Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History
Songhai's Silent Boom: Kola Nuts, Slaves, and the Atlantic
From the reign of Askia Muhammad through the twilight years under Askia Ishaq II, Songhai's economy was being reshaped by a trade no one in Gao had fully predicted: the Atlantic world. This episode follows the kola nut from the forests of the south to the markets of Timbuktu and beyond, and traces the slow, corrosive rise of the transatlantic slave trade out of West Africa. We meet the Wangara merchants who handled both commodities, the Portuguese who first appeared at the mouth of the Senegal River, and the Saadian forces whose invasion in 1591 cut Songhai off from these new currents…
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