broad waters of the Niger. Having captured the place, he proceeded to sack it without mercy; no one but Mohammed Abu Bekr was able to stay his hand. The king frequently decreed an unjust execution of some subject of his. Mohammed Abu Bekr dared to conceal the culprit until the royal wrath had cooled. Sometimes his struggles with the king were long continued; in such cases Mohammed's mother was wont to help. She would let it be known in Timbuktu that her son was withstanding Sonni Ali, that the people might pray in the mosque for his success.
Sonni Ali pushed his conquests both among the neighboring Moslem kingdoms and in the pagan belt, until at last his empire stretched inland (see map) from west to east some two thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and was bounded on the south by the pagan lands bordering the Gulf of Guinea, and on the north by the slopes of the Atlas Mountains. In 1492 he was returning from a successful campaign when he was drowned by the sudden flooding of a stream. He left sons to succeed him. But, supported by the good-will of the people, Mohammed Abu Bekr rose up against them, defeated them in battle, and seized the vacant
