On the subject of the manners and customs and the state of society in Songhay during its period of power, we find but little in the short extracts which I was able to make from the history of Áhmed Bábá; still a few hints as to some remarkable usages are to be gleaned from them. Islám, as we have seen, had been adopted by the royal family at the beginning of the eleventh century of our era; but we learn from the eminent Andalusian geographer El Bekrí, who finished his work on Africa in the year 1067, that while the king was a Moslim by law, receiving at his accession to the throne, as emblems of his authority, a sword, ring, and a copy of the Kurán, which were said to have been sent by an Emír el Múmenín (from Egypt), the greater part of the inhabitants even of the capital, at that time, were still addicted to paganism[111]; and we may fairly conclude from the description of Leo Africanus, and from what we observe in Negroland at the present day, that even during the time of the Áskías, the greater part of the natives of the country were idolaters, at least in heart and superstitious usages. However, it would seem as if they had received, in more ancient times, several institutions from the Egyptians, with whom, I have no doubt, they maintained an intercourse, by means of the energetic inhabitants of Aújila[112], from a relatively ancient period; and among these institutions I feel justified in reckoning the great care which the Songhay bestowed upon their dead. We see that even those among their kings who died in the very remotest part of the empire were transported with the greatest trouble to the capital, in order to be buried there with due ceremony. For instance, Sonni ʿAlí had died in Gurma; but his sons, who accompanied him on the expedition, took out his entrails, and filled his inside with honey, in order that it might be preserved from putrefaction.[113] The remains of Áskía Dáúd were transported all the way from Tindírma to Gágho in a boat. Even in the case of the slaughter of distinguished enemies, we find strict orders given to perform towards them the ceremonies usual with the dead. The attention thus bestowed upon the dead seems not to have been in consequence of the introduction of Islám, but appears rather to have been traditionally handed down from the remotest antiquity. Nevertheless, it is clear that the adoption of Islám exercised considerable influence upon the civilisation of these people, and we even find a Medreseh mentioned in Gágho[114], an establishment the institution of which we have probably to assign to El Háj Mohammed, who, while on his pilgrimage to Mekka, solicited the advice of the most learned men in Egypt, and especially that of the sheikh Jelál e’ dín e’ Soyúti, as to the best method of propagating the Mohammedan religion in his own country.