Baguirmi

Baguirmi, whose speakers call it tar barma, belongs to the Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi group of the Central Sudanic family, whose languages spread from South Sudan through the Central African Republic into southern Chad. It was the language of the kingdom founded around 1522 south-east of Lake Chad, with its stone-palace capital at Massenya on the upper Chari.

The sultanate was for much of its history a tributary of Bornu, whose ruler Idris Alooma conquered it around 1580. Under Mbang Abdullah the court adopted Islam, though the countryside kept its older rites.

Muhammad al-Amin, reigning from 1751 to 1785, threw off Bornu overlordship, but in 1805 Wadai sacked Massenya and carried off tens of thousands into slavery, reducing Baguirmi to a tributary. The state sent captives, eunuchs, ivory and cotton north to trans-Saharan markets.