Book excerpt: Some 500 years ago, Askiya Muhammad founded the Songhay Dynasty of the Askiyas, which flourished for more than a century in Sahelian West Africa. The Timbuktu-based scribe al hajj Mahmud Kati was a close friend of Askiya Mohammed - and the Tarikh al fattash gives an eyewitness account of his empire, told from the perspective of a key participant. Long valued as one of the most important historical documents of the African medieval world, Kati's account is also a literary achievement that is comparable to the writings of figures like Chaucer, Rabelais and Montaigne.