172 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY seem to have been one of these. For thirty years their friendship, though often severely strained, never gave way. The minister would seem to have had the rare power of understanding the strength and the weakness of the character with which he had to deal. He appreciated the genius of Sonni Ali, and entered into his great designs. His constant care was to assist him in carrying them out. At the same time he endeavoured to save both him and the country from the consequences of the madness with which in this case genius seems to have been closely allied.

It was this minister who instituted at Sonni Ali's court the practice of concealing for a time culprits capriciously condemned to death. He had the courage frequently to disobey the unjust orders of his master, and thus, while he risked his own life, stood between the monarch and the defenceless people over whom he ruled. He was enabled to do this, says his chronicler, because God had endowed him with a special force of character.

He had the wishes of the people on his side, and often, when his struggles with the conqueror became critical, his mother, it is said, would cause prayers to be offered in Timbuctoo that the Almighty would sustain him in his opposition. The picture is curious, of a prime minister sustained by public prayer in opposition to a friend and tyrant whose lightest word had power to end his life. It serves to illustrate the typical relation of Mohammedan to pagan greatness in the country where each commands, even to this day, its own form of respect.

Sonni Ali, though nominally Mohammedan, was in truth of the pagan type. He was the last of the great pagans, and in the double strain of conflict and affection which existed between him and his minister, may be seen reflected the conflict between enlightenment and natural instinct, between law and tyranny, between reason and force, which form the elements of the eternal conflict between the higher and the lower life of peoples.