Yamta ra Walla

Name The original meaning of the name Yamta-ra-Walla is uncertain. Some link it to the Bura words ya (an honorific prefix) and mpta ('death'), and have suggested the sobriquet "one who deals out death to his enemies". A Kanuri mallam (Islamic scholar) told J G Davies, who compiled a history of Biu titled The Biu Book (1956) when he was a colonial officer there, that the name derived from the phrase yauman-taraku-wallah ("he will be leader of the people"). An alkali (chief Qadi) of Biu claimed that Yamta's real name was Abdullahi but that when he left Gazargamu in anger after failing to become mai (ruler) of Bornu, he cried out yauman-tarani-wallahi anasulden insha'allah ("one day you shall see that I am a chief, God willing"). By the 1960s, local Biu scholars had agreed that the original meaning was "you will soon see me or hear of me".

Death Yamta died around 1580. Yamta called his followers Babur, and the Babur (or Pabir) people are said to descend from intermarriage between Yamta's followers and the local Buram Sha. From J G Davies's translation of Yamta's kirari (praise-song) collected in Biu: He is like a lion, like a lion of the dark forest, yet has no mane; nothing can stand against him except for natural elements like shrubs and the wind.

His importance is such that he is like a pillar holding up the world; although small in size like a sack made from one squirrel's skin yet he controls a large territory as though that sack contained all the meat of one elephant.

Just as a deaf man may appear to be disobedient because of not hearing, so he is brave and fearless, for although he hears he behaves as though he doesn't, nothing dismaying him. He is independent of help from other people, like a baby locust which flies away when born not requiring any milk or assistance from its mother.