CHAPTER XX MILITARY CONQUESTS OF SONNI ALI While by the exertions of Mohammed Abou Bekr the worst evils which might have resulted from Sonni Ali's administration were averted, the military genius of the monarch himself extended the limits of this administration year by year. To meet the requirements of the army he imposed a general military service upon the people, and his reign of nearly thirty years was one long series of campaigns.

From Timbuctoo he marched on Jenne. That town, which had successfully resisted, it is said, no less than ninety-nine sieges from Melle, cost him a siege of seven years, seven months, and seven days, during which time his army camped and cultivated the fertile fields by which Jenn6 is surrounded. At the end of the siege the town yielded by honourable capitulation. No injury of any kind was done to its inhabitants, and the seven days which are added to the period of the siege were consumed, it is said, by festivities on the occasion of the marriage of Sonni AH with the widow of the ruler of the town, who had died during the siege. Thus, after about four hundred years of separation, Jenne became once more a portion of the Songhay Empire.

The exact date of the fall of Jenne is not given, but it was presumably towards the year 1477, and in the meantime the troops of Sonni Ali had not been idle. The entire course of the Middle Niger was in their general's hands. From Gago to Jenne he commanded the great highway of the Soudan. He had repulsed Mossi in the south. He had conquered Hombori in the Bend of the Niger, and Kanta, and other countries in the east. A little to the north of Jenne on the west, and again to the south of Gago 174