Birni Lalle

Birnin Lalle was a capital of Gobir, one of the seven original Hausa kingdoms. Pressed by the Tuareg, who had founded the sultanate of Agadez in the Aïr early in the fifteenth century, the Gobirawa moved south in stages, and in the early eighteenth century they made Birnin Lalle their capital. Leo Africanus described Gobir as a land of herdsmen's villages whose many artisans and linen weavers sent textiles and shoes as far as Timbuktu and Gao.

In the eighteenth century the kings of Gobir were often at war with their neighbours. Soba laid siege to Zabarma for three years and carried his raids as far as Ilorin, and Babari, who reigned from 1742 to 1770, raided Katsina and Kano before building a new walled capital, Alkalawa, on the Gulbin Rima. The Gobir of the early nineteenth century is remembered above all as the chief opponent of Usman dan Fodio.