Kano (city)

Kano, a city in northern Nigeria, serves as the capital of Kano State. It sits in the savanna region, just south of the Sahel, and has been a hub for trans-Saharan trade and human habitation for thousands of years. As the second-largest city in Nigeria after Lagos, it houses over four million residents within an area of 449 square kilometers. The city is the traditional seat of the Dabo dynasty, whose emirs have governed this city-state since the 1800s, and the Kano Emirate Council now functions as the traditional authority within the city, under the Kano State Government.

One of the seven medieval Hausa kingdoms, Kano’s primary inhabitants are the Hausa and Fulani peoples. Even centuries before British colonization, the city was highly cosmopolitan, with settled communities of Arabs, Tuaregs, and Kanuris, and it remains so today. Hausa serves as the lingua franca for over 70 million speakers across the region. Islam reached Kano by the 11th century or earlier, largely through trans-Saharan trade routes, which brought wealth and made the city the commercial heart of the region and northern Nigeria—a reputation that persists, earning it the nickname "centre of commerce."

Originally called Dala, after a local hill, the city was known by that name in Bornoan records until the late 15th and early 16th centuries. In the 7th century, Dala Hill was home to a hunting-and-gathering community that worked iron, though it is unclear if these people were Hausa or speakers of other Niger–Congo languages. The Kano Chronicle describes Barbushe, a warrior-priest of Dala Hill linked to a female spirit deity called Tsumburbura. Barbushe came from a lineage of hunter families, the Maguzawa, who were the city’s first settlers and worshipped Tsumburbura. According to the Chronicle, Bagauda—son of Bawo and grandson of the mythical hero Bayajidda—became Kano’s first king in 999, reigning until 1063. His grandson Gijimasu, the third king, began building city walls at the foot of Dala Hill, and his own son Tsaraki, the fifth king, completed them.

In the 12th century, King Ali Yaji of the Kudawa lineage renounced the cult of Tsumburbura, converted to Islam, and proclaimed a sultanate that lasted until the 19th century. His reign began an era of expansion, making Kano the capital of a pseudo-Habe Empire. Muhammad Rumfa, who ruled from 1463 to 1499, faced political pressure from the rising Songhai Empire and married Auwa, daughter of Askiyah the Great, who later became the first female Madaki of Kano. Rumfa was a wealthy, flamboyant ruler; luxurious clothing and ostrich-feather shoes were common among officials, and the kakaki trumpet was introduced during his time. His wealth came from Kano’s commercial prosperity, and the city arguably reached its peak as a trans-Saharan trade center under him. Leo Africanus’s description of Kano likely reflects Rumfa’s era, noting wealthy merchants, skilled craftsmen, a strong cavalry, and an abundance of rice, corn, cotton, and citrus fruits. Rumfa reformed the city, expanded the Sahelian Gidan Rumfa (Emir’s Palace), promoted Islam by urging conversions and inviting scholars, and built the city walls and Kurmi market. The Kano Chronicle credits him with twelve innovations. Later, Mohammed Sharef (1703–1731) was the thirty-seventh king, and his successor Kumbari dan Sharefa (1731–1743) fought major battles with Sokoto.

At the start of the 19th century, Fulani Islamic leader Usman dan Fodio led a jihad that dismantled the Habe kingdom and created the Sokoto Caliphate. In 1805, the last sultan of Kano was defeated by the Fulani Jobe Clan, and Kano became an emirate within the caliphate—already its largest and most prosperous province. The city suffered famines in 1807–1810, the 1830s, 1847, 1855, 1863, 1873, 1884, and 1889–1890. Under Sokoto suzerainty, Kano thrived as a commercial center, with weaving, dyeing, and leatherwork traded as far as Morocco and Europe, and cotton cloth reaching Tripoli, Lake Chad, and Timbuktu. In 1851, German scholar Heinrich Barth noted Kano’s 10-mile-long, 30-foot-high clay walls and a population of 30,000, with abundant commerce and manufacturing. He described its huge market as a labyrinth of narrow alleys selling everything from vegetables to slaves, called Kano the greatest emporium of central Africa, and estimated that at least 50% of its people were slaves, most living in slave villages. This was one of the last major slave societies.