text: The highly developed states and towns of the West Sudan strongly attracted the Hamitic desert tribes, who must have looked upon the cultures of the Sudan as the Germanic tribes viewed the splendor of Rome. Time and again new invading groups seem to have made their appearance in the Sudan. In more recent times we note two major invasions, that of the desert folk known as Tuareg, and that of the ubiquitous Fulani. Driven by lust of conquest as well as by religious zeal-both tribes were ardent Moslems-they frequently  
  attacked the sultanates and emirates of the Sudan. The Tuareg limited their field of operations to the area around the Niger bend, where, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, for instance, we find them struggling with the Songhai for the possession and control of Timbuktu.