Serbewel Sultanate
The Serbewel Sultanate (also known as the Serbewel Sultanate ) was a rulership subordinate to the French colonial empire in the far north of today's Cameroon , which existed from the conquest of the region by the French (around 1915) until 1953.
After the Shua-Arab Sheikh Jaggara was the first among the local rulers of the region to join the French troops in World War I , he was later rewarded with the appointment of sultan in a sultanate created by the French colonial administrator Émile Gentil . The sultanate comprised several former, city-state-like domains of sultans of the Kotoko in the vicinity of the Serbewel River , an arm of the Logone in the delta south of Lake Chad , Goulfey , Makari , Wulki , Bodo and Afade . From today's perspective, it extended over the district of Logone-et-Chari , with the exception of the southern municipalities of Kousséri , Logone-Birni , Waza and Zina . In addition, villages of the Kanuri as well as the warlike Arab tribes of the Hemmadiye , Salamat , Ghawalme and Banu Seit were incorporated into the sultanate. The new capital became Goulfey .
The establishment of an Arab ruler in the territory of the traditional Kotoko principalities led to serious tensions between the ethnic groups of the Shua Arabs and the Kotoko . Local fighting between insurgents and the troops of the sultanate increased, until finally the disempowered Kotoko rulers of Makari and Afade raised armies and marched together against the capital of the Serbewel sultanate, Goulfey. Important officials of the Sultanate were also killed in the ensuing battles. Jaggara managed to escape, but he was deprived of his power base and therefore useless to the French.
Strangely enough, the punitive expedition started by the French was not directed against the rebels, but against Shuwa Arabs. Sheikhs and elders of the Hemmadiye, Salamat, Ghawalme and Banu Seit were imprisoned in Maroua .
In 1953 a new organization of the region was initiated and five new cantons were created based on the model of the traditional sultanates of the Kotoko, which had been added to the Serbewel: Makari, Goulfey, Afade, Wulki and Bodo.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ethnoarcheology of Shuwa-Arab-Settlements by Augustin Holl (English) Source: Google Books, accessed on October 26, 2015