Kano (city)

Kano (Ajami: كَنُوْ) is a city in northern Nigeria and the capital of Kano State. It is the second largest city in Nigeria after Lagos, with over four million citizens living within . Located in the Savanna, south of the Sahel, Kano is a major route of the trans-Saharan trade, having been a trade and human settlement for millennia. It is the traditional state of the Dabo dynasty who have ruled as emirs over the city-state since the 19th century. Kano Emirate Council is the current traditional institution inside the city boundaries of Kano, and under the authority of the Government of Kano State. The city is one of the seven medieval Hausa kingdoms. The principal inhabitants of the city are the Hausa people. Centuries before British colonization, Kano was strongly cosmopolitan with settled populations of Arab, Berber, Tuareg, Kanuri and Fula and remains so with the Hausa language spoken as a lingua-franca by over 70 million speakers in the region. Islam arrived in the city in the 11th century or earlier primarily through the trans-Saharan trade. As a result, Kano became wealthy and the commercial nerve centre of the region and Northern Nigeria, and is still associated as the "centre of commerce". Kano was originally known as Dala, after the hill, and was referred to as such until the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th by Bornoan sources. Timeline of Kano Kingdom of Kano and Bagauda DynastyIn the 7th century, Dala Hill, a residual hill in Kano, was the site of a hunting and gathering community that engaged in iron work (Nok culture); it is unknown whether these were Hausa people or speakers of Niger–Congo languages. The Kano Chronicle identifies Barbushe, a warrior priest of Dala Hill and a female spirit deity known as Tsumbura, Barbushe is from the lineage of the hunter family (maparauta) who were the city's first settlers (Elizabeth Isichei notes that the description of Barbushe is similar to those of Sao people).