The Tarikh al-fattash is a West African chronicle that provides an account of the Songhai Empire from the reign of Sunni Ali (ruled 1464-1492) up to 1599 with a few references to events in the following century.

The second, which bears the title Tarikh al-fattash, is a re-written forgery produced early in the 19th century by Nūḥ b. al-Ṭāhir but which claims Kati as its author.

[6] After Octave Houdas and Maurice Delafosse had completed a translation of the Tarikh al-fattash they received a further manuscript that had been acquired by the French traveller Albert Bonnel de Mézières in Timbuktu in September 1913.

The biographical information for Mahmud Kati (in Manuscript C only) suggests that he was born in 1468, while the other important 17th century chronicle, the Tarikh al-Sudan, gives the year of his death (or someone with the same name) as 1593.

[11] In 1971 the historian Nehemia Levtzion published an article in which he argued that Manuscript C was a forgery produced during the time of Seku Amadu in the first quarter of the 19th century.

Unfortunately the modern study of the Tarikh al-fattash is handicapped by the disappearance of the Arabic manuscript corresponding to Appendix 2 of the French translation.

[14][15][16] This reinterpretation has become widely accepted among historians of West Africa, although its impact on existing understandings of history is still being debated.