The kingdom of Songhai, also spelled Songhay, West Africa's great trade state, focused on what is now central Mali on the middle reaches of the Niger River and gradually spreading west to the Atlantic coast and east to Niger and Nigeria.
While the Songhai people are said to have settled in the city of Gao about 800 CE, during the reign of the dia Kossoi, a Songhai convert to Islam, they did not consider it as their capital until the beginning of the 11th century. During the next 300 years, Gao prospered and expanded so much that the rulers of Mali added it to their kingdom from 1325 to 1375.
