Bilala

The Bilala, self-styled Balala, are Muslim farmers of central Chad around Lake Fitri in Batha, their capital at Yao. They first appear in the fourteenth century as rivals of Kanem's Sayfawa dynasty: allied with the Toubou, they killed the mai Dawud and seized Kanem, forcing its court to relocate to Bornu.

Their rulers took the title of sultan, building a kingdom Egyptian chanceries treated as equal to the Sayfawa, and Leo Africanus in the sixteenth century ranked their state, Gaoga, among the three great kingdoms of the Sudan. The Sayfawa retook Kanem in the early sixteenth century under Idris Katagarmabe, leaving the Bilala to govern it as a province. Idris Alooma subdued their revolts later in the century.

Around 1630 Wadai drove them out, and the Bilala migrated east to Lake Fitri, founding the Sultanate of Yao, where they grew cotton and millet.