West of Lake Chad, groups migrating from Kanem encountered sedentary peoples who spoke Chad languages. Kanuri traditions use the collective name Sao or Saw for these populations, although the medieval writers cited in the excerpt do not use that name. The designation therefore reflects a later interpretive and cultural framework rather than a consistently documented polity.

The dynastic chronicles record several battles between Sefuwa kings and the Sao in the middle of the fourteenth century, including the deaths of four rulers, two of them at Ghaliwa. That place may tentatively correspond to modern Ngala, south of Lake Chad, where Kotoko communities later lived. Other accounts place Sao groups west of Lake Chad and south of Bornu, while Ibn Furtuwa identifies the Ghafata along the Komadugu Yobe and the Tatala on the lake’s western shore.

Idris Alawoma launched repeated attacks against the Ghafata and Tatala and forced survivors to leave their ancestral homes. Some took refuge on the islands of Lake Chad. By the late sixteenth century, the name Sao had acquired a broad cultural meaning in Kanuri usage, referring to peoples believed to have preceded the Kanuri across Kanem, Bornu, and Kawar, though the excerpt stresses that reliable knowledge of these earlier populations had largely disappeared.