A quiz question · hard
What destroyed the Songhai Empire at the Battle of Tondibi in 1591?
Some 4,000 musketeers under Judar Pasha — half died crossing the desert — broke a far larger Songhai army that had no firearms. Tondibi conventionally ends the age of the great Sahelian empires.
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The Songhai Empire The Songhai Empire, centred on Gao on the Niger bend, was the largest state in African history at its 16th-century peak, succeeding Mali as master of the trans-Saharan trade. Built by Sunni Ali (r. 1464-1492) and reorganised by Askia Muhammad, it was destroyed in 1591 by a Moroccan army whose muskets ended the age of Sahelian empires.
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