The Za Dynasty of Gao

The Za Dynasty of Gao. The Za dynasty of Gao (c. 690-1335) ruled the first kingdom of the Songhay people, centuries before the famous Songhai Empire of Sunni Ali and Askia Muhammad. The Songhay lived along the middle Niger, and their chief town, Gao, grew rich on trade between the river and the desert. According to the great Songhay chronicle, the Tarikh al-Sudan, the Za line was founded by Za al-Yaman, a stranger said to have come from the east, whose descendants ruled Gao as kings for generations.

Gao's kings profited from the trans-Saharan gold trade and from their command of the Niger. Arabic writers knew the town as Kawkaw and described it as one of the great markets of the Sudan. The Za dynasty also figures in the early history of Islam in West Africa: tradition holds that one of its kings, Za Kusay, accepted Islam around the year 1010 after contact with Muslim merchants, making the Gao court one of the first in the region to adopt the new faith, though older beliefs and royal rituals remained strong for centuries.

The dynasty's independence ended as the Mali Empire expanded east. In the early fourteenth century, the chronicles record, the Malian ruler Sakura, a former slave who had seized the throne of Mali, conquered Gao and reduced the Za kings to vassals around 1335. The Songhay remembered their subjugation, and in the next century, as Mali weakened, princes of the old line broke away. The chronicle names Ali Kulun and his brother as the founders of the restored Songhay state, the Sunni dynasty, whose greatest king Sunni Ali would build Gao into the capital of an empire.

The Za dynasty matters because it shows that Songhay statehood was ancient long before the empire. Gao had been a seat of kings for six hundred years when Sunni Ali made it famous, and the Za rulers had already tied the middle Niger into the web of Saharan trade and introduced Islam to its court. The great mud-brick tomb known as the Tomb of Askia still rises over Gao, a monument of the imperial age that grew from these beginnings.

To read more about this topic:

Wikipedia: Za Dynasty OpenStax World History: The People of the Sahel OpenStax World History: The Songhai Empire Black American History: The Za Dynasty Reigns in the Songhai Kingdom