Mandara

The Mandara, who call themselves the Wandala, are a Chadic-speaking people of the iron-rich Mandara Mountains across northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria. Their smiths formed endogamous castes. Tradition remembers a kingdom founded around 1500 by the ruler Soukda and the hunter Gaya; it appears on Fra Mauro's map of 1459 and was described by Leo Africanus in 1526 as Medra.

About 1580 the war leader Sankre moved the capital to Dulo, and in 1614 the Borno emperor Idris Alooma installed his candidate as king. Around 1715 King Bukar Aji took the title of sultan after Muslim visitors converted him, and Islamisation continued through the century.

Under Bukar Guiana, who ruled from 1773 to 1828, Mandara defeated Borno about 1781 and drew tribute from some fifteen chiefdoms. In 1809 it repelled the Fulani jihad of Modibo Adama, though renewed raids weakened it thereafter.