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Question

Difficulty: MediumWest African Kingdoms (Ghana, Mali, Songhai)

In his sixteenth-century work *Description of Africa*, the traveler Leo Africanus wrote the following about the city of Timbuktu:

'Here are great numbers of religious judges, scholars, and priests, all of whom are well-maintained by the king's bounty. Many hand-written books imported from Barbary [North Africa] are also sold here. More profit is made from the book trade than from any other line of business.'

Based on this passage, which of the following best explains the significance of Timbuktu's scholarly community to the governance of the Songhai Empire?

  1. A
    It represents the early consolidation of the Kingdom of Ghana, showing how tenth-century rulers centralized control over trans-Saharan trade.
  2. B
    It demonstrates that West African administrative structures were entirely imported by foreign merchants, as local societies lacked the capacity to govern complex urban centers.
  3. It provided the empire with a literate administrative class supported by royal patronage, which helped facilitate centralized legal and bureaucratic rule.Answer
  4. D
    It shows how Islamic scholars successfully eradicated all traditional African religions and ancestral cosmologies, creating a single uniform culture across the region.

Answer

The option stating that the scholarly community provided the empire with a literate administrative class supported by royal patronage, which helped facilitate centralized legal and bureaucratic rule.
The correct answer explains that the scholarly community provided the empire with a literate administrative class supported by royal patronage, facilitating centralized legal and bureaucratic rule. Rulers of the Songhai Empire, such as Askia Muhammad, recognized that sustaining a literate class of judges, administrators, and scholars in centers like Timbuktu was essential for managing a vast, multi-ethnic empire and maintaining centralized bureaucratic control.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the provided historical source written by Leo Africanus.
The source details the high social and economic value placed on books and the presence of state-funded scholars, judges, and priests in Timbuktu.
Establishing the historical context and the components of Timbuktu's intellectual economy.
2
Relate the presence of a scholarly class to the administrative needs of the Songhai Empire.
Identify that a centralized state like Songhai required literate administrators, tax collectors, and judges to run its bureaucracy and legal systems.
Connecting the intellectual culture described in the passage to the mechanisms of political governance.
3
Evaluate the choices to determine the correct response and rule out distractors.
Confirm that the state-sponsored scholarly class supported centralized rule, while rejecting options that display chronological confusion, deny indigenous African agency, or mischaracterize religious transformation.
Selecting the most historically accurate and text-supported answer.

Key Concept

West African Kingdoms (Ghana, Mali, Songhai)
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

West African Kingdoms (Ghana, Mali, Songhai)

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