the incentive to conquer them. Mohammed was not without mercy, but when a Mossi village resisted fiercely, it was depopulated after conquest, its people forever exiled from their homeland. Along with thousands of captives, the Songhai also appropriated enemy weapons. Empty villages did not stay empty for long; once the conquest was complete, Mohammed encouraged Muslim Songhai to colonize the infidel lands to the south.
The Portuguese brought more than weapons and goods when they came to Africa; they brought their faith along with them. Weapons and trade goods the Songhai wanted, but the Muslin state had zero interest in Christianity. Between 1603 and 1643, Jesuit missionaries converted tens of thousands within the southern and western reached of the Empire. The Portuguese presence in the Gambia protected many converted, but those in the south ran the risks of being punished as apostate, captured and sold into slavery. The Emperor attempted to stop the conversions by force. A Songhai expedition down the Gambia River was turned back by a small number of fortified Portuguese and their cannon. Songhai blacksmiths could replicate small arms to an extent, but they still had a ways to go in perfecting domestic artillery.
Attacks on the Jesuits resulted in a halt of trade with Portugal, and with the Europeans arming the neighboring enemies of the Songhai. These alternative traders brought retribution to the Songhai Empire, raiding deep into its western frontier and hauling off thousands of subjects to the Portuguese markets. Mohammed III desperately sought a new trade partner, one that could serve as a balance against the Portuguese in West Africa, as well as abroad. To the relief of the Emperor, Portugal, during its period of union with Spain, was in fierce competition with the rising Dutch Republic. The Dutch had recently allied themselves with the Kingdom of Kandy on the distant island of Ceylon, and expelled the Portuguese from said island.
Mohammed III learned that the infidels in Kandy allied themselves with the Dutch infidels, because the Dutch had no interest in subverting them to the Dutch faith. The Dutch Republic and its merchants were interested on in trade. In 1643, the aging Emperor entered into a commercial and military alliance with the recently founded West-Afrikaansche Compagnie, and from there proceeded to push back the tide of Portuguese influence.
Over the course of a twenty year period, between 1650 and 1670, the Songhai Empire fought a series of short, successful wars, reducing neighbors to the west and south to mere tributary states. According to WAC figures, the number of prisoners purchased from Songhai exceeded fifty thousand during this period. The number of slaves taken in 1661 alone was so great that it depressed the value of slaves in the West Indies. In fact, the supply so outstripped demand that the Dutch, and later English, began to offer less and less for captive Africans.
The increase in price for firearms, as well innovation in firearm technology, allowed for the Songhai to no longer be dependent upon Europe for its weapons. The flintlock mechanism proved far more reliable and simpler than earlier wheel locks. Domestic muskets were still of lower quality than those produced in Europe, but they more than made up for it in sheer numbers. The entire Songhai Army found itself equipped with muskets, including shorter-barreled carbines for cavalry. Reloading them on the ride proved a daunting task, and many horsemen retained their swords for charges.
When the demand for slaves picked up once again in 1673, Emperor Omar ordered an invasion of the Gambia. The Gambia was nominally in tribute to Songhai, but heavy Portuguese influence allowed for the states along the Gambia to resist Songhai invasion. With Songhai no longer a trading partner, the Portuguese turned to these other states for a supply of slaves, and began to arm them in trade. During the rainy season of 1674, Songhai weapons proved to have the edge, for African smiths built their weapons with heavy rains in mind. However, just because a weapon can handle the rain, did not mean the ammunition would fare well, as much of the black powder was ruined in torrential downpours.
The Songhai Army found itself resoundedly defeated at the confluence of the Gambia and Sandougou Rivers that same year. With the army committed so far away, subjects in the south rose up in rebellion. Upon taking the throne in 1659, Oman decreed the Sharia to be the one true law of the Empire, and strongly encouraged all subjects to convert. The attempt to unify the Empire through religion backfired when the pagans and infidels of Mali drove or wiped out the Songhai’s garrisons, with clear European support.
As civil war threatened to break out all across the Empire, Emperor Oman showed one too many weaknesses, causing his brother Ishmael to launch his own coup, becoming Emperor Ishmael II. The new Emperor recalled the armies from the west, effectively abandoning any navigational control of the Gambia, and waged a fierce war upon the pagan rebels. In December of 1676, Ismail went beyond his brother’s ‘strong encouragement’ and stated that all freemen of Songhai would convert to the one true faith. His long decree ended in declaring a Jihad against the Malians. With thirty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry, the Songhai descended upon Mali.
Ishmael’s decree raised alarms in the slaver industry, as his decree included clauses that no Muslim could ever be sold to a foreigner. They were still subject to servitude as punishment for crimes, but only in domestic use. Even these sentences would be far less than those of non-Muslims committing the same crimes. Slaves willing to convert to Islam would also be spared the horrors of slavery on the far shores of the Atlantic.
The Malians were not to be preempted. With European weapons, along with Jesuits eager to penetrate Songhai’s borders to save souls, the Malians stormed and captured the city of Djenne. Thousands of the Emperor’s loyal subjects fled the city and thousands more were killed or sold into slavery, destined for the plantations of Brazil. The Malian rebels pushed further north, only to found themselves decisively defeated upon the savanna on May 7, 1677, when the Songhai, commanded by General Moruk Abdul surrounded the Malians in three columns. The Malians were nearly killed to the last, with only a few captives seeing the light of Islam and throwing themselves on the Emperor’s mercy as new converts. The Jesuits were shown nor offered any quarter, and all were summarily executed.
Two weeks after the crushing defeat, Moruk marched into Djenne. Surviving Malian soldiers did their best to deny Songhai the city. Much of the city was built from stone and mud brick, but those parts not were razed to the ground. Upon hearing the news, the Emperor decided the city would be rebuilt even grander than before, with a mosque erected at its heart that would rival those in Timbuktu, Gao and even distant Istanbul. Has Ishmael ever seen the Haiga Sofia, he would know a goal of surpassing it was lofty beyond his ability. The mosque would be dedicated to unifying all the peoples of the Empire under the banner of Islam.
The decree was premature. Upon marching southwest into the rain forest, army discipline and order began to wane. Worse luck yet, the Songhai found themselves facing European soldiers and mercenaries who fought as allies of the pagans. Ishmael attempted to gain the support of his most valued trading partner, the Dutch Republic, only to learn they were weakened by their own wars against the English. The lightning fast victory on open grasslands gave way to a prolonged form of warfare in the jungle, where Songhai soldiers found themselves reduced to using melee weapons when powder stocks exhausted themselves.
After ten years of conflict, the Emperor was forced to face facts. After the loss of treasure and manpower through attrition, the southwestern lands would not remain under Songhai control. Though there was no formal peace treaty, a resurgent Portugal extended its protection over a newly revived and partially Christianized Kingdom of Mali. Malian protection, as well as control over the lower Gambia locked the Songhai from access to the sea, except via the Niger River. With his former Dutch allies in decline, Ishmael decided that he could not rely solely upon the white man for maritime commerce. Songhai must have its own merchant fleet.
Keep going.