ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the certain questions concerning the states of the western Sudan during the later Middle Ages; states which achieved level of development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, beyond which they were unable to advance before the Moroccan invasion of 1591, which began decline that lasted several centuries. It focuses on some analogies with eastern European countires, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries which were at more or less the same level of economic development as the western Sudan two centuries later. The chapter seeks to pinpoint those elements of social and economic progress and more particularly of stagnation which were to be found in Mali, its successor state, Songhai. A substantial amount of gold was at the disposal above all of the sovereigns, who collected it as tribute and certainly too in the form of taxes from merchants.
