The known history of Songhay covers a thousand years and three dynasties and centers in the great bend of the Niger.  There were thirty kings of the First Dynasty, reigning from 700 to 1335.  During the reign of one of these the Songhay kingdom became the vassal kingdom of Melle, then at the height of its glory.  In addition to this the Mossi crossed the valley, plundered Timbuktu in 1339, and separated Jenne, the original seat of the Songhay, from the main empire.  The sixteenth king was converted to Mohammedanism in 1009, and after that all the Songhay princes were Mohammedans.  Mansa Musa took two young Songhay princes to the court of Melle to be educated in 1326.  These boys when grown ran away and founded a new dynasty in Songhay, that of the Sonnis, in 1355.  Seventeen of these kings reigned, the last and greatest being Sonni Ali, who ascended the throne in 1464.  Melle was at this time declining, other cities like Jenne, with its seven thousand villages, were rising, and the Tuaregs (Berbers with Negro blood) had captured Timbuktu.

Sonni Ali was a soldier and began his career with the conquest of Timbuktu in 1469.  He also succeeded in capturing Jenne and attacked the Mossi and other enemies on all sides.  Finally he concentrated his forces for the destruction of Melle and subdued nearly the whole empire on the west bend of the Niger.  In summing up Sonni Ali’s military career the chronicle says of him, “He surpassed all his predecessors in the numbers and valor of his soldiery.  His conquests were many and his renown extended from the rising to the setting of the sun.  If it is the will of God, he will be long spoken of."[19]

Sonni Ali was a Songhay Negro whose father was a Berber.  He was succeeded by a full-blooded black, Mohammed Abou Bekr, who had been his prime minister.  Mohammed was hailed as “Askia” (usurper) and is best known as Mohammed Askia.  He was strictly orthodox where Ali was rather a scoffer, and an organizer where Ali was a warrior.  On his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1495 there was nothing of the barbaric splendor of Mansa Musa, but a brilliant group of scholars and holy men with a small escort of fifteen hundred soldiers and nine hundred thousand dollars in gold.  He stopped and consulted with scholars and politicians and studied matters of taxation, weights and measures, trade, religious tolerance, and manners.  In Cairo, where he was invested by the reigning caliph of Egypt, he may have heard of the struggle of Europe for the trade of the Indies, and perhaps of the parceling of the new world between Portugal and Spain.  He returned to the Sudan in 1497, instituted a standing army of slaves, undertook a holy war against the indomitable Mossi, and finally marched against the Hausa.  He subdued these cities and even imposed the rule of black men on the Berber town of Agades, a rich city of merchants and artificers with stately mansions.  In fine Askia, during his reign, conquered and consolidated