Songhai's sway over western Hausaland includes the subordination of Kebbi, whose kanta (king) controls the territory along the Sokoto River.

Katsina and Gobir also pay tribute to Songhai, while Songhai merchants dominate the trade of the Hausa towns.

It is at this time that the overland trade in kola nuts from the Akan forests of modern Ghana is initiated.

Largely because of Songhai's influence, there is a remarkable blossoming of Islamic learning and culture.

The influence of Songhai collapses abruptly in 1591, when an army from Morocco crosses the Sahara and conquers the capital city of Gao and the commercial center of Timbuktu.

Morocco is not able to control the whole empire, and the various provinces, including the Hausa states, become independent.

The collapse undermines Songhai's commercial and religious hegemony over the Hausa states and abruptly alters the course of history in the region.

North Africa (1540–1683 CE): Ottoman Regencies, Saadian Morocco, and Corsair Empires

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of North Africa includes Morocco (together with the Western Sahara), Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.Anchors included the Atlas Mountains, the Tell plains, the Saharan oases and caravan routes, the Western Sahara desert corridor, and the Maghreb seaports of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Marrakesh, and Meknes. By this period, Ottoman power extended across Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, while Morocco retained its independence under the Saadian dynasty, tied to Saharan trade.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age continued, producing cycles of drought and famine in the Maghreb and Western Sahara. Agricultural yields shrank in dry decades, leading to hunger and rural unrest. Oases and irrigated plains buffered some shocks, sustaining date groves and wheat. Coastal cities remained resilient, sustained by Mediterranean provisioning and piracy revenues.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Morocco: The Saadian dynasty rose to prominence, with Marrakesh as its capital. Agriculture in the Central Valley and oases sustained cereal and sugar production. Control of Saharan caravans enriched the dynasty.

• Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya: Ottoman regencies developed around Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Agricultural hinterlands supplied wheat, olives, and livestock. Urban populations grew in fortified port cities that became bases for corsair fleets.

• Western Sahara: Nomadic Maqil and Sanhaja tribes maintained camel herding and salt-gold-slave caravans. Morocco’s Saadians extended authority over Saharan trade routes, competing with local tribes and European smugglers.

Technology & Material Culture

Ottoman artillery and fortification technology reshaped coastal defenses. Corsair fleets deployed galleys and sailing ships armed with cannon. Urban guilds produced textiles, leather goods, ceramics, and manuscripts. In Morocco, monumental Saadian tombs and mosques in Marrakesh displayed ornate tilework and marble. Firearms, increasingly available through Mediterranean trade, altered warfare along the steppe and frontier.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Ottoman regencies: Algiers (under Barbarossa and successors) became the hub of corsair fleets, raiding European coasts. Tunis and Tripoli followed suit, mixing piracy with trade.

• Spanish enclaves: Spain maintained fortified ports such as Melilla, Oran, and Ceuta.

• Morocco: The Saadians secured Saharan caravans and defeated Portugal at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir (1578), ensuring Moroccan independence.

• Saharan caravans: Continued to bring gold, salt, and slaves northward, linking Western Sahara oases to Maghreb markets.

• European maritime trade: France, England, and the Netherlands began to trade directly with Maghreb ports, bypassing Iberian monopolies.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Islamic scholarship flourished in madrasas of Fez, Tunis, and Algiers. Sufi brotherhoods such as the Qadiriyya and Shadhiliyya grew in influence, spreading devotional practices across desert and steppe. Oral traditions celebrated corsair captains and saints, reinforcing popular Islam. The Saadian court in Marrakesh sponsored poetry, learning, and architecture. Christian symbols loomed in Spanish forts, while European captives in Algiers and Tunis contributed memoirs that shaped North Africa’s image abroad.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Communities managed drought through irrigation, terrace cultivation, and reliance on caravan trade. Nomads adjusted grazing circuits in the Sahara, while urban dwellers relied on waqf endowments and Sufi lodges for famine relief. Corsairing supplemented economies when crops failed, sustaining urban populations through maritime predation.

Transition

By 1683 CE, North Africa had been divided into distinct powers: Ottoman regencies at Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli; an independent Moroccan kingdom under the Saadians (soon to be replaced by the Alaouites); and Spanish strongholds along the coast. The Western Sahara remained under Moroccan suzerainty but functionally tribal and caravan-dominated. The region was a nexus of Saharan trade, Ottoman power, and European naval rivalry—poised for further contest as Atlantic empires expanded.

Privateering is an age-old practice in the Mediterranean.

North African rulers engage in it increasingly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century because it is so lucrative, and because their merchant vessels, formerly a major source of income, are not permitted to enter European ports.

Although the methods vary, privateering generally involves private vessels raiding the ships of an enemy in peacetime under the authority of a ruler.

Its purposes are to disrupt an opponent's trade and to reap rewards from the captives and cargo.

Privateering is a highly disciplined affair conducted under the command of the rais (captains) of the fleets.

Several captains become heroes in Algerian lore for their bravery and skill.

The captains of the corsairs band together in a self-regulating taifa (community) to protect and further the corporate interests of their trade.

The taifa comes to be ethnically mixed, incorporating those captured Europeans who agree to convert to Islam and supply information useful for future raids.

The taifa also gains prestige and political influence because of its role in fighting the infidel and providing the merchants and rulers of Algiers with a major source of income.

Algiers becomes the privateering city-state par excellence, especially between 1560 and 1620, and it is two privateer brothers who are instrumental in extending Ottoman influence in Algeria.

The Muslim privateer brothers Aruj and Khair ad Din—the latter known to Europeans as Barbarossa, or Red Beard—had been operating successfully off Tunisia at about the time Spain was establishing its presidios in the Maghrib.

Aruj had moved his base of operations to Algiers in 1516 but was killed in 1518.

Khair ad Din had succeeded him as military commander of Algiers, and the Ottoman sultan had given him the title of beylerbey (provincial governor)and a contingent of some two thousand janissaries, well-armed Ottoman soldiers.

With the aid of this force, Khair ad Din had subdued the coastal region between Constantine and Oran (although the city of Oran will remain in Spanish hands until 1791).

Under Khair ad Din's regency, Algiers becomes the center of Ottoman authority in the Maghreb, from which Tunis, Tripoli, and Tlemcen will be overcome and Morocco's independence will be threatened.

So successful was Khair ad Din at Algiers that he had been recalled to Constantinople in 1533 by the sultan, Suleyman I (r. 1520-66), known in Europe as Suleyman the Magnificent, and appointed admiral of the Ottoman fleet.

The next year, he mounted a successful seaborne assault on Tunis.

The next beylerbey is Khair ad Din's son Hasan, who assumes the position in 1544.

Until 1587 the area is governed by officers who serve terms with no fixed limits.

Subsequently, with the institution of a regular Ottoman administration, governors with the title of pasha rule for three-year terms.

Turkish is the official language, and Arabs and Berbers are excluded from government posts.

The pasha is assisted by janissaries, known in Algeria as the ojaq and led by an agha.

Recruited from Anatolian peasants, they are committed to a lifetime of service.

Although isolated from the rest of society and subject to their own laws and courts, they depend on the ruler and the taifa for income.

In the seventeenth century, the force numbers about fifteen thousand, but it is to shrink to only thirty-seven hundred by 1830.

Discontent among the ojaq rises in the mid-1600s because they are not paid regularly, and they repeatedly revolt against the pasha.

As a result, the agha charges the pasha with corruption and incompetence and seizes power in 1659.

The taifa has the last word, however, when in 1671 it rebels, killed the agha, and places one of its own in power.

The new leader receives the title of dey, which originated in Tunisia.

When Joao III dies in 1557, the only surviving heir to the throne is his three-year-old son, Sebastião, who takes over the government at the age of fourteen.

Sickly and poorly educated, Sebastião proves to be mentally unstable, and as he grows to young manhood he develops a fanatical obsession with launching a great crusade against the Muslims in North Africa, thus reviving the Moroccan policy of Afonso V.

In 1578, when he is twenty-four years old, Sebastião organizes an army of twenty-four thousand and assembles a large fleet that leaves Portugal on August 4 for Alcazarquivir.

Sebastião's army, poorly equipped and incompetently led, is defeated, and the king, presumed killed in battle, is never seen again.

A large number of the nobility are captured and held for ransom.

This defeat, the most disastrous in Portuguese military history, sweeps away the flower of the aristocratic leadership and drains the coffers of the treasury in order to pay ransoms.

Worse, it results in the death of a king who has no descendants, plunging Portugal into a period of confusion and intrigue over the succession.

The first Wattasid Sultan, Abu Abd Allah al-Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Mahdi, had controlled only the northern part of Morocco as the Wattasid sultanate, the south being dominated by the Saadi dynasty.

Under the regent Abu al Hasan Abu Hasun, the Wattasids, are able with Ottoman help to conquer Fes once more in 1554, but this conquest is short-lived.

With the final victory of the Saadi and the death of Abu al Hasan, the war is decided in favor of the southerners.

The Saadi, who had come from Tagmadert in the valley of the Draa River, claim sharifian origins through an ancestor from Yanbu.

The family claims descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through the line of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Fatima Zahra (Muhammad's daughter).

The name Saadi or Saadian may derive from Arabic sa'ada meaning happiness or salvation.

Others think it derives from the name Bani Zaydan or that it was given to the Bani Zaydan (Sharif of Tagmadert) by later generations and rivals for power, who tried to deny their Hassanid descent by claiming that they came from the family of Halimah Saadiyya, Muhammad's wet nurse.

In any case, the Saadi have begun to render Sufism respectable in the Maghreb.

At the beginning of the reign of the Saadi Sultan Mohammed ash-Sheikh in 1554, he makes Marrakech his capital.

The Moroccans, who are allied with the Spanish, occupy the city of Tlemcen while the Ottomans are occupied in the siege of Oran.

The harbor of Mostaganem had been captured by the Spanish from the Muslims in 1506. The harbor became part of numerous Spanish possession on the North African coast that had been captured since 1496: Melilla (1496), Mers-el-Kebir (1505), Oran (1509), Bougie (1510), Tripoli (1510), Algiers, Cherchell, Dellys, and Tenes.

Mostaganem had in 1516 been seized by Hayreddin Barbarossa from his base atAlgiers, who then strengthened its defenses; the city then became a rival of Oran.

Barbarossa had from 1519 placed himself under the protection of the Ottomans, thereby transforming Mostaganem into an Ottoman dominion.

Previous Spanish expeditions had taken place in 1543 and 1547, which failed as the Spanish forces were repulsed and then pursued in retreat by Turkish and tribal forces.

The expedition of 1558 to retake Mostaganem from the Ottomans follows a string of Ottoman successes in the Mediterranean, especially with the Siege of Tripoli in 1551, and the evacuation of Al-Mahdiyeh by the Spaniards.

Concurrently, the corsairs of Barbary are operating from their base in Algiers.

The Ottomans had in 1557 demanded the submission of Morocco to the Ottoman Empire, but had murdered the Moroccan ruler Mohammed ash-Sheikh, who was collaborating with Spain, when he refused.

The Ottomans under Hasan Pasha, the son of Barbarossa and ruler of Algiers, had in March 1558 invaded the Moroccan territory toward Fez, but were stopped at the indecisive Battle of Wadi al-Laban just north of the city.

The Ottomans retreat when they learn about Spanish preparations for an offensive in Oran.

An elite contingent, numbering sixty-five hundred, had been dispatched from Málaga by Philip II of Spain, and concentrated at the Spanish base of Oran to join local Spanish troops and the Moroccan Goum troops of the Caïd of Tlemcen, Abdallah al-Ghalib.

They had departed from Oran on August 22 or 26, 1558.

The Spanish expedition attacks Mostaganem but is repulsed.

With supplies running low, they learn that Hasan Pasha is arriving from Algiers with a relief force of about six thousand troops.

This leads to a panicked retreat by the Spanish troops.

In the end, around twelve thousand Spanish soldiers are taken prisoner.

Count Alcaudete, Governor of Oran, dies in the expedition; his son Don Martín de Córdoba, himself future Governor of Oran, is also captured in the disaster and will be imprisoned as a Christian slave in Algiers under the beylerbey Hasan Pasha, until he is exchanged for the huge ransom of twenty-three thossand escudos.

The failure of the expedition of Mostaganem ends attempts at a grand alliance between Spain and Morocco against the common Ottoman enemy.