The Bade and Kanem-Borno

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An excellent reconstitution of a map of Ibn Sa'id for the Lake Chad Region in the 13th century, in Dierk Lange's La région du lac Tchad d’après la géographie d’Ibn Saʿīd. Textes et cartes.

Although far from detailed, 13th century geographer Ibn Sa'id was one of the first writers to specifically name the Bade people of modern-day Nigeria. According to Ibn Sa'id, the Bade (spelled Badi in the translation of Levtzion and Hopkins) lived along the northern shores of Lake Chad and to the west of the land of Jaja. Jaja, a fertile province held by the Muslims of Kanem must have been much of Borno while the Badi occupied the western section (as well as some living closer to Lake Chad, or Lake Kuri). Some ambiguity about the borders between Muslim-held Jaja and the land of the Badi can be found in Ibn Said's reference to the Badi Hills adjoining the river of "Kawkaw" and Lake Kuri (Lake Chad) from which the Nile issues. Referring to Ibn Fatima, who traveled to Kanem, the Badi were bordered on their west by the Jabi (Jati?) peoples, said to be cannibals who file their teeth. 

Interestingly, Palmer's Gazetteer of Bornu Province includes some relevant Bedde traditions. Palmer saw them as linked to the Ngizim and noted that tradition in Borno remembered both groups as the first to come from Kanem to Borno and traveled along the Komadugu. This tradition of tying their arrival in Borno to Kanem and the Sayfawa dynasty seems to be a legend in which many groups sought to redefine their origins in Yemen (or the east) with claims to a Sayfawa connection as additional prestige. However, Palmer's suggestion that that Bade (or Bedde) were in western Borno by c.1300 or 200 years before the foundation of Gazargamo does match Ibn Sa'id's account. If, by the mid-1200s, the Bade were in western Borno, they could have dispersed from Dillawa and then moved to Dadigur in Borsari. Of course, some were supposedly still living along the northern shores of Lake Chad and presumably neighbored the land of Jaja between Badi and Lake Chad.