“The Kano Chronicle as history.”

The Kano Chronicle, published first in an English translation by Sir H. Richmond Palmer and nearly twenty-five years later in a Hausa translation by Dr. Rupert East and his colleagues is unique among indigenous contemporary documents on Hausa history before the Fulani jihad of 1804-1810. There are a number of king-lists for Zaria, Katsina, Kebbis, and so forth, but these rarely report events for the reigns they list, and even fewer report any development during those reigns. Such king-lists are invaluable in the absence of any other data; but they often present more puzzles than answers, more questions than information. The Kano Chronicle differs from these royal skeletons in summarizing for each of the reigns that it reports a varying collection of pertinent incidents and information. It is preceded by an introductory and speculative sketch of the culture and composition of the autochthonous population before the advent of an immigrant group led by a legendary hero, Bagauda, who is generally believed to have been the grandson of Bayajidda, the mythical founder of the seven Hausa states, who came from the east to Daura, where he married the queen, or Magajiya, and shared her rule.