Borno (in northeast Nigeria) is notorious today as the home of an Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, whose insurgency is a major security threat, but it was once the heartland of the Kanuri-speaking royal empire of Kanem-Borno, renowned throughout Africa and beyond, which in its later incarnation, the Bornu Empire, lasted from 1380 to 1893. Vincent Hiribarren offers the reader the first modern history of Borno, drawing upon sources in London, Berlin, Paris, Kaduna and Maiduguri and recently released ‘migrated archives’.

Image courtesy of interviewee