caa a22 4500 38634387X CHVBK 20180307111804.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198907 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0021853700024099 doi S0021853700024099 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0021853700024099 Lange Dierk University of Bayreuth Preliminaires pour une histoire des Sao [Elektronische Daten] [Dierk Lange] The identity of the Sao to the south of Lake Chad has remained obscure despite the efforts of archaeologists, ethnographers and historians. To solve the problem, it is necessary to look at the historical circumstances in which they passed into legend as the ancestors of the present occupants of the region, namely the creation of the empire of Borno to the west and south of the lake in place of Kanem to the north-east. The conflicts involved in this creation lasted from the beginning of the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, and produced the main historical references to the Sao apart from oral tradition, always as enemies of the new rulers among the native population. The first applies to the fourteenth century, but all the others are from the contemporary record of the campaigns of Mai Idrīs Alauma by Ibn Furū in the sixteenth century, where we learn of the Sao-Gafata in the neighbourhood of the Bornoan capital Gazargamo, and of the Sao-Tatala on the flood-plain southwest of the lake. Elsewhere on the flood-plain, the various peoples are referred to by recognisably modern names: Ngama, Makari, Kotoko. It seems probable that in the work of Ibn Furū we find the last use of a term which the incoming Kanembu had originally used to describe all the inhabitants of their new Bornoan dominions, then employed as an adjective for each particular population, until with the suppression of the Sao-Gafata and Sao-Tatala it was abandoned except as the name of a legendary people ancestral to Kanuri and non-Kanuri groups alike. The most probable explanation of the term itself is that it meant ‘city' or ‘city-dwellers', describing the inhabitants of the walled villages or towns of the flood-plain as perceived by their conquerors the Sayfuwa rulers of Kanem-Borno at the outset of their imperial adventure. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989 The Journal of African History Cambridge University Press 30/2(1989-07), 189-210 0021-8537 30:2<189 1989 30 AFH https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700024099 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700024099 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Lange Dierk University of Bayreuth NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- The Journal of African History Cambridge University Press 30/2(1989-07), 189-210 0021-8537 30:2<189 1989 30 AFH CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge