Teda clans herd and trade in the deserts east and north of the Kawar escarpment, on the Djado plateau and toward the Mangueni and the Tibesti, using the Djado oases and the wells of the Fezzan road.
Who holds it
- Title
- clan elders
- Confidence
- low
Overlord
None recorded
How things stand that morning
Self-governing clans; Kawar's oasis towns south of them are drawn under Kanem.
Customs
As for the Tibesti Teda.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Later ethnography only.
On the map: Rough outline.
Primary sources for Tubu
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- The Diwan of the Sultans of Bornu (the Sayfawa king list) (kept and extended to the nineteenth century; Lange argues its core was first written down in the thirteenth century). A list of the Sayfawa mais with reign lengths, parentage, mothers' names and burial places, and the odd event.
- The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia: Toubou people (Teda and Daza, clans with their own oases, pastures and wells, the derde of the Tumagra, the Aza craft caste, earliest mentions by Ibn Qutayba and al-Khwarizmi)
- UNESCO General History of Africa III, ch. 15 (Lange and Barkindo), pp. 315, 460, 471: al-Idrisi's Zaghawa camel nomads reaching the Fezzan and Kawar; 'Tubu' as the Kanembu term for the Teda-Daza; royal marriages with the Tomaghra and Tubu
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.