1492: The Year Our World Began by Felipe Fernández-Armesto Page B
Authors: Felipe Fernández-Armesto
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humiliation and contempt.” 21 Muhammad’s display of loyalty to his dead master only increased his devout reputation and the clamor for him to be king. Chroniclers gilded his iron ambition with the gleam of piety.
He was reluctant—so it was said—to accept the throne. The people besought him; the army acclaimed him. Messengers from the old king’s deathbed assured him that Ali had wanted him to save the kingdom from Sonni Baro’s impiety or incompetence. The truth is that Muhammad dared not defer to Sonni Baro. For too long, they had been rivals in the old king’s esteem, and contenders for influence over him. Muhammad marched against Baro, claiming to demand from him accession to the true faith. It was an old and enduring pretext for violence: jihad against an alleged apostate.
The surviving chronicles, which are uniformly favorable to Askia Muhammad, portray Sonni Baro preparing for battle in drugged ecstasy,communing with his idols, especially Za Beri Wandu, the god who begot the river Niger. A sorcerer conjured for Baro a vision of his father’s spirit. Baro saw the ghost’s lips move but heard nothing. The medium gave him the message: “[T]he king rejoices in your valor and urges you to combat Islam courageously.” Sonni Baro, meanwhile, treated Muhammad’s emissary, an old sheikh who brought the insulting demand for repentance and conversion, to a display of magic. A fakir disgorged a chain of pure gold. Another made a tree shake in a windless landscape. When the sheikh tried to escape the scene of devilry, Sonni Baro himself rose and beat him almost to death. “I reign by right of birth,” he cried, “and the protection of the gods.” 22
To the chroniclers who recorded or constructed this scene, it was a double blasphemy, for only Allah conferred kingship. False auguries deceived Baro, even at the height of the battle that followed. The decisive element in Muhammad’s victory, however, seems not to have been supernatural intervention, but the Tuareg allies who descended from the desert in his support.
It was one of the great decisive battles of the world—though Western tradition has forgotten or ignored it. Sonni Baro owed nothing to the mullahs and had every reason to arrest the spread of Islam south of the Sahara. Had he triumphed, Islam might have been stopped at the edge of the Sahel. Askia Muhammad, on the other hand, owed his throne to Muslims and invested heavily in practicing and promoting their religion. In 1497, he reenacted the most ostentatious of the displays of piety of the Mansas of Mali by making a pilgrimage to Mecca with one thousand foot soldiers and five hundred horse, bidding to emulate the Mansa Musa’s dazzling retinue. He legitimized his usurpation of power in Songhay by submitting his claim to the throne to the Sharif of Mecca. On his return to Songhay in 1498, he adopted the title of caliph—the most ambitious claim any ruler could make to the legacy of the Prophet.
Muhammad’s reason for arrogating the title to himself perhaps owed something to regional power struggles: Ali Ghadj, the redoubtable kingof Bornu—the state that straddled the Sahel around Lake Chad—used the same title until his death in 1497. Bornu was a warrior state, exchanging slaves for horses. Ali Ghadj’s successor, Idris Katakarmabi, was on the throne when Leo Africanus turned up. He found Bornu rich in rare kinds of grain and with wealthy merchants in the villages, but the highland people were naked or clad in skins. “They embrace no religion at all,…living in a brutish manner, and having wives and children in common.” Still, Bornu had three thousand horsemen, and huge numbers of infantry, maintained by a tithe of the people’s grain and the spoils of war. Though stingy with merchants—so merchants said—“the king seemeth to be marveilous rich; for his spurres, his bridles, platters, dishes, pots, and other vessels…are all of pure golde: yea, and the chaines of his dogs and
He was reluctant—so it was said—to accept the throne. The people besought him; the army acclaimed him. Messengers from the old king’s deathbed assured him that Ali had wanted him to save the kingdom from Sonni Baro’s impiety or incompetence. The truth is that Muhammad dared not defer to Sonni Baro. For too long, they had been rivals in the old king’s esteem, and contenders for influence over him. Muhammad marched against Baro, claiming to demand from him accession to the true faith. It was an old and enduring pretext for violence: jihad against an alleged apostate.
The surviving chronicles, which are uniformly favorable to Askia Muhammad, portray Sonni Baro preparing for battle in drugged ecstasy,communing with his idols, especially Za Beri Wandu, the god who begot the river Niger. A sorcerer conjured for Baro a vision of his father’s spirit. Baro saw the ghost’s lips move but heard nothing. The medium gave him the message: “[T]he king rejoices in your valor and urges you to combat Islam courageously.” Sonni Baro, meanwhile, treated Muhammad’s emissary, an old sheikh who brought the insulting demand for repentance and conversion, to a display of magic. A fakir disgorged a chain of pure gold. Another made a tree shake in a windless landscape. When the sheikh tried to escape the scene of devilry, Sonni Baro himself rose and beat him almost to death. “I reign by right of birth,” he cried, “and the protection of the gods.” 22
To the chroniclers who recorded or constructed this scene, it was a double blasphemy, for only Allah conferred kingship. False auguries deceived Baro, even at the height of the battle that followed. The decisive element in Muhammad’s victory, however, seems not to have been supernatural intervention, but the Tuareg allies who descended from the desert in his support.
It was one of the great decisive battles of the world—though Western tradition has forgotten or ignored it. Sonni Baro owed nothing to the mullahs and had every reason to arrest the spread of Islam south of the Sahara. Had he triumphed, Islam might have been stopped at the edge of the Sahel. Askia Muhammad, on the other hand, owed his throne to Muslims and invested heavily in practicing and promoting their religion. In 1497, he reenacted the most ostentatious of the displays of piety of the Mansas of Mali by making a pilgrimage to Mecca with one thousand foot soldiers and five hundred horse, bidding to emulate the Mansa Musa’s dazzling retinue. He legitimized his usurpation of power in Songhay by submitting his claim to the throne to the Sharif of Mecca. On his return to Songhay in 1498, he adopted the title of caliph—the most ambitious claim any ruler could make to the legacy of the Prophet.
Muhammad’s reason for arrogating the title to himself perhaps owed something to regional power struggles: Ali Ghadj, the redoubtable kingof Bornu—the state that straddled the Sahel around Lake Chad—used the same title until his death in 1497. Bornu was a warrior state, exchanging slaves for horses. Ali Ghadj’s successor, Idris Katakarmabi, was on the throne when Leo Africanus turned up. He found Bornu rich in rare kinds of grain and with wealthy merchants in the villages, but the highland people were naked or clad in skins. “They embrace no religion at all,…living in a brutish manner, and having wives and children in common.” Still, Bornu had three thousand horsemen, and huge numbers of infantry, maintained by a tithe of the people’s grain and the spoils of war. Though stingy with merchants—so merchants said—“the king seemeth to be marveilous rich; for his spurres, his bridles, platters, dishes, pots, and other vessels…are all of pure golde: yea, and the chaines of his dogs and
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