Songhai Empire
▶ Explore on the mapThe Songhai empire was the largest state in West African history, ruling the middle Niger from the mid-fifteenth to the late sixteenth century. It grew from the town of Gao, which had been a trading post of the Mali empire, and its Sunni Ali, who took the throne in 1464, conquered Djenne and Timbuktu and turned the river into a highway of boats and barges. Askia Muhammad, who ruled from 1493 to 1528, reorganised the provinces, sent pilgrims to Mecca, brought in scholars and made Timbuktu a centre of Islamic law and manuscripts; the Sankore mosque taught thousands. The state taxed the salt mines of Taghaza and the gold of the western savanna, and its army, equipped with cavalry and later with arquebuses, controlled the trans-Saharan caravans. In 1591 an expedition sent by the Saadian sultan of Morocco, armed with firearms and led by Judar Pasha, defeated the Songhai army at Tondibi and sacked Timbuktu and Gao. The empire broke into pieces, its libraries scattered, and the Niger trade passed to other hands, but Songhai's institutions and its memory of Askia remained in the region. The empire controlled the river from Gao towards Timbuktu, and its officials collected toll at every crossing.