Gao

The city on the eastern bend of the Niger River, in what is now Mali, that grew rich on the trans-Saharan trade and became the capital of the Songhai Empire — the largest state in the history of West Africa — ruled from here by the askias at their height around 1500, and remembered above all by the great earthen pyramid-tomb of King Askia Muhammad.

Everyone has heard of Timbuktu. Far fewer have heard of Gao, the city a few days downriver that actually held the power. Timbuktu had the books. Gao had the throne. From this river port on the eastern bend of the Niger, the kings of Songhai ruled the largest empire West Africa has ever known. And in Gao still stands the monument they left behind: a stepped pyramid of mud, the tomb of a king whose empire stretched across the middle Niger and deep into the Sahelian trade world.