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

Faya

The Borkou depression is a chain of palm groves and springs, Faya the largest, worked by the Daza and their dependants.

The groves lie on the road from Kanem up the Bahr el Ghazal toward the Tibesti and Kufra. Not recorded near 1200.

Who holds it

Title
clan elders
Confidence
low

Lord in 1200

Daza clans

How things stand that morning

Daza palm groves.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Later geography only.

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)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.