The Songhai Scholar Who Defied the Saadian Invaders

In 1593, Saadian forces from Morocco rounded up hundreds of scholars in Timbuktu and marched them north into exile. Among them was Ahmed Baba, the most celebrated intellectual of the Songhai Empire — a man whose library was said to rival any in West Africa, and whose writings still survive in archives from Timbuktu to Fez. In this episode, Lucas and Luna unravel the story of Ahmed Baba, his role at the Sankore Madrasa, his legal opinions that shaped Islamic jurisprudence in the Sahel, and his years under house arrest in Marrakesh after the Moroccan invasion. They explore what his life reveals about scholarship, resistance, and cultural survival in the wake of Songhai's collapse. Along the way, they encounter the Tarikh al-Sudan, the Saadian sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, and the trans-Saharan book trade that made Timbuktu a city of libraries. This is a story not of kings and generals, but of a historian who chronicled his own empire's destruction and lived to write its epitaph. #AhmedBaba #Timbuktu #SonghaiEmpire #SankoreMadrasa #SaadianInvasion #TarikhAlSudan #WestAfricanHistory #AfricanScholars #IslamicHistory #BookTrade #Marrakesh #AhmadAlMansur #MoroccanInvasion #16thCentury #Resistance #IntellectualHistory #History #FexingoHistory #WestAfrica #SunniAli Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo