Birnin Zamfara

Birnin Zamfara was the walled capital of the Hausa kingdom of Zamfara, built by its rulers a few miles north of Dutsi near the Gagare River. Tradition gives its wall a length of eleven miles with fifty gates, and the remains can still be traced east of Isa. The country around it was among the most fertile in Hausaland, which Heinrich Barth called almost the most flourishing in Negroland.

Around 1715, under Babba, Zamfara joined Gobir and Agadez in a revolt that drove back Kebbi and captured its king, and the victory made it a power of the first rank. Gobir settlers, welcomed as warriors, then turned on their hosts. Babari of Gobir attacked Zamfara despite having a sister married to its king Mairoki, and the army captains, tired of his taunts after each battle, abandoned the capital. Barth was told it fell about 1756; other accounts say 1762. Mairoki fled to the hill fort of Kiawa, where Bawa Jan Gwarzo besieged him, and Babari built his own capital at Alkalawa.