![]() Merchants traded with villages along the Niger and as far as the town of Gao, which had been founded by Berber and possibly even Egyptian merchants, attracted by the Bumbuk gold trade of Ghana. By the ninth century this middle region of the Niger had been integrated into the state of Songhai, with its capital at Kukiya. The Songhai people had long settled along the middle region of the Niger River, using the river for transport, fishing, hunting, and agriculture. The Songhai Empire began when the Songhai king took advantage of a weakened Mali Empire to extend control over ever more territory. In the 18th century people of the Mande culture were highly represented among those enslaved in the French Louisiana colony in North America. Throughout the West African savanna where people migrated in advance of the Mande warriors, people spoke mutually intelligible Mandekan languages, and had a strong oral history tradition. Between the 13th and 17th centuries Mande and Mande-related warriors established the dominance of Mande culture in the Senegambia geographical region. ![]() Islamic scholars and African oral traditions document that all of these states had centralized governments, long distance trade routes, and educational systems. Hausa and Fulani people lived in the region that is now northwest Nigeria. Mandinka, Wolof, Bamana, (also called Bambara) peoples, and others lived in the western reaches of the Songhai in the Senegambia area. Songhai encompassed the geographic area of ancient Ghana and Mali combined and extended into the region of the Hausa states of ancient and contemporary northwest Nigeria. Over the next 28 years, Sunni Ali converted the small kingdom of Gao into the huge empire of Songhai. The Islamic militancy of Takrur was exceptional, whereas Gao's symbiotic relationship between Islam and the traditional religion was more typical of Islam in West Africa.Īround 1375, Gao, a small tributary state of Mali, broke away under the leadership of Sunni Ali and thus began the rise of the Songhai Empire. The partial acceptance of Islam in Gao is contrasted with the zealous adherence to Islam of the king of Takrur, who compelled his subjects to observe Islamic law and carried out a jihad against his neighbors. The king of Gao was Muslim, but the common people adhered to their ancestral religion, and pre-Islamic customs persisted at the court. 1054) was able to gather precious information about Islam in three contemporary African kingdoms: Gao, Ghana, and Takrur (in lower Senegal). Writing in 1068, the Andalusian geographer al-Bakri (d.
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