Songhai Empire , also Written Songhay , large commercial state West Africa (flourishing 15th - 16th centuries), centered on the central area of the Niger River at today's center Mali and finally west to Atlantic Coast and east to Niger and Nigeria .
Britannica Quiz Destination Africa:Fact or Fiction? Is Africa's northernmost point further north than Europe's southernmost point? See if your geographical knowledge points north or south on this journey through Africa. Although the The Songhai are said to have settled in the city Gao by 800 ce , they did not consider it their capital until the early 11th century during the reign of Dia (King) Kossoi, one to Islam converted Songhai . Gao thrived and expanded so much over the next 300 years that the rulers of Mali from 1325 to 1375 made it their rich added . Around 1335, the dia- Ruler's line Sunni or Shi square, one of whom, Sulaiman-Mar, is said to have regained Gao's independence.
The Century of Variations that followed was terminated by joining at 1464 of Sonni ʿAlī , also known as ʿAlī Ber (died 1492). By launching a Mossi attack on Timbuktu , the second most important city in Songhai, fended and the Dogon and Fulani in the hills of Bandiagara defeated , by 1468 he had rid the kingdom of all imminent danger. Later he distributed the Tuareg from Timbuktu, which they had occupied since 1433, and took after a siege of seven years 1473 Jenne ( Djenné ) and ruled the lake region of central Niger west of Timbuktu in 1476. He repelled a Mossi attack on Walata in the north-west in 1480 and then advised raids on all the inhabitants of the southern peripherals of the Niger Valley . Sonni ʿAlī's civil policy was to reconcile the interests of his pagan pastoralist subjects with those of the Muslim townspeople on whose wealth and learning the Songhai Empire depended.
His son Sonni Baru (r. 1493), who fully supported the pastoralists, was killed by the rebel Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr Ture, aka, deposed Muḥammad I Askia (r. 1493–1528), who welded the central region of western Sudan into a single empire. He also fought against the Mossi of Yatenga, attacked Borgu in modern-day north-western Nigeria (1505) - albeit with little success - and led successful campaigns against the Diara (1512), against the Kingdom of Fouta-Toro in Senegal and against the east against the Hausa States . To gain control of the main caravan markets in the north, he ordered his armies to establish a colony in and around Agadez in Aïr to base . He was deposed by his eldest son Musa in 1528.
During the dynastic clashes of successive reigns (Askia Musa, 1528–31; Bengan Korei, also known as Askia Muḥammad II, 1531–37; Askia Ismail, 1537–39; Askia Issihak I, 1539–49) the Muslims in the cities were continued to act as intermediaries in the profitable Gold Trading with the Akan States in Central Guinea . The peace and prosperity of the reign of Askia Dāwūd (1549–82) was followed by a Sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr from Morocco raid initiated on the salt deposits by Taghaza. The situation, which continued to deteriorate under Muḥammad Bāni (1586–88), culminated catastrophically for Songhai under Issihak II (1588–91), when Moroccan forces invaded the Songhai Empire with firearms, his forces first in Tondibi and then in Timbuktu and Gao. The pastoral Songhai's guerrilla retaliation failed to restore the empire, whose economic and administrative centers remained in Moroccan hands.