Hummay

Hummay, also called Ume or Umme Jilmi, is remembered as the first Muslim mai of Kanem, reigning around 1075 to 1086. The Diwan marks his reign as the point at which the ruling house embraced Islam, and it is from Hummay that all subsequent Muslim mais of Kanem and Bornu reckoned their descent. Dierk Lange reads the change as more than a conversion, arguing that Hummay's advent represents the supplanting of the older Duguwa (Zaghawa) kings by a new line. In the religious memory of the tradition he marks the threshold between the pre-Islamic sacral kingship and the Islamic monarchy that succeeded it, even as much older belief in the sanctity of the king's person persisted beneath the new faith.

Domains

• islam
• sacred kingship

Powers

• establish Islam over the kingship
• found the line of Muslim mais

Epithets

• Jilmi — an honorific attached to Hummay's name in the chroniclesLe Diwan des sultans du Kanem-Bornu, ed. Lange (1977) (primary)

Sources

• Hummay (Ume Jilmi) is recorded as the first Muslim king of Kanem, reigning in the late eleventh century.: Le Diwan des sultans du Kanem-Bornu, ed. Dierk Lange (1977) (primary); John E. Lavers, 'Kanem and Borno to 1808', in Groundwork of Nigerian History (Ibadan, 1980) (secondary)
• Lange interprets Hummay's accession as the replacement of the pre-Islamic Duguwa line by a new Islamic dynasty.: Dierk Lange, 'The Kingdoms and Peoples of Chad', UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. IV (1984) (secondary)