Songhai and Kanem-Bornu

1The source: an engraving of a Bornu horseman

In 1826 the British explorer Dixon Denham published an account of his travels to Bornu in 1822 to 1824. One plate, engraved from his own sketch, shows a member of the bodyguard of the Sheikh of Bornu.

Analyse it. The picture shows armoured cavalry: horses, mail and lances were the weapons of power in the Sahel, and horses had to be bought across the Sahara. But ask who made it: a British officer, sketching what impressed him, for readers in Britain who knew almost nothing of Bornu. It records the look of an elite unit in the 1820s, not the whole army or the empire's earlier history. Like al-Bakri on Ghana, it is an outsider's view.

2How long they lasted

3Songhai: from city-state to empire, 1464 to 1591

• Rise. A Songhai state had existed around Gao since the 11th century and had been ruled by Mali. As Mali weakened, the Songhai took Gao back. Sunni Ali (ruled about 1464 to 1492) turned it into an empire, conquering Timbuktu in 1468 and Djenné in 1475, and made Gao the capital. He treated the scholars of Timbuktu harshly, suspecting them of siding with the Tuareg.
• Organisation. Askia Muhammad took power in 1493 after defeating Sunni Ali's son at the Battle of Anfao, and ruled until 1528. He made political and economic reforms, favoured Islam and its scholars, and went on pilgrimage to Mecca in 1497–98. The pyramidal mud tomb built for him at Gao at the end of the 15th century, 17 metres high, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Decline. Askia Muhammad was overthrown by his own son in 1528. Plots, coups and civil wars among his successors weakened the empire, with a recovery under Askia Daoud. Then, in October 1590, Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur of Morocco sent an army under Judar Pasha across the Sahara: 1,500 light cavalry and 2,500 infantry, many armed with arquebuses, and eight cannons. At Tondibi in 1591 the Songhai, who outnumbered them but had no guns, tried to break the Moroccan lines with a stampede of 1,000 cattle; the noise of gunfire turned the cattle back on the Songhai lines. The empire collapsed.

4Kanem-Bornu: about 1,200 years around Lake Chad

• Rise. The empire is believed to have been founded around 700 in Kanem, north-east of Lake Chad, a position between Egypt, the Nile valley, West Africa and the Sahara. Its first rulers, the Duguwa, ruled from Njimi, a capital whose site has never been found. The early empire grew rich by exporting enslaved people in exchange for horses, and by raiding its neighbours.
• Organisation and religion. In the 11th century the rulers converted to Islam, and the Sayfawa dynasty replaced the Duguwa. The empire exported salt, ivory, enslaved people and animal products across the Sahara.
• Survival through crisis. Around 1380 the Bilala drove the Sayfawa out of Kanem and took Njimi. Instead of collapsing, the state moved its centre west of Lake Chad to Bornu, and after a century of instability Mai Ali Gaji founded a new permanent capital, Ngazargamu.
• Height. Idris Alooma (ruled about 1570 to 1603) brought Bornu to the peak of its power. He bought muskets and hired Turkish military advisers to train his gunmen, built fortified posts (ribats), introduced large boats to cross Lake Chad quickly, set up Islamic courts with judges (qadis), and played Morocco and the Ottoman Empire against each other in diplomacy.
• Decline. Tuareg pressure cost Bornu oases and trade routes. The Fulani jihad launched at Sokoto in 1804 reached Bornu by 1807; the scholar and soldier Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi saved the state, and his family later replaced the Sayfawa, ruling with the title shehu. In 1893 the Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr conquered Kanem-Bornu; the al-Kanemi dynasty was restored in 1900, but under colonial rule.