Dīwān is the Arabic and Girgam is the older designation of the royal chronicle of Kanem-Bornu. The latter name is also used for written historical records in some kingdoms west of Bornu, including Daura, Fika and Mandara.
The Dīwān was discovered in 1851 by the German traveller Heinrich Barth in Kukawa, the nineteenth century capital of Bornu.[1] Its "local" name girgam appears to be derived from the Sumero-Akkadian term girginakku ("library, box for written tablets"). Hence its Arabic translation dīwān ("register, collection of written leaves"). [2] It begins with an original list of all the Biblical patriarchs (except one) before Abraham, and it places Sef and Dugu before and after Abraham. The thirteenth century identification of Sef with the pre-Islamic Yemeni hero Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan represents a conscious effort to bring the history of Kanem-Bornu in line with pre-Islamic Arab history. According to Dierk Lange's research, the form of some of the Patriarchal names can be shown to be authentic and not derived from Arabic sources, and consequently it must be supposed that there existed a local line of transmission of valid biblical information.[3]
The Dīwān provides the names of 69 rulers of Kanem-Bornu and some supplementary information concering the length of their reigns, their ascendancy, and often some events of their reigns.[4] The information given by several Arab authors (Ibn Sa'īd, al-Maqrīzī and al-Qalqashandī) confirm the validity of the data provided by the Dīwān.[5] On the basis of these sources, a nearly accurate chronology of the rulers of Kanem-Bornu can be established between the tenth and the nineteenth centuries. After the fall of the Sefuwa dynasty in 1846, the supporters of the succeeding al-Kānemī dynasty tried to obliterate the memory of the Sefuwa as much as possible. Hence they destroyed all copies of the dīwān they could lay their hands on. The two copies of the chronicle obtained by Barth are the only ones that are known to have survived.