Katsina

Katsina was a walled Hausa city-state on the trade routes towards the Sahara, counted among the seven Hausa Bakwai. Its pre-Islamic rulers were treated as semi-divine.

Tradition held that the cleric Muhammadu Korau became its first Muslim king in 1348 and built the Gidan Korau palace. Under his line Katsina became a centre of Islamic learning alongside Kano. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was a major commercial centre, with markets near the Gobarau Minaret. In 1807 Fulani jihadists captured Katsina and made it an emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate.