1.5 The Sudanic Empires: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai

Each empire grew as the one before it declined, and each sat on the Sahel and savannah between the Sahara and the forests (1.2).

These empires had access to some of the richest gold fields in the world, and they sat where trade routes met. Caravans crossed the Sahara carrying salt, cloth and North African goods south and gold north toward the Mediterranean and Europe. Rulers grew powerful by taxing and protecting this trade.

Trans-Saharan trade also brought North African merchants, scholars and officials, who introduced Islam. Rulers and merchants often converted first. Islam brought literacy in Arabic, legal traditions and links to the wider Muslim world, though many ordinary people kept older beliefs alongside it (1.7).

Mansa Musa ruled Mali in the 1300s ('mansa' means king among Mande speakers). He made Mali a center of trade, learning and culture, and he brought scholars and builders back from his travels.

In 1324 he made the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, with a huge caravan. He spent and gave away so much gold in Cairo that accounts say its value there dropped for years. News of Mali's wealth spread to merchants and mapmakers across the Mediterranean and into southern Europe, who began planning to trade manufactured goods for West African gold.

Mali's wealth also bought military strength. Its leaders bred powerful North African horses and bought steel weapons, which helped them extend control over neighboring peoples. A terracotta horse-and-rider figure from the Mali region (1200s–1400s) reflects how much horses and mounted warriors meant to the elite.

The Catalan Atlas, made in 1375 by the mapmaker Abraham Cresques on the island of Majorca, shows Mansa Musa seated, wearing a gold crown and holding a gold orb. It's a European view of Mali, and it shows that Mali's fame as a land of gold had reached Europe.

Songhai was the last and largest Sudanic empire. After Portuguese ships began trading along Africa's west coast in the 1400s, more trade moved to the Atlantic and less crossed the Sahara, which drained Songhai's wealth. A Moroccan army armed with guns then defeated Songhai in 1591.

The Sudanic empires stretched from Senegambia to present-day Côte d'Ivoire and parts of Nigeria. Most enslaved Africans brought directly to North America came from two broad regions, West Africa and West Central Africa, so many African Americans have roots in lands these empires once ruled.