The Kanuri Tribe: From a 9th-century loosely held pagan group to being an epitome of statecraft, by A.G Abubakar   The crystallisation of the Kanuri identity goes back to the conquest of the cluster of semi-nomadic pagan tribes around the Northeast part of the Lake Chad basin, by one Saif ibn Dhi Yazid, a Yemeni warrior, in the 9th century. The tribes include the Zagawa, Tubu, Kanembu, and Bulala, among others. The Kanuri as a tribe or culture was then too nascent to be visible. Yazid is believed to be a marauding...