Kanem and the Zaghawa in the writings of al-Ya'qubi

Al-Ya'qubi, who served the Tahirids in Khorasan and later the Tulunids in Egypt, gathered information about distant lands from merchants and pilgrims. Writing of the peoples of the Sudan, he names the Zaghawa ‘who live in a place called Kanem’ and lists other kingdoms under Zaghawa rule; Arabic writers of the 9th–11th centuries went on calling the state both ‘the kingdom of the Zaghawa’ and Kanem. The passage is usually dated to 872, the year with which his History ends, though some writers place it in his later Book of Countries (889/890).

Kanem lay on the plains north-east of Lake Chad, at the southern end of caravan routes that ran through the Fezzan to Tripoli and towards Egypt. The state, whose origins are usually dated to about 700 (estimates range from 600 to 900), was probably founded by the Zaghawa, pastoralists from the Ennedi plateau, and came to include farmers, other nomads and iron-workers; its rulers bore the title mai, and its first capital, probably Njimi, has never been located. The early kingdom grew rich by raiding its neighbours and exporting slaves northwards in exchange for horses.

Islam probably reached the region early with trans-Saharan traders, but the rulers themselves converted only in the 11th century, when the Muslim Sayfawa dynasty replaced the older Duguwa. In the late 14th century the Sayfawa moved west of the lake to Bornu, and the state, known to historians as Kanem–Bornu, lasted until the end of the 19th century. Al-Ya'qubi’s brief notice, like al-Fazari’s mention of Ghana a century earlier, shows how the trans-Saharan trade was bringing the kingdoms of the Sahel into the knowledge of the Islamic world.