Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History
The Sahel's Grand Canal: Songhai's Waterworks and a Drought
Long before the Sahel's current climate challenges, the Songhai Empire engineered an ambitious canal system to manage the Niger River's floods and combat drought. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the remains of a grand canal project initiated under Sonni Ali or Askia Muhammad, the role of the fari-mondio (royal administrator) and kore (lieutenant) in organizing labor, and how the empire's hydraulic infrastructure supported its capital, Gao. They discuss the empire's vulnerability to severe droughts that could break even the strongest administration, the decline of…
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