People or land · The Tubu of the Tibesti and Borkou · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Teda of the Tibesti

The Teda clans of the Tibesti mountains, the highest ground of the Sahara, hold its valleys, palm groves and wells clan by clan, and range out to the oases of the north (on the Maghreb sheet) and to the Borkou and Kawar.

Later the Tumagra clan supplied the derde, their spiritual head and judge. Nothing is recorded for 1200.

Who holds it

Title
clan elders; the later derde of the Tumagra
Confidence
low

The derde office is not dated; not assumed for 1200.

How things stand that morning

Independent clans.

Customs

Each clan owns its oases, pastures and wells; disputes settled by elders and blood payment; a craft caste (Aza) of smiths and leatherworkers.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Later ethnography; early Arabic mentions of the people only.

On the map: Cut at the sheet's northern edge.

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

  1. 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)
  2. 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.