Askia Muhammad I

Askia Muhammad I (c. 1443 - 1538), born Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Turi and also known as Askia the Great, was the first ruler of the Askia dynasty of the Songhai Empire, reigning from 1493 to 1528. A general under Sunni Ali, he overthrew Ali's son Sunni Baru and built the largest empire in West African history, making Islam an integral part of the state. ^{1 2}

The Tarikh al-Sudan gives his name as Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Turi or al-Sillanki, and the Tarikh al-Fattash as Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr; the names have been read as Soninke clan names, or as references to ancestry from Futa Toro or Silla in the Senegal valley. The Arabic article gives his years as 1441-1538. Muhammad rose as a prominent general of the Songhai ruler Sunni Ali. When Ali died in 1492 and his son Sunni Baru succeeded, Muhammad challenged the succession on the grounds that the new ruler was not a faithful Muslim — Baru had refused to declare himself a Muslim — defeated him, and ascended the throne in 1493. ^{1 3}

He extended the empire from Taghaza in the north to the borders of Yatenga in the south, and from Air in the north-east to Futa Djallon in Guinea, encompassing the Hausa states as far as Kano. Rather than organising the empire purely on Islamic lines, he built on the traditional model with a bureaucratic government unmatched in West Africa, standardised trade measures and regulations, policing of the trade routes and an organised tax system. He allied himself with the scholars of Timbuktu, and his reign opened a golden age of Muslim scholarship there; he founded schools and made Islam integral to the empire. ^{1 2}

In 1496 he made the hajj to Mecca with a great retinue — the sources also date the pilgrimage to 1497-1498 — spending lavishly in charity in the holy cities and setting up a hostel in Medina for West African pilgrims. On the journey he obtained recognition as caliph of the Sudan, and after his return he was known as Askia al-Hajj Muhammad. His Sudanese name in modern Songhai is Mamar Kassey. ^{1 2}

In old age he went blind, and his concealment of the fact could not hold. Ill and increasingly isolated, he was forced to abdicate by his son Askia Musa in August 1528 and was banished to an island in the Niger, where he watched his sons fight over the empire. In 1537 his son and third successor, Askia Ismail, recalled him to Gao and received from him his green turban and his caliph's sabre. He died at Gao — Britannica dates the death precisely to 2 March 1538, and Wikidata's preferred value agrees, while the English article gives only c. 1538 — and he was buried there under the pyramidal Tomb of Askia, which still stands. ^{1 2 4}

His practice of Islam is documented in full: the religious ground of his claim to the throne, the hajj, the caliphal title, the Qur'an as the civil code of his state (in Britannica's description), and his patronage of Timbuktu's scholars. The English article's infobox names his religion as Sunni Islam; no second independent source naming his school was found, and Wikidata carries no religion claim for him, so the museum's structured record leaves his school unsettled rather than rest it on a single attestation. ^{1 2 4}