SHARI, a river of North-Central Africa, carrying the drain age of a large area into Lake Chad. Its headstreams rise on the watersheds between the Chad basin and those of the Nile and Congo. The principal headstream, known generally as the Wam, rises, in about 6° 3o' N., 15° E., in mountainous country forming the divide between the Chad system and the basin of the Sanga affluent of the Congo. From the source of the Wam to the mouth is a distance, following the windings of the stream, of fully i,400 m.
The Warn flows east and then north and in about 7° 20' N., 18° 20' E. is joined by the Fafa, a considerable stream rising east of the VVam. The upper course of the Wam is much obstructed by rapids, but from a little above the Fafa confluence it becomes navigable. Below the confluence the river, now known as the Bahr Sara, receives three tributaries from the west. In about 9° 20' N., 18° E., it is joined by the Bamingi, which is formed by the junc tion of the eastern headstreams of the Shari. One of its branches, the Kukuru, rises in about 7° N., 21° 15' E. Some 90 m. from its source the Bamingi becomes navigable, being 12 ft. deep and flow ing with a gentle current. In 8° 42' N. it receives on the west bank the Gribingi, a river rising in about 6° 20' N. It is narrow and tortuous with rocky banks and often broken by rapids. It flows in great part through a forest-clad country. A few miles above its confluence with the Bahr Sara the Bamingi receives on the right hand another large river, the Bangoran, which rises in about 7° 45' N. and 22° E., in a range of hills which separates the countries of Oar Runga and Dar Banda, and, like the Bamingi, flows through open or bush-covered plains with isolated granite ridges.
Below the junction of the Bahr Sara and the Bamingi the Shari, as it is now called, becomes a large river, reaching, in places, a width of over 4 m. in the rains; while its valley, bordered by elevated tree-clad banks, contains many temporary lakes and back-waters. In 46' N. it receives the Bakare or Awauk (Aouk) from the east, known in its upper course as the Aukadebbe. This, like the Bahr es Salamat, which enters the Shari in 2' N., traverses a wide extent of arid country in southern Wadai, and brings no large amount of water to the Shari. In io° 12' a
divergent branch, the Ergig, leaves the main stream, only to rejoin it in I I° 3o'.
In 12° 15' N. and i5° E. the Shari receives on the west bank its largest tributary, the Logone, the upper branches of which rise far to the south between 6° and 7° N. The principal headstreams are the Pende and the Mambere. Its system is connected with that of the Benue (see NIGER) by the Tuburi Swamp, which sends northward a channel joining the Logone in about io° 3o' N. Be low the Logone confluence the Shari, here a noble stream, soon splits up into various arms, forming an alluvial delta, flooded at high water, before entering Lake Chad.
The existence of the. Shari was made known by Oudney, Den ham and Clapperton, the first Europeans to reach Lake Chad (1823). In 1852 Heinrich Barth spent some time in the region of the lower Shari and Logone, and in 1872-1873 Gustav Nachtigal studied their hydrographical system and explored the Gribingi, which he called the Bahr el Ardhe. But the most prominent ex plorers have been Frenchmen. In 1896 t mile Gentil reached the Bamingi and in a small steamer passed down the river to its mouth. In 1907 an expedition under Captain E. Lenfant followed the Wam-Bahr Sara from its source to the confluence with the Bamingi and showed it to be the true upper course of the Shari. The same expedition also discovered the Pende tributary of the Logone. From the mouth of the Shari in Lake Chad there is a current towards the Bahr-el-Ghazal channel at the south-eastern end of that lake (see CHAD) . This channel has been supposed to be a dried-up affluent of the lake. Investigations by the French scientists E. F. Gautier and R. Chudeau led Chudeau to the con clusion that the Shari did not end in Lake Chad, but, by way of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, passed between Tibesti and Ennedi and ended in some shat in the Libyan desert. The major part of the Shari basin is in French Equatorial Africa; some of the western affluents are in the Cameroons.
See the works of Barth, Nachtigal and other travellers, especially Lenfant's La Decouverte des grandes sources du centre de l'Afrique (1909).