Conclusion

The destruction of the Songhay Empire at the hands of a Moroccan invasion has often been lamented by Africanist historians because it marked the end of the era of large medieval Sudanic empires.

There are, however, other ways of seeing the end of the Songhay Empire that are less pessimistic. While recognizing the scale and achievement of Songhay, we should also be careful not to construct an idea of an imperial state that was the match of empires elsewhere in the world. The Songhay Empire was a polity much more successful at claiming and projecting a certain kind of religious authority over a wide region of West Africa and the Sahara than it was in administering and defending its concrete authority over the far-flung territories it claimed. When its military power was destroyed by the Moroccan invasion, the Songhay Empire con­tinued to be an important political model for subsequent state-building projects in the region, both in the Songhay heartland and more obviously in the wider region that had never come under its direct control. If the Songhay-speaking people of the Niger Bend heartland of the empire ceased to be empire-builders, they nonetheless continued to play important roles in the region that they lived—and live today—as the most important ethnolinguistic group in the Niger Bend region of Mali and western Niger.

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