ABSTRACT
The territory that is now Mali was the center of several of Western Africa’s greatest empires, including the Ghana from the fourth to eleventh centuries c.e., the Mali from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and the Songhai, which followed the Mali and was then defeated by the Moroccan kingdom at the end of the sixteenth century. The Moroccans then occupied the great trading cities of Gao and Timbuktu, destroying all political and intellectual centers. These events came at a time when increased European contact on the coast was reorienting African trade in that direction.
