Some have described it as greed. Others describe it as a quest for power. We describe it as a conglomeration of both — a desire for affluence and power — primordial forces that have, since time immemorial, driven the actions of men.
In the sixteenth century, those forces brought the ambitions of the Moroccan sultan, Ahmad al-Mansur, into direct collision with the Songhai Empire, then the dominant power of western Sudan. Songhai had something al-Mansur wanted — gold — but to get it he would have to travel across the Sahara, a journey that took him approximately 120 days.
For centuries, gold flowed in abundance, from West African lands, through trade routes, coastal cities and across the ocean. By the time al-Mansur came to power in Morocco in 1578, West Africa had become a globally renowned source of gold. For centuries, gold had been mined in its interior and traded as a valuable commodity across the region. However, with the introduction of camels into the region, the trade evolved into a huge system across the trans-Saharan caravan system. From this trade, Ghana and its successor, the Malian Empire would grow into prosperous nations. Over time, the wealth of western Sudan became much renowned across North Africa.
However, for nations beyond, western Sudan’s wealth was as much a reality as it was the stuff of legend. Not until Mansa Musa, the emperor of Mali, visited Cairo in 1324 CE that the wider world gained a closer glimpse of the extraordinary wealth of the region from which he came. It was said that Mansa Musa was on his way to Mecca for pilgrimage and being who he was, made a lasting impression on the places he journeyed through. He travelled with a vast retinue and an enormous quantity of gold, which he distributed so lavishly that, according to contemporary accounts, the influx contributed to a decline in the value of gold in Cairo for years afterward.
This spectacle gave the outside world a glimpse of the wealth in western Sudan and, inevitably, stirred the desire of others to possess it. For centuries, rulers, raiders, explorers and adventurers sought access to this wealth, to no avail. Ahmad al-Mansur would be different.
The Trade
For centuries, Morocco maintained a commercial relationship with western sub-Saharan Africa despite the fact that the world’s largest desert, the Sahara existed between them. During this period, crossing the Sahara was perilous but not impossible. By the fourth or fifth century, Camels were introduced to the region and travel became much easier and this commercial trade evolved into an international enterprise. The rigor and dangers of the journey across the Sahara, however, necessitated that the value of the goods being transported were proportionately high. As a result, goods boiled down to strategic necessities such as gold, slaves, salt, and weapons and luxurious goods such as exotic fabrics, pepper, tea, ostrich feathers, ivory, beads, kola nuts, glassware, preserved foods and copper crafts.
For both western Sudan and Morocco, there were more than enough incentives that pushed them to brave the deserts. Both economies were weak. In the west, their subsistence culture limited production to agriculture, mining and smaller enterprises which gave them a limited purchasing power. For Morocco, its lands were poor for farming due to their rocky nature while nature played constant practical jokes on them in the form of droughts and locust invasions. Its only large industry was in sugar which generated substantial revenue for its people.
Yet, the sultans of Morocco had a renowned taste for gold. However, with a weak economy, this was barely sustainable. Gold did flow into Morocco consistently, it just could not be kept there considering it was a much needed commodity for trade with Europe. While they used sugar as a substitute commodity to keep some of the gold, it was barely enough.
Overall, in the regional economy, Morocco had become an intermediary between the western Sudan region and Europe. Commerce particularly revolved around three crucial goods: gold, sugar and salt. Gold was a significant currency in these trades and so Ghanaian (located in West Africa) gold gradually began to filter into Europe in the fifth century. Over time, West African gold held much power in the region, especially during the Middle Ages. By the fourteenth century, gold in Europe, Germany, Serbia and Bohemia had become nearly exhausted and Mali filled the gap, producing approximately half of the world’s gold during this period. For the wealthy in Europe, Hapsburg, Valois and Tudor, the flow continued to sponsor their flagrant lifestyles and fund incessant wars.
By the sixteenth century, the economic potential of sugar had been realised and it rose to be of almost parallel significance to gold and the Moroccan economy began to thrive even better. The ruling dynasty — the Saadian dynasty — was particularly interested in military modernisation and needed funds to pay the expenses. Morocco then began a state-ran sugar industry. By the late sixteenth century, sugar had become Morocco’s leading revenue generator.
For centuries, Morocco and West Africa enjoyed the mutually beneficial commerce that emanated from sugar, gold and salt, as well as from other luxury goods, including slaves despite the fact that there was constant war around the Sahara. HHowever, by the sixteenth century, this relationship had begun to deteriorate. History partly attributes this to the rise of an aggressive Moroccan dynasty as well as to the introduction of firearms to Europe which changed land and sea warfare. Military specialisation emerged and war became even more expensive. In the same century, European kingdoms and the Ottoman Empire entered into a scramble to increase their resources to meet their arms need. Consequently, onerous taxes were introduced.
In Morocco, trouble started when the Saadians established a rival government in Marrakech, the traditional capital of southern Morocco. They had arisen in a quest to wipe out the Portuguese trading post at Agadir, a city in southwestern Morocco, on the Atlantic coast, about 250 km south of Marrakesh. To fund their war, the Saadian sharif, Ahmad al-Araj, set his gaze on different means, including the desert and salt mines as well as imposing onerous taxes on the people.
Then came the era of Sultan Moulay Ahmad al-Mansur who came up with an altogether different means of raising resources. During his reign, he reinforced sugar production and the sub-Saharan trade. Just like his predecessors, he had a taste for gold and came to understand that to get a steady supply of same, he needed to control the gold fields.
Moulay Ahmad al-Mansur
Moulay Ahmad al-Mansur was the sixty-third ruler of Islamic Morocco who ascended rulership on August 4 1578. His ascent was accompanied by a particularly resounding victory against Portugal. Al-mansar’s brother had been the generalissimo but had died during the battle, leaving al-Mansur, his successor, complete credit. And that was how he became, al-Mansur, which translates as ‘the Victorious.’ Over time this war would become known as one of the greatest military defeats by an African army against Europe. The battle was however just a launching pedestal for al-Mansur.
Ahmad al-Mansur did not emerge from a dynasty that had always possessed power. His family’s rise was forged in the instability of sixteenth-century Morocco, where political authority was contested by tribes, religious sects, ethnic groups and mystical orders. He was born into the Saadian clan, a group of Arabs from the Draa Valley of southern Morocco whose ancestors had migrated from Arabia during the late Middle Ages before settling among the date palms and mud-brick settlements along the Draa River.
For much of their early history in Morocco, the Saadians were an obscure group on the desert fringes of the kingdom. Their fortunes changed when the Portuguese established a presence at Agadir. The weakness of the Wattasid dynasty created a vacuum of authority, and the Saadians were drawn into the Sous Valley to provide leadership for a jihad against the Portuguese. In 1510, the tribes of the Sous, unable to organise themselves around a central figure, turned to the Sufi shaykhs and leaders of local brotherhoods for a commander.
Their search led them to the Saadians. Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman was selected as their leader and adopted the name al-Qa’im bi Amrillah, meaning “He Who Has Arisen by the Command of Allah”. He took up the banner of the jihad and began building the political and military foundations of what would become the Saadian dynasty. His efforts, however, were not immediately successful. He suffered a bloody defeat before the walls of Agadir, although the campaign left behind a small standing army which would later become the foundation for a much larger military force.
His son, Muhammad ash-Shaykh, inherited that foundation. Born in humble circumstances in an otherwise nondescript village of the Draa Valley, ash-Shaykh had become a jihadi commander by his early twenties. The experience of fighting with lances against men armed with firearms made a deep impression upon him. When al-Qa’im died in 1517, Muhammad ash-Shaykh and his elder brother, Ahmad al-Araj, determined to suspend the jihad temporarily and consolidate their power in the south.
The reason was simple. They understood that the Portuguese could not be defeated merely by force of arms. Their defeat required a transformation of the political and military conditions under which the war was being fought — precisely the conditions that the Wattasid rulers had failed to create. Hence, the jihad was transformed into a rebellion. The two brothers, leading a series of warfare against the Hintana empire, Fez and eventually Agadir.
That transformation provided Ahmad al-Mansur with something his predecessors had lacked: a political and military inheritance capable of supporting ambitions beyond the immediate struggle for control of Morocco. The Saadian rise had begun with a fragmented collection of tribes seeking a commander. It would ultimately produce the man who looked beyond Morocco, across the Sahara, towards the extraordinary wealth of western Sudan. But before he could look towards the gold of western Sudan, he would first have to survive the politics of his own family.
In 1557, his father, Muhammad ash-Shaykh, was assassinated. His elder brother, Abdallah al-Ghalib, succeeded him as Sultan, but Ahmad al-Mansur and their brother Abd al-Malik were forced into exile. They would spend the next seventeen years in Ottoman territories, moving between Algiers and Constantinople. For Ahmad, exile became an education of its own. He studied Islamic and secular sciences, while his years among the Ottomans exposed him to a military and political system considerably more powerful than the one he had left behind.
In 1574, Abdallah al-Ghalib died. His son, Muhammad al-Mutawakkil, took the throne, but his accession was contested by his uncle Abd al-Malik, who had remained in exile. With Ottoman assistance, Abd al-Malik defeated al-Mutawakkil in 1576 and became Sultan. Ahmad returned with him and was appointed heir to the throne. The arrangement would last only two years.
Al-Mutawakkil had not abandoned his claim. He sought the assistance of King Sebastian of Portugal, who saw in the dispute an opportunity to intervene in Morocco. In 1578, Sebastian crossed into Morocco at the head of a Portuguese army and marched against Abd al-Malik. The two forces met at Wadi al-Makhazin, near Ksar el-Kebir, on 4 August 1578. The battle would become known as the Battle of the Three Kings because three claimants to power would perish in its aftermath: Sebastian, al-Mutawakkil and Abd al-Malik. Ahmad survived.
His brother did not. On the same battlefield that destroyed the Portuguese invasion and ended the succession struggle, Ahmad was proclaimed Sultan of Morocco. He assumed the title al-Mansur — the Victorious. By now, he was thirty years old.
The March Across the Desert
By the end of the sixteenth century, the great trading empires of the western Sudan had risen and fallen in succession — Ghana, then Mali, and finally Songhai, which under rulers such as Sunni Ali and Askia Muhammad had grown into one of the largest empires in African history, controlling the Niger bend and the fabled cities of Gao, Timbuktu, and Djenné
The origins of the Songhai people are unknown and until the fourteenth century, their existence remained anonymous. In Western Sudan, they occupied a large area of land which faced many difficulties, largely due to the diverse ethnic groups around them, particularly the Tuareg. Just like other ethnic groups, the Songhai fought wars, made alliances, and traded in slaves. Gradually, they rose as a dominant force on the landscape of western Africa, laying control over vast regions from the Senegal River to Niger.
Even before al-Mansur became a Sultan, Saadian interest in western Sudan had been growing. During the reign of his uncle, Ahmad al-'Araj, the Saadians had sent a missive to Askia Ishaq, Songhai’s empire, demanding control over the Taghaza salt mines. The request was never fulfilled. The Saadians were also expanding their influence westward and southward; they occupied the Touat oasis for a period and, in 1543–1544, sent a force against Ouadane. Hence, the expedition ended in retreat after a major Songhai counterattack.
In 1583, al-Mansur renewed the Saadian claim, this time seeking payment equivalent to the revenues generated by the salt mines. His forces had also occupied the Touat and Gourara oases. When Askia Ishaq II refused, al-Mansur made another demand in 1589 or early 1590: that Songhai pay gold in proportion to the salt extracted from Taghaza. Ishaq II rejected the demand. This time, al-Mansur did not send another letter. He sent an army.
On October 16, 1590, the Saadian army left Marrakesh for Songhai. In February 1591, they reached the Niger River, after having surmounted the rigors of crossing the Sahara desert. Different accounts provide varying numbers for the size of the army that left Morocco. Hence, we can only estimate that they were between 4,000 and 20,000 men.
The army was led by Judar Pasha, a commander of Spanish origin who had been captured as an infant and raised in the sultan’s service. He would eventually lead the Moroccans to victory despite the smaller size of their army compared to Songhai’s. Understandably so, considering they carried what Songhai did not have: firearms. Some two and a half thousand arquebusiers, several English cannon, and a vast baggage train of thousands of camels crossed the desert over roughly four gruelling months. That they arrived at all, largely intact, was itself extraordinary.
Upon reaching Songhai, Askia Ishaq scrambled to rally his army, surprised to see the Moroccan forces. On 13th of March, near a place called Tondibi just north of Gao, the Moroccan army met the host of the Songhai emperor, Askia Ishaq II. The Songhai vastly outnumbered the invaders — estimates run from tens of thousands up to, by some accounts, ten to one. But they fought with cavalry, bows, lances, and swords, and had almost no guns. Askia Ishaq understood the danger of gunpowder and tried to counter it with an ingenious tactic: he drove a great herd of cattle — a thousand head or more — ahead of his army, hoping the stampede would smash the Moroccan lines and screen his advancing infantry. It backfired catastrophically. The crash of the arquebuses and cannon terrified the cattle, which wheeled and stampeded back into the Songhai ranks. The Moroccan gunmen then poured fire into the disordered charges, and the Songhai army broke.
The battle would come to be known as the Battle of Tondibi. Upon defeat, Songhai had to evacuate their capital, Gao, and retreat to the south while the Moroccan forces occupied Gao and Timbuktu, present day Mali.
Imagine having gone to the ends of the earth in pursuit of wealth only to find that such wealth does not exist. That was the situation of the Moroccans. No wealth could be found in Songhai’s lands and within a short while, diseases beset them. In the aftermath of the war, Songhaoi tried to renegotiate its position through a proposal — the nation would pay tribute to al-Mansur, including 100,000 god pieces and 1000 slaves while the Saadian army withdrew. By then, al-Mansur had set up camp in Timbuktu. Judar Pasha, withdrawing from Gao, travelled to Timbuktu to deliver the proposal to al-Mansur who became enraged on the grounds that his army was already at an advantage and Judar should have pressed his position. Consequently, he sent Pasha Mahmud ibn Zarqun to take over Judar’s position in Gao.
Then ensued a second battle known as the Battle of Bamba. Isahaq II, seeing the dynamics of the battle, renewed his military strength and also encouraged the Timbuktans to revolt. Simultaneously, his hold on power was becoming weak as his brother, Muhammad Gao declared himself the new king and disqualified him as a leader on the premise that he had suffered too many military defeats. Ishaq II would eventually die that same year.
To retain control over the region, Mahmud Pasha built Kasbah, a citadel, to control Timbuktu and from there, used very severe measures to suppress local resistance. In 1592, war efforts were renewed against Songhai and Muhammad Gao tried to negotiate a peace treaty. In response, Mahmud Pasha deceived Gao into coming to negotiate the peace treaty himself and was arrested, along with his entourage.
The arrest did very little to extinguish the resistance as revolts continued to erupt across the territories under Saadian control. Mahmud Pasha attempted to solve the problem by installing Sulayman, another member of the Songhai royal family, as Askia, hoping that the Songhai could be governed indirectly through a ruler acceptable to Morocco but the plan failed. The resistance leaders refused to recognise Sulayman and instead chose Nuhu as their Askia.
By then, what remained of the Songhai Empire had been pushed as far as Dendi, a province along the Niger River, in present-day southwestern Niger. They, however, never backed down, continuing their resistance. Over the next two years, the Songhai adapted to this new reality, acquiring firearms of their own and waging a persistent guerrilla war against the Moroccan forces. Mahmud Pasha, in turn, attempted to conquer them into Dendi, but the campaign proved far more difficult than the conquest of Gao. The heat, mosquitoes and unfamiliar terrain of the Niger region worked against his forces, while the Songhai resistance refused to disappear. By September 1593, Mahmud had returned to Timbuktu, where another confrontation awaited him.
The city's Islamic scholars, the Ulema, had begun complaining to al-Mansur in Marrakesh about the conduct of the Moroccan troops. Mahmud responded harshly. In April 1594, he arrested several of the scholars, including the renowned Timbuktu scholar Ahmad Baba, and sent them to Morocco. However, the problems within the Moroccan camp were becoming almost as serious as the resistance outside it. Rivalries and disagreements weakened the Saadian command, and al-Mansur eventually lost confidence in Mahmud Pasha.
In 1595, he ordered Mansur ibn Abd al-Rahman to replace him and execute him. Mahmud, having learned of the order, attempted to flee on another campaign against the rebels but died in January of that year. Judar Pasha, the commander who had first led the Moroccan army across the Sahara, returned to a position of influence, taking charge of administrative affairs while Mansur ibn Abd al-Rahman commanded the army.
By 1599, it had become apparent that the great Songhai Empire had been broken, its political centre lost and its territories fragmented. However, while the Moroccan army had conquered the heart of Songhai, it could not fully take control of its territory.
Aftermath of the Songhai Empire
The fall of Songhai changed the political landscape of the western Sudan. The great empire was broken, and none of the states that followed could restore its former power. Even Mali, which saw an opportunity to reclaim some of its lost influence, failed. In 1599, Mansa Mahmud IV attacked Djenné but was defeated by Saadian forces from Timbuktu.
For Morocco, the victory brought territory and, eventually, a measure of the wealth al-Mansur had pursued. Caravans began making the difficult journey back to Marrakesh carrying gold, slaves, ivory and other goods. Yet the conquest was never as profitable as al-Mansur had imagined. Maintaining an army so far from Morocco was expensive, and the wealth of Sudan could not easily compensate for the cost of controlling it.
In 1603, al-Mansur died and Morocco descended into a succession struggle, weakening its hold over the territories it had conquered. By 1618, direct control from Marrakesh had effectively ended, leaving the region in the hands of local military rulers descended from Moroccan soldiers and the communities they had settled among.
