Songhai Empire

The largest state in African history, built on the Niger bend and destroyed by an army that crossed the Sahara. Songhai grew out of Gao and took over the trans-Saharan gold and salt trade from Mali, and Sonni Ali conquered Timbuktu and Djenne in the 1460s and 1470s. Askia Muhammad, who seized power in 1493, made it an administrative state with provinces, a professional army, standard weights and a legal system built on Islamic law, and his pilgrimage to Mecca returned him with the title of caliph of the western Sudan. Timbuktu under Songhai held madrasas and a manuscript culture of tens of thousands of volumes on law, astronomy, medicine and mathematics, much of which survives in family libraries - the written record that disproves the claim African societies had none. The empire controlled territory larger than western Europe. In 1591 a Moroccan force of a few thousand crossed the desert with arquebuses and cannon and destroyed a far larger Songhai army at Tondibi, because firearms beat cavalry. The empire fragmented immediately. Scholars were deported to Marrakesh, including Ahmad Baba, who wrote about the experience. The empire lasted from around 1464 to 1591 at its imperial height. Timbuktu, Djenne and Gao are all World Heritage sites. The Sankore madrasa drew students from across the Sahel. Manuscripts smuggled out of Timbuktu during the 2012 conflict saved much of the surviving collection. Salt from Taghaza was traded against gold from Bure and Bambuk, sometimes weight for weight. The Niger river carried its trade and its armies.

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