A Bornocentric World

We here at the blog cannot recommend a book more passionately than Du lac Tchad à La Mecque by Rémi Dewière. Using primarily the chronicles of Ahmad b. Furtu, a French captive's writings on Borno who was enslaved in Tripoli in the 17th century, plus a variety of other local and external sources on on Borno, Dewière's study shows what can be accomplished with new theoretical models that reconsider our unfortunately limited primary source materials. By situating Borno in a Braudelian Sahara and trans-Sahelian context, one can gain new insights into the nature of the Borno sultanate's development as the dominant power in the "Central Sudan" and Lake Chad Basin. The text introduces us to the geography, climate, ecology, seasonal nature of trans-Saharan trade, shifts in Islamic practice and shifting legitimating ideologies of the Sefuwa dynasty to elucidate how Borno's rulers from the 1500s to early 1700s engaged with the wider world. Naturally, much of the story here focuses on Idris Alooma and successors like Ali ibn Umar in the 17th century, but the analysis encompasses earlier and later moments in the long-lived Sefuwa house. 

Most significantly for us, the analysis includes Borno's relations with lands further east, connecting "Sudanic" Africa from the Senegal River to the Red Sea. Of course, much more work remains to be done by archaeologists and historians eager to explore this topic, but this important book on Borno at its apogee includes some theories on the nature of trade and cultural exchange between Borno and lands further east, such as the Funj Sultanate and Ethiopia. While the "Sudanic" pilgrim route was probably already in practice by the later period encompassed in the study, we hoped there would be additional sources that could shed light on this intriguing dilemma. For such an approach, however, one would probably have to contextualize the history of Kanem, Bagirmi, Wadai, Darfur and the Kordan from 1500-1710. So, a future book awaits researchers eager to connect the entirety of the "Bilad al-Sudan" and center this "Sudanic" context for the history of Africa. The primary obstacle would be the paucity of surviving records to illuminate this, since the external Arabic sources usually prioritize trans-Saharan over trans-Sahelian contacts. Either way, the oral traditions referenced in the study suggest Kanem-Borno played a key role as a brigde between the Eastern and Western "Sudan," with villages in Darfur believed to have been established by people from Borno. Indeed, the Banī Dāwud of the Sefuwa dynasty may have settled there after the dynastic squabbles in the 15th century, if oral traditions can be reliable here. 

While we still wish something akin to Dewière was applied to the Sefuwa dynasty's earlier Kanem period, one must accept the limitation of the sources and hope for archaeology to shed light on early Kanem and its role in the premodern world. We here, through our own speculative reading of the external Arabic sources on Kanem and Nubia, tend to think migrations and trade between the Eastern and Western "Sudan" was already in place. Kanem may very well have already been the dominant cultural and political influence in the lands between Lake Chad and the Nile through the "Zaghawa" and the "Taju." Perhaps later polities like Uri, Wadai, and Darfur (and its previous dynasties) reflect an earlier influence from Kanem that intersected with Christian Nubia. Perhaps, for all we know, the Sefuwa rulers in Borno were continuing the political and cultural agenda of their forebears.