Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History / The Songhai Scholar Who Defied the Saadian Invaders
Transcript
- Lucas: In 1593, a caravan left Timbuktu that was not carrying salt or gold or books — though books were in it. It was carrying prisoners. Among them was a sixty-seven-year-old scholar named Ahmed Baba, one of the most learned men in the entire Sahel. The Saadian sultan of Morocco, Ahmad al-Mansur, had ordered the roundup of Timbuktu's intellectual elite after his armies conquered Songhai two years earlier. Luna: They deported scholars? Like hostages? Lucas: More like a calculated decapitation. Al-Mansur wanted to control the conquered territories, and the ulema — the religious scholars — were the backbone of Songhai's civil society. They were judges, teachers, advisors. So he had them arrested and marched across the Sahara to Marrakesh. Ahmed Baba was the prize catch. Lucas: Ahmed Baba had been the most prominent scholar at the Sankore Madrasa in Timbuktu. He was a specialist in Maliki law, theology, and grammar, and he'd written dozens of works. His personal library was said to contain over fifteen hundred volumes — at a time when a single manuscript could cost a fortune. He was also the author of a biographical dictionary of Maliki scholars, which is still used today. Luna: So he was like the walking encyclopedia of the empire. Lucas: Exactly. And the Saadians knew it. When they marched into Timbuktu in 1591, they initially tried to co-opt the local elites. But by 1593, there were tensions — a revolt in the city, maybe, or a conspiracy. The historical record is a bit murky. What's clear is that the Saadian governor, Judar Pasha, was replaced by a more hardline figure, Mahmoud ben Zergoun, who ordered the arrests. Lucas: Ahmed Baba and his colleagues were forced into exile. The journey across the Sahara took months. Many died along the way. But Ahmed Baba survived, and when he reached Marrakesh, he was placed under house arrest — though he was eventually allowed to teach and write. Luna: House arrest in Marrakesh doesn't sound too bad compared to what happened to others. Lucas: It wasn't a dungeon, but it was still exile. He was cut off from his library, from his students, from his city. And he was deeply bitter about the invasion. In his writings, he refers to the Saadians as 'the invaders' and laments the destruction of Songhai. But he also used his time in Marrakesh to continue his scholarly work. He even debated with Moroccan scholars and gained a following there. Lucas: One of the things Ahmed Baba is famous for is a legal opinion, a fatwa, he wrote while in Marrakesh. A question came to him: were the Saadians legitimate rulers? He gave a nuanced answer. He said that a ruler who seizes power by force but then rules justly can be considered legitimate — but he made it clear that the Saadian invasion was unjust. It's a remarkable piece of political thought, written under the nose of the sultan. Luna: He essentially told his captors they were illegitimate. Lucas: In a carefully worded way, yes. And he got away with it, partly because his reputation was so enormous that even al-Mansur respected him. After al-Mansur died in 1603, the political situation shifted, and Ahmed Baba was eventually allowed to return to Timbuktu in 1607. He lived another twenty years, teaching and writing until his death in 1627. Luna: What did he find when he got back to Timbuktu? Lucas: A very different place. The Saadian occupation had gutted the city's economy. The trans-Saharan trade routes were disrupted. Many scholars had fled or been killed. But Ahmed Baba picked up the pieces. He reopened his classes at the Sankore — though the madrasa itself was never quite the same. He also began writing one of his most important works: the Tarikh al-Sudan, a history of the Songhai Empire and the Western Sudan. Lucas: The Tarikh al-Sudan is one of our main sources for Songhai history. It was written by a contemporary who lived through the empire's rise and fall. Ahmed Baba includes details about the Askia dynasty, about Sonni Ali, about the Moroccan invasion. He also wrote a separate work called the Nayl al-ibtihaj, a biographical dictionary of Maliki scholars that's a treasure trove of information about intellectual life in West Africa. Luna: So his scholarship is why we know so much about Songhai today. Lucas: Absolutely. Without him — and without other scholars like Al-Sa'di, who wrote another chronicle — the history of Songhai would be much more obscure. Ahmed Baba's works survived in manuscripts that were copied and recopied, and many of them ended up in libraries in Timbuktu, but also in Fez, Cairo, and Istanbul. His writings are part of a larger tradition of West African Islamic scholarship that is still being studied. Lucas: One thing I find remarkable is that Ahmed Baba is known to have said, in one of his legal opinions, that 'the harm of the invasion is greater than the benefit.' That blunt assessment, written while he was still in exile, shows his integrity. He didn't flatter his captors. Luna: He was a historian who refused to be silenced, even when he was far from home. Lucas: Exactly. And his story reminds us that the Songhai Empire wasn't just about military power or trade networks. It was also a civilization that valued learning deeply. The Sankore Madrasa in Timbuktu was a center of scholarship that rivaled any university in the medieval world. Ahmed Baba was the embodiment of that tradition. And his survival — his return, his continued teaching — was a form of resistance in itself. Lucas: Today, Ahmed Baba's name is remembered in the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, a library and research center that houses thousands of manuscripts. Sadly, many of those manuscripts were lost or damaged during the conflict in Mali in 2012-2013. But the legacy endures. His works are still studied by historians of Africa, and his fatwas are still cited by scholars of Islamic law. Luna: It's a powerful example of how knowledge can outlast empires. Lucas: It is. And it's a fitting end to our series on Songhai — not with a battle or a conquest, but with a scholar who wrote the story of his own civilization's end, and in doing so, ensured it would not be forgotten.