Kingdom of Kanem

The Kingdom of Kanem (aka Kanim) was an ancient African state located in modern-day Chad, which flourished from the 9th to 14th century CE. With its heartland in the centre of the African continent on the eastern shores of Lake Chad, the kingdom was formed by a confederation of nomadic peoples and then ruled by the Saifawa dynasty. The city prospered thanks to its position as the hub of trade connections with central African peoples, the Nile Valley, and North African states on the other side of the Sahara Desert. The kingdom adopted the Islamic religion after long contact with Muslim clerics and traders from the 11th century CE onwards. In the 1390s CE Kanem's king was forced to flee the invading Bulala people and so set up a new state on the other side of Lake Chad, which would become the Bornu Empire, sometimes known as the Kanem-Bornu Empire, which lasted until the late 19th century CE.