Dutsi

Dutsi was the first seat of the Zamfarawa, the people of the Hausa kingdom of Zamfara. Tradition says they settled here and, after seven years with no chief, chose Dakka as their first Sarkin Zamfara. Five more chiefs followed, the sixth a woman named Algoje, and later memory made them giants: Dakka was said to eat a whole ox at one meal and to be heard shouting as far as Katsina. Six great earth mounds at Dutsi are held to be the tombs of these early rulers.

Another legend explains the name Zamfara through Fara, a Gobir princess lost in the bush and rescued by hunters from the village of Unguwar Maza near Dutsi; the "men of Fara" became the Zamfarawa. Dutsi, Togai, Kiawa and Jata were the chiefdoms from which the kingdom was built before 1600. Its rulers then moved a few miles north to the Gagare River and began the walled town of Birnin Zamfara.