Tarikh al-Sudan

The Tarikh al-Sudan (Arabic: تاريخ السودان Tārīkh as-Sūdān; also Tarikh es-Sudan, "History of the Sudan") is a West African chronicle written in Arabic in around 1655 by the chronicler of Timbuktu, al-Sa'di. It provides the single most important primary source for the history of the Songhay Empire. It and the Tarikh al-fattash, another 17th century chronicle giving a history of Songhay, are together known as the Timbuktu Chronicles.^[1]

The author, Abderrahmane al-Sa'di, was born on 28 May 1594, and died at an unknown date sometime after 1655-56, the last date to be mentioned in his chronicle.^[2] He spent most of his life working for the Moroccan Arma bureaucracy, initially in the administration of Djenné and the massina region of the Inland Niger Delta. In 1646 he became chief secretary to the Arma administration of Timbuktu.

The early sections of the chronicle are devoted to brief histories of earlier Songhay dynasties, of the Mali Empire and of the Tuareg, and to biographies of the scholars and holymen of both Timbuktu and Djenné. The main part of the chronicle covers the history of the Songhay from the middle of the 15th century till the Moroccan invasion in 1591, and then the history of Timbuktu under Moroccan rule up to 1655. Al-Sadi rarely acknowledges his sources. For the earlier period much of his information is presumably based on oral tradition. From around 1610 the information would have been gained first hand.