Kingdoms of Central Africa - Duguwa / Zaghawa

The pre-history of Africa contains a far longer period of human habitation than any other area on Earth, thanks to it being the cradle of humankind's evolution. Much of this pre-history involves a great deal of uncertainty in which small windows of opportunity to view events can be gained through archaeology. Even more recent prehistory is shrouded in uncertainty, requiring analysis and archaeology to help define it.

Central Africa around the area of today's Central African Republic (or CAR) was poorly defined as a region until the creation of colonial-era territories in the eighteenth century. To its north, though, in what is now Chad, there existed the longstanding Kanem-Bornu empire which came in two main phases, with Kanem emerging first on the southern edge of the medieval kingdom of Duguwa, and then Bornu succeeding it in the late fourteenth century.

Referring to Duguwa as a kingdom may be misleading though, perhaps suggesting more formal borders and a more formal social structure than may in fact have been the case. It emerged in the Tibesti highlands, beyond the Bodele depression in what is now northern Chad. It was driven by nomadic pastoralist settlement there and intruded at least partially into the Sao civilisation.

Its eventual territory intruded across the modern Sudanese western border and touched the modern Libyan southern border, but was separated from coastal Libya by the Libya Desert. The medieval kingdom of Dongola lay to its east in the seventh and eighth centuries.

It was established by a division of Berber nomads who were (and are) known as the Zaghawa or Zakhawa, alternatively shown as the Beri or Kegi, while the Kanem empire refers to them as the Duguwa or Dugoura. The state's early structure may have been very informal or subject to change. It appears to have existed since at least the seventh century. In its later days it was especially influential between about AD 1000-1350, but its rulers by then would appear to have been the rulers of Kanem, revealing a transfer of power along the way.

There exists almost no data about the region prior to the European colonial period, although the Zaghawa exist to this day as an identifiable Berber ethnic group. They now reside across south-western Libya, north-eastern Chad, and western Sudan, including in the Darfur area.

The medieval Arab geographer, Ya'qubi, wrote of them as the 'Zaghawa who live in a place called Kanem', before listing a series of kingdoms they ruled which were more probably localised strongholds or territories than formal kingdoms. In fact they appear to have held an informal form of hegemony over a series of smaller societies (the 'kingdoms' in question) which covered the Sahel between Lake Chad and the Nile valley states of Alodia, Makuria, and Nobatia.

These latter states were trading with the Toubou and Zaghawa during the first millennium AD, with modern opinion regarding these as two branches of the same people. Early Arabic accounts describe the Zaghawa as 'black nomads', while the twelfth century geographer, Muhammad al-Idrisi, and Yaqut al-Hamawi of the thirteenth century both gave them an oasis-centred system which also focussed on the towns of Anjimi (Njimi,or N'jimi), Kanem, and Manan.

Manan, however, may have been adopted as the capital of the early Kanem state by 1270, according to ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi. Zaghawa people may have continued to occupy the town though, even after the Sayfawa dynasty converted to Islam and conquered the region before moving their capital to Njimi. As with the rulers of Kanem with whom the Duguwa shared many connection points, its rulers were known as mais (singular mai).

The Zaghawa were also important in the Islamicisation of Kanem, the city and the empire, in AD 1085. They would most likely have been Islamicised themselves via 'Ifriqiyya and the Maghreb' Islamic influences to their north.

African Kingdoms

Central Africa

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