Gao

Gao was still a Malian city when Ibn Battuta stayed there for a month in 1353, praising its rice, milk, chickens and fish and noting that people paid in cowries, as in Mali. Mali's hold did not last. A war with the Tuareg of Takedda devastated Gao in 1374–75, and in the first half of the 15th century Sunni Sulayman Dama threw off the Malian yoke. His successor Sunni Ali, who came to power in 1464, made Gao the capital of an empire that took Timbuktu in 1468 and Djenné a few years later.

Under the askias who followed, Gao was the capital of Songhai at its height. Leo Africanus, who came in the reign of Askia Muhammad, found a great unwalled town full of rich merchants, with rice, melons and sweet wells, and a square where slaves were sold on market days. That wealth ended in 1591, when a Moroccan army that had crossed the Sahara with guns beat the Songhai at Tondibi. The invaders chose Timbuktu as their seat, and Gao sank into a provincial town.