Makary is a town in

Logone-et-Chari Logone-et-Chari is a department of Extreme-Nord Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 12,133 km and at the 2005 Census had a total population of 486,997. The capital of the department is at Kousséri. Most inhabitants of t ...

, Far North Region, Cameroon, West Africa. The town is located on the right (east) bank of a

distributary A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. Distributaries are a common feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation. The opposite of a distributar ...

of the

Chari River The Chari River, or Shari River, is a long river, flowing in Central Africa. It is Lake Chad's main source of water. Geography The Chari River flows from the Central African Republic through Chad into Lake Chad, following the Cameroon border f ...

in the delta just before it enters

Lake Chad Lake Chad (french: Lac Tchad) is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Central Africa, which has varied in size over the centuries. According to the ''Global Resource Information Database'' of the United Nations Environment Programme, ...

. The people are known as Kotoko, and the local language is Mpade, Fulani (Fulfulde) is the trade language. The primary economic activity was and is fishing.

History

Makary was part of the indigenous

Sao civilisation The Sao civilization (also called So) flourished in Central Africa from ca. the fourth or sixth century BC to as late as the sixteenth century AD. The Sao lived by the Chari River basin in territory that later became part of Cameroon and Chad. The ...

that occupied the land south of Lake Chad from about the Sixth Century A.D. going into decline by at least the Fourteenth Century. With the decline of the Sao confederation, Makary was an independent kingdom, one of the

Kotoko kingdom The Kotoko kingdom was an monarchy in what is today northern Cameroon and Nigeria, and southwestern Chad. Its inhabitants and their modern descendants are known as the Kotoko people. The rise of Kotoko coincided with the decline of the Sao civilisa ...

city-states. In the early Fifteenth Century, Makary went from being an ally of King

Idris Alooma Idris Alooma, Idris ibn 'Ali (Alooma), or Idriss Alaoma, (r. 1570–1602/03 or 1580–1617) was Mai (king) of the Kanem-Bornu Empire, located mainly in Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria. His name is more properly written Idris Alawma or Idris Alau ...

to being a part of the

Bornu Empire Bornu may refer to: * Bornu Empire Bornu may refer to: * Bornu Empire, a historical state of West Africa * Borno State Borno State is a state in the North-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria, bordered by Yobe to the west, Gombe to the southwest ...

, and soon converted to Islam. However, by the late Eighteenth Century, although nominally still part of Bornu, the city states had reasserted themselves, and by 1800 Makary had formed a federation of seven fortified towns under the ''prince'' (''Mé'') of Makary. In March 1846

Umar of Borno Umar I ibn Muhammad al-Amin ( ar, اولعمر ابن محمد لرشيد) or Umar of Borno (died 1881) was ''Shehu'' (Sheik) of the Kanem-Bornu Empire and son of Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi. Reign of Umar Umar came to power at the death of his ...

, nominal general of the Bornu sultan Ibrahim, suffered a defeat at

Kousséri Kousséri (from ar, قصور ''quṣūr'' meaning "palaces"), founded and known as Mser in the indigenous Mser language is a city in Far North Province, Cameroon. It is the capital of the Logone-et-Chari department. It is a market town, and its ...

by the forces of the

Kingdom of Baguirmi The Sultanate or Kingdom of Bagirmi or Baghermi (french: Royaume du Baguirmi) was a kingdom and Islamic sultanate southeast of Lake Chad in central Africa. It was founded in either 1480 or 1522 and lasted until 1897, when it became a French protec ...

, itself weakened by attacks from the

Wadai Empire The Wadai Sultanate ( ar, سلطنة وداي ''Saltanat Waday'', french: royaume du Ouaddaï, Fur: ''Burgu'' or ''Birgu''; 1501–1912) was an African sultanate located to the east of Lake Chad in present-day Chad and the Central African Repub ...

. By the 1890s

Rabih az-Zubayr Rabih az-Zubayr ibn Fadl Allah or Rabih Fadlallah ( ar, رابح فضل الله ,رابح الزبير ابن فضل الله), usually known as Rabah in French (c. 1842 – April 22, 1900), was a Sudanese warlord and slave trader who establish ...

was able to move into the power vacuum created by these contending forces and took first

Oubangui-Chari Ubangi-Shari (french: Oubangui-Chari) was a French colony in central Africa, a part of French Equatorial Africa. It was named after the Ubangi and Chari rivers along which it was colonised. It was established on 29 December 1903, from the ...

, then Baguirmi, and then in 1894 Bornu. This soon brought Makary under Rabih's control. After Rabih was killed by the French in 1900, Makary fell under the German sphere of influence. Despite the changes in rulers and religion the culture of Makary seems to represent an uninterrupted continuation of the original Sao culture.

Villages

Bodo Bodo may refer to: Ethnicity * Boro people, an ethno-linguistic group mainly from Northwest Assam, India * Bodo-Kachari people, an umbrella group from Nepal, India and Bangladesh that includes the Bodo people Culture and language * Boro cu ...

* Goura

Geography

Makary sits on the delta; however the river bed of the Chari River is dry most of the year, only filling with the onset of the rainy season in July and drying up again by the end of October.

Climate

Makary has a

hot desert climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk''), is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(BWh) with little to no rain in all months except July, August and September.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Makary Populated places in Cameroon Communes of Far North Region (Cameroon)