This Week in History:

Queen Amina of Zazzau. The Finctitious Warrior.

Amina of Zaria (1533 1610), commonly known as the warrior queen, expanded the territory of the Hausa people of West Africa to the largest borders in history. More than 400 years later, the legend of her person became the model for a television series about a fictitious warrior princess, called Xena.

Amina was the warrior queen of Zazzau (now Zaria). She was known also as Amina Sarauniya of Zazzau. She lived approximately 200 years prior to the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate in the nineteenth century.

According to most accounts, Queen Amina ruled for 34 years at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her domain of Zazzau, a city-state of Hausaland, was eventually renamed Zaria and is the capital of the present-day emirate Kaduna in Nigeria. Although many details of her life remain largely in dispute among historians, the fact that she existed is a matter of general acceptance, and she is presumed to have been a Hausa ruler. Much of what is known of Queen Amina is based on information related in the Kano Chronicles.

A translation by Muhammed Bello of pre-colonial African tradition based in part on anonymous Hausa writings and details were pulled from the oral traditions of Nigeria. As a result, the memory of Queen Amina assumed legendary proportions in her native Hausaland and beyond. The extent of her military prowess and her performance in battle was augmented by lore and remains unclear.

The reign of Amina occurred at a time when the city-state of Zazzau was situated at the crossroad of three major trade corridors of northern Africa, connecting the region of the Sahara with the remote markets of the southern forest lands and the Western Sudan. It was the rise and fall of the powerful and more dominant Songhai people and the resulting competition for control of trade routes that incited continual warring among the Hausa people and the neighboring settlements during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was not until later that a ruling arrangement between the Hausa and the Fulani people ultimately brought a lasting peace to the region and survived into the colonial era of the nineteenth century.

HEIR APPARENT

Amina was the twenty-fourth habe, as the rulers of Zazzau were called. She is believed to have been the granddaughter of King Zazzau Nohir. Speculation suggests that she was born sometime during his reign, around 1533. This theory lends credence to the belief that Amina ruled Zazzau at the end of the sixteenth century. The citizens of Hausaland at that time displayed advanced skills in the industrial arts of tanning, weaving and metal working in contrast to the inhabitants of the neighboring territories and surrounding cultures, where agriculture remained the dominant activity. The Hausa social hierarchy, as a result, was boundless rigidly in the social standings of tradition, which were based on hereditary factors.

Amina was born the eldest of three royal siblings; she was 16 years old when her noble parent, the powerful Bakwa of Turunku inherited the throne of Zazzau. Historical accounts of Bakwa, the twenty-second babe of Zazzau, vary as to whether Bakwa was Amina’s father or mother. Although the reign of Bakwa was known for peace and prosperity, the history of the Hausa people was nonetheless characterized by military campaigns for the purpose of increasing commerce. During the years between 1200-1700 Hausaland, was, in fact, fraught with warring parties. These descended into neighboring territories that were inhabited by the Jukun and the Nupe to the south, in an effort to control trade and to expand the Hausa communities into more desirable environs. The Hausa, in turn, were conquered intermittently during those years by various people. The Mali, Fulani, and Bornu were among the aggressors in these clashes. During the reign of Bakwa, the teenaged Amina occupied herself in honing her battle skills, under the guidance of the soldiers of the Zazzau military. Full Article.