The Tubu of the Tibesti and Borkou

Who rules

Name

None. No Tubu chief is named in any source for about 1200

Title

no single ruler: clan heads and lineage elders

Since

-

Family

The Teda of the Tibesti and the northern oases, the Daza of the Borkou, the Bahr el Ghazal and northern Kanem; 'Tubu' is the Kanembu name for both (Lange).

Confidence

low

The derde, the spiritual head and judge drawn from the Tumagra (Tomaghra) clan of the Tibesti, is attested only much later and is not assumed for 1200. The Tomaghra are named by Lange as a nomad clan whose women were chief wives of the kings of Kanem in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Overlord

None in the Tibesti and Borkou. Clans near Kanem are bound to the mai by marriage and service rather than by any recorded tribute.

What the realm holds

• The Tibesti mountains with their valley palm groves and wells (Teda; see Teda of the Tibesti)
• The Borkou palm groves and the Djourab and Bodele margins down to the northern Bahr el Ghazal (Daza; see Daza of the Borkou)
• The Djado oases and the deserts round Kawar to the Mangueni plateau (Teda; see Teda of the Djado)
• Wells and passages on the Kanem-Fezzan and Borkou-Kufra roads

How it was acquired

Ancient occupation of the eastern Sahara; their clan histories are later oral tradition.

Allies and rivals

Allies: the Sayfawa house of Kanem through marriage. Rivals: caravans and oasis towns they raid; the Zaghawa to the east (realm peoples); later Kanem itself (Dunama Dibalemi's Tubu war, after 1210). One modern reading (reported on Wikipedia's Hummay page) has some Tubu breaking from Kanem's rule and moving east over the spread of Islam in the later eleventh century.

The realm that morning

On 1 January 1200 the Tubu clans are free of any recorded overlord in the Tibesti, the Borkou and the Djado; those on Kanem's northern edge are tied to the royal house by marriage. North of the sheet (above about 22.4 N) the Tibesti and the roads to the Fezzan and Kufra continue on the Maghreb sheet (realm tubu).

Wealth

Camels, goats, the dates of the Borkou and Tibesti valleys, salt and natron, the hire and plunder of caravans.

Military

Camel-riding raiders; mountain refuges in the Tibesti. No numbers recorded.

Threats

• Drought
• Kanem's later attempts to subject them (after 1210)

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

1. 1200No dated event recorded.Depends on: - Stopped by: -

Later, on the likely course

1. after about 1210Dunama Dibalemi's long war with the Tubu (tradition: seven years, seven months and seven days).Depends on: Dunama's accession and his turn from the nomad alliance to the settled clans. Stopped by: Continued royal marriages and alliance.

Where the sources disagree

• Wikipedia's Hummay page and Lange differ on when Tubu clans drew away from Kanem: Hummay's reign (eleventh century) or Dunama Dibalemi's (thirteenth). For 1200 the marriage ties of the last three mais argue for alliance.

Evidence: Brief mentions in Arabic geographers, the Diwan's notes on the mais' mothers, and later ethnography.

On the map: Clan ranges overlap and move; the outlines are the mountain and oasis countries the clans used, not borders.

Primary sources for this realm

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