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

Djado

Djado is a cluster of ruined fortified villages (ksour) and palm groves on the Djado plateau north-west of Kawar, off the main Kanem-Fezzan road; Lange suggests it may have served the road to Ouargla.

The ksour are undated; local tradition gives them to earlier builders. For 1200 nothing is recorded.

Who holds it

Title
headman
Confidence
low

Lord in 1200

Not known; Teda country

How things stand that morning

An oasis of the Teda country, outside any recorded rule.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Undated ruins and a remark by Lange.

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. 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.