CHAPTER XII MORABITE CONQUEST OF THE SOUDAN It will be remembered that the population of the Desert Kingdom was composed of united Berber tribes, whose occupation of the desert was of immemorial antiquity. The united tribes were ruled, in the very healthy part of Africa which spreads inward from the Atlantic coast to the Sahara, by hereditary Berber kings. It has already been mentioned that Tiloutan, who died in 837 a.d., was one of the first of these to exact tribute from the black kingdoms of the Western Soudan, and that his descendant, Tin Yeroutan, was ruling in Audoghast between the years 961 and 971. This Berber rule having been overthrown by the black monarch of Ghana, it was by an act of natural retribution, when the Almoravides formed themselves into a religious fighting force in the heart of the desert kingdom, that one of the first incidents of their Holy War was the sack of Audoghast and its restoration to Berber rule. But the taking of Audoghast was indicative of a movement which was in some sort to decide the fate of the Desert Kingdom. At the moment at which El Bekri wrote, this ancient kingdom was about to divide itself permanently into two sections, of which one, moving northwards under the Morabite commanders, was to renew the power of Africa upon the throne of Spain, while the other, breaking away from its brethren of the north, was to follow the road suggested to its armies by the taking of Audoghast ; and, having carried the banners of the Crescent from the shores of the Atlantic to the Nile, was to scatter itself eventually in divided communities along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The Desert Kingdom itself dis-107