Songhai

Origins and formation

Britannica presents Songhai as a great trading state of West Africa, flourishing in the 15th and 16th centuries, centered on the middle Niger in what is now central Mali and eventually extending west to the Atlantic and east into Niger and Nigeria. The Songhai people are said to have settled at Gao about 800. They did not treat it as their capital until the early 11th century, under the dia Kossoi, a convert to Islam. The city grew for about three hundred years. From 1325 to 1375 the rulers of Mali added it to their empire. About 1335 the dia line gave way to the sunni line, and Sulaiman-Mar is said to have won Gao’s independence back. The official guide starts the story as Mali declines and its Songhai vassal rises to build one of Africa’s largest states. Britannica’s timetable is longer. Inclusion, recovered independence, and a 15th-century empire are not the same morning.^{[1] [4]}

Sonni Ali’s accession about 1464 ended a century of reversals. He repulsed a Mossi attack on Timbuktu, defeated the Dogon and Fulani in the Bandiagara hills, and by 1468 had removed the immediate danger. He drove out the Tuareg, who had held Timbuktu since 1433, took Jenne in 1473 after a seven-year siege, and by 1476 dominated the lakes west of Timbuktu. In 1480 he repulsed a Mossi attack on Walata. His civil policy was to conciliate pagan pastoralist subjects and Muslim town dwellers. The empire depended on the towns’ wealth and scholarship. That pairing means Islam was not the whole of Ali’s policy on one day. The guide says Songhai revitalized Islam in the region. The revitalization can be read with Askia later. It does not have to be Ali’s entire government.^[1]

The published Aksum essay is another millennium, on the Red Sea highlands and their port. The two can be read together because both are published histories of African states. The middle Niger is not Adulis. No published essay on Mali is available, so Mali is not opened here as a previous dynasty.^[1]

Defining periods

The Tomb of Askia fixes another reign in the ground. UNESCO says Askia Mohamed, emperor of Songhai, built the 17-meter pyramidal mud structure in 1495 in his capital, Gao. After he returned from Mecca he made Islam the official religion. The complex, with the tomb, two flat-roofed mosques, a cemetery, and an open assembly ground, was built when Gao became the imperial capital. It testifies to an empire made rich in the 15th and 16th centuries by trans-Saharan trade, especially in salt and gold, and it is an example of Sahel mud architecture. Plaster is eroded by rare violent rains and renewed by traditional maintenance. The property has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2012. A tomb still in use, and still replastered, is not a device that is finished once and then pays gold forever.^[2]

Britannica dates Sonni Ali’s death to 1492 and then lists the succession disputes: Askia Musa, 1528–31; Bengan Korei, 1531–37; Askia Ismail, 1537–39; Askia Issihak I, 1539–49. Through those years Muslim townsmen continued as middlemen in the gold trade with the Akan states of central Guinea. Askia Dawud’s reign, 1549–82, is described as peace and prosperity, followed by a raid that Ahmad al-Mansur of Morocco sent against the salt of Taghaza. Conditions worsened under Muhammad Bani. Under Issihak II, Moroccan forces using firearms routed the Songhai at Tondibi and then at Timbuktu and Gao. Pastoral guerrilla war did not restore the economic and administrative centers. The guide says the Moroccans sought new routes for their own prosperity and invaded with gunpowder. Salt, firearms, and Tondibi make that sentence specific.^{[1] [4]}

Timbuktu’s scholarly reputation has to sit with these years. Sonni Ali treated the scholarship of the towns as something the empire depended on. Askia made Islam the official religion and left prayer spaces that are still used. The guide says Songhai renewed the academic community in Timbuktu. Renewal is a direction. It does not prove that every mosque was finished in the same year, or that learning vanished with the army in 1591. What the Moroccans held were the economic and administrative centers. The fate of the books is a further question.^{[1] [2]}

Legacy and interpretation

Songhai’s legacy is a trading state on a river, not a universal desert bonus. Gao, Timbuktu, Jenne, and the salt of Taghaza had different parts. The middlemen of the gold trade kept working through the succession disputes. Britannica therefore does not allow the empire to be told as one ruler’s uninterrupted victories. Ali’s conquests, Askia’s official Islam, the prosperity of the mid-16th century, and the defeat of 1591 are separate politics.^[1]

The mud architecture is also a legacy of maintenance at Gao. UNESCO stresses the pyramidal form, the function as a minaret, and the timber scaffolding as the marks of Sahel building. Replastering after rain belongs to authenticity. It is not an accident after a ruin. The game places the wonder on a desert tile and raises gold and production for resources assigned to the city. Resource capacity can recall salt and gold. It does not replace the replastering, or the conservation pressure recorded since 2012.^[2]

A closer look

The official guide names the ability Tarikh al-Sudan. Wikipedia says the Tarikh al-Sudan, the History of the Sudan, was written in Arabic around 1655 and gives an early history of the Songhai as handed down by oral tradition. The year 1655 is about six decades after the defeat of 1591. The ability takes its name from a later chronicle. It was not a government office of the empire. The simplified Chinese label can be read, in modern usage, as a history of a sultan. Set beside the English title, Sudan is also a regional name. The chronicle is not only a biography of one ruler.^{[3] [4]}

The Caravanserai must be built on desert or plains, gains gold beside navigable rivers and resources, and extends trade range. The Tajiro is a cheaper merchant and gains gold when a trade route includes at least one navigable river. The Gold Bangles Infantry is stronger on resource tiles and receives yields for plundering trade routes. Those are rules on the guide. Britannica supports caravan markets, salt and gold, and cities on the Niger. It does not assign a yield to each of the three game objects.^{[1] [4]}

In Civilization VII

The official guide names the ability Tarikh al-Sudan. It presents the Caravanserai as the improvement, the Tajiro as the merchant, the Gold Bangles Infantry as the infantry unit, and the Tomb of Askia as the associated wonder. The simplified Chinese guide names the same slots in its own words. The tomb increases gold and resource capacity, raises gold and production for every resource assigned to the city, and must be built on desert. UNESCO’s tomb is at Gao, built of mud, in 1495. A desert tile and a mud building are not the same siting note.^{[2] [4]}

The ability raises resource capacity in cities on navigable rivers and raises production for resources assigned to those cities. The guide adds that, after the Kanta civic, homelands treasure convoys can be created on navigable rivers. The historical pages used here do not explain Kanta as a fully described institution, so the civic is not treated as the whole tax law of Songhai. The accessed guide does not identify an edition. The codex publishes the essay with that gap visible. The Aksum essay belongs to the Red Sea. No published essay on Mali is available. The published Ibn Battuta essay is about a traveler, not a ruler of this empire. Songhai belongs with Gao, Timbuktu, and 1591, not with a permanent formula for a desert river.^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}