The history of the Songhay Empire involves many fascinating stories–the interaction of Islam with older paganistic folk religions, the mingling of many different peoples and tribes of west Sudan, royal intrigue that pitted father against sons and brother against brother, epic battles fought in the punishing desert heat, and a ruinous civil war that left the once mighty empire vulnerable to foreign invasion and domination. This is full-bodied, red-blooded history, and it is brought to vivid life in this account, replete with a treasury of primary source material and full-color images. This text supports Common Core’s mandate regarding analyzing the relationship between primary and secondary sources, citing evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, and determining the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source.