Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History / Songhai's Sisterhood: The Hidden Power of Royal Women
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Askia Dawud's canals, his secret police, his coinage — the machinery of empire. But there's a whole dimension of Songhai that's almost invisible in the Tarikh al-Sudan, and I think it's worth pulling at. Luna: You mean the women? Lucas: Exactly. The chroniclers — Al-Sa'di, the Tarikh al-Fattash writers — they were men writing for a male court audience. So when women do appear, it's usually because they did something that broke the pattern. And that tells us a lot. Lucas: For example, there's a story from the reign of Askia Dawud — maybe around 1550 — about his mother, or possibly his senior wife, intervening in a succession dispute. The Tarikh al-Sudan mentions a 'queen mother' who brokered a peace between two rival factions. We don't even get her name, but her authority was enough to stop a civil war. Luna: A woman stopping a civil war — and we don't know her name. Lucas: Right. And that's typical. But there are other traces. For instance, the title 'koyam' — which we've talked about as a military rank — might have also been held by women in some contexts. There's a passage in the Tarikh al-Fattash that lists a 'koyam of the women' — a female official overseeing the royal harem and its vast network of servants and estates. Lucas: The royal women of Gao weren't just passive. They managed huge agricultural lands along the Niger, especially around Kala, where Askia Dawud built his canals. Women oversaw the harvest, controlled grain stores, and even traded in salt and textiles. Luna: So they were running the economic backbone of the empire. Lucas: Exactly. And then there's the religious side. Timbuktu's Sankore madrasa had female scholars — women who studied and taught Maliki law. Ahmad Baba, the great scholar we talked about earlier, had female students. One of them, a woman named Aisha bint Muhammad, was known for her legal opinions. She was consulted by judges in Gao. Luna: So women weren't just in the shadows — they were authorities. Lucas: They were. And that carries over into the political realm. When the Saadians invaded in 1591, after the Battle of Tondibi, the Songhai resistance in Dendi was led partly by women. Oral traditions from the Dendi region describe a woman named Dendi Kira, who rallied fighters and managed supply lines. She's a folk hero now, but she's not in the written chronicles at all. Lucas: Think about that — the written record we rely on is missing half the story. The Tarikh al-Sudan tells us about the pashas and the farari, but it barely mentions the women who kept the empire running through invasion and collapse. Luna: And it's not just that they're absent — it's that when you do find them, they're doing things that matter. Lucas: Right. Take the example of Askia Dawud's daughter — or maybe a niece — who was married to a Moroccan pasha after the conquest. She became a broker between the occupiers and the local population. The Tarikh al-Sudan says she used her position to protect Songhai nobles from execution. She's a diplomat in her own right, but she's only mentioned in passing. Luna: It's like a whole layer of history that's buried. Lucas: And that's worth remembering. If you've been coming along with us through these conversations about West Africa — the canals, the coins, the battles — you know how rich this history is. And this show exists because listeners support it so we can keep digging into these stories. If you'd like to be part of that, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to help keep the conversations ad-free and focused on the details that get left out. Luna: And speaking of details — let's get back to those Dendi oral traditions. What else do they say about the women's role in the resistance? Lucas: Well, the oral epics from the Dendi region tell of women who acted as spies, carrying messages between scattered Songhai forces. They'd cross the Niger at night in small boats — the Sorko boat people were key to that. And one story mentions a woman who hid the royal drum, the tabal, from the Moroccans, because the drum was a symbol of sovereignty. Without it, the Moroccans couldn't legitimately claim to rule. Luna: So the women were literally safeguarding the legitimacy of the empire. Lucas: Yes. And that's not just symbolic. The Tarikh al-Sudan records that when the Moroccan pasha Judar tried to install a puppet Askia, he needed the royal regalia — including the drum and the seal — to be recognized. The women of the court controlled access to those items. That gave them real power in the negotiations. Lucas: There's also evidence from the legal records — fatwas from Timbuktu's qadis — that women owned property independently. They could inherit land, buy and sell slaves, and initiate divorce. That's pretty progressive even by some later standards. Luna: Was that unique to Songhai, or common in the Sahel? Lucas: It was rooted in Maliki law, which was practiced across West Africa. But Songhai's relative stability under Askia Dawud meant that these rights were actually enforceable. In times of war, those protections often broke down. So the fact that we see women active in the economy during the 16th century tells you something about the strength of the legal system. Lucas: And then there's the everyday life. Leo Africanus, who visited Gao around 1510, wrote that women in Songhai were 'very chaste' but also 'go about with their faces uncovered' — which surprised him as a North African. He noted that they conducted trade in the markets, especially in grain and cloth. So the public sphere wasn't closed to them. Luna: It sounds like a society where women had more agency than we often assume. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's why it's worth pulling these threads. The empire wasn't just built by sultans and generals. It was built by farmers, traders, and scholars — and a lot of them were women. Luna: I want to know more about Aisha bint Muhammad — the scholar you mentioned. Where can we find her story? Lucas: She appears in a biographical dictionary compiled by Ahmad Baba himself — the Nayl al-Ibtihaj. It's a collection of biographies of Maliki scholars, and it includes several women. Aisha bint Muhammad was from Timbuktu, studied under her father and then with other scholars, and issued fatwas on marriage and trade. She died around 1590, just before the Saadian invasion. Luna: So her lifetime spanned the peak of Songhai's power and the beginning of its end. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes these individual stories so powerful. They connect the big arc of empire to real human lives. Next time we'll talk about the Songhai diaspora — how the empire's legacy lived on in the Hausa states and beyond, through the women and men who carried its culture southward.