Ahmad may have used the Timbuktu raid to export troublesome soldiers

Evidence

One wonders (and this is purely speculation) whether for Ahmad one of the merits of his Timbuktu enterprise may not have been that it removed so many rootless fighting men far from the heart of his empire and busied them with tasks far away in the south. (And there indeed, after Jaudar’s return, they proceeded to fight one another in wars that recall the internecine strife that took place in the sixteenth century in Peru between equally insubordinate factions of conquistadors.) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1602

Categorization

• QUESTION: Purely speculative reading — worth chasing whether scholars have found evidence for colonial-expedition-as-safety-valve reasoning in Moroccan court records.