Borno's history is closely associated with Kanem, which had achieved imperial status in the Lake Chad basin by the thirteenth century.

Kanem expanded westward to include the area that became Borno.

Its dynasty, the Sayfawa, was descended from pastoralists who had settled in the Lake Chad region in the seventh century.

The mai (king) of Kanem ruled in conjunction with a council of peers as a constitutional monarch.

In the eleventh century, the mai and his court accepted Islam, as the western empires also had done.

Islam is used to reinforce the political and social structures of the state, although many established customs are maintained.

Women, for example, continue to exercise considerable political influence.

The mai had employed his mounted bodyguard, composed of abid (slave-soldiers), and an inchoate army of nobles to extend Kanem's authority into Borno, on the western shore of Lake Chad.

By tradition the territory was conferred on the heir to the throne to govern during his apprenticeship.

In the fourteenth century, however, dynastic conflict forced the then-ruling group and its followers to relocate in Borno, where as a result the Kanuri emerged as an ethnic group in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The civil war that disrupted Kanem in the second half of the fourteenth century resulted in the independence of Borno.

Borno's prosperity depends on its stake in the trans-Sudanic slave trade and the desert trade in salt and livestock.

The need to protect its commercial interests compels Borno to intervene in Kanem, which continues to be a theater of war throughout the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries.

Despite its relative political weakness in this period, Borno's court and mosques under the patronage of a line of scholarly kings earn fame as centers of Islamic culture and learning.