SONGHAY UNDER ASKIA THE GREAT 209 A very great trade was done both here and at Kagho in cotton, which was exchanged for European cloth. Unfortunately their relative value is not mentioned. We are told only that the money price of fine European cloth was reckoned at fifteen ducats an ell, and for scarlet of Venice or Turkey cloth, Leo says they would give as much as thirty ducats an ell. In Kagho he says that it was " a wonder to see what plenty of merchandise is daily brought hither, and how costly and sumptuous all things be." Marmol, who wrote about thirty years later than Leo, specially dwells upon the cotton trade of Jenne, Melle, Timbuctoo, Gober, Kano, Zamfara, and Bornu. Both Leo and Marmol, who are worth quoting, as being writers professedly antagonistic to the Soudan, speak of the great trade done in manuscripts and written books from Barbary, which, they say, **are sold for more money than any other merchandise " ; and Leo was at least so far aware of the literary life of Timbuctoo as to note that " Here are great store of doctors, judges, priests, and other learned men."

It is interesting and remarkable that while Timbuctoo undoubtedly dominated the life of the Songhay Empire, and was the first town of the Soudan, many other towns are almost equally noticed by travellers for their trade and for the learning of which they were the centre. Marmol, writing in the reign of Askia Daouad, speaks of Melle as not only rich in trade but also in learning, having its own schools of science and religion. The writers of Timbuctoo themselves make frequent allusions to learned doctors of Melle, Aiwalatin, Jenn6, and Katsena. In Masina also there were an "immense number of distinguished men of letters and divines." Even the far distant Tekadda is named as the seat in which El Mocheili chose to establish his school, when, as a consequence of his fanatical hatred of the Jews, he was driven from the western part of the Soudan.

Marmol says that in his day Songhay was the lano