Maroua

Maroua grew beside the Mandara foothills, near the meeting of the Kaliao and Tsanaga watercourses. Its hill and the sandy riverbeds offered a setting for settlement in a country where water could lie just beneath the surface in the dry season. Giziga communities held the town before Fulbe forces and their allies contested it in the late eighteenth century.

Between 1792 and 1794, Mal Biiri and his allies drove the Bi-Marva chief from the town. He remained its master for sixteen years after this victory. Modibo Damagaran, imam from 1801, sought to build Maroua into a religious centre, attracting learned men and establishing settlements around it. The city’s neighbourhoods reflected the rival claims of powerful families and officials as a new order took shape.