Maba people

The Maba, Burgu or Bargo people are a minority ethnic group found primarily in the mountainous Ouaddaï region of eastern Chad and adjacent areas of Sudan. Their population is estimated to be about 300,000 in Chad. Other estimates place the total number of Burgu people in Sudan to be about 700,000.

The Burgu today primarily adhere to Islam, following the Maliki Sunni denomination. They supported the Sultans of Abeche and the Sudanic kingdoms, who spoke their language. Little is certain about their history before the 17th century. They are noted as having helped expel the Christian Tunjur dynasty and installed an Islamic dynasty in their region in the early 17th-century. Their homelands lie in the path of caravan routes that connect the Sahel and West Africa with the Middle East. The Burgu people are an African people. They are traditionally pastoral and farmers who are clan-oriented.

The Bargo people have also been referred to as the Wadai, a derivative of Ouaddaï. They speak Maba, a Nilo-Saharan language, of the Maban branch. Locally this language is called ''Bura Mabang''. The first ten numerals in Maba language, states Andrew Dalby, are "tek, bar, kungal, asal, tor, settal, mindri, rya, adoi, atuk", and this is very distant from other Nilo-Saharan languages. Although an ethnic group, their Maba language was the state language of the Islamic state of Wadai, and continued to be an important language when the Islamic Bornu Empire