The only narrative of the Hausa towns, but a nineteenth-century compilation whose dates for early kings are reckoned back from reign lengths. For 1200 it places the sarki Yusa (Tsaraki, 1136 to 1194) and then Naguji (1194 to 1247) on the throne, after Gijimasu had begun the city wall; it tells of the struggle between the kings and the keepers of the old cult on Dala hill, and it dates the coming of Islam under Yaji to the 1340s. Its value for 1200 is to show what Kano's own tradition says the city was: a walled town with a pagan king and a priestly opposition. The king lists of Daura, Katsina, Zazzau and Gobir are later and thinner.
About this source
- Title
- Tarikh Kano (the Kano Chronicle)
- Author
- Anonymous
- Author's dates
- compiled in Kano, probably in the 1880s, perhaps by Malam Barka
- Written
- about 1880 to 1890, from older written lists and oral tradition
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- the rulers of Kano from Bagauda (traditionally from 999) to the 1890s
- Kind
- Chronicle
Palmer's 1908 translation is public domain. The Sudanese Memoirs reprint was not found free online. Murray Last and Paul Lovejoy have argued over how old the chronicle's materials are; nothing in it can be shown to be a thirteenth-century record.
Where to read it
Editions
- The Arabic text has not been published in full; Palmer worked from a manuscript obtained at Sabon Gari near Katsina (not freely online)
Translations
- H. R. Palmer (tr.), The Kano Chronicle, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 38 (1908), pp. 58 to 98, English: the JRAI volume at the Internet Archive
- The same article as a public-domain scan at Zenodo
- H. R. Palmer (tr.), Sudanese Memoirs, 3 vols (Lagos, 1928; reprinted London, 1967), vol. 3, English, with the other Hausa and Bornu texts (not freely online)