Katsina

Katsina grew from a walled settlement at a trade crossroads near an iron mine and an old shrine. Tradition says the scholar Muhammad Korau founded the city in the fifteenth century after he took the throne from the last ruler of the earlier Durbawa line, and that his Wangarawa dynasty made it a Muslim city. The visit of the Maliki jurist al-Maghili in 1493 spurred the spread of Islam, and the Gobirau mosque served as a school that drew scholars from Walata and Timbuktu.

Askia Muhammad of Songhai conquered the city in 1512; Katsina regained its independence in 1554. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries it overtook Kano as the chief market of Hausaland, with quarters for traders from Bornu, Gobir, Mali, Songhai and Agadez and a wall some thirteen miles around, while its poets and scholars made it a rival to Timbuktu in learning. Raiders from Kwararafa breached the walls in 1671. In 1805–1806 the jihad of Usman dan Fodio ended the Korau dynasty; many Katsinawa fled north and founded Maradi.