Kousséri

Kousséri is a city in the Far North Province of Cameroon and the capital of the Logone-et-Chari department. Known in the indigenous Mser language as Mser, its Arabic-derived name means palaces. It is a market town whose population has recently been swollen by refugees from Chad, and it recorded 89,123 inhabitants at the 2005 census, most of them Shuwa Arabs who use Chadian Arabic as the common language. Kousséri forms a transborder agglomeration with N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, from which it is separated by the Logone and Chari rivers. It was an independent city state from about the year 1000 until the late 1500s, later passed under the Southern Kotoko Kingdom and the Bornu Empire, and in 1900 was the site of the decisive battle of Kousséri that secured French rule over Chad.