[1] When Askia Isma'il died on campaign, the leading men in the empire peacefully agreed that Ishaq would be the next ruler.
[2] Askia Ishaq was a ruthless and paranoid ruler, inspiring fear and anxiety among the Songhai people.
Despite being a devout Muslim, he sent agents to Timbuktu on a regular basis to demand enormous sums of money from the merchants, which is against Islamic law.
[3] Soon thereafter he exiled a conspiratorial Kurmina-fari and replaced him with his half-brother Dawud, who later invaded the Mali Empire, briefly occupying the capital in 1545 and 1546.
[5] After a request from the Moroccan sultan Mohammed al-Shaykh, to cede the salt mines of Taghaza, Ishaq I sent a group of 2000 mounted men to raid a market town in the Dara valley of southern Morocco with instructions to avoid killing anyone.