تاريخ الفتاش (Timbuktu Chronicles 1493-1599)

many rifles with them. Their weapons were vastly superior to the weapons of the Askiyas.

“The biggest mistake that the Askiyas made was in not investing in firearms. They ignored the development of superior military armaments in the north. They could very well have bought rifles. This would have been easy for them. Kano A major city-state in modern-day Nigeria. bought rifles from the Turks, the Grand Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The Askiyas could have done the same. The Askiyas had many interactions with the Turks, both at Mecca and elsewhere. While the Moroccans stocked up on powerful weapons, the Songhay rulers sat around and did nothing. They did not believe it was necessary to make the investment in the new technology, and so they were easily defeated when the Arma Arma (the Moroccan forces who conquered Songhay) from the North swooped down upon them.

“This was not a matter of anyone’s sexual immorality, or broken vows, as the authors of the Ta’rikhs (historical chronicles) claim,” al-Hājj Ould said. “It was a question of military power, pure and simple. It was technology—the superior weapons technology of the Arma—that brought the Askiyas to their knees. The grandsons of the Askiya Muhammad lost because of the brute power of the Moroccans. They fought with spears and swords against bullets. But history is always complicated. There is never one reason alone behind history. There are always many reasons.”

I asked him if he accepted Jean Rouch’s thesis that Sonni Ali Ber, or the Shi Ali, was the true genius and founder of the Songhay Dynasty, and not the Askiya Muhammad.

“This is Timbuktu,” he said with obvious annoyance. “You are in Timbuktu now, not Kukiya. Sonni Ali Ber killed a great many scholars and jurists. He was only nominally a Muslim. Sonni Ali Ber was an animist, a sorcerer. He was a very bad man. The Askiya Muhammad was a true Muslim. He gave a lot of money to the scribes, the jurists, the marabouts marabouts (Islamic religious leaders/teachers), and the imams. He gathered the true Muslims about him. The Askiya Muhammad was the real genius of the Songhay people, not Sonni Ali Ber.”

I told him about my conversation with a boatman from Gao about the underwater djinn djinn (supernatural beings in Islamic mythology) that had ruled the Songhay, the demonic fish that was reputedly killed by two brothers from Medina. Al-Hājj Ould smiled. “There are not many sorcerers in Gao today,” he said. “Don’t listen to the stories that you hear from the boatmen. Gao is mostly a Muslim town nowadays, not a home for those possessed by demons.” He then told me his own version of the story of how the Egyptian Pharaoh sent for the most powerful magician in the world, a Songhay sorcerer from Kukiya. The Songhay sorcerer was summoned, along with many other sorcerers throughout the Pharaoh’s domain, in order to do spiritual battle with Moses. But then al-Hājj Ould added something I had never heard: “The staff of Moses turned into a snake, and the staffs of the Pharaoh’s magicians also turned into snakes, but the snake of Moses quickly swallowed up the snakes of the Pharaoh’s magicians. When the snake of Moses swallowed up the snake of the sorcerers from Kukiya, the Songhay sorcerers fell to their knees and bowed to worship the one true God. They were completely defeated.” Al-Hājj Ould paused and physically enacted the sorcerers’ gesture of total submission, bowing his forehead so low that it touched the ground. “This is important for the Songhay people because it marks the first time that the Songhay people worshiped the God of Moses,” he said.

I could see that for al-Hājj Ould the story of the staff of Moses was important because of the sorcerers’ defeat, and the Songhay people’s historical entry into the religion of the God of Moses. And, of course, the fish that ruled Gao also feared Solomon, the son of David, but that was long after the Songhay magicians had fallen to their knees to worship the God of Moses. “There is something you must not fail to remember,” he said. “The Songhay worshipped the God of Moses a long time before the European Christians. When the white Europeans lived in caves, the Songhay already worshipped the one true God.” This made him smile.

Later that day, I visited the tomb of al-Hājj Mahmūd Kati. Kati’s tomb sits alongside the tomb of Muhammad Bagayoko,