Askia Ishaq II was ruler of the
Songhai EmpireThe Songhai Empire, also known as the Songhay Empire, was an African state of west Africa. From the early 15th to the late 16th century, Songhai was one of the largest African empires in history. This empire bore the same name as its leading ethnic group, the Songhai. Its capital was the city of...
from 1588 to 1591.
Ishaq came to power in a long dynastic struggle following the death of the long-ruling
Askia DaoudAskia Daoud was ruler of the Songhai Empire from 1549 to 1582. Daoud peacefully succeeded Askia Ishaq I following that ruler's 1549 death. The Empire continued to expand under Daoud's rule, and saw little internal strife...
. Sensing the Empire's weakness,
Moroccan Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 32 million and an area just under . Its capital is Rabat, and its largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the...
SultanSultan is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power"...
Ahmad I al-Mansur SaadiAhmad I al-Mansur was Sultan of the Saadi dynasty from 1578 to his death in 1603, the sixth and most famous of all rulers of the Saadis...
dispatched a 4,000-man force under the
IslamIslam Islam Islam ( al-’islām,
[There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...]
icized
SpaniardSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
Judar PashaJudar Pasha was a military leader of Morocco's Saadi Dynasty and the conqueror of the Songhai Empire.Born a Spaniard, Judar had been captured as a baby. As a young boy he joined the service of Moroccan Sultan Ahmad I al-Mansur Saadi...
across the Sahara desert in October 1590. Though Ishaq assembled more than 40,000 soldiers to meet the Moroccans, his army fled the enemy's
gunpowderGunpowder, also called black powder, is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. It burns rapidly, producing volumes of hot solids and gases which can be used as a propellant in firearms and as a pyrotechnic composition in fireworks. The term gunpowder also refers broadly to any...
weapons at the decisive
Battle of TondibiThe Battle of Tondibi was the decisive confrontation in Morocco's sixteenth-century invasion of the Songhai Empire. Though vastly outnumbered, the Moroccan forces under Judar Pasha defeated the Songhai Askia Ishaq II, guaranteeing the Empire's downfall....
in March 1591; Judar soon seized and looted the Songhai capital of
Gao||-||-||}Gao is a city in Mali and capital of the Gao Region on the River Niger, with a population of 57,978 in 2005. It is also the capital of the surrounding cercle of Gao.- History :...
as well as the trading centers of
TimbuktuTimbuktu is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali. It was made prosperous by Mansa Musa, tenth mansa of the Mali Empire...
and
DjennéDjenné is a historically and commercially important small city in the Niger Inland Delta of central Mali. It lies 5 km north-west of the Bani River . It has an ethnically diverse population of about 12,000...
, ensuring the Empire's destruction.