Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History / Sonni Ali's Religious Tolerance: Islam and Traditional Beliefs
Transcript
- Lucas: So far in this series we've talked a lot about Sonni Ali the military commander — his war canoes, his campaigns against the Mossi, his riverine strategy. But there's another side to him that's often overlooked, and it's one that actually divided his own empire deeply: his approach to religion. Luna: You mean how he handled Islam versus the traditional beliefs? Lucas: Exactly. Sonni Ali came to power around 1464, and the Songhai Empire at that time was a patchwork of Muslim urban centers like Timbuktu and Gao, and rural communities that held onto their ancestral spirits and priesthoods. He himself was nominally Muslim — he prayed, he observed Ramadan — but he was far from orthodox. And that put him on a collision course with the scholarly elite of Timbuktu. Luna: I've heard he had a particular hatred for the Sankore scholars. Lucas: That's the common story, especially from the Tarikh al-Sudan, which was written by a scholar named Abd al-Rahman al-Sa'di about a century later. It paints Sonni Ali as a tyrant who persecuted the ulema — the Muslim learned class. According to that chronicle, he even said something like 'I am the king of this country. The one who fears God should not be my subject.' But we have to be careful with that source. Al-Sa'di was writing under the Askiya dynasty, which overthrew Sonni Ali's son and had every reason to paint the previous ruler as an enemy of Islam. Luna: So it might be propaganda. Lucas: Almost certainly, but not entirely invented. There's another source, the Tarikh al-Fattash, which is a bit more sympathetic but still critical. It describes how Sonni Ali destroyed part of the Sankore madrasa in Timbuktu because he suspected the scholars were conspiring with the Tuareg. And that's plausible — Timbuktu was a city where the Muslim elite had close ties to the Tuareg nomads who often raided Songhai territory. Luna: What about the non-Muslim priests? Did he treat them better? Lucas: He did, and that's the key to understanding his religious policy. Sonni Ali actively patronized the traditional religious leaders — the so-called 'Mande priests' and the spirit mediums associated with the Niger River. The Sorko fishermen, who were the backbone of his navy, had their own river spirits, and Sonni Ali made a point of participating in their ceremonies. He even had a personal 'griot' — a praise-singer — who performed rituals that were definitely not Islamic. The Tarikh al-Fattash mentions that he consulted diviners before battles. Luna: So he was playing both sides, but leaning toward the traditionalists. Lucas: Exactly. But there's a famous incident that really shows the tension. In the 1470s, a Muslim scholar from North Africa named al-Maghili visited the region. He was a hardline reformer — the kind who argued that any Muslim who didn't follow strict Maliki law was an apostate. He wrote a letter to Sonni Ali urging him to enforce Islamic law more strictly, and Sonni Ali basically told him to mind his own business. According to the Tarikh al-Sudan, al-Maghili then prophesied that Sonni Ali's kingdom would fall because of his impiety. Luna: And didn't al-Maghili later influence Askia Muhammad? Lucas: He did. After Sonni Ali died and Askia Muhammad took over, al-Maghili became a close advisor. He wrote a famous treatise on governance for Askia Muhammad, called the 'Ajwibat al-Maghili', which pretty much outlines an Islamic theocracy. So you can see the religious policy completely flip under the Askiya dynasty — they went all in on Islam, purging the traditional practices Sonni Ali had encouraged. Luna: But Sonni Ali's approach must have made sense at the time. Lucas: It did. Think about his base of support. His father, Sonni Sulayman, had been a Muslim, but Sonni Ali's mother was from the Sorko fishing community, and he was raised in the rural area around Koukya, the old Sonni capital. The majority of his army were Sorko and other non-Muslim peoples who were suspicious of the urban Muslim elite. By championing traditional religion, he solidified his bond with them. At the same time, he couldn't afford to alienate the Muslim merchants who controlled the trans-Saharan trade. So he kept up the appearance of piety — he still prayed, he still gave alms — but he never let the clerics dictate policy. Luna: It sounds like a balancing act that worked for him personally, but maybe not for the empire's long-term unity. Lucas: That's a good way to put it. When he died in 1492, his son Sonni Baru tried to continue the same policy. But Askia Muhammad, who was one of Sonni Ali's generals and a devout Muslim, saw his chance. He raised a rebellion, defeated Sonni Baru at the Battle of Anfao in 1493, and then systematically Islamicized the empire. One of his first acts was to destroy the traditional shrines and execute the Mande priests Sonni Ali had protected. The Tarikh al-Sudan says he 'cleansed the land of idolatry.' Lucas: And that religious division never really healed. Even during the height of the Askia dynasty, there were tensions between the urban Muslim scholars and the rural communities. When the Moroccan invasion came in 1591, some of those rural groups actually sided with the invaders because they saw them as fellow Muslims — or at least as a way to get back at the Askia establishment. So in a way, Sonni Ali's religious policy sowed the seeds of disunity that later helped bring the empire down. Luna: It's fascinating how much of that history is colored by the sources we have. I mean, if all we had were the Tarikh al-Sudan, we'd think Sonni Ali was just a monster. Lucas: Exactly, and that's why we need to read these chronicles with a critical eye. The Tarikh al-Sudan was written by a Maliki scholar in Timbuktu, part of the very class Sonni Ali had antagonized. Al-Sa'di even calls Sonni Ali a 'tyrant' and a 'hypocrite.' But when you look at the actions — protecting traditional priests, consulting diviners — it's clear he was following a coherent strategy. He wasn't just being stubborn; he was building a coalition that included the non-Muslim majority. Luna: And he must have been successful, because he ruled for 28 years and expanded the empire. Lucas: He did. By the time he died, Songhai was the largest empire in West African history. But his religious legacy was so controversial that even his burial was contested. The Tarikh al-Fattash claims he was buried in a secret location so that his enemies wouldn't desecrate his grave. And to this day, there are oral traditions among the Sorko that remember him as a hero who defended their way of life against foreign religious imposition. Luna: I wonder if there's a parallel to something like Akhenaten in Egypt — a ruler whose religious reforms were so unpopular that later generations tried to erase him. Lucas: That's a really interesting comparison. Akhenaten tried to impose a new religion from the top down, and it failed. Sonni Ali did the opposite — he resisted religious change and held onto the old ways, but the elite still saw him as a threat. In both cases, the next dynasty rewrote history to portray their predecessor as a villain. But Sonni Ali's story is less about theology and more about power — whose gods would legitimate his rule, and whose taxes would fill his treasury. Luna: Speaking of that balance between faith and funding, I think this is a good moment to mention something that keeps our own conversations going — if you've been enjoying this series and learning about figures like Sonni Ali, maybe consider supporting the show. It helps us keep researching and producing these deep dives without ads. Honestly, if today's episode was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Every little bit helps us stay independent. Lucas: Yeah, and it really does make a difference. We don't have a big network behind us — it's just us and our curiosity. So thanks to anyone who chips in. Now, back to Sonni Ali — we were talking about how his religious policy affected his relationship with the Muslim merchants. Those merchants were crucial because they controlled the gold and salt trade. Sonni Ali needed them, but he also needed to keep them in check. Luna: How did he manage that? Lucas: He used a carrot and stick approach. On the one hand, he allowed the Muslim merchants to continue their trade and even appointed some of them to administrative posts. On the other hand, he made sure they didn't get too powerful. For example, he appointed a non-Muslim, a man named Ali Fulan, as his top general — that's someone we've talked about before. And he kept the chief qadi, or judge, on a short leash. The qadi of Timbuktu, a scholar named Mahmud ibn Umar, had a tense relationship with Sonni Ali. The king actually humiliated him publicly by forcing him to admit that his own rulings didn't always follow the Quran. Luna: That must have infuriated the scholars. Lucas: It did. And it's one reason they were so happy when Askia Muhammad took over. But Sonni Ali's strategy makes sense if you remember that he was not trying to create a unified Islamic state. He was trying to hold together a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire. His capital at Gao was a mix of mosques and traditional shrines. Leo Africanus, who visited the region about a hundred years later, described how the people of Gao still practiced a blend of Islam and traditional customs — a legacy of Sonni Ali's era. Luna: So in the long run, his policy didn't survive, but it left a mark. Lucas: It did. And I think that's the most interesting thing about Sonni Ali — he's not just a warrior king, he's a ruler who understood that religion was a tool of statecraft, not an end in itself. He used it to unite his core supporters, and he paid the price in his reputation. But without his religious balancing act, he might never have built the empire that Askia Muhammad later inherited and Islamized.