All language subtitles for Empire Age of Gold

In the year
1858, the German explorer Heinrich Barth

travelled across the wide expanse of the
Sahara Desert.

He was determined to reach the city of
Timbuktu

that lay at its far edge.
He spoke Arabic along with several

African languages, and made
careful notes about the places he passed

through.
His journey all around West Africa would

ultimately be a trip
of nearly 20,000 kilometers.

But Barth was always on the lookout for
more sights to see,

and on the arduous return leg of his
journey, he heard rumors

of something that only a handful of
Europeans had ever seen before.

His guides told him of the existence of
an enormous,

ruined city lost in the African bush,
a city that had once commanded the

continent's greatest
empire. His guides

called this city Gao.

As soon as I had made out that Gao was
the place which for

several centuries had been the capital
of a strong and mighty

empire in this region, I felt a more
ardent desire to visit it then

I had to reach Timbuktu. Gao had been the
center of a great national movement from

whence powerful and successful princes
spread their conquests.

Barth gathered his things and set out,
following the Niger River along with his

guides
through the swampy lowlands and flat

desert plains,
swatting away mosquitoes and tsetse flies

until he reached the site of the former
city.

But what he saw disappointed him;
he found only a small collection of huts,

about 300 in total, with heaps of
overgrown rubble

where the ancient city had once stood.
This once busy locality, which according

to the unanimous statements of former
writers,

was the most splendid city of Africa, is
now the desolate abode of a small and

miserable population. Just opposite my
tent

lay the ruined massive tower, the last
remains of the principal mosque of the

capital.
All around the wide, open area in which

we were encamped
was woven a rich corona of vegetation,

among which
in the clear light of the morning, I

discovered date palms,
tamarind trees, sycamores, and silk

cottons.
Not to be deterred, Barth explored the

ruins
of the ancient city and took detailed

notes
about what he saw. The town,

in its most flourishing period, seems to
have had a circumference of about six

miles.
The east quarter of the mosque is

entirely girded with a thick grove of
siwak bushes which covers all the

uninhabited part of the former city.
The mosque consisted originally of a low

building flanked on the east and west
side by a large tower,

the whole courtyard being surrounded by
a wall about eight feet in height.

The eastern tower is in ruins but the
western one

is still tolerably well-preserved. It
rises in seven terraces which gradually

decrease in diameter.
The inhabitants still offer their

prayers in this sacred space where their
great conqueror is interred,

although they have not sufficient energy
to repair the whole.

His guides told him that this had been
the capital of an empire known

as the Songhai. Barth
soon left the ruins of Gao to the silk

cottons and sycamore trees,
and continued on his journey home. But

the site of the ruined city
seems to have stuck with him and

wherever he went,
he would ask the same questions;

how had the Empire of Songhai grown to
such

size in the harsh desert landscape of
the southern Sahara?

How had its people held such a society
together

and built such grand constructions?
Why, after rising to such great

heights,
had they left it all here to crumble

into the dust
and shifting dunes of the desert?

My name's Paul Cooper and you're
listening to The Fall of Civilizations

Podcast.
Every episode, I look at a civilization

of the past that rose to glory
and then collapsed into the ashes of

history.
I want to ask what did they have in

common? What led to their fall?
What did it feel like to be a person

alive at the time
who witnessed the end of their world?

In this episode, I want to look at a
society that has been all but forgotten

by popular narratives of history; the
Songhai people

of West Africa. I want to explore
how this great civilization rose up

among some of the harshest conditions
our planet can throw at us, how they

united
two warring traditions, became a

cosmopolitan and pluralistic society
as well as Africa's greatest empire,

and I want to explain why, after barely
more than a century of greatness,

their whole society collapsed around
them.

This will be an episode about cycles,
and our first cycle is that of the

planet Earth
itself.

As the Earth spins through the dark void
of space,

it turns on its axis, giving us the cycle
of night and day.

But there's another planetary cycle that
affects us all

just as profoundly, although it is much,
much slower. This

is the wobble of the Earth, known more
scientifically

as its axial procession.
This wobble is caused by the gentle

gravitational tug
of the other planets in our solar system

and it changes the angle of the planet's
tilt

by about one degree every 72 years
until it tilts a full 23 degrees each

way.
This cycle lasts for over 25,000

years and this tilt can have some
extreme effects on the climate on the

planet's surface.
Over the last 8,000 years or so, one of

these effects
has been to shift the pattern of monsoon

rains on the African continent,
pushing them southward, and creating an

enormous dry zone in its northern region.
This has created one of Earth's most

impressive geographic
features; the Sahara Desert.

The Sahara is a vast ocean of sand dunes,
rock plateaus, and salt flats that covers

an area
totaling nine million square kilometers.

This desert makes up around 30% of the
entire

African continent, but until about 5,000
years ago,

these bare sand dunes were rolling, green
grasslands.

The landscape was broken by rivers and
huge lakes

that supported late stone-age human
communities.

Sparse forests grew here, full of oak and
walnut,

lime, and olive trees.
Rock paintings have even been discovered

in the central Sahara
that date to around the year 3,000 BC,

and depict lush vegetation and abundant
animals

in areas where today there's nothing but
desert.

But as the planet tilted on its endless
cycle,

this landscape's days were numbered.
The rains gradually left the region. The

large plant life would have died off
first

until only grasses remained, and then
eventually

the grass, too, would have died. Without
plant cover to absorb the heat of the

sun
or roots to hold together the earth, the

topsoil would have dried up and blown
away in the wind.

Slowly, these green valleys turned into
arid grasslands,

then to desert, and finally, to the
enormous Sahara that we know

today.
Neolithic people fled from the steady

advance of this great desert.
It drove them out of the Sahara and

concentrated them at its edges.
Some of them fled to the northeast and

settled
in the fertile Nile Valley where they

would lay the foundation
for the civilization of the pharaohs.

But others went south and built a
civilization of their own.

Much of this story will take place in a
landscape

just to the south of the Sahara, known
today

as the Sahel. The word derives from the
Arabic

'sahil' which means ‘coast’ or ‘shore’.
That's because early people thought of

the place as the coast of the great
sea of sand that stretches for nearly

2,000 kilometers
until it meets the Mediterranean.

The Sahel is a zone of transition;
it's neither the desert sand to the

north nor the
tropical savannah to the south.

For most of its 5,000-kilometer length
from the Red Sea to the Atlantic coast,

it's a landscape of semi-arid grasslands
and steps,

broken by thorns, scrub land, and patches
of acacia trees.

Much of the life here relies on regular
monsoon rains.

During the long dry season, many trees
here lose their leaves

and the annual grasses die away.
Several species of gazelle and buffalo

compete here with large predators like
the cheetah and lion,

along with the African wild dog, but
there are also spots of incredible

richness
in this otherwise arid landscape. The

source of this richness
can be seen from outer space.

From its source in the mountainous
highlands of southeastern Guinea,

West Africa's longest river runs inland
for over 4,000

kilometers in a dramatic, sweeping
sickle shape. This is the Niger River.

Its name is thought to come from the
Berber phrase

'ger-n-ger' meaning 'river of
rivers'. The Niger River

is exceptionally fertile. At its thickest
point

it is nearly a kilometer across, and it
floods every year

across a vast area that turns the desert
green.

In fact, its cultivation zone is more
than five

times the size of the ones surrounding
Egypt's Nile River,

allowing the people who live here to
grow rice,

millet, and couscous for half of the year.
The medieval West African chronicle,

known
as the Tarikh al-fataash, paints a glowing

picture
of the wealth and beauty of this region.

Mali encompasses a region of 400 towns
and its soil is extremely rich. Among the

kingdoms of the sovereigns of the world,
only the lands of Syria surpass it in

its beauty.
Its inhabitants are rich and live very

well.
According to oral tradition, the story of

human settlement along the Niger River
begins with a people known as the Sorko.

They built settlements along the
riverbank and fashioned boats

from African mahogany. They were soon
joined

by a people known as the Gao, skilled
hunters

who knew how to bring down hippopotamus
and even crocodiles

living in the river. These were joined
by the Doh people who had adapted to

life-cultivating crops in the rich
floodplains.

Finally, a hardy people from the north
moved into the region. They were the

first to ride horses here,
and they called themselves the Songhai.

From the very beginning, this was a
blended society

that survived by unifying formerly
disparate elements

into a successful whole. The riverboats of
the Sorko,

the hunting skills of the Gao, and the
Doh's farming acumen,

all supercharged with the power of the
horse,

all combined to form the beginning of a
complex

and connected society that would forever
use

the River Niger as its lifeblood.
But their journey from these humble

beginnings would not be easy
or straightforward.

Over recorded history, a number of great
empires rose up in West Africa.

I think we should pause for a moment
and ask what is an

empire? An empire
is a violent phenomenon. It occurs

when one kingdom or state becomes more
powerful than its

neighbor. It then invades and conquers
them

and rules over both territories by force.
The original nation, what's known as the

imperial center,
will usually extract resources and

wealth from their conquered subject,
and it may also make some attempt to

impose its culture and way of life on
them.

Empires grow in this way, absorbing
neighbours

and turning them into so-called client
states.

They become more powerful but they also,
as is usually the case, grow more

unstable.
Then eventually, the bubble bursts.

Whether through poor leadership, economic
collapse,

or imperial overreach, the empire falters
and weakens. The client states

demand their freedom. The power that held
the imperial center together

fails, and the whole edifice cracks like
an eggshell.

This is often a time of great unrest.
The once-mighty capital city might even

go down
in flames, but for its most powerful

client states, the lack of central
authority

might represent an opportunity.
They might begin to expand their own

territory;
they might build an empire of their own.

There are many theories about how
exactly empires grow and operate,

but this simplified account is what has
been called 'the Imperial

cycle' and I think it's useful to think
about this

when we look at the history of West
Africa.

Some empires of this region will follow
this cycle exactly,

while others will try with limited
success

to break it.

The first empire to grow here was the
Empire of

Ghana. It rose up on the fringes of the
Sahara Desert

around the 8th century. Its people
pioneered ironworking in the region,

giving them
a military edge, and it's clear that by

the year 1,000,
Ghana had conquered a large number of

client states at its borders
and begun to build a true empire.

The secret to Ghana's success relied
on one thing

that would prove essential to all the
empires that would follow

after. Actually, it's not a thing,
but an animal.

Until around the year 300, horses
were the main mode of transportation in

West Africa.
A horse, while strong and fast on

hard ground,
is poorly suited to the harsh

environment and shifting sands of the
desert.

In July and August, daytime temperatures
in the Sahara

can reach 50 degrees centigrade, or over
120 degrees Fahrenheit.

The desert is also prone to
sandstorms.

The most deadly of these is known as the
simoom,

or poison wind. These
hot, dry winds reach temperatures of up

to 54 degrees centigrade,
or over 130 Fahrenheit, which is hot

enough
to scald the skin. These simooms

are known to cause rapid onset heat
stroke in desert travelers,

since they can transfer more heat to the
human body

than it's possible to lose through the
evaporation of sweat.

This causes the body to quickly overheat,
and major organs begin to fail.

But from the 4th century onwards, a
remarkable new innovation

began arriving from Arabia.
It was an animal with large, flat feet,

and adaptations that made them perfectly
adapted for survival in the heat.

Among these was the distinctive hump on
their back.

The camel had arrived in West Africa.
The introduction of camels transformed

the economy of the Sahara.
They could carry enormous weights of up

to 150 kilograms,
and this meant that large-scale trade

was now possible
across the desert. The West African

economy at this time
was already flourishing but now it was

suddenly linked up
to the rich markets of the Mediterranean,

and the result was the beginning of a
new era

for both peoples.
Trade across the Sahara relied on a

system of caravans
which were vast trains of camels piled

high with
goods and luxuries. According to the 14th

century Arab
writer Ibn Battuta, the average size of

these caravans
was around 1,000 camels, but they

could grow
as large as 12,000. They would

have been
an incredible sight, snaking across the

red sands of the desert
for miles. There were three main routes

across the central Sahara
through most of its history, and they

zigzagged
between oases in the desert.

An oasis was a spot where an aquifer or
an underground river,

often coupled with a layer of
impermeable rock below the sand,

caused fresh water to appear on the
surface of the desert.

Over millennia, humans settled on these
oases

and in these small pockets, they reversed
the process

that led the Sahara to form in the first
place.

They first planted groves of hardy date
palms

that then provided shade for smaller
trees like apricots,

figs, and olives.

These oases formed crucial stopping
points along the trade routes over the

desert.
They were so important that military

control of these tiny settlements
could often mean control over an entire

trade route
and all its accompanying wealth.

Today, traveling at high speed in a
modern car,

these trade routes would represent a
non-stop drive

of over 70 hours. But for travellers in
the Middle Ages,

with their vast herds of camel, it took
roughly

two months to cross the desert. These
journeys were so long

that about a third of the camels on the
caravan were there simply to carry

supplies for the journey.
In these conditions, even the camels

struggled.
After their journeys, the animals had to

spend months recuperating;
a four-month round trip would usually

earn them
an eight-month rest afterwards.

The kingdoms of West Africa used these
desert trails

to transport ivory, spices, wheat,
and exotic animals to Europe, as well

as a steady trade in slaves.

The transatlantic slave trade that we're
all familiar with from history books,

shipped millions of African slaves to
the Americas

over roughly 400 years.
It was exceptional in its scale and

brutality,
but it wasn't the beginning of slavery.

In fact, forms of slavery have existed
probably since the beginning

of agricultural society. Ancient Rome,
Greece, and Carthage were all famously

slave societies,
and with the collapse of the Roman

Empire in Europe and its ensuing chaos,
slave-taking only increased.

But with the gradual Christianization of
Europe in the first millennium,

the church began to introduce rules
about keeping other

Christians as slaves.

By the year 1000, slavery of Christians
by

Christians had more or less ended in
feudal Europe,

although it's worth mentioning that it
was replaced by the widespread system of

serfdom,
where peasant workers were little better

than slaves,
and could still be bought and sold by

feudal lords.

But the keeping of non-Christian slaves
was still allowed,

and persisted right through the middle
ages.

When Christian kingdoms went to war with
the kingdoms of the Muslim world,

prisoners of war were constantly being
taken as slaves by both sides.

But for both Muslims and Christians,
sub-Saharan Africa

was the source of a seemingly infinite
supply of forced labourers.

Since the first trade routes across the
Sahara began,

the lands of the north began extracting
Africa's manpower

by force. These slaves
were transported across the desert under

horrendous conditions
and were sold in the slave markets of

North Africa
in the Byzantine Empire, and in Venice

and Spain.
They were often used as labourers and

servants,
but they were also forced to fight as

soldiers in one medieval army or another.
While slavery is deeply unpleasant

to consider,
it was an unfortunate fact of life in

this time, and it will be important to
acknowledge its effect

on the history of this region if we are
to make any sense at all

of what happens next.

More valuable than slave laborers, ivory,
or spices, was the natural resource

that occurred in West Africa with an
abundance unparalleled

around the known world, and that resource
was gold.

Gold has always done something strange
to the human brain;

something about its warm color and
reflective surface

has always made us desire it. We want to
wear it on our bodies and decorate our

buildings with it,
and we've structured entire economies

around it.
This rare, precious metal, more than any

other,
has always suggested to us a kind of

divinity.
The ancient Egyptians called gold 'the

breath of God'
while the Aztecs called it 'the sweat of

the sun'.
These early ideas of gold as a metal

sent from heaven
are actually not that far from the truth.

Like most heavy metals, gold was forged
in the center of stars

by the process of nuclear fusion.
Stars, just like empires, pass through a

cycle.
They grow and grow until they reach the

size that we call
a supergiant, thousands of times larger

than our own
sun. After this, it enters into a death

spiral.
Most stars simply shed their outer

layers
and fizzle out, but some, perhaps less

than one percent,
achieve a mass that means they explode

in a supernova,
a burst of energy and light that can be

equivalent
for a few moments to the brightness of

an entire galaxy.
It's in these explosions that gold

is formed.

From around 200 million years after our
planet first formed,

gold started raining from the sky,
carried

on asteroids that bombarded the earth's
surface.

West Africa is remarkably rich in this
rare element.

In fact, until the discovery of the
Americas in the 16th century,

this region was the world's top producer
of gold.

So much gold left Africa during this
time that Europeans and Arabs

began to believe that it must be home to
a single

monumental gold mine, a mountain of gold
that was being intentionally kept a

secret by African kings.
This idea would later inspire myths like

the story of King Solomon's mines,
but actually, the reality was quite the

opposite.
Gold in West Africa wasn't mined from a

single source
but from countless tiny gold mines and

panning stations
across the land.

Gold usually occurs in flecks and
nuggets

found within quartz crystals.
Over time, the crystals are eroded by the

running water of rivers and streams,
and the flecks of gold run free.

The majority of West Africa's gold
wasn't dug out of a mine,

but panned on the banks of the Senegal
and Niger Rivers.

The extremely variable climate of
the region also helped this industry.

That's because during the long dry
season when all plant life

died and agriculture was impossible, many
farmers

would hang up their farm tools and go
prospecting for gold instead.

The 10th century Iranian geographer Ibn
al-Faqih

seems to have heard some version of this
process, as he relates

in his geography text "The Book of Lands".
In Africa, gold grows in the sand like

carrots do,
and is picked at sunrise.

These part-time prospectors would gather
together their tiny amounts of gold dust

and wait for the trading caravans to
pass through.

Due to the great variety of languages
used in this part of the world,

these traders would often engage in a
practice known

as silent barter. They would lay out
their goods

on rugs; ornaments and tools, foods,
spices, and most importantly, salt,

which is hard to come by in sub-Saharan
Africa

and was crucial for preserving food.
The traders would then beat on large

drums and blow trumpets,
and withdraw out of sight. The local

amateur gold miners would emerge and
place their little nuggets and flecks of

gold
in front of the goods they wanted,

offering what they thought they were
worth.

The traders would then return and if
they accepted the price,

they would take the gold. They would then
travel

north and exchange it with North African
traders

who would give them more salt and exotic,
Mediterranean goods in return.

Soon, a veritable river of gold flowed
north

across the desert. Through this
system,

the early kingdoms of West Africa
swelled

to eye-watering wealth.

To give you a sense of the kind of
wealth we're talking about, it's worth

looking at the example
of one of Africa's most famous medieval

kings.

His name has gone down in history as
Mansa Musa,

the wealthiest man in the world.

The Empire of Ghana, which had ruled much
of West Africa for 500 years,

went into decline at some point during
the 13th century.

It passed through the final stages of
that imperial

cycle we talked about; its power weakened,
its client states demanded independence,

and finally, one of its own conquered
subjects

eclipsed it in power, snapping up its old
dominions,

and seizing control of the lucrative
Saharan trade routes.

This was the beginning of a new empire.
Eventually, even the Ghanaian Kingdom was

absorbed into this rising power,
and it would become known as the Empire

of Mali.

The Mali Empire inherited much of the
wealth and power of its predecessor,

but it developed the system of
trans-Saharan trade

to eye-watering size.
Its most famous king, Mansa Musa,

was a genius of public relations.
He was so famous that he even appears on

a medieval European map
known as the Catalan Atlas, holding a

gold coin
and wearing a gold crown.

Mansa Musa's journey to become the
King of Mali

is probably one of the strangest stories
of royal succession

in history.

The year was 1312.
Musa was an elite member of the Mali

court,
serving an eccentric old king named Abu

Bakr II.
Musa was around the age of 32 when he

was summoned to see the king.
The king told him that Musa would be

appointed as deputy
and rule in the king's place while he

was away.
This was a common enough event, as kings

who went off on campaign
or pilgrimage would often appoint

deputies to rule in their place.
But it's where the king was going that

must have raised at least
a few eyebrows.

Towards the end of his reign, the old
king Abu Bakr

became convinced that it would be
possible to sail

far enough across the Atlantic Ocean
that he might reach the other side.

In fact, he became obsessed with this
idea.

The Arab historian Shihab al-Umari once
spoke to Mansa Musa and recounts the

king's version
of what happened next.

The ruler before me believed that it was
possible to reach the end of the ocean

that encircles the earth,
so he equipped 200 boats full of men and

gold,
water, and food enough for several years.

He ordered the admiral not to return
until they reached the end of the ocean.

They set out. Their absence extended over a
long period of time,

and at last, only one boat returned.

The sailors on this boat brought back a
tale

of a great whirlpool that had sucked the
fleet down beneath the waves,

leaving only their vessel afloat.
Most likely, the fleet was wrecked during

an Atlantic storm,
but this whirlpool may have also been

the formidable Canary Current
that flows down the African continent.

But the King Abu Bakr was not deterred,
and he seems to have decided that if you

want a job done,
you should do it yourself.

This time, he ordered 2,000 boats to be
equipped for him and for his men,

and 1,000 more for water and food.
Then he departed with his men on the

awesome trip,
never to return.

This story has long fascinated
historians of West Africa.

Of course, Abu Bakr would be proved right
by history;

other lands really did lie beyond the
ocean,

and with the passage of only a few
centuries, the fate of Africa

would become inextricably tied to those
lands.

Some historians have slightly fancifully
searched for evidence

that Abu Bakr II may have actually
reached the new world

nearly 200 years before Columbus, but
there is no

real evidence for this. What's more,
the only account we have of this story

was the one given
by the new King Mansa Musa. As we'll

find out later,
kings can often be a little cagey about

how
exactly their predecessors met their

ends.
Still, the storyteller in me finds it an

irresistible anecdote to mention.
Something about the pure weirdness

of it does tempt me to believe it,
that this immensely wealthy king, not

satisfied with the things of this world,
sailed out into the ocean on an

impossible quest,
and drowned somewhere on his way to a

new one.

Whatever the circumstances of his rise
to power, we do know that Musa was a

fearsomely effective ruler.
During his reign, he expanded the Mali

Empire and conquered a further 24
cities, folding them into the largest

Empire that Africa had ever seen.
But one event would secure his place in

history.
It will show the talent he had for

self-promotion,
and would ensure that his name was on

the lips of Europeans and Arabs
for centuries to come, and that was his

eye-wateringly expensive
pilgrimage to Mecca.

As is always the case, it's not just
goods that flow up and down trade routes.

Human cultures also travel along them
too,

and with the increasing traffic of trade
across the Sahara,

West Africa was slowly being introduced
to new

and exotic ways of life.
Chief among these foreign imports was

the Arab culture,
and along with it, the young religion of

Islam.

For the early kings of Mali, converting
to Islam

was an entry point into the world of the
Mediterranean coast.

It was a way to gain acceptance and
influence among these various

powerful kingdoms.

The first Malian king we can reliably
say was a Muslim

was named Sundiata Keita, and he ruled
in the first half of the 13th century,

nearly a hundred years before Musa.
But religion would always form a

fracture that ran the whole length of
West African society,

dividing the rich from the poor, and city
dwellers

from the countryside.

The people living in the farms and
villages of West Africa,

the people who worked the land and
herded the cattle,

were what we call animists. That means,
loosely speaking, that they worshipped

their ancestors
alongside the ancient spirits of nature

and the magic that lived in the
mountaintops and the forests.

The Muslim chronicles record these kinds
of beliefs

with barely concealed contempt.

They worship idols among trees and
stones.

They make sacrifices to them and pray to
them for their needs.

Among these people are diviners and
sorcerers.

But in the cities, Islam was the dominant
religion,

at least in name. For a West African
citizen

of this time, becoming a Muslim had a
number of benefits.

It helped you to build a rapport and
trade with the foreigners who arrived

from across the desert,
and at times, it allowed people to avoid

certain taxes.
It also shielded people from the

increasingly bold
slave-taking raiders who came down from

the Sahara.
Just like in Christian Europe, under

Islamic law,
it was illegal for a Muslim to take

another Muslim as a slave.
This prohibition was taken very

seriously.
The 14th century Islamic scholar

Makhluf al-balbali
was one of the first to set this law in

writing.

Anyone who is known to be from those
lands, which are known to be the lands of

Islam,
and who mentions he is from those lands,

should be let go
and should be adjudged free. This was the

ruling of the jurists of Andalusia.

Legal disputes would even erupt
periodically

over whether it was allowed to sell
slaves who had converted after being

captured.
For the kingdom of Mali as a whole,

converting to Islam
offered similar protections. Again,

similar to Christian Europe, Muslim kings
were only supposed to go to war when it

was legally sanctioned.
A legal war of this kind was known as a

jihad,
or holy struggle. Legal approval

would rarely be given for a war against
another Muslim nation.

By the time Mansa Musa took the throne,
Mali

had been a Muslim empire for over a
hundred years.

But Musa was a devout Muslim and would
go on to forge

strong and enduring links with the rest
of the Muslim world. He finally

made a pilgrimage to Mecca that began in
the year 1324.

But even on this religious duty, Musa
seems to have had a keen eye for his

image.
He reportedly traveled with an

impressive retinue
that caused a sensation across the

medieval world.
He was accompanied by a caravan

consisting of 60,000 men,
including a personal retinue of 12,000

slaves,
all carrying golden staffs and wearing

brocade and Persian silk. He's also
supposed to have traveled

with a baggage train of 80 camels, each
carrying

300 pounds of gold. At today's market
rates,

that would be a value of around 500
million,

or half a billion dollars.

At every city he stopped at, Mansa Musa
handed out this gold to the poor

in huge amounts, but his generosity
had a number of inadvertent effects.

All along his pilgrimage route, he left
economic chaos in his wake.

In the cities of Cairo, Medina, and Mecca
that he passed through,

the sudden influx of gold caused a
collapse in the metal's value for the

next decade,
causing enormous inflation and

devastating their economies.
On his way home, perhaps a little bashful

at the devastation he had caused,
Musa loaned back all the gold he could

find in Egypt
in an attempt to somewhat stabilize the

price.
It's the first and last time in history

that one man has controlled the price of
all the world's gold. But the Empire of Mali,

while incredibly wealthy, wasn't to last.
It would soon follow Ghana's footsteps

along that imperial cycle.
0ne of its client states, which was

only just beginning to flex its muscles,
would soon become the true subject of

this episode,
and the largest empire in African

history.
That state, finally, was the kingdom

of
Songhai.

I think this is a good point to mention
that there are essentially three groups

of sources
about the history of this region of West

Africa,
and they can often give wildly divergent

versions
of events. The first source

is the Arab travelers and historians who
occasionally crossed the Sahara

and wrote about what they saw. Of these,
two stand out for the length and detail

of their descriptions.
One of these is the traveller Ibn Battuta.

He was the Moroccan Marco Polo. Over a
period of 30 years in the 14th century,

he traveled all over the Middle East,
North and sub-Saharan Africa,

then through Afghanistan and Central
Asia,

India and Sri Lanka, and even on to China.
It's on one of these great journeys

that he explored the kingdoms of West
Africa

during the time of the Mali Empire.
Nearly two centuries later, in the early

16th century,
another traveler, a Spanish Moor who

would become known as
Leo Africanus, travelled in West Africa.

Afterwards, he was captured by European
pirates

and taken to Rome where he was forced to
convert to Christianity.

There, he wrote down accounts of all
his travels.

But visitors of this kind are few and
far between.

Each one acts like a kind of snapshot,
capturing a moment in time, and they can

sometimes
be frustratingly vague about the kinds

of things that are interesting to a
modern historian.

The second source of information is the
storytelling tradition of West Africa

itself. This region
is home to a unique tradition of

folklore presided over
by a mysterious cast of mystics and holy

men
known as the griots. For millennia,

these griots have played the roles of
storyteller,

historian, singer, poet, and musician,
all together in West African society.

These griots were repositories of an
oral tradition,

memorizing their stories and histories,
and passing them on from one generation

to another.
They were treated as wise men and

magicians, too,
and often held positions as advisors to

the kings and rulers.
You're currently listening to a pair of

griots from the town of Yelekela in
modern Mali,

still practicing this ancient tradition
today.

Like most of the world's folklore
traditions, the stories of the griots

were often not written down until the
19th century.

Between different regions today, the
stories of griots can differ greatly,

and while they are an invaluable piece
of cultural heritage,

as a historian, they can often prove a
frustrating source of information.

To the griots, the boundary between
history and myth

is very thin. Their histories include
fantastical stories

full of sorcerers and magic, but they are
an incredible source

for learning about how the people of
this region perceive their own history.

Studies of their folklore have been
used comparatively

to corroborate or strengthen other
sources.

The final source is a kind of mixture of
these two traditions,

and that's the scribes of Timbuktu.
We'll talk much more about Timbuktu

later,
but for now, I'll only say that it was a

library city
on the edge of the desert. It was home

to a serious scholarly tradition where
scribes and learned men were trained.

They were connected to an international
network of intellectuals

which stretched from the libraries of
Baghdad and Alexandria

to the mosques of Cordoba in Spain.
The scribes of Timbuktu were genuinely

interested in recording history;
some of them even travelled with West

African kings
with the express purpose of writing down

the events they saw.
Two of the most prominent works by these

scribes
are known as the Timbuktu chronicles.

They are the Tariq al-fataash and the
Tariq al-Sudan;

the chronicle of the seeker, and
the chronicle of

Africa, and you'll hear a lot more from
both

throughout this episode.
Although many of the scholarly families

of Timbuktu
traced their lineage back to Arab

Muslims,
many of them were also West African, and

they were steeped
in the ancient traditions and folklore

of the people around them.
Although they liked to pretend that they

were, they weren't
immune from the influence of the griots,

those magical storytellers,
and this comes through in the histories

of the Timbuktu chronicles
which are full of prophecies and dream

visions,
magical stories where men can turn into

animals,
and kings can talk with demons.

The Tariq al-fataash, for instance,
recounts one origin story

for the Songhai people. It relates
how they were once ruled by a king who

was half-fish
and half-man, who every night swam up the

Niger River
and terrorized his subjects.

Finally, a hero overthrows this fish-man
and becomes the Songhai's first king.

But the scribe of the chronicle relates
some of these stories

with a slight sense of embarrassment, and
even includes

this anxious disclaimer.

Most of the tales we have recounted are
almost certainly not true.

We ask forgiveness from God the Most
High.

Another thing to mention is that both
these chronicles

were also political documents.
They were written on the orders of kings,

so they often massage history
into a shape that casts these kings in

the most flattering light.
But if we apply their accounts

cautiously,
overlapping them both and placing them

in conversation with other sources,
they are also invaluable for learning

about what happened during this time.
So, these are the sources we have to rely

on,
the fragmentary, unreliable accounts of

Arab travelers in the region,
the griot storytellers who still spin

tales of the ancient times,
and the scribes of Timbuktu, desperately

trying to make sense of it all,
with a king breathing over their

shoulder.

Because of the naturally unreliable
nature of all of these sources,

the history of this region is filled
with many gaps and blank spaces,

many questions and uncertainties that I
will attempt to navigate

as we go forwards.

The earliest written records mentioning
the Kingdom of Songhai

appear in the 10th century.
They mention a small kingdom on the

banks of the Niger River,
and for much of its history, that's all

it was.
Songhai centered around the city of Gao,

a great trading terminus where the
expanse of the Sahara

met the green floodplain of the Niger.
Just outside of Gao, a great sand dune

looms over the skyline. It's known
as the Rose Dune due to the reddish

color
it turns at sunrise, and since ancient

times,
it has been thought to be the home of

sorcerers who are supposed to meet there
after dark

to perform their rituals and spells.
Despite Islam being officially

adopted by the royal court of Songhai
as early as the year 1019, the city of

Gao
would always retain something of that

character.
More than perhaps any other city in the

region,
it still retained a deep-seated

connection
to the ancient ways of Africa.

Gao was a great cosmopolitan marketplace
where African cola nuts, gold, ivory,

slaves, spices, palm oil, and precious
woods

were traded for Mediterranean goods like
salt,

textiles, weapons, horses, and the metal
copper.

Gao was what's known as an entrepot or
entry port, the terminus of a vast array

of trade routes
which spread out from it like a web.

The explorer Leo Africanus, who visited
Gao in the 16th century,

writes about the rich trade he saw
arriving from Europe.

It is a wonder to see the quality of
merchandise that is daily brought here,

and how costly and sumptuous everything
is.

Horses purchased in Europe for 10 ducats
are sold here for 40 and sometimes 50

ducats apiece.
There is not European cloth so coarse as

to sell for less than four ducats per
cubit. A cubit of the scarlet of Venice,

or of Turkish cloth, is here worth 30
ducats.

A sword is here valued at three or four
crowns,

and likewise, are spears, bridles, and
similar commodities,

and spices are all sold at a high rate.
However,

of all other items, salt is the most
expensive.

While gold was universally used for
trade,

there was also another type of currency
that was widespread in this region;

these were cowrie shells, the shells
of a type of sea snail that occurs most

commonly in the Indian Ocean.
These small shells served much the same

purpose as gold.
They were beautiful enough to be

universally desired,
and they were rare enough to be safe

repositories of value.
They acted like coins in the era before

coins were minted and today, the
classical Chinese symbol for money

even derives from a stylized drawing of
one of these shells.

Whether measured in gold or in cowries,
by the year 1325, the wealth of the city

of Gao
had swollen it to such a degree that

Mansa Musa,
the richest man in the world, and the

emperor of Mali
desired to seize it. Musa

soon ordered his armies to march against
Gao and absorb it

into his empire.
In the preceding centuries, the wealth of

Mali
had turned it into a powerful military

machine.
If accounts are to be believed, Mali at

this time had an army
of 100,000 soldiers, including

10,000 horsemen. These were drawn
from the aristocracy,

just like European knights.
Iron working as a craft had been

perfected in the empire of Ghana
so that now, whole clans of Mali's

Mandinke people
were given over to it, responsible for

creating the spearheads,
swords, and arrows used by the imperial

army.
Mali's soldiers wore leather helmets and

sometimes
iron chainmail imported from Arabia.

A certain proportion of this army were
likely slave

soldiers. Most would have been
conscripted citizens,

but many were also professional soldiers.
Mali's army also incorporated

specialist fighters
from the different territories that made

up the empire.
Oral historians recount the use of

poison bowmen
from the Sankharani river in the south,

fire archers from Wagadou to the north,
and heavy cavalry from the northern

state of Mema.
Against this force, the small city-state

of Gao
would have had little chance. It was soon

folded into the Empire of Mali, but by
all accounts,

Gao did quite well as a client state of
this greater power.

The Arab explorer Ibn Battuta visited
Gao

28 years later, in 1353.
In his writings, he is often quite

scathing about Africa.
He was scandalized by many of the

customs of Mali's people
and what he perceived to be the rudeness

of their manners.
For instance, at one point in his

writings, he turns up his nose
at the food offered to him by a local

chief.

The meal was served, some pounded millet
mixed with a little honey and milk.

This convinced me that there was no good
to be hoped for from these people,

and I made up my mind to travel back to
Morocco at once.

So, I think it's telling that when he saw
the walls,

the gates, and the mosques of Gao, as well
as the rich surplus of food kept in its

store houses,
the sight seems to have impressed him

greatly.
Then I travel to the town of Gao which

is a great town on the Niger,
one of the finest, biggest, and most

fertile cities of Africa.
There is much rice there, and milk, and

chickens, and fish, and the cucumber
which has no like.

While for a time the Empire of Mali
seemed invincible,

there were a number of great weaknesses
hiding just beneath its surface,

and all it took for those to emerge was
for the great king

Mansa Musa to pass away.

One of the greatest challenges any
society faced up until very recently

was that of royal succession.
For most of history, countries have been

ruled by kings,
but when a king died, the question over

who would rule his kingdom
could become a lethal matter.

If the king had an heir or named a
successor, this person would have a

strong
claim, but he would need to command an

overwhelming
body of support from the lords and

nobles
and other stakeholders in the kingdom.

But if a king died without an heir, then
multiple challengers might present

themselves.
In the worst cases, the country would

divide itself among the challengers
and this would lead to a war.

If all the wars of succession and
history are taken into account,

we could probably find no greater waste
of resources and time,

let alone human life and suffering.
Civil wars routinely brought countries

to their knees,
destroyed their industries, and decimated

their populations.
In many ways, they represented a greater

danger
than any plague, earthquake, or famine,

and the people of this time lived in
constant fear of them.

In Europe, kings were terrified of dying
without

having produced a son, but in West Africa,
the problem was usually not too few sons,

but too many.
West African kings usually had multiple

wives,
with four being allowed under medieval

laws,
so the chance of a king dying without an

heir was much less than in Europe.
According to the chronicles, one Songhai

king named Askiya Muhammed
would have 37 sons during his reign,

while the oral tradition places the
number at closer to 500.

The problem wasn't only with sons
fighting over the crown;

large families meant that any king
usually had a

great number of brothers who may have
fancied a hand at

being king themselves, and with so many
potential claimants to the throne,

it would have been utterly essential to
have clear

and universally agreed upon laws about
who should be king.

That's exactly what the kingdoms of
West Africa

didn't have.

Those laws that did exist were elaborate
and needlessly complicated,

so when a king died, there were often
multiple interpretations

of who should take the throne. This
is something we'll see happen

over and over throughout this episode.
In times of peace, during the long reigns

of its great kings,
West Africa flourished. But the death of

its kings
virtually always led to disaster.

In Mali, the great king Mansa Musa died
in the year 1337, and the first to

replace him
was his son Maghan. But Musa also had a

brother,
a man named Suleyman.

Musa's son Maghan ruled for only four
years

before his uncle struck, killing Maghan
and taking the throne for himself.

Such an illegitimate act enraged the
lords of the kingdom,

and they each brought forth their
contesting claims for the throne.

What followed was a succession crisis
that destroyed the unity of the empire.

Suddenly, Mali's strong, united army
splintered into factions and it began to

fight
itself. Perhaps

sensing weakness in the once great
empire,

horsemen from the land of Mossi to the
south crossed the Niger River

and began raiding around the city of
Timbuktu.

Wracked by civil war, the Malians were
unable to react,

and the raids on their borders got
bolder.

Soon, the client states of the empire
took notice.

One of them was the distant coastal
Kingdom of Jolof

which was the first to declare
independence.

When Mali failed to march on Jolof and
restore it to the empire,

other client states who wanted
independence saw their chance.

Mali had always been a single ethnicity
project;

while it ruled over a large variety of
regions and tribes,

its kings and social elite were all
drawn from a people

known as the Mande. They used the empire
to project their power over the other

groups,
and this meant at the first sign of

trouble, these other groups
would seek to throw off the yoke of

Mande rule.
Suleyman, the uncle who had killed Mansa

Musa's son,
soon died himself, and passed the throne

to his son.
He was in turn overthrown by another who

was overthrown by another.
During this crisis, the average king

ruled for barely more than a few years,
and the authority of the empire

collapsed.
Its client states broke free in droves,

and one of these states was the wealthy
trade city of Gao.

At this time, the king in Mali was a man
named Musa II,

but he was king in name only.
He had an advisor and counselor known

as Mari Djata who appears to have been the
true power in the empire.

At one point, Mari Djata even threw the
young king in a jail cell

to keep him out of the way.

Because of this remarkable situation, and
the decades of civil war and financial

mismanagement,
in places like Gao, the legitimacy of the

Mali
Empire must have been at an all-time low.

Mali's eastern provinces were now in
open rebellion,

and it's at this point that the city of
Gao declared independence.

For the royal vizier Mari Djata, the loss
of this great city,

more than any other of his rebellious
client states,

must have been a huge blow. He must have
been determined

to crush this rebellion. He immediately
dispatched

the great Malian army to restore order
in the east,

and the army had some success. They
recaptured Takedda,

an important copper mining town in the
north,

but when they reached Gao, the newly
formed Kingdom of Songhai

put up a much greater fight. By this time,
Gao had seized large territories in the

east,
strengthening their power. They may have

also gathered together
other elements of the resistance against

Mali, forming
a kind of rebel alliance.

They relied on guerrilla warfare, raiding
Mali's urban

centers, often using riverboats on the
Niger

to deliver large amounts of troops right
where they would be most effective,

attacking swiftly and by surprise.
These tactics allowed the Kingdom of

Songhai to tie up the larger but
weakened

army of Mali, and a sort of stalemate
seems to have set in.

But this war wouldn't end on the
battlefield,

but with the endless churn of royal
murders

that had swept the empire.
The sickly King Musa II died in 1387.

He may have still been imprisoned and he
may not have died naturally.

Either way, the royal vizier Mari Djata
refused to give up power. He killed

Musa's brothers and ascended to the
throne himself.

He ruled for only a year before being
assassinated.

More provinces revolted; the Mossi people
attacked the Mali Empire again, and soon

invasion by the nomadic Tuareg people
from the desert

meant that Mali lost access to the
northern trade routes across the Sahara.

This meant it could no longer import
enough horses to supply its army,

let alone fund its expensive wars.
For the next century, Mali would be

locked in a life or death struggle for
its very survival.

In this period of chaos, the empire
completely fell apart,

and the rebellious city of Gao was
forgotten.

The Kingdom of Songhai was fully
established by the 1430s.

The wheel of the imperial cycle turned.

Out of all this chaos, the young Kingdom
of Songhai

saw an opportunity to rise from the old
empire's ashes.

The next century saw the continuing
decline of Mali

and the rise of Songhai. As the end
of the 15th century drew near,

this new kingdom was poised to become
one of Africa's great powers.

One man, a ruthless and fearsome
military leader,

was about to take full advantage of the
opportunity that this chaos had created.

His name was Sunni Ali.

Sunni Ali is perhaps the most
controversial character

in African history. We know little about
his early life, who he was, or where he

came from.
But what's clear is that he was a fierce

military leader,
a man of limitless energy and ambition.

He took the throne of the Kingdom of
Songhai in the year

1464, and his reign
would mark an unprecedented expansion of

this kingdom
so that it would soon extend further

than the Empire of Mali
ever had.

But Sunni Ali is remembered very
differently

by the two sides of Songhai society.
In the oral tradition of the griots, he

is remembered
as Ali Ber or Ali the Great.

In the stories of the griots, he is a
great and wise man

who commanded the powers of magic, the
first ever

emperor of the Songhai. But in the
chronicles written by Muslim scholars,

he is remembered as a cruel and
tyrannical ruler.

The chronicle Tarikh al-fataash reserves
particular condemnation for him.

The tyrant, the cursed, the oppressor;
the Sunni Ali, a model of shameful

conduct.

It's true that from virtually the moment
he took power,

Sunni Ali went to war.

He was determined to modernize and
reorganize his military.

He had seen the Mali Empire collapse
after its access to horses fell apart,

and so, he resolved to begin the
large-scale breeding of horses in

Africa. He built large stables to shelter
these horses

from the elements and from the disease-
-carrying tsetse fly,

and he pioneered the use of
crossbreeding to generate a breed of

sturdy horses
well-suited to the African environment.

He also introduced the use of cavalry
soldiers

wearing iron breastplates beneath their
tunics.

These must have been difficult to wear
in the African heat,

but they would have greatly increased
the weight and strength of his cavalry.

One of his great passions was also the
use of a river Navy.

He expanded the raiding boats that the
Songhai had used in their rebellion

until the Songhai commanded a large
fleet

of 400 boats that could transport troops
up and down the Niger River at rapid

speeds.
He named one of his generals the admiral

of this fleet,
with the title Master of the Water.

He loved these boats so much that during
one siege of the city of Jenne,

lying many kilometers away from the
river, Sunni Ali

had a long canal dug so that his boats
could continue supplying his men on the

siege lines.
During this time, the Songhai abandoned

guerilla raids,
instead taking on a more sustained and

aggressive style of warfare.
The chronicle Tarikh al-Sudan recalls

the remarkable success that Sunni Ali
enjoyed.

Ali was always victorious, pillaging
every land on which he fixed his choice.

Wherever he was present, his armies were
never defeated. From Kanta

to Sibi-rid-ugu, his horses ran over all
these lands.

Part of the success of his campaign
seems to have been his extreme

ruthlessness,
which we get some sense of through the

Timbuktu chronicles.
From the Mongols to the Assyrians,

military leaders throughout history
have used terror as a weapon, and it can

be
an effective military tactic. If your

enemy are terrified of you,
they may be more likely to run away and

throw down their weapons,
saving you time and resources in your

conquests.
Ali seems to have used this tactic to

great effect, but I think some of the
acts attributed to him

go beyond this use of tactical brutality.
One example is his treatment of a tribe

known as the Fulbe,
and he seems to have reserved a

particular and unexplained hatred for
these people.

When they rebelled against their Songhai
conquerors, Sunni Ali marched on them

and had them executed en masse, so that if
the chronicles are to be believed,

their remaining population could fit
beneath the shade of a single tree.

His mood changed rapidly; he flew in and
out of rages,

sometimes condemning people to death,
only later to change his mind and let

them go free.
Because of this unpredictable and at

times brutal nature,
Sunni Ali is described using an

astonishing array of nicknames
in the great chronicles of Timbuktu.

Ali the Merciless. The Degenerate.
The Accursed. The Great Tyrant.

Arrogant One. Ali the Godless.
The Profligate. Cold-hearted. The Despotic

One.
Arrogant One. The Shedder of Blood.

The Notorious Evildoer. The Killer of so
Many People

That Only God the Most High Knows the
Number.

The chronicles even attribute to him a
number of actions

that begin to sound almost cartoonishly
villainous.

His heart was so hard that he once threw
a baby into a mortar

and forced the mother to grind it even
while the baby was still alive.

The flesh was then fed to the horses. His
acts of cruelty

were so numerous that it would be
impossible to record them all in a

single volume.

It's at this point that I should
introduce a note of caution about these

characterizations;
it's certainly possible that Ali was

just as ruthless and bloodthirsty as
they say.

History, after all, is full of kings like
this,

and it's not hard to see why.
Recent research has found that today, up

to 20 percent of people
found in the upper echelons of the

corporate business world
exhibit signs of psychopathy compared to

only one in a hundred in the general
population.

When violence was so often the key
to power in the Middle Ages,

there's no reason to believe that this
number would be any lower

among medieval kings. But to give Sunni
Ali some credit,

it's worth pointing out that these
chronicles were written after his death,

and on the order of kings who were
trying to legitimize

their own line of succession. Part of the
way they tried to do this

was to trash Sunni Ali's reputation.
We should always bear in mind that these

chronicles were very much political
tools,

an early form of propaganda for a new
regime.

At times, Sunni Ali does seem to have
understood the value of mercy.

Conquered tribes were ordered to join
his army, swelling its numbers

until the Songhai Kingdom soon commanded
a force of 40,000

infantry and 10,000 cavalry.

But whatever else we can say about him,
it's clear that Sunni Ali

was a complicated man. Some historians
have even questioned whether he suffered

from a personality disorder,
but I think the least we can say is that

the violence of this king
appears to have stemmed from a number of

deep-seated insecurities.
Chief among these seems to have been a

hatred and distrust of scholars
and their learning. It's not clear why

exactly Ali felt this way. Perhaps,
like some politicians today, he

cultivated a kind of anti-elitist
populism

which held knowledge and expertise in
contempt.

There were many rumors circulating about
him, too,

rumors that he was not really a Muslim,
that he only paid

lip service to the religion. Perhaps
he saw

these scholarly communities as the
source of these rumors.

Perhaps, quite simply, he couldn't read
and he hated those who could.

Whatever the reason, the effects were the
same and they would come to bloody

fruition
when Ali set his sights on perhaps the

greatest prize in all of western Africa,
the great capital of scholars, the heart

of learning,
the eternal library city of Timbuktu.

Timbuktu is an ancient city.
In the European imagination, it has

become a metaphor
for remoteness. When we say

‘all the way to Timbuktu’, we mean a place
as far away as it is possible to get.

In fact, a survey conducted in 2006
found that over 30 percent of British

people believed that Timbuktu
was a mythical place like Atlantis or

El Dorado.

Timbuktu began as a seasonal settlement
about 15 kilometers north of the Niger

River.
It was a place where traders could come

in from the desert
and exchange salt, gold, ivory, and slaves.

Legend has it that this camp was
centered around a well

owned by an old slave woman called Buktu,
and so, it became known as ‘the place of

Buktu,’
Timbuktu. It became

a permanent settlement around the year
1100.

Under the Mali Empire, it grew to
house a population of well over

100,000 which is double the
population today,

and made it one of the largest cities in
West Africa.

At its height, it was home to Arab,
Italian, and Jewish merchants,

and the city taxed around a tenth of all
the goods that passed through it,

a vast wealth that led to an astonishing
flourishing of culture,

and above all, literacy.
Timbuktu has the perfect climate for

producing
and keeping books. Books here

were written on sheepskins, on tree bark,
and on paper imported from Italy, and the

dry desert air
meant that their pages never warped or

cracked.
Books were written here in countless

African languages
like Songhai and Fulani, but also in

Arabic.
Some were even illuminated with gold

leaf.
Timbuktu's people saw these books as

symbols of wealth and power,
and so, an active trade in literature

began with the rest of the Islamic world
until hundreds of thousands of

manuscripts were collected here
over the course of centuries.

The city of Gao was the administrative
center

of West Africa, but Timbuktu was its
intellectual center.

If Gao was the heart of the Sahel, then
Timbuktu was its brain.

This was the city against which the
ruthless Sunni Ali,

the great hater of books and learning,
marched

in the year 1468.

Sunni Ali made no secret about his
intentions

for the city of Timbuktu. He sent a
messenger

into the city ahead of his army to
deliver a chilling warning

to its remaining citizens. The medieval
chronicle

Tarikh al-fataash recalls this event.
The messenger arrived at midday. The drum

that he had brought with him was beaten
and the crowd gathered around him.

Unsheathing a sword and brandishing it
by the hilt,

he said, ‘This is the sword of the king.
I have been ordered to cut the throat of

anyone who stays the night in this town.’
In the blink of an eye, all the town's

inhabitants fled.
Some did not even take their supper that

night, while others forgot to bring
blankets for sleeping.

The sun had still not set before
Timbuktu was completely evacuated.

Most of the townsfolk fled without
bothering to close the doors of their

houses.
After the flight of its defenders, Ali

succeeded in capturing Timbuktu
without much resistance, and he

was not merciful with the community of
scholars who lived there.

Ali immediately ordered his soldiers to
gather together all the books he could

find in the city
and burned them in great bonfires.

Luckily, many of the scholars and wealthy
families who fled

had taken their collections with them,
saving

some proportion of this ancient
collection.

Some also managed to hide their books in
secret places,

but Sunni Ali executed any scholars who
remained behind.

This is another time when Ali's cruelty
just didn't seem to have a point to it.

There was no tactical reason to
victimize these scholars.

It seems to have stemmed from something
rooted deep in his personality,

something that we as historians can only
guess at.

In fact, over the remaining 24 years of
his reign,

Ali would embark on no fewer than five
purges of the city,

attacking its noble families, destroying
its books and schools,

and expelling its scholars. All of this,
as you can imagine, led to a great amount

of resentment among the population.
People must have begun to cry out for

some alternative to this tyrannical king,
and if the chronicles are to be believed,

that alternative
was already gathering power. His name

was Askiya Muhammed.

By anyone's standards, Muhammed had no
legitimate claim to the throne.

He was a nobleman and a warrior who held
a position in the Songhai Empire

known as the tondi-Fari, the lord of the
mountains.

He was in control of the rocky hills and
red

sandstone mountains to the south.
This landscape is broken by an

incredible
500-meter tall cliff known as the

Bandiagara Escarpment
that runs for 150 kilometers along the

modern border
between Mali and Burkina Faso.

This was a tough region full of mountain
bandits and hill tribes,

and it was also one of the most highly
militarized borders in the empire,

facing the extensive lands of the
powerful Mossi people in the south.

Due to all of this, Askiya Muhammed would
have commanded a large

and battle-hardened army. He was in the
top level of Songhai military command.

He knew how its army worked; its
strengths,

and also, its weaknesses. Askiya
Muhammed

also seems to have frequently clashed
with the king

Sunni Ali. The chronicles
never make clear the nature of these

disagreements,
but Muhammed was even imprisoned and

sentenced to death
on a number of occasions as the Tarikh

al-Sudan recalls.
More than once, Sunni Ali condemned him

to death or imprisonment
because of his stout heart and great

courage. But because he was wise and
prudent,

the tyrant never did him any harm.
It's possible they disagreed over

questions of military tactics,
but everything else we know about

Muhammed gives us a picture of a
thoughtful man,

a diplomat, and a shrewd statesman. So,
it's possible

that he may have also protested against
the terror tactics that Sunni Ali

employed,
and had the king's rage rained down on

him as a consequence.
Either way, it's clear that Askiya

Muhammed was a deadly mix for King Sunni
Ali.

The Askiya was rebellious but he also
seems to have been indispensable,

and he was steadily positioning himself
as a true alternative to the tyrant king.

Soon enough, he would get his chance.

Sunni Ali died in November, 1492.
How exactly this happened is a mystery.

In the Timbuktu chronicle Tarikh
al-fataash,

his death is a divine intervention.
He gets struck down by God as a

punishment for abusing a holy man,
and this explanation should immediately

give us some cause for suspicion.
In the other chronicle, the Tarikh al-

-Sudan, we get a slightly more realistic
scenario.

In this version, Ali drowns when a flash
flood of the Niger River

washes into his camp near the village of
Kuna.

Of course, flash floods were a deadly
fact of life on the medieval Niger

just as they are today, but this would
have still been incredible bad luck

for a king. It's worth mentioning
that if historians are correct, the

village of Kuna
was found within the mountainous

territory of Songhai,
the same region that at the time was

controlled by the lord of the mountains,
Askiya Muhammed.

Perhaps after himself being sentenced to
death by Sunni Ali multiple

times, Askiya Muhammed finally did
what his opponent didn't have the

courage to do;
that is, give the order to end his life.

In my view, another piece of evidence for
this is a single line

in the Tarikh al-fataash. It's mentioned
quite incidentally

that Ali's soldiers buried him before
anyone else had even learned of his

death.
If this is true, it may be that he had

wounds on his body
that they wanted to conceal.

Ali was succeeded by his son Baru.
It's not known whether he tried to

continue the repressive policies of his
father.

Either way, half the country, sick of Sunni
Ali's rule,

burst out in open revolt.
Some noble families who had fled

Timbuktu
during Sunni Ali's time on the throne

marched back home with their armies,
and the man they rallied around was the

one who had headed the opposition
against the tyrant,

Askiya Muhammed.

The speed this all happened at makes
many historians believe that this was a

plot that had been in place for a long
time,

perhaps for years. Perhaps suspecting
the nature of this plot,

Sunni Ali's son Baru was determined
to stamp out this upstart General

Muhammed. Sunni

Baru's armies massed around him,
as is dramatically rendered in the Tarikh

al-fataash.
His troops surrounded him like a

mountain range.
They raised storms of dust that turned

day into night,
and they were mirrored by their great

cries.
All swore of our blood would run in

torrents. Askiya

Muhammed also gathered his rebel forces
and marched on the capital city of Gao.

Sunni Baru marched out and met him
on the battlefield

at a place called Anfao.
His army outnumbered Askiya Muhammed’s,

but Baru must have been nervous as the
army of this experienced general

gathered outside of his city.
He must have tried to remember the

lessons his father had taught him.

First, the two armies would have
exchanged a volley of arrows,

their cavalries harassing and harrying
each other's lines,

as well as skirmishing among themselves
before the spearmen

finally drew in together to fight.
When the two armies met, the experience

of Askiya Muhammed
won over the greater numbers of Sunni

Baru.
One of Baru's generals, when he saw which

way the battle was going,
threw himself into the River Niger and

drowned.
From this moment on, the Askiya Muhammed

would rule the 24 tribes of the Songhai.

The death of the tyrannical King Sunni
Ali

in November 1492 came
at a historical tipping point of immense

importance.
Around the world at this time, big things

were underway.
The Catholic monarchs of Spain had

enacted a new law
banishing all of Spain's Jews.

As many as 200,000 Spanish
Jews were forced to flee,

and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
sent his grand fleet

to escort them safely to relocate in his
lands.

One month before, England's Henry VII
had laid siege to the French port of

Boulogne,
forcing the French king to sue for peace.

On the other side of the world,
in the islands of the Caribbean, only

days before Sunni Ali was swept away in
that flash flood,

a European explorer named Christopher
Columbus

first set foot on the new world.

The battle of Anfao in 1493,
when Askiya Muhammed emerged victorious

outside the walls of Gao,
came just a few months before Columbus

set out on his second voyage.
For the history of the African

continent, this discovery
would begin one of its bleakest chapters.

It's not recorded whether news of
these developments reached the new king

of Songhai,
Askiya Muhammed, but he had quite enough

to be occupying him at home.
Muhammed had inherited a Songhai

territory that had never been larger.
By the time he came to the throne,

imperial Songhai
comprised a broad diversity of ethnic

groups
including the Fulbe, Soninke, Tuareg,

Dogon, Bambara, and Bozo, but it had also
suffered greatly

from decades of civil war and attacks by
its aggressive neighbours.

Muhammed immediately set about trying to
fix these problems.

In response to ongoing attacks from
outside,

he became determined to reform the
Songhai army

and secure the empire's borders. He
expanded

its powerful cavalry and moved away from
the use of slave soldiers and conscripts

to become a true professional standing
army.

Soon after seizing power, he embarked on
a series of campaigns that would have

impressed
even the ferocious Sunni Ali.

He announced a legally sanctioned jihad
against the Mossi people to the south.

He marched on their cities, capturing
many of them, and expanding the empire

further.
Then he marched against the desert

Tuareg people and seized the salt mines
of Taghaza,

a land where the salt was so numerous
that people built their houses

out of salt bricks. Askiya
Muhammed spread the boundaries of the

Songhai Empire
until it was the largest territory that

Africa had ever seen.
But while he shared something of his

predecessor's military skill, in many ways
Askiya Muhammed seems to have been

the polar opposite
of Sunni Ali. Whereas

Ali had only been a conqueror, Muhammed
was a diplomat and an administrator.

He sought to reconcile the differences
of the people in his empire,

and the chronicle Tarikh al-Sudan speaks
especially highly of him.

Through Askiya Muhammed, God the Most High
alleviated the Muslim's distress

and eased their tribulation. He strove to
establish the community of Islam

and improve people's lot. He befriended
the scholars

and sought counsel from them over the
appointments and dismissals he made.

It should be remembered that these
chronicles are essentially pieces of

propaganda
for Muhammed Askiya’s dynasty, but we do

see this character
in evidence in our other sources too.

Muhammed's friendship with scholars is
perhaps the thing that so distinctly

sets him apart from his predecessor.
He made peace with the persecuted

scribes and learned men of Timbuktu,
bringing banished families back from

exile,
and even maintaining personal

friendships with some scribes.
Askiya Muhammed was also pluralistic and

outward looking.
While the chronicles don't mention Sunni

Ali doing a single thing
outside of the empire's borders, Askiya

Muhammed
brought in a new age of diplomacy.

He forged connections that reached right
across the Muslim world. He even made

a pilgrimage to Mecca
in imitation of that legendary king of

Mali, Mansa Musa.
Perhaps most crucially, in a symbolic

act,
he invited a leader from each of his

empire's ethnic groups
to join him on his pilgrimage. Even

ethnic groups like the Fulbe,
which had been persecuted and massacred

under Sunni Ali,
were invited along. This,

more than anything, was the true source
of Askiya Muhammed's success.

In the new Songhai Empire, he began to
forge a state that crossed ethnic

boundaries.

The empires that had come before were
only ever just that --

empires. In the Ghana Empire,
the Soninke people had conquered their

neighbors and ruled over them.
In the Mali Empire, it was the Mande

people who did the same.
But in Songhai, a new kind of political

project was being formed.
It was a nation that incorporated all

the different peoples that lived within
its borders,

and which inspired loyalty in its people
that rose above their original loyalties

to their tribe.
It was a very modern kind of state.

Muhammed also succeeded in doing
what few Songhai kings had achieved

before;
that is, to unite the two sides of the

empire,
its heart in Gao and its brain in

Timbuktu.
Muhammed managed to bring the Muslims of

Timbuktu over to his side,
but he never truly renounced the ancient

magic of his ancestors.
So, he fused together an empire that

looked like it might truly
last the test of time.

During Muhammed's reign, he established
standardized trade measures and

regulations,
and began policing trade routes to keep

them safe,
as well as establishing an organized tax

system.
He divided the empire into states and

appointed a governor of each one.
He also appointed ministers who took

care of finance,
justice, agriculture, and other areas of

government.
All these developments ushered in an

age of virtually
unprecedented peace and prosperity in

the region.
But this golden age, like all golden ages,

was soon to come to an end.

Towards the end of his life, Askiya
Muhammed became blind.

According to West African law, this would
have disqualified him from ruling,

since the king was expected to lead his
army into battle. But

Askiya Muhammed seems to have been
reluctant to give the crown to any one

of his sons.
As his sight increasingly failed and he

reached the age of seventy,
he began to heavily rely on his powerful

royal vizier
to enact policies for him.

Rumors began to spread that this vizier
had undue influence over the old king.

Askiya Muhammed also had 37 sons,
and as the king got older, each of these

began to grow
impatient for him to pass on the crown

to one of them.
Eventually, one of these sons, a man named

Musa,
grew tired of waiting.

Musa is remembered in the chronicles as
an impudent and stupid boy,

spoiled by a life of royal luxury.
He moved to seize his father's crown,

deposing Askiya Muhammed, and banishing
the blind old man

to an island in the middle of the Niger
River,

which the chronicles describe as a place
infested with mosquitoes and toads.

Musa's seizure of the throne naturally
enraged Askiya Muhammed's other sons,

many of whom probably thought they had a
better claim.

The empire soon erupted in civil war.
Musa would go on to kill several of his

brothers
and nearly 30 of his cousins, some in

battle, and others in assassinations and
executions.

But eventually, he himself was overcome
in the year 1531,

just two years after taking power.
The Songhai Empire, like Ghana and Mali

before it,
had few clear laws of succession.

While the Askiya Muhammed made many
legal reforms during his reign,

this seems to have been something that
no one had mustered the political will

to change. A period
of bitter usurpings and civil wars

followed,
but there was one ray of light to come

out of all the chaos.
About eight years after the toppling and

banishment of Askiya Muhammed,
one of his other sons, a man named

Askiya Ismail,
managed to seize the throne. He ordered

for his blind father to be released from
the mosquito-infested island

where he had been imprisoned, and so, the
old king returned to his home to die

one year later. But what the spoiled
prince Musa had unleashed

couldn't be contained. Askiya Ismail
soon died in unknown circumstances,

and the chaos of disputed succession
rolled on.

The next 20 years saw almost constant
bloodshed,

as various claimants to the throne of
the Askiyas

fought and died. Whole generations of
young men

were piled into this meat grinder, all to
satisfy the vanity of princes.

Askiya Muhammed had turned the Songhai
Empire into one of the world's great

powers,
and as so often happens when a great

society is built,
men would now risk everything to take it

for themselves.

The chronicle Tarikh al-fataash doesn't
mince words

when it comes to the question of what
led to Songhai's growing weakness.

What caused the ruin of the state of
Songhai and compelled God to throw it

into disorder?
What brought divine punishment down upon

its citizens?
It was their failure to observe the laws

of God.
The injustice of slavery. The most grave

crimes and most disagreeable acts were
committed there,

as well as the pride and arrogance of
the great ones.

We all belong to God. It is to him that
we should return.

As civil wars raged, the country's wealth
began to run dry.

Wars caused disruption at the lucrative
trade hubs of Jenne,

Timbuktu, and Gao, damaging the land's
income.

West African armies also lived and died
by their supply of horses,

and each rival warring prince needed a
steady supply

to replenish his army. These horses were
usually imported across the desert from

Europe
at great expense, but with all the

disruption and chaos,
increasingly only one resource remained

in abundance in West Africa
that could be traded for the horses

needed in these wars,
and that resource was its people.

During these times of crisis, the slave
trade increased in volume.

Defeated armies in these civil wars were
frequently captured and sold,

and thousands were shipped across the
desert to be sold as

labourers in Europe and Arabia.
This was a crucial moment for the

history of this continent.
The failure of political stability in

its largest empire,
coupled with an increase in slave-taking

to pay for these constant wars,
coincided in tragic form with the first

European
trading posts that were set up by the

Portuguese
at Sao Tomé and Sao Salvadore,

as well as fortified positions all up
the coast of Morocco.

This was the beginning of the
transatlantic slave trade

that would dwarf the Saharan slave trade
both in its size

and its cruelty.

Within twenty years of Askiya Muhammed's
death,

barely 50 years after the discovery of
the Americas,

as many as 250,000 Africans
had already been kidnapped and

transported to the new world.

By the time the slave trade was
abolished in the 19th century,

the number would exceed 12 million, and
of these,

nearly two million died on the voyage.
The period of bloodletting did come to

an end in the Empire of Songhai
with the reign of a man named Askiya Dawud.

He, at least, seems to have been a shrewd
operator,

and immediately placed his sons in
strategic positions in the government.

His ability to stabilize the nation
would lead to a brief return

to its former flourishing state.
For this reason, he is often referred to

as Songhai's second-greatest king,
after the great Askiya Muhammed.

But when Askiya Dawud came to power, he
inherited

a weakened and damaged country.
It's clear that during the 20 years of

unrest and civil strife
following the death of Askiya Muhammed,

rebel factions across the country
had gained power and confidence.

Askiya Dawud undertook a number of
campaigns to stamp down insurgencies

across the country,
and he sent his cavalry up into the

mountains to put a stop to bandit rage
there,

with some success. But if he had any
hopes of expanding his borders further

like his predecessors,
that would have been put a stop to by a

failed campaign
against the Mossi people that killed a

large number of his commanders.

Dawud even embarked on several public
works,

instituting the equivalent of public
libraries in the kingdom.

But all of this came at a cost.

During his long 34-year reign, slavery
greatly increased in the empire.

Songhai's agriculture suffered from wars
as well as droughts and famines, and in

response,
it seems that the former citizen farming

was replaced
with slave plantations.

While slavery had always been a feature
of Songhai society,

during Askiya Dawud's reign, the empire
became a true

slave state. This would have caused
social disruption across the land, as

whole communities
were harrowed by slave raids,

and this would have in turn fueled
political disruption.

There are even stories of royal slaves
attaining great power and wealth in

Songhai,
even going on to command significant

influence in the capital
after the deaths of their masters.

But towards the end of Askiya Dawud's life,
things began to get worse.

In the year 1582, a great plague
killed many in Timbuktu, and syphilis,

brought back from the new world by
Europeans,

appears to have also ravaged the
population.

With the final death of Askiya Dawud
one year later

in 1583, Songhai once again
spiraled into civil war and chaos.

The kings that followed each ruled for
only a few years

before being killed or deposed.
At the same time, drought descended on

the region,
followed by famine and inflation.

A strong Songhai state at the height of
its power

might have been able to ride out these
challenges, but with rival princes

fighting over the throne,
there was no energy available to help

Songhai's people, and
its now largely slave-based

agriculture
began to collapse. Songhai

entered the final stages of the imperial
society

and after this point, there was no
turning back.

The final king of Songhai was a man
named Askiya Ishaaq II.

Little is known about this character, and
what we do know

isn't good. He seems to have been
a relatively competent ruler, but he was

also vengeful
and merciless. He seems to have channeled

the energy of Sunni Ali
far more than Askiya Muhammed. The

chronicles
remember Askiya Ishaaq burying some of

his enemies alive,
wrapped in palm frond sacks, and he had

one lord beaten to death
with a knotted belt. This was also

the king
who would preside over the final,

dramatic collapse of the entire
Songhai Empire.

This unrest in Songhai came at an
unfortunate time;

that's because it coincided with the
growing power of a rising star in the

region,
the Kingdom of Morocco.

Situated on the north African coast,
right across the Mediterranean Sea from

Spain and Portugal,
Morocco had been growing in strength and

confidence
for many years.

A new dynasty known as the Saadi had
seized

control of the country in 1549,
and they gained huge popular support by

expelling the Portuguese
from the forts and trading posts they'd

established along the Moroccan coast.
In retaliation, Portugal invaded Morocco,

and it was so confident in victory that
it sent its king

and virtually the entire Portuguese
nobility on the campaign.

They met the Moroccan sultan's army at
the battle

of Ksar el Kebir. The Portuguese,
believing themselves inherently superior

to the Arab Moroccans,
were overconfident in battle. They

allowed themselves to be surrounded,
enveloped, and utterly defeated.

Eight thousand Portuguese soldiers were
killed, and

fifteen thousand captured. The body of
the Portuguese King Sebastian

was never recovered, and virtually his
entire court was eradicated in one blow.

Portugal was virtually beheaded in a
single day,

and this resulted in a succession crisis
of their own

that led to them becoming part of a
union with Spain for the next 60 years.

The Moroccans were understandably
ecstatic.

They had decisively defeated their
greatest rival,

but the victory had all but emptied
their treasury,

and with their confidence at an all-time
high, the Moroccans began to turn their

gaze southwards
to the rich but troubled lands that lay

across the great Sahara Desert;
the lands of salt and gold. The lands

of the Songhai.

One of the prizes that the Moroccans
most coveted

was the salt mines of Taghaza, that rich
salt pan

where people literally built their
houses out of salt.

But they also believed the European
rumors

that a great gold mine must lie
somewhere in Africa,

and they desired this mine for
themselves.

It's clear that by this time, news of the
internal divisions in Songhai

had reached beyond its borders.
One chronicle even names an escaped

royal slave
who is supposed to have fled to

Marrakesh and delivered a message
to the Moroccan king…informing him of

the weakness of Songhai's leadership,
and providing intelligence about them

concerning their desperate circumstances,
their depraved natures, and their

enfeebled power,
he urged the king to take the land.

So, Morocco seized its chance.
They prepared an invasion force.

This invasion was actually led by a
Spaniard,

a man named Judar Pasha.
Judar had piercing blue eyes.

He was born as Diego de Guevara,
but was captured by Moroccan slave

raiders as a boy
and brought up in the service of the

Moroccan sultan.
From there, he rose through the ranks of

Moroccan society
and proved himself a shrewd military

commander.
But he had no small task ahead of him.

To invade Songhai, he and his men would
have to cross the great Sahara Desert

with all their equipment, and the
impoverished Moroccan sultan

had given him scarcely any resources at
all.

In fact, the force they mustered to
undertake the invasion of Africa's

greatest empire
was tiny. Judar had barely more than four

thousand men,
including just 500 light cavalry.

They knew that if reports were
correct, an army of tens of thousands

guarded the borders of Songhai.
But they had a secret weapon that would

tip the scales
dramatically in their favor, something

that in all their years of civil war, the
kings of Songhai

had neglected. That thing
was gunpowder.

Since its development in China in the
9th century,

gunpowder had become an increasingly
important feature on European

battlefields.
The first cannons began as siege weapons

used to knock down castle walls,
but as the technology became more

refined, they soon became used as a
battlefield weapon,

too. Hand-held guns
began as defensive weapons in Germany in

the early 1400s.
They were mounted on city walls and used

to fire pellets of lead or stone
down onto attacking forces.

But by 1450, they had become handheld
weapons.

Around 1475, the matchlock mechanism
was added to firearms. It was the first

mechanical firing device, meaning that
guns

no longer needed to be fired by lighting
a fuse with a match.

These were the first guns with triggers,
and they transformed the way battles

were fought.
Around 1520, towards the end of Askiya

Muhammed's reign,
the first muskets were developed, named

after the French word mousqette,
or sparrowhawk. This was a firearm

capable of piercing heavy armor,
and it ended the age of the armored

soldier on European battlefields.
Although the Spaniard Judar marched with

only four
thousand men, of these, the majority were

musketeers.
Many of them were mercenaries from Spain.

He also brought with him a total of
eight English cannons.

Judar’s expedition left Marrakesh in
November, 1590,

taking advantage of the slightly cooler
winter temperatures to cross the desert.

But still, it was slow and arduous going.

The troops lugged their heavy equipment,
their eight

cannons, and all their armor and supplies.
As was common for desert crossings, many

must have died along the way.
It took them nearly four months, twice

the normal journey time.
But in February, they finally arrived on

the banks of the Niger River,
dusty and beleaguered, and only enough of

them to fill
a large theater. From there,

they marched on the Songhai capital of
Gao.

It took them another month to cross the
silty floodplain

of the Niger. The ground would have been
swampy

and infested with mosquitoes. Many would
have contracted malaria

or the dreaded sleeping sickness. But
soon,

the city walls of Gao came into view in
the distance,

that red sand dune on the horizon
turning pink

at sunrise. In the cattle pastures
outside the city,

at a place called Tondibi, they also saw
the vast army

of the Songhai Empire marching out in
all its glory to meet them.

The sight must have been incredible.
Estimates vary, but the force gathered by

the Songhai King
Askiya Ishaaq likely topped over forty

thousand men. Some sources
put it at as many as eighty thousand,

enough to fill
a large modern sports stadium.

If you've ever been to a stadium during
a big game,

you can probably imagine the sound that
this army would have made.

The ground would have shaken with the
force of their footfalls

and the hooves of their tens of
thousands of horses.

They would have been accompanied by a
substantial troop of drummers and other

musicians,
thousands of archers, and tens of

thousands of spears
clattering overhead as they marched.

In contrast, the Moroccan army must have
looked

tiny, thin, and scattered.
But they lined up along the low rise of

a hill
and readied their muskets to fire.

Despite their enormous strength in
numbers, the Songhai military tactics

didn't get off to a great start.
They had heard rumors about the wonder

weapons that the Moroccans had brought
with them,

and they had come up with a plan to
neutralize them.

But the age of the great tacticians
Sunni Ali and Askiya Muhammed

were gone.

The beginning of the Songhai plan was to
send a stampede of a thousand cattle

towards the Moroccan lines. They hoped
this would soak up

some of the Moroccan musket fire and
that it might even panic the foreigners

into retreating.
Then the enormous force of Songhai heavy

cavalry
could mow them down as they fled.

But this tactic didn't quite go as
planned.

The cattle stampede began, but as they
bore down on the enemy lines,

the Moroccan soldiers let off a volley
of cannon fire,

as recalled in the chronicle Tarikh
al-fataash.

When the cattle heard the sound of the
rifles,

they became frantic. They stampeded back
towards the soldiers of the Askiya,

crashing a great number between them, the
majority of whom

died. Despite this setback,
the Songhai infantry advanced, but they

didn't fare much better than the cattle.
From the high ground in the distance,

Moroccan muskets let off
puffs of smoke. Before the distant cracks

of the weapons could even be heard,
the pellets of lead would have struck;

whizzing through the air,
passing right through armor and flesh,

mowing hundreds down in a single volley.
It would have been truly terrifying, as

the chronicle recalls.

The dust and smoke engulfed the throng
of combatants,

and God sowed fear and dread into the
ranks of the Songhai army.

It's at this point that the Songhai King
Ishaaq

seems to have begun to panic.
He ordered his cavalry to charge in

against the line of musketeers,
desperate for some of his soldiers to

even reach them,
but the cavalry charge would be

hopelessly doomed.
Their thick breastplates would have been

effortlessly punctured
by the whizzing musket balls, and their

horses,
unused to this new strange threat, panicked

and fled the battle. The Songhai archers
were mowed down before they could come

into range,
and soon these, too, fled the battle.

Only the Songhai rearguard remained.
These were the elite royal bodyguards of

the king.
Perhaps beginning to feel a little sorry

for their enemies,
or beginning to suspect this massacre

was not the most honorable thing,
the Moroccans finally advanced, drawing

swords and pole arms
for close combat. The elite royal

bodyguards of the king,
enveloped on all sides, stayed and fought

to the last man.
One Spanish source even records that

they bent their knees to the ground
and tied them into position with their

belts so that they could maintain their
spear line

even as the strength of their muscles
failed.

But it, too, was a doomed effort.

The Songhai force was utterly crushed.
Its king fled along with the rest of its

soldiers,
and Judar Pasha's men descended on the

helpless city of Gao.
They sacked it, looted its treasures, and

burned its buildings
before moving on to the richer trading

centers of Timbuktu
and Jenne, where they looted and burned

in a similar fashion.
The chronicles recall the devastation

caused
with deep sorrow.

It is beyond our powers to fully
describe all the misery and losses that

were suffered at Timbuktu,
when the Moroccans took the town. The

Moroccans even tore off the doors of the
houses

and cut down the town's trees.

Horrified by the defeat, the Songhai
generals

deposed their useless king Askiya Ishaaq,
and the central power of the state

collapsed.
Morocco attempted to occupy the Songhai

lands
and build an empire of their own in West

Africa,
but the challenges of maintaining such

an empire across the obstacle of the
Sahara

proved too much. Still, they looted
everything they could from Songhai,

carrying everything they could transport
back across the desert.

When they faced resistance in Timbuktu,
the Moroccans

even sent leading scholars to Marrakesh
in chains

and kept them there as hostages. The
wealth of Timbuktu,

Gao, and Jenne was systematically
stripped.

When the Spaniard Judar Pasha returned
to Morocco in 1599,

victorious nine years after setting out
across the desert with his army,

his caravan included 30 camel loads of
gold

as payment for his services.

The fall of imperial Songhai happened
completely

and all at once.

Its complete dissolution came only eight
years

after the death of what is remembered as
its second greatest king,

Askiya Dawud. It burst
like a bubble from a single puncture.

The defeat at the battle of Tondibi sent
splinters running right across the

empire,
just as it happened to Ghana and Mali.

Soon, where a single state had existed,
now countless small kingdoms reasserted

their freedoms
and separate borders.

Western Africa cracked like an egg;
kingdoms splintered into smaller

kingdoms, which themselves
splintered into even smaller kingdoms.

Now, there could be no unified resistance
to the spreading

influence of European colonialism.
As the splintering states warred amongst

themselves,
they would frequently sell their

captured enemies into slavery,
boosting the slave economy to untold

heights.
Predatory Europeans set up trading posts

all along the African coast,
profiting from the chaos, and the full

horror
of the transatlantic slave trade began.

As the manpower of Africa was drained on
an industrial scale,

its hopes of ever rebuilding the glory
of Ghana,

Mali, and Songhai would be frustrated.
In the years that followed, the economy

of Timbuktu declined
and with it, its position as a center of

learning.
The destruction of the city was so

profound that the author of one of the
chronicles,

a man named Al-Sa’di, wrote this lament
at the beginning of his work.

I have witnessed the ruin of learning
and its utter collapse.

His sorrow at the destruction that he
witnessed during his life

is what inspired him to write his
masterpiece.

He writes that he hopes his chronicle
will inspire future generations

to remember these days of greatness.
Because learning is rich in beauty and

fertile in its teaching,
since it instructs men about their

fatherland, their ancestors, their history,
the names of their heroes, and what lives

they lived,
I asked God's help and decided to set

down all that I
myself could learn on the subject of the

Songhai princes;
their adventures, their story, their

achievements, and their wars.

As wars between splinter states raged on
across the region,

Timbuktu was repeatedly besieged and
captured.

Many of the city's great scholars were
kidnapped and sold as slaves during this

time.
They were shipped to the coast and

transported across the Atlantic to the
new world.

As the city declined, its libraries
gathered dust.

Over the centuries, its manuscripts
became precious heirlooms,

and the city's noble families hid away
their cherished books in private

collections,
often protecting them at great personal

risk against raiders and invading armies.
The dry desert air and these dedicated

caretakers
preserved their pages perfectly, and it's

thanks to the efforts of these families
of book lovers

that the two great Timbuktu chronicles,
which made up so much of this episode's

story,
have survived.

The great capital city of Gao slowly
faded

and shrunk into obscurity.
As its population left, sycamore trees

and silk cottons put down roots into the
cracks in its walls.

Its great mosque began to crumble
beneath the forces of the weather,

and its eastern tower collapsed.
Soon, only about 300 families would live

here,
surrounded by the ruins of the city's

former glory,
now overgrown with thorns and bushes.

No more would be heard of Gao on the
world stage

until the German explorer Heinrich Barth
stumbled upon its ruins

in the 19th century.
But the imperial cycle went on and on.

The fractured states of West Africa
would eventually be folded into the sea-

-going empires of European nations:
the French, British, and Portuguese who

extracted their resources
and grew rich on them. That is,

until the cycle turned on, when these
subjugated client states

demanded their independence, and the
European empires

fell apart in the 1950s and 60s.
If there's one thing you should have

learned over the course of this podcast,
it's that history is change and nothing

lasts forever.

I want to end this episode with a couple
of short passages

from one of the documents that has
informed so much of the history of this

region,
the Timbuktu chronicle the Tarikh

al-fataash,
the chronicle of the seeker.

This document is a remarkable piece of
literature.

It represents the unifying of the two
great traditions of the Songhai.

It's a perfect marriage of the scholarly
Islamic traditions of Timbuktu,

with the ancient beliefs of the griots
and sorcerers of West Africa,

and the result is a work of startling
poetic value. It's a book of history,

but it's also an epic piece of poetry
including dream visions,

prophecies, and conversations with
spirits

that make it in my view, one of the great
pieces of world literature.

One incredible passage recounts the
great King Askiya

Muhammed speaking to a wise man.
This man teaches the king to speak to

spirits,
and they tell him about his nation's

past, but also crucially,
its future. They give him a remarkably

accurate account
of what fate will befall his country.

Unless you're inclined to believe in
prophecies, of course,

it's likely that this was written after
these events,

and therefore, forms a kind of lament
about the direction that the empire went,

an elegy to a lost golden age.
As you listen, I'd like you to think

about how it must have felt
to watch this complex and sophisticated

society
slide into chaos, as the doors

of the great libraries of Timbuktu
closed,

and the books began to gather dust on
their shelves.

Imagine what it must have felt like to
watch the trees begin to grow

in the walls of the great mosques of Gao
and Jenne,

their mud walls crumbling, their towers
collapsing.

Imagine watching the population leave
one by one,

and the houses empty, the booming markets
go steadily quiet, and the sounds of

prayer in the mosque go
silent, as the rolling sand dunes

begin to burst through the doors, rolling
over hills and houses,

while all the while, the songs of the
griots

still sounded somewhere in the gathering
dusk.

The prince asked the wise man: tell me,
is it possible for men to see the

spirits and speak with them?
Yes, it is entirely possible, the wise man

replied.
If we were alone, we could speak with

them right now.
The prince ordered all those who are

present to go away and leave them alone
so that only the prince and the wise man

remained.
They stayed in seclusion for a long time,

and then the king spoke.

I see the earth's surface transformed
into a lake of water.

He said, I see the stars surging out of
the water

and flying towards the heavens. The birds
swoop down around me

and they cut each other to pieces. Next, I
see seven men

carrying a green throne which they place
between the two of us.

So, we sit for a while only to see a
great number of men appear before us,

some holding books, and others holding
writing tablets.

In their midst, I see an old man who
leans upon a staff.

I don't know where any of these people
come from. They sit down and stare at us.

The old man approaches the throne and
takes his seat. The old man

spoke a prophecy. As a ruler,
he said, you will be quite happy, tolerant,

and generous. At the end of your life,
you will go blind. You will have many

sons,
but when you are gone, they will no

longer walk the straight path.
They will bring devastation to your

kingdom.
These words saddened the prince who

remained silent for a long moment.
Then he let out a profound sigh like the

moaning of a father
who has just lost his son.

Thank you once again for listening to
The Fall of Civilizations Podcast.

I'd like to thank my voice actors for
this episode, Rhy Brignell,

Jake Barrett Mills, Bryan Tshiobi, and Pip
Willett.

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responses on Twitter, so please come and

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