Kousseri

Who holds it

Title

town ruler

Confidence

low

No Sao ruler is named for any town in 1200.

Lord in 1200

Its own Sao ruler (not known)

How things stand that morning

A Sao mound settlement of the lower Logone and Chari, independent of Kanem (inferred).

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Archaeology of the Sao mounds, mostly undated in detail, and Kotoko tradition.

Primary sources for Sao

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