Duguwa

Duguwa is the name of the dynasty that ruled over the empire of Kanem in the Lake Chad region from the beginning until 1068 AD .

Immigrants of the crumbling Assyrian Empire: 600 BC Chr.

It was initially assumed that the Duguwa were direct ancestors of the Sefuwa-Humewa and, despite the lack of synchronisms, dated them directly to the time before. However, in the 9th century AD, Al-Ya'qubi mentions a king Kak.rh, who does not appear in the divan . According to recent research, the first ten king names of the divan do not denote the pre-Islamic sacral kings Kanems, but kings of the ancient Near East. They obviously served to provide clues about the history of the immigrants who came to the Kanem state around 600 BC. Established as the successor state of the collapsed Assyrian Empire west of Lake Chad.

First dynasty of Kanems: descendants of ancient oriental kings of Babylonian tradition

The Arabic royal chronicle Diwan dates Duku, the ancestor of the Duguwa, together with Sef, the ancestor of the Sefuwa , to the time of the biblical patriarch Abraham . It has the sequence Sef, Abraham (Arabic: Ibrahim), Duku. Due to their descent from Sef and Duku , the Duguwa can actually be referred to as Sefuwa-Duguwa. The Arab geographers mention the ruling class led by the Duguwa under the name Zaghawa and thus suggest a certain similarity with other historical Zaghawa of western and central Sudan. However, the historically attested Zaghawa, in contrast to today's Zaghawa on the border between Chad and Sudan, were not nomads.

Abd-al-Jalil was the only king of the Duguwa mentioned in the Diwan who actually ruled in Kanem. His reign extended from 1064 to 1068. As part of Islamization , the Sefuwa-Duguwa were overthrown by the Sefuwa-Humewa in 1068 AD . Gradually marginalized, they now survive in the blacksmith caste of the same name in Kanem east of Lake Chad.

Table of the Duguwa kings: 600 BC Chr. To 1068 AD

Duguwa kings

Name of the king	Outdated dating	Historical name and date	identity
Sef	about 700	Sargon of Akkad (2334-2279)	Founder of the Akkadian Empire
Ibrahim	approx. 740	Abraham	Legendary patriarch of Israel
Dugu	approx. 785	Hammurabi (1792-1750)	Founder of the Amorite Empire
Fune	circa 835	Pûl / Tiglat-pileser III. (744-727)	Founder of the New Assyrian Empire
Arsu	approx. 893	Rusâ / Ursâ I (730-713)	6. King of Urartu
Katur	circa 942	Kutir-Nahhunte I. (1730-1700)	22. King of Elam
Buyuma	approx. 961	Bunuma-Addu (c. 1770)	1. King of Nihrija / Nairi
Bulu	circa 1019	Nabupolassar (626-605)	1st New Babylonian King
Arku	circa 1035	Assur-Uballit II (612-609)	Last king of Assyria
Shu	circa 1077	Sammuramat	Regent at the beginning of the reign of Adad-nīrārī III. (810-783)
unknown	?	?	?
Abd al-Jalil / Selma	circa 1081	First king of the Duguwa: 1064-8	After Kak.rh Kanems was the first known king

literature

• Edouard Conte: Marriage Patterns, Political Change and the Perpetuation of Social Inequality in South Kanem (Chad) , Paris 1983.
• Dierk Lange: Le Dīwān des sultans du Kanem-Bornu , Wiesbaden 1977.

- The founding of Kanem by Assyrian Refugees approx. 600 BCE: Documentary, Linguistic, and Archaeological Evidence (PDF file; 1.53 MB), Boston, Working Papers in African Studies N ° 265, 2011.

• Nehemia Levtzion, John Hopkins: Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History , Cambridge 1981.
• Abdullahi Smith: The early states of the Central Sudan , In: J. Ajayi, M. Crowder (eds.), History of West Africa , Volume I, 1st edition, London, 1971, 158-183.
• Yves Urvoy: L'empire du Bornou , Paris 1949.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Urvoy, Empire , 26; Smith, "Early States," 167.
2. ↑ Levtzion / Hopkins, Corpus , 21; Lange, Diwan , 66–67.
3. ↑ Lange: Founding of Kanem (PDF file; 1.53 MB), 27–35.
4. ↑ Lange: Founding of Kanem (PDF file; 1.53 MB), 7–8, 39.
5. ↑ Levtzion / Hopkins, Corpus , 21, 116, 119-120, 171.
6. ^ Lange, Founding of Kanem , 35.
7. ^ Conte, Patterns , 89-105.
8. ↑ Urvoy: Empire , p. 26.
9. ↑ Lange: Founding of Kanem (PDF file; 1.53 MB), pp. 13-18.