Dikwa

Dikwa lies in the semi-arid country of Bornu, southwest of Lake Chad, where a short wet season alternates with a much longer dry period. This is flat grassland where settlement depends on dependable water, pasture and routes across the plain. The people of the plain were the Kanuri, whose rulers governed the Kanem–Bornu Empire. From the late fifteenth century its capital was Ngazargamu, west of the lake, and the empire reached the height of its power under Mai Idris Alooma in the late sixteenth century.

In 1808 Fulani forces took Ngazargamu. The scholar and leader Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi drove them back and in 1814 founded a new capital at Kukawa, from where his dynasty ruled Bornu as shehus. Pastoralists with cattle and herds, farmers growing millet and sorghum, and fishing communities on the lake margins shared this plain, and caravans crossing the Sahara brought salt, cloth and horses to its markets.