Zazzau

Zazzau was the southernmost of the Hausa city-states, standing on the plateau where caravans from the Sahara met routes into the forest country. Camel caravans brought salt and took away slaves and grain, and Zazzau's Habe kings drew wealth from this trade; Islam reached the city in the late 1450s by way of Kano and Katsina. Hausa tradition remembers it as the supplier of enslaved labour to the other Hausa states.

Zazzau's power peaked under Amina, a warrior queen of tradition who is said to have reigned from 1576 to 1610 and to have made Kano and Katsina tributary; she is missing from some king lists, and scholars date her differently. The city is said to have been renamed Zaria after her sister. After her death Zazzau came under the influence of the Jukun kingdom and became a tributary state, as it had earlier been to Songhai. In the early nineteenth century the Fulani captured the city in Usman dan Fodio's jihad; the last Habe ruler fled south to Zuba.