The Songhai Empire
Learn about the Songhai Empire — the largest empire in African history, which succeeded Mali and made Timbuktu a world center of Islamic scholarship.
The Songhai Empire (c. 1430–1591 CE) was the largest empire in African history by territory, stretching from the Atlantic coast to what is now central Nigeria. Rising from the declining Mali Empire, Songhai built upon Mali's commercial and intellectual legacy while creating its own distinctive imperial system.
The empire's transformation from a regional kingdom to a continental power was largely the work of two rulers. Sunni Ali (r. 1464–1492) was a brilliant military commander who conquered Timbuktu and Djenné, bringing the Niger River's vital commercial cities under Songhai control. Askia Muhammad (r. 1493–1528) was the administrator who turned conquests into a functioning empire, establishing provincial governors, a professional army, a standardized tax system, and Islamic courts of law.
Under the Songhai, Timbuktu reached its intellectual peak. The University of Sankore attracted scholars from across the Islamic world, producing works on theology, law, astronomy, and medicine. The city's private libraries held hundreds of thousands of manuscripts — a literary heritage that scholars are still working to preserve today. The empire's fall to a Moroccan invasion in 1591 — driven by the desire to control Saharan salt mines and gold — ended the era of great Sahelian empires.