Saharan

Saharan is the game's grouping for Nilo-Saharan vernaculars of the eastern Sahara and Lake Chad belt. The Saharan family includes the Teda and Daza speech of the Toubou, Zaghawa, the Naba tongue of the Bilala, and the Kanuri-Kanembu continuum; the Maban tongues of eastern Chad form a separate but related branch.

Kanembu served the empire of Kanem, founded around 700 at Njimi. Its Sayfawa rulers adopted Islam in the 1000s, and the mai Dunama II Dibalemi controlled the trans-Saharan routes to the Fezzan in the 1200s; Kanembu was later written in Arabic Ajami script.

Around 1380 the Bilala drove the Sayfawa from Njimi, and the court re-established itself in Bornu. Idris Alooma carried Kanem-Bornu to its peak in the late 1500s as court Kanembu merged into Kanuri. The Maba under Abd al-Karim overthrew the Tunjur in 1635 and built the Wadai sultanate around Wara.