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This book looks into the interplay between different social groups that existed on the Middle Niger Bend between 1549 to 1660. The groups mainly under scrutiny are Muslim traders and scholars - the "Ulema" and the worldly lords that ran the polities that had laid claim to the region of the Middle Niger Bend; first the Askyas, then the Arma. The changing relationships between these different groups and of individuals within them are analysed within the wider historical background of the rise and fall of the Songhay Empire and the subsequent takeover of the region by the Moroccan Arma that had conquered the heart of the Middle Niger Bend in 1591. This work explores the interaction between the groups through the framework of honour, religion and ancestry and traces the initially successful cooperation between rulers, traders and scholars to its breakdown and the final social disintegration of the Middle Niger Bend.

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