Sonni ʿAlī

Sonni ʿAlī (died 1492) was a West African monarch who initiated the imperial expansion of the western Sudanese kingdom of Songhai. His conquest of the leading Sudanese trading cities established the basis for Songhai’s future prosperity and expansion.

When Sonni ʿAlī ascended the Songhai throne about 1464, the kingdom comprised only a small area in the upper Niger valley around its capital, the prosperous trading city of Gao. Although the Songhai people had managed to throw off the domination of the Mali empire, they also hoped to obtain territorial benefits, like other West African peoples, from the disintegration of Mali. Sonni ʿAlī saw an excellent opportunity to oblige in 1468, when Muslim leaders of the city of Timbuktu (Tombouctou), formerly one of the chief cities in the empire of Mali, asked his aid in overthrowing the Tuareg, the nomadic desert Berbers who had conquered the city when Mali control declined. After Sonni ʿAlī conquered Timbuktu and drove out the Tuareg, he plundered the city and murdered many of its inhabitants, presumably in retaliation for the Muslim leader’s failure to provide him with promised transport across the Niger River.

Sonni ʿAlī’s sack of Timbuktu established his reputation in the history of the Sudan as a cruel and capricious tyrant, alternately generous and savage. The 16th-century Muslim Sudanese historian ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Sadi, in the historical chronicle Tarʾīkh al-Sūdān (“History of the Sudan”), related several instances of Sonni ʿAlī’s summary executions of friend and foe alike. The antipathy of Muslim scholars toward Sonni ʿAlī may be attributed in part to what they regarded as his rather unorthodox observance of Islam. He apparently combined the performance of Muslim rites with those of the traditional Songhai religion.

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Aware of the benefits of controlling Sudanese commerce, Sonni ʿAlī turned to the conquest of the wealthy trading city of Jenne (now Djenné) on the Bani River near its confluence with the Niger. His seven-year siege of the city resulted in its conquest in 1473. Sonni ʿAlī spent most of his reign in the field repulsing attacks on his empire, these coming especially from the Mossi, the Fulani of the Dendi region, and the Tuareg. His fine strategic sense and his effective use of cavalry enabled him to cripple the striking power of the Mossi (although he could not annex their territory), to conquer and assimilate the Dendi area, and to discourage Tuareg raiding.

Little is known about the actual administration of Songhai during Sonni ʿAlī’s time except that he divided conquered territories into provinces and appointed trusted lieutenants to govern them. He died while returning from a campaign against Fulani peoples who lived west of Songhai.