Manan

Manan was an early town of Kanem, the country northeast of Lake Chad. In the twelfth century al-Idrisi described it as the seat of the mai, with Njimi lying farther south. Kanem was by then a literate Muslim society whose scribes had developed their own barnāwī script, and a ruler of the thirteenth century is recorded to have gone on pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Era of Instability in the fourteenth century cost the Sayfawa their homeland, and the Bilala ruled Kanem independently until the sixteenth century. Around 1630 the Wadai Sultanate drove the Bilala out of Kanem and they fled east to Lake Fitri, which forced Bornu to intervene to secure the eastern side of Lake Chad. Tuareg invasions and a famine in the later seventeenth century weakened the empire further. In 1808 the Fulani destroyed Ngazargamu, and the scholar al-Kanemi, who defeated them near Ngala, rose to rule Bornu.

The later city of Mao lies here.