Ngazargamu

Birni Ngazargamu was the great capital of Bornu, west of Lake Chad and near the meeting of the Komadugu Gana and Komadugu Yobe rivers. A vast earthen rampart enclosed the city, and red-brick buildings stood within its walls. Situated near the southern ends of trans-Saharan routes and a salt-producing region, it became a meeting place for merchants from across the central Sudan and beyond.

After the Sayfawa rulers lost Njimi east of Lake Chad, dynastic conflict left them without a secure permanent capital. In the later fifteenth century Mai Ali Gaji consolidated his power and established Ngazargamu as a new seat. By the seventeenth century its markets drew caravans from Tunis, Tripoli, Cairo, Timbuktu and other distant centres, bringing goods that included books, weapons, textiles and copperware. The city's long life as a capital ended during the Fulani wars. Captured and destroyed in 1808, it briefly received Mai Dunama again after he rallied his forces with the help of Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi. When another army approached in 1809, Dunama fled; though the invasion was eventually repelled, he did not return to the threatened city.