Kanembu

The Kanembu, whose name means the people of Kanem, are a Saharan-language people of Lake Chad and the core population of the old Kanem Empire. They settled in Kanem in the late twelfth century, trading salt, ivory and slaves across the Sahara.

Their rulers, the mai, became Muslims in the eleventh century, and under Mai Dunama Dabbalemi of the Sayfawa dynasty, who reigned from 1221 to 1259, Kanem conquered the Fezzan and the Hausa borderlands. In the fourteenth century Bilala attacks drove the Sayfawa court west to Bornu, where Kanembu settlers intermarried with local peoples and their descendants became known as the Kanuri.

Kanem was later recovered by Mai Idris Katagarmabe. The reunited empire flourished under Idris Alooma in the late sixteenth century. After the Fula jihads the Sayfawa gave way to the al-Kanemi shehus, while the Kanembu remained merchants in the Chad basin.