194 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY from the sons and nephews of the kings. Oriental history has demonstrated that such a system has its serious inconveniences, and the Soudan was no exception to the rule, for if on the one hand the honours of the kingdom were opened freely to the best blood of every province, the system also created an excessive number of claimants for all preferment, and gave rise to labyrinths of intrigue, which not infrequently upset for personal motives the wisest plans. Successions were too often accompanied by the private murder or public massacre of superfluous co-heirs.

After the campaign against Borgu, which would appear to have been very severe, there followed further campaigns against Melle, and in 1512 there arose in the West a Fulani false prophet, Tayenda, against whom the Askia marched with success. Tayenda was killed. His son Kalo fled with the remnant of his troops to the Fouta Djallon, a country which at that time belonged to the Djolfs, and founded a second Fulani kingdom, which continued to exist even after the Moorish conquest of the Soudan. Towards the end of the same year, 151 2, the Askia marched into the Haussa states.

The very meagre account which we have of the campaigns which appear to have occupied his troops in that region for the next few years, constitute the first mention of any importance of the Haussa States from the point of view of the Songhay Empire. These states, which at the present day constitute the greater part of Northern Nigeria, have a history of their own which dates back as far as that of Songhay itself.

At the time of the Askia's conquests in the first half of the sixteenth century they were an agricultural and commercial people who, situated as they were between the two powerful empires of Songhay on the one hand and Bornu on the other, had already suffered the tide of conquest to sweep over them more than once in the course of their long existence. Yet always as the waters of war subsided, they had emerged with independence, and by means partly of a not despicable courage and partly of