Alkalawa

Alkalawa was the walled capital of Gobir, the northernmost of the Hausa kingdoms, standing on the banks of the Gulbin Rima River. Its ruler Babari raised it in the mid-eighteenth century, after Gobir's warriors had sacked Birnin Zamfara, and gave it a name that recalled the farmland of Zamfara's chief judge (alkali), on which it was built. Gobir, once pushed south from Aïr by the Tuareg, now held the fertile Zamfara country, and the city became the seat of a military monarchy.

Under Bawa Jan Gwarzo (r. 1777–1795), Gobir's armies raided Katsina, Zamfara and Kebbi from Alkalawa. In 1788 the ageing Bawa summoned the Fulani preacher Usman dan Fodio, who taught at nearby Degel, to Magami and granted him freedom to preach, but his successors grew wary of the scholar's growing following. Yunfa, who took the throne in 1803, tried to have him killed and then drove him out; dan Fodio answered with a jihad that began in 1804. After years of fighting, his forces stormed Alkalawa in October 1808 and killed Yunfa. Gobir's court fled north, and the city's fall opened the way to the Sokoto Caliphate.