Logone-Birni is a town and
commune in
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west- central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; th ...
. The town lies on the left (west) bank of the
Logone River which at this point forms the state boundary between Cameroon and Chad. It is the capital of the
Kotoko people, whose two other principal cities are
Kousséri and
Goulfey.
History
Logone-Birne means Fort Logone and was founded around 1700 by Prince
Bruha.
visited Logone on 23 January 1824. He reported:
:''"I rode down the river, which here flows with great beauty and majesty past the high walls of this capital Loggun; it comes direct from the south-west, with a rapid current. We enetred the town by the western gate, which leads to the principle street: it is as wide as
Pall Mall and has large dwellings on each side, built with great uniformity, each having a courtyard in front, surrounded by a wall, and a handsome entrance. with a strong door hasped with iron: a number of the inhabitants were seated at their doors for the purpose of seeing us enter, with their slaves ranged behind them"''.
[Volume 2]
p 14
Gannibal
Logone-Birni has been suggested as the birthplace of
Abram Petrovich Gannibal
Abram Petrovich Gannibal, also Hannibal or Ganibal, or Abram Hannibal or Abram Petrov ( ru , Абра́м Петро́вич Ганниба́л; c. 1696 – 14 May 1781), was a Russian military engineer, general-in-chief, and nobleman of Afr ...
(1696-1781), a General in the
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army (russian: Ру́сская импера́торская а́рмия, Romanization of Russian, tr. ) was the armed land force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the earl ...
and great-grandfather of
Alexander Pushkin.
This view was first aired by
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...
in 1962, albeit in a dismissive remark.
Previously, the predominant view, was that Gannibal was from
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the Er ...
. As Hugh Barnes suggested this may have arisen from the generic use of the term "Ethiopian" to cover all of Africa.
However, in 1996
Dieudonné Gnammankou
Dieudonné Gnammankou (born 1963) is a Beninese historian and translator.
Gnammankou was born in 1963 in Cote d'Ivoire. He studied in the former Soviet Union, earning a Master of Arts degree (Russian Philology and Litterature, Russian Language a ...
convincingly argued that Logone-Birni was his birthplace.
This view was further elaborated by Hugh Barnes in ''Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg'' (2005).
Geography
The Logone Birni Basin
Logone-Birni has given its name to the Logone Birni Basin, which covers an area of 27,000 km2 and is part of the
West and Central African Rift System
The West and Central African Rift System (WCARS) is a rift system composed of two coeval Cretaceous rift sub-systems, the West African Rift sub-system (WAS) and the Central African Rift sub-system (CAS). These are genetically related, but are phys ...
.
See also
*
Communes of Cameroon
References
Site de la primature - Élections municipales 2002
Contrôle de gestion et performance des services publics communaux des villes camerounaises Thèse de Donation Avele, Université Montesquieu Bordeaux IV
* Charles Nanga,
La réforme de l’administration territoriale au Cameroun à la lumière de la loi constitutionnelle n° 96/06 du 18 janvier 1996', Mémoire ENA.
Communes of Far North Region (Cameroon)
1700 establishments in Africa
{{Cameroon-geo-stub