Kanem-Bornu
Kanem's origins around Lake Chad, the Sayfawa dynasty and early Islam, the move to Bornu, Idris Alooma and Ottoman connections, Bornu's scholarship and diplomacy, the trans-Saharan routes to Tripoli, al-Kanemi's defence against Sokoto and correspondence with Muhammad Bello, Rabih, and partition between Britain, France and Germany.
A thousand years at Lake Chad
Kanem-Bornu linked the Lake Chad basin to North Africa through the Fezzan route to Tripoli, trading captives, ivory and other goods for horses, cloth and metal. Its rulers corresponded with Ottoman sultans and with the rulers of Morocco and Egypt.
A debate in letters: when the Sokoto jihad attacked Bornu, al-Kanemi wrote to Sokoto's leaders asking why a Muslim state was being attacked as unbelieving; Muhammad Bello replied. Their correspondence is a rare written record of an argument between African states over religious legitimacy.
Ahmad Furtu, chronicles of Idris Alooma (trans. Dierk Lange and others); Louis Brenner, The Shehus of Kukawa (1973); UNESCO General History of Africa, vols. III-V; Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate (1967) on the correspondence.