I was reading a translation of Ta'rīkh Al-Sūdān by the seventeenth-century Timbuktu scholar 'Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sa'dī recently and I was kinda intrigued by the historian's description of Askia Dawud, who ruled from 1549 to 1582. In the text and at least partially corroborated from what little I could find online, Dawud was a vigorous leader who reorganized the army, quelled revolts in restive outlying regions, centralized the nation further, and oversaw a second renaissance in scholarship akin to the one Askia the Great ruled during.
While this is all well and good, what's really cool is what he didn't get to finish in his lifetime: hammering out a clear succession system (which, at least according to al-Sa'dī, would have been based around selection by elder council) and getting some of those Moroccan guns into his soldiers' hands. Dawud had experienced the power of gunpowder when Muhammad al-Sheikh of the Marrakech based Saadi dynasty sent some of his men to capture Taghaza. Even though he took the salt mining town back from the Moroccans, Askia Dawud tenatively began to send out feelers to some former generals-turned-warlords of the collapsed Wattasid Moroccan dynasty, offering them some of the vast wealth of Songhai if they could train his men in the use and countering of firearms. IOTL, though, he died rather suddenly and his death before any real headway in the succession reform attempt plunged Songhai into civil war.
So, what would happen if Askia Dawud did succeed in institutionalizing a council that would select an heir from amongst the ruler's sons and getting some Moroccans to teach his soldiers firearm fundamentals?
While this is all well and good, what's really cool is what he didn't get to finish in his lifetime: hammering out a clear succession system (which, at least according to al-Sa'dī, would have been based around selection by elder council) and getting some of those Moroccan guns into his soldiers' hands. Dawud had experienced the power of gunpowder when Muhammad al-Sheikh of the Marrakech based Saadi dynasty sent some of his men to capture Taghaza. Even though he took the salt mining town back from the Moroccans, Askia Dawud tenatively began to send out feelers to some former generals-turned-warlords of the collapsed Wattasid Moroccan dynasty, offering them some of the vast wealth of Songhai if they could train his men in the use and countering of firearms. IOTL, though, he died rather suddenly and his death before any real headway in the succession reform attempt plunged Songhai into civil war.
So, what would happen if Askia Dawud did succeed in institutionalizing a council that would select an heir from amongst the ruler's sons and getting some Moroccans to teach his soldiers firearm fundamentals?
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