Songhai

The Songhai and Zarma peoples along the middle Niger in West Africa centre their traditional belief on the holey, spirits approached through possession rites, and on a creator god, Yarkoy. Each hereditary group traditionally revered its own guardian spirit.

The rulers of Gao adopted Islam around 1009, yet the old practices survived beside it, even after Mali conquered the region near the end of the thirteenth century.

Sonni Ali, who ruled the Songhai from 1464 to 1492 and was taught the old rites by his mother, upheld them, which earned him a hostile name in the Muslim chronicles of Timbuktu. Askia Muhammad, who seized the throne in 1493, promoted Islam, but the spirit cults stayed strong in the villages after Morocco destroyed the empire in 1591.