Tondibi and the Fall of Songhai

March 13, 1591

A Moroccan army of three thousand Andalusian and European mercenaries, armed with arquebuses and dragged across the Sahara on camelback, met the enormous Songhai cavalry at Tondibi. Gunpowder broke Songhai in an afternoon. Timbuktu was occupied, and the greatest empire of West Africa collapsed into warring provinces. The Moroccan conquest destroyed Timbuktu's scholarly community and ended the great medieval West African empires.