The Arma people is an ethnic group of the middle Niger River valley, descended from Moroccan invaders of the 16th century.
[citation needed] The 1590 expedition sent to conquer the Songhai Empire trade routes by the Saadi dynasty of Morocco was made up of four thousand Moroccan, Morisco refugees and European renegades.
After the destruction of the Songhai Empire in 1591, the Moroccans settled into Djenné, Gao, Timbuktu and the larger towns of the Niger River bend .
In cities like Timbuktu, the men of the 1591 expedition intermarried with the Songhai, became small scale independent rulers, and some of their descendants came to be identified as minor dynasties of their own right.
By the end of the 17th century, Bambara, Tuareg, Fula, and other forces came to control empires and city-states in the region, leaving the Arma as a mere ethnicity.