Who ruled Kano?

Kano lies on the open savanna of northern Nigeria, south of the Sahel and far from the sea. Its fortune came from its place at the southern end of the caravan routes that crossed the Sahara: for centuries salt, leather, cotton cloth, kola nuts and enslaved people changed hands in its markets. Two things define its history. It was one of the great Hausa city-states, ruled by kings and then emirs for a thousand years, and it was a centre of Islamic learning and craft whose indigo-dyed cloth was sold from Lake Chad to North Africa.

People were working iron and farming around Dala Hill, a rocky outcrop inside the later walls, well before the city took shape. The Kano Chronicle, a history written down in the 19th century from older traditions, names a priest-chief called Barbushe as leader of the first settlers and says that Bagauda became the first king in 999. His successors built walls around the town in the 1100s and gradually extended their power over the surrounding farmland.

Islam arrived with traders and scholars from the west, and by the 1300s Kano's rulers had adopted it, though older beliefs persisted in the countryside for a long time. The city's golden age is linked to Muhammad Rumfa, who reigned from 1463 to 1499. He built the palace that still houses the emir, enlarged the walls, founded the Kurmi market and invited Muslim scholars, among them the North African jurist al-Maghili, who wrote him a treatise on government. Kano competed with Katsina and the other Hausa states and at times paid tribute to stronger neighbours, above all Bornu to the east.

In the early 1800s the Fulani scholar Usman dan Fodio led a jihad against the Hausa rulers, whom he accused of lax Islam and unjust taxes. Kano fell to his followers in 1805 and became an emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate, soon its richest province. The German traveller Heinrich Barth, who visited in 1851, described miles of clay walls, busy dye pits and a market selling everything from vegetables to slaves, and he called Kano the great emporium of the region. Slavery remained central to its economy throughout the century.

British forces under Frederick Lugard's administration took Kano in February 1903 after a short campaign, and the city entered the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. The British ruled through the emirs, leaving much of the old order in place. The railway from Lagos arrived in 1911, and Kano became the hub of a huge groundnut trade, famous for the pyramids of sacks stacked for export. In 1914 the territory was joined into the colony of Nigeria, which became independent in 1960.

Kano became the capital of Kano State in 1967. Rapid growth brought new suburbs and industry, but also outbreaks of violence, including riots in 1953, the Maitatsine uprising of 1980 and sectarian clashes after Kano State adopted sharia law in 2000. In January 2012 coordinated bomb attacks by Boko Haram killed more than 150 people in the city.

Kano is now the second-largest city in Nigeria after Lagos, with more than four million people. It is the commercial centre of the north, and its emir, though without political power, remains an important religious and social figure.