Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History
Songhai's Astronomical Legacy: Timbuktu's Lost Observatories
Before telescopes and modern observatories, the scholars of Timbuktu studied the stars with naked-eye precision, creating tables, predicting eclipses, and debating the shape of the cosmos. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the astronomical tradition of Songhai's Sankore Madrasa and the wider Sahel. They discuss how astronomers like Ahmad al-Tifashi and al-Qalasadi used instruments like the astrolabe and quadrant, and how their work connected to Islamic and West African intellectual networks. The conversation also touches on the 1492 solar eclipse that coincided with Askia…
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