Saharan

The Saharan languages are a small Nilo-Saharan family of the eastern Sahara, stretching from southern Libya and north-western Sudan through Chad and eastern Niger to north-eastern Nigeria. Its chief members are Kanuri around Lake Chad, the Tebu tongues and Zaghawa.

Kanuri was the language of the Kanem-Bornu empire, founded around 700, which accepted Islam in the eleventh century, peaked under Dunama II in the thirteenth century, and after losing Kanem in the fourteenth century re-established itself in Bornu, peaking again under Idris Alooma in the late 1500s. Kanuri was written in the Arabic-based ajami script.

The Tebu and Zaghawa remained largely nomadic pastoralists whose tongues were seldom written. Songhay, also grouped here, is the language of Gao, Timbuktu and the Songhai empire; its place within Nilo-Saharan is disputed, though some linguists unite it with Saharan as a Songhay-Saharan branch.