QUEEN AMINA OF ZARIA WAS A NUPE WOMAN Preface The Kano Chronicle, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the University Of Liverpool Encyclopaedia Of World Biography, and many other documentaries wrote that Queen Amina of Zaria died on the outskirts of Bida in the days when KinNupe was known as AtaGara. The truth of the matter is that Queen Amina of Zaria was born, bred, lived, flourished and died in KinNupe where the kingdom of AtaGara was located. Queen Amina of Zaria never lived in, or even visited, the present kingdom of Zaria or its general area. And she was not a Hausa woman. Queen Amina of Zaria was born, lived and died here in KinNupe. Queen Amina was a full-blooded Nupe woman! Now then, the details and the proofs: The Zaria traditions, according to O. Temple on the authorities Major F. Edgar, K. V. Elphinstone, E. G. M. Dupigny, A. C. Francis, Captain J. M. Fremantle, C. Migeod, M P. Porch and others, are that Zaria was founded by a people known as the Abakwa who came from the south. The Zaria traditions continued to the effect that the leader of these Abakwa people was also known as Abakwa or Bako. They said he had two daughters, namely, Zaria and Amina. His wife was called Gunguma. The interesting thing here is that all of these four names – Bako, Zaria, Amina and Gunguma – are olden national names of the Nupe people in former times. Bako the Father of Queen Amina was Nupe Bako is, according to O. Temple and her many authorities, simply a variant of Bakwa or, as the Hausa traditions pronounced it, Abakwa. This word Bako or Bakwa is, of course, simply a shortened form of Bakwara or Bakoro, respectively, both of which, definitely, originally referred to a ‘Person from the River Niger’. The River Niger has always been known as Kwara, to this very day, or Koro in ancient times – Kwara and Koro being dialectal synonyms. A person from the River Niger area was then known as Ba-Kwara or Bakwara or, simply, Bakwa or Abakwa. Also, in a dialectal variant form, a person from the River Niger area was also known as Ba-Koro, Bakoro or, simply, Bako. But the River Niger area is none other than KinNupe. A person coming from Zaria or the entire Hausaland have never been known as Bakwara or Bakwa or Bakoro or Bako for the simple reason that the River Niger is not located in Hausaland. Instead the River Niger is located here in Central KinNupe and it is Nupencizhi who were known as the ‘River Niger Person’ or Bakwara or Bakwa or Abakwa or Bakoro or Bako. So, the very actuality that the father of Queen Amina of Zaria was related by the Zaria traditions themselves to have been an Abakwa or a Bako man from the south indubitably and irrefutably testifies to the truth that the father of Queen Amina of Zaria was a Nupe man. The accuracy of the matter, however, is that the Zaria traditions categorically related that it was not the father of Queen Amina of Zaria who built the present, or historical, city of Zaria. Instead the Zaria traditions categorically maintained that the historical city of Zaria that has survived into modern times as the city of Zaria was in point of fact built by the Abakwa or Bako people who were subject to the father of Queen Amina and who came in large number from the south, from KinNupe. The Zaria traditions are that these Abakwa people came in large numbers as warriors, actually colonialists, and that they came to built the city of Zaria beside the Turunku or Kofena rocks or hills. It is for the fact that these Abakwa or Bako Nupe people came and settle beside the Turunku rocks and eventually founded and established the present city of Zaria beside these Turunku rocks that the father of Queen Amina of Zaria was atimes referred to as the ‘Bakwa Turunku’ which plainly means the ‘Bakwa (Nupe) people who settled at the Turunku rocks’. In any case the Abakwa or Bako people who came from the south to found and establish the present city of Zaria were a Nupe people through and through. They came, as the Zaria traditions continue to emphasize, from the south, that is, from KinNupe as in those days Greater KinNupe was the only nation to the south of today’s Zaria. As a matter of fact Zaria was merely located on the northern fringes of the Greater KinNupe of those days. So, we see, in recollection, that Bako the father of Queen Amina and his people the Bakwa or Abakwa people were Nupe. Now let’s take a look at the mother of Queen Amina who was, according to the Zaria traditions, referred to as Gunguma or Bakwa Gunguma. Gunguma the Mother of Queen Amina Is Nupe The name, or epithet, of the mother of Queen Amina is Gunguma. And this name or nickname of Queen Amina’s mother corroborates the fact that she, Queen Amina, was a Nupe woman. According to the Zaria traditions the mother of Queen Amina was known as Bakwa Gunguma. However both ‘Bakwa’ and ‘Gunguma’ are very old Nupe names. As we have discussed before, ‘Bakwa’ is the shortened form of ‘Bakwara’ or ‘Bakoro’ both of which basically means ‘River Niger person’ or ‘Person from the River Niger area’ which, of course, is KinNupe. Bakwa or Bako was used in primeval times to refer to Nupe people who were the people from the River Niger Area. And ‘Gunguma’ was another name of KinNupe in earliest times. Gunguma is actually a combination of ‘Gungu’ and ‘ma’. Professor Alan Ryder and Sir H.R. Palmer have both verified long ago that KinNupe was known in ancient times as Gungu or, as the Arab historians from Timbuktu transcribed it, Kaogha or Kawkaw. This, Gungu, was the same ancient Nupe national name that was written by Borno historians as Kukia which was the name of the first Borno capital city which was named after KinNupe from which the Borno people originated. Sir H.R. Palmer, Sultan Bello and Captain Hugh Clapperton also all referred to KinNupe as Gungu, or Borno Gungu, which they all said was an enormous kingdom located on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe. So, Gungu was a national name of KinNupe in early times. And this Gungu used to be also combined with the article ‘ma’, meaning ‘nation’, to refer to the Nupe Nation. Gunguma means ‘The Gungu Nation’ or, as we will call it today, ‘The Nupe Nation’. So, when the Zaria traditions narrated that the mother of Queen Amina was known as Gunguma the Zaria traditions were simply telling us that the mother of Queen Amina was from Gunguma or the Nupe Nation. After all the very reality that the name ‘Abakwa’ or ‘Bako’, which is practically equivalent to today’s ‘Nupe’, is attached to Gunguma unswervingly means that the mother of Queen Amina was a Nupe woman from KinNupe. The point here is that ‘Gungu’ is itself a shortened form of ‘Gunguru’ or ‘Guangara’ which, as reported by Mungo Park and others, was the name of KinNupe in former times. Gunguma, Guangara and Gunguru all belong to the same group of Nupe national names to which also belongs ‘Dunguru’ – the archaic form of our modern ‘Kontagora’ or the former Old Oyo ‘Katunga’. But Dunguru is itself derived from the more ancient ‘Dagara’ or ‘AtaGara’ which was the name of KinNupe in ancient times. Remember that the Kano Chronicle stated that Queen Amina died in AtaGara KinNupe. So, the name ‘Bakwa Gunguma’ may roughly translate as ‘The River Niger area (KinNupe) person from AtaGara’ or ‘The AtaGara person from the River Niger area (KinNupe)’. Either way round the name shows that the mother of Queen Amina was a Nupe woman from KinNupe. So, we can see that both of the two component names of the mother of Queen Amina refer to KinNupe and show that she is from a Nupe woman from KinNupe. Princess Zaria The Zaria traditions, interestingly enough, vociferously maintained that the city of Zaria was actually built by the sister to Queen Amina and not by Queen Amina herself. And this sister of Queen Amina of Zaria who built Zaria was known as Princess Zaria – it was her name, the Zaria traditions told us, that the city was named after. This Princess Zaria, the sister to Queen Amina, was, of course, not a Zaria or Hausa woman since she also came, according to the Zaria traditions themselves, from the south or KinNupe. She was a Nupe woman. As a matter of fact the traditions are that Princess Zaria died somewhere around the Yauri general area. But the Yauri people were in those days a Nupe people through and through and Yauri was in fact part and parcel of the Greater KinNupe of those days. In fact J. C. O. Clarke and Major W. Hamilton-Browne both documented the fact that the Yauri people were originally a Gungawa or Gungu, that is Nupe people, before they came to eventually settle at today’s Yauri. In any case Princess Zaria the sister to Queen Amina of Zaria was a Nupe princess who was born and bred, flourished and died here in KinNupe. Even her name Zaria is of Nupe derivation and origins. Zaria is the modern Latinization of Zakzak or Zegzeg or Zazzau. Zakzak is a repetitive form of Zak or, more pristinely, Zakwa which is itself a shortened form of Zakwara or Zagwara or Zagara or Zagoro or Zakoro. ZaGara or Zakoro is, of course, a compound of Za and Gara or Koro. This Za is actually just a dialectal form of Sa or Isa such that the original compound is really IsaGara or IsaKoro. The point to mark here is that both the Isa or Kisra and the Gara or Koro peoples were Nupe peoples. The Isa or Kisra people were descendants of the Kisra people who came from outside the African continent and came to settle in Central KinNupe somewhere around the middle of the first millennium into the Christians Era, that is circa 500 AD. The Gara or Koro people are a very ancient, and in fact autochthonous, Nupe people who have been on the banks of the River Niger in Central KinNupe since time immemorial. They are the same that are known to Nupe historians as the Gwagba and to Nupe linguists as the Ibara or Bari Nupe people. In very ancient times there emerged a Nupe kingdom, here in Central KinNupe and on the banks of the River Niger, which was a united kingdom of the ancient Isa or Kisra or Yisa Nupe people and the Gara, Koro or Agwara Nupe people. It was this Nupe kingdom Isa-Kwara United Kingdom that became progressively known as Isakwa, Sakwa, Zakwa, Zak or Zakzak. And, of course, Zakzak was also pronounced as Zegzeg or Zazzau which was the same that became Latinized as Zaria today. So, and as we can see, Zakzak or Zaria was originally a Nupe united kingdom located right here in Central KinNupe on the banks of the River Niger. That was the Original Zaria or Old Zaria which was a Nupe kingdom through and through and which was located here in Central KinNupe. It was from that Old Zaria or Original Zaria here in KinNupe that the Abakwa or Bako Nupe people migrated northwards until they reached the Turunku or Kofena rocks where they founded and establish today’s Zaria as a Nupe colony in those days. The interesting pont we shouldn’t overlook here is the fact that Queen Amina’s sister was called Zakzak or Zaria not because that was her proper name but because she was remembered by historians as the one who founded today’s Zakzak or Zaria which was named after KinNupe the Old or Original Zakzak or Zaria. But then we should note that the Zaria chroniclers have this general habit of naming individual historical figures after entire nations or kingdoms. Queen Amina’s mother was named Gunguma which was actually the national name of the Nupe Nation in ancient times. Queen Amina’s father was named Bako or Abakwa which was a national name with which the Koro or Kwara or Gara Nupe people were known in ancient times. And then Queen Amina’s sister was named Zakzak or Zazzau which was the name of a former united kingdom of the Nupe Nation in prehistoric times. The truth is that even Queen Amina’s name is actually an ancient national name of KinNupe in prehistoric times. But then it may be right at this juncture to take a look at who was Queen Amina. And we are going to start with an analytic look at her name. The Name ‘Amina’ We don’t know Queen Amina’s real name. Her name could not have been Amina because no historian has ever associated her with Islam and Amina is the name of the mother of Prophet Muhammad. No historian or any of the Hausa City chronicles have ever mentioned her as Muslim. If Queen Amina had been a Muslim Sultan Bello, who wrote extensivey on her, would have been the first to mention that considering the fact that he was the first Sultan of the Islamic Sokoto Caliphate. Queen Amina was not a Muslim and her proper name was not Amina. But then, where did the moniker Amina came from? How comes she is known as Amina when she was not a Muslim and her proper name was not Amina? The answer to that question may be proffered, in part, by Lady Flora Shaw, the wife to Lord Lugard, who wrote that the Turunku or Kofena rocks beside which the initial settlement of Zaria was sited before it was shifted to its present position of Zaria city, were located in a general area known to ancient historians as Al-Mina. In former times roughly the places known as Niger State and Southern Kaduna, including Zaria, today used to be combinely known as Mina or Al-Mina. Lady Flora Shaw noted that all ancient references to prehistoric Nigeria made mention of a nation of Mina located in precisely around the places we call Niger State and Southern Kaduna, including the FCT of course, today. The truth of the matter is that the northern half of the ancient Greater KinNupe of ancient times was known as Mina. This Mina was a remnant of the general Mana or Mara with which the whole of West Africa was known in even more primordial times. This Mana or Mara was the origin of the Latinized term ‘Moor’ that was applied to all Black African Negros from Africa in medieval Europe. Later on the Europeans came to use the term Moor to refer to Arabs and Muslims. In any case, and whatever the truth might have been, the verity remains that a major part of KinNupe used to be known as Mina in very ancient times. Earlier historians, including the classical Greek writers and the Arabs, variously mentioned that a colossal statue, carved from solid rocks, once stood on the horizons somewhere in Mina or the KinNupe of those earliest days. This El-Mina or Al-Mina or Almina Colossus was a gigantic statue of a woman carved into a gargantuan rock much like the Great Sphinx of Giza or the Buddhas of Bamyam rock statues of Afghanistan. As a matter of fact the Almina Colossus seems to have been built around the same time with, or even before, the Great Sphinx on the Giza Plateau of Egypt, that is, some four to five thousand years ago. Like the Buddhas of Bamyam of Afghanistan, there was a constant flow of pilgrims from all parts of the world to this Almina Colossus located on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe in ancient times. The Almina Colossus here in Central KinNupe was believed to be a spiritual oracle or divine fortuneteller that the pilgrims from all parts of the world come to worship and consult. Ancient traditions narrate that in Almina or Mina, that is ancient KinNupe, there was located a gigantic rock, much like today’s Zuma Rock, which was carved into the statue of a female oracle. This was a colossal statue that predated the Colossus of Rhodes by some two to three thousand years. The Almina Colossus of KinNupe was built several thousand years ago. It definitely predated the onset of the Sahara Desert and it might have predated, and may have been the prototype of, the Sphinx of the Giza pyramid at Egypt. In any case the ancient Colossus of Rhodes and the Statue of Liberty in New York today were respectively erected as colossi of Freedom or Farata, that is Black Negro Africa, after the Almina Colossus which once stood here in KinNupe thousands of years ago. According to the ancient sources this Almina Colossus of KinNupe was an international oracle visited by all the peoples of the ancient world on annual pilgrimages much the same way that we have the world going on annual pilgrimages to the Ka’aba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia today. Al-Maqrizi categorically narrated, while quoting from very ancient sources, that an Egyptian pharaoh, somewhere around 1700 BC, that is some four thousand years ago, once performed the holy pilgrimage to this Almina Colossus here in KinNupe all the way from Egypt. Al-Maqrizi said the pilgrimage took the pharaoh eleven years before he got back to Egypt but that the Egyptian pharaoh was rewarded by a Nupe king with the mystic Black Stone which was much sought after in those days. Greek and Roman stories of visits to Pythia the female oracle at Delphi on mount Parnassus by ancient world leaders including Alexander the Great, Croesus the king of Lydia, Nero, Hadrian, might after all be latter modifications of West African stories or folktales of ancient world leaders who made the primeval pilgrimage to the Almina Colossus here in KinNupe in those far off days when KinNupe was known as Almina or Mina. After all both Pythia and Almina were described as females associated with mountains or rocks. It was because of this Almina Colossus that KinNupe was generally known as Almina and the Nupe people were referred to as the Mina or Almina people in ancient times. To this very day we still see remnants of the Mina people scattered in various parts of KinNupe. There are, for instance, the Saminaka people which, interestingly enough, is to this very day located in Kaduna State. The Igbomina people, if we exclude their latter immigrants from Ijara, Ife, Oyo and Ora, are evidently remnants of the ancient Mina Nupe people. The oldest stock of the Igbomina were originally resident as a Nupe people here in Central KinNupe before they were pushed out of KinNupe, in very ancient times, unto today’s Northern Yorubaland. They left KinNupe in those very far off days when KinNupe was still known as Mina. Then, and of course, we shouldn’t forget the fact that the ancient name of Minna, the capital city of Niger State, is a Colonial transcription of the original Mina. And, more ancient times, Minna or Mina was located in KinNupe proper. In fact as recent as Colonial times a Nupe District Head used to be sent from Bida to administer the place we call Minna today. In any case, that Almina Colossus, built several thousand years ago here in KinNupe in those days when KinNupe was known as Mina, survived into the days of Queen Amina of Zaria who reigned just a couple of hundreds of years ago. KinNupe was known in ancient times as Almina by the Arab historians due to the fact that it was the location of the Mina Colossus which was famous to the outside world as an in international oracle in ancient times. Incidentally Queen Amina of Zaria also lived here in ancient KinNupe and was accordingly refered to by latter politicians as the ‘Queen of Almina’. But then Sultan Bello came to write or transcribe ‘Almina’ simply as ‘Amina’ and that was how Sultan Bello unknowingly popularize the name Amina as the name of the person we refer to as Queen Amina of Zaria today. Queen Amina was a great woman who was born, lived, flourished and died here in KinNupe. Because she was such an almighty queen and because she was a Nupe woman who lived in the same KinNupe where there was the ancient Almina Colossus which was a statue of a very ancient queen, this Queen Amina easily gained the nickname ‘Almina’ which Sultan Bello came to pronounce as ‘Amina’ in his historical writings. And that was how Queen Amina became known as Amina. The Zaria traditions categorically associated Queen Amina with the Almina Colossus of ancient KinNupe. In fact the Zaria traditions said that the locals believed that the Almina Colossus was actually a statue of the historical Queen Amina. Queen Amina the Nupe Nyizagi Though Queen Amina’s name was incidentally mentioned by the Kano Chronicle in connection with the AtaGara kingdom here in KinNupe, the truth of the matter is that Queen Amina lived and died long before the time of the AtaGara kingdom. The Kano Chronicle mentioned that Queen Amina died in AtaGara close to Bida because the very area where she died was to later become the site of both the AtaGara and Bida in latter times. Queen Amina lived in the days of the Nupe kingdom of Sakwa or Zagwa or Zugur or Zugurma and not in the days of the AtaGara kingdom. When the Isa kingdom merged with the Koro or Kwara kingdom, both located here in KinNupe, the result was the united kingdom of Isa-Kwara or Sakwa. The kingdom of Sakwa was known with various other names. Sakwa was pronounced as just Saki or Zaki and this was repeated into Zakzak or Zegzeg which was the original name of the Zaria kingdom. But Sakwa was also pronounced as Sagwa or, as the Yorubas came to pronounce it, Shango. It is still known among the Gbagyis as Saiko. The Edo people pronounced it as Etsako. And among the Nupes it is still known as Zungeru. In more historical times it was known as Zungur or Zugur. It is the same that came to be known as the famous Zugurma of Nupe history. The rulers of Sakwa were known as the Saki or Sagi. This royal title ‘Sagi’ is merely a shortened form of Saragi or Saraki or Sarki which, in turn, is just the mirror-image of Kisra or Kisara which was the royal title of the erstwhile Yisa emperors. To this very day the leading royal title for women in KinNupe is ‘Sagi’. But Sagi was also pronounced as ‘Nusagi’. It was from Nusagi that we got the ‘Nusa’ of Nupe and the ‘Orisha’ of Yoruba. The Nusa or Orisha were worshiped as semi-divine sacred kings. Nusa was also pronounced as Nyisa and Nusagi was also pronounced as Nyisagi or Nyizagi. The emperors of the Zakzak empire were known as the Nyizagi. Nyizagi was originally the royal title of the Yisa and Sakwa or Zugurma Nupe emperors and it was then a uni-gender title that was applied to both emperors and empresses. Queen Amina was just one of these ‘Nyizagi’ empresses of this Sagwa or Zakzak or, as we call it today, Zaria. Zugurma and Zaria But Zugurma, Zugur, Zugzug, Zakzak or Zaria was a Nupe kingdom through and through. It was here, on the banks of the River Niger in the heart of KinNupe, that the Yisa and Koro (Kwara) kingdoms merged together to form the Sagwa kingdom which became known as Zugurma. And it was here in KinNupe that Zugurma or Sakwa grew into a mighty empire that eventually set up satellite colonies in Hausaland (as Zakzak or Zaria), in Yorubaland (as Shango), and so many other parts of ancient Nigeria. Queen Amina was born, lived, reign and died in the Nupe kingdom of Zugurma here in the heart of KinNupe. Zugurma was a great empire. It planted colonies in different parts of the ancient Sudan and some of these colonies became great kingdoms and empires on their own. One of these Zugurma colonies of Nupe origin that became a great power is the Songhai Empire. The kings of the Songhai Empire where initially known as the Askia or Saki which is the same with Sagi which was the name of the Nupe emperors of Yisa and Sakwa in ancient times. But this is not where to discuss the origin of the Songhai Empire from Nupe. Zugurma or Zaria used to be such a great Nupe empire that it had a greater part of the Central Sudan under its sovereignty. History saw Zugurma or Zaria being constituted of both of today’s KinNupe and the whole of Gwandaraland. This means that the Gwandara people of Keffi, Nasarawa, Jema’a, Bauchi and Jos Plateau people used to be one and the same with the Nupe people in former times. It was when Zugurma fell and collapsed into daughter kingdoms that we had one of such daughter kingdoms gradually migrating out of Central KinNupe to the borders of KinNupe with Hausaland to become today’s Zaria. It is on this note that Sultan Bello wrote that Zaria was originally a colony of Nupe people. Dr. Elizabeth Isichei also confirmed that Nupe was fundamentally involved in the initial history of Zaria. Zaria was Nupe Zaria was also a Nupe settlement. In fact Zaria was never a Hausa settlement as is wrongly and mischievously alleged by the Hausa Bakwai-Banza Bakwai propagandists. It is in this regard that Sultan Bello wrote that Zaria was originally a colony of Nupeko or Kororofa Nupe peoples. And Professor Elizaebth Isichei wrote that the Nupe peoples were intricately and intimately involved in the early history of Zaria. The Zaria traditions are that Zaria was founded by Queen Amina of Zaria whose parents or ancestors were Bakwa Turunku and Bakwa Gunguma. But, and as we have discussed in an earlier part of this present work, the term ‘Bakwa’ is a national name of the Nupe people in ancient times. We saw this term Bakwa, as ‘Bakwai’, also in the Hausa Bakwai-Banza Bakwai story wherein, as we demonstrated, it referred to the Nupe people as Bako or Bakoro because they came from the River Niger which is known as Koro. So, Ba-Koro or Bako or Bakwa simpl means ‘A Person from the River Niger’. In substantiation of this is the fact that the Zaria traditions categorically narrated that both Bakwa Turunku and Bakwa Gunguma, the ancestors of Queen Amina, came from the south, that is, KinNupe. The story is that Zaria was originally located to the South and that it was in a gradual manner that it migrated upwards to its present location. Actually even the names of the ancestors of Queen Amina, who were said to have come from the south, KinNupe, were the names of the Nupe peoples. Taking Bakwa Gunguma for instance, we see that it is completely and totally an ancient Nupe name. As we said before, Bakwa is a national name of the Nupe people in former times as it refers to the River Niger on which the Nupe Nation is located. Gunguma is also national name of KinNupe in former times. Sir H.R. Palmer and Professor Alan Ryder have both demonstrated the fact that KinNupe was also known in former times as Gungu. It was this Gungu that was also, dialectally, pronounced as ‘Gunguma’ which we saw as the surname in the name Bakwa Gunguma. This Gunguma is the same that Leo Africanus and Mungo Park heard pronounced as Gungura or Gwangara as the national name of KinNupe in fomer times. So, Bakwa Gunguma, the mother of Queen Amina, was a Nupe woman through and through. And the Zaria traditions did maintain that Bakwa Gunguma actually came from the south, that is, KinNupe. In fact variants of the Zaria traditions also indicated that both Bakwa Turunku and Bakwa Gunguma never got to or lived in Zaria. The Zaria traditions narrated that it was a sister to Queen Amina, and not her parents Bakwa Turunku or Bakwa Gunguma, that founded the city state of Zaria which was later on ruled over by her sister Queen Amina. So, Bakwa Turunku and Bakwa Gunguma, the parents of Queen Amina, were Nupe people who were born, lived and died here in Central KinNupe and not in Zaria. Sir H.R. Palmer and Sir C.R. Niven both wrote that Zaria was originally located in the south and that the ancestors of Queen Amina, that is people like Bakwa Turunku and Bakwa Gunguma, who initiated the slow movement of Zaria from the south to its present location. Bakwa Turunku, another one of the parents of Queen Amina, was also a Nupe person. The name Bakwa Turunku is a Nupe name. Turunku is the same as Tukuru which is just another variant of the name Tagara or AtaGara. In any case the Kano Chronicle categorically wrote that Queen Amina died at AtaGara which was the super power Nupe kingdom that was located on the banks of the River Niger right here in the heart of KinNupe in very ancient times. The truth of the matter is that Queen Amina was born, lived, flourished and died here in Central KinNupe. She never lived in, or even visited, the Zaria kingdom of today. In fact the Hausa traditions refer to Queen Amina as ‘the daughter of Nikatau’. But Nikatau was simply another Hausa corruption of the Nupe national name ‘Atagara’. Zaria was originally founded as a united kingdom of the Yisa ancient Nupe people and the Gara ancient Nupe people right here in the heart of KinNupe. It was the Yisa and Gara Nupe peoples who merged to form the united kingdom of Yisa-Gara or Isagara which was also known as Sagara or Saga or Sagwa. Sagwa was also pronounced, repetitively in the usual Kwa linguistic manner, as Sagsag or Zagzag which was also pronounced as Zakzak or, as we transcribe it today, Zazzau. This derivation have been demonstrated by James Rhodes Wilson-Haffendon. This Original or Old Zaria, which was a merger of the ancient Yisa and Gara Nupe people and which was also located right here in KinNupe, was variously known as Zungeru, Wushishi, Abuja (today’s Suleja), Asokoro, etc, etc. All these are also remnants of the original Zazzau or Zaria kingdoms which are still located in KinNupe to this very day. That Zaria originated from KinNupe is also attested to by the fact that when the Zaria kingdom was threatened with extinction by the Fulani Jihadists the rulers of Zaria simply ran back to KinNupe, there original homeland. It was to the Zuba-Lapai area that the rulers of the Zaria kingdom fled when Zaria was attacked by the Fulani. The rulers of Zaria actually settled in a place not far away from Old Lapai before they eventually relocated to the place where Abuja (today’s Suleja) was located to this very day.
Posted on: Thu, 08 May 2014 01:43:08 +0000
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