The extensive Old Kanembu texts found in the Borno Qur’anic manuscripts provide, as far as we know, the earliest evidence for a sub-Saharan language and shed light on the history of the languages of the Saharan family. In this article, the form/meaning features of Old Kanembu inflectional TAM’s are compared with the corresponding Kanuri, Teda-Daza and Beria inflectional paradigms. The analysis, though preliminary, demonstrates that Old Kanembu is diachronically close to proto-Western Saharan, and also reflects proto-Saharan features retained in Eastern Saharan Beria which is located at the geographical extreme of the family at some distance from Western Kanuri/Kanembu
