240 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY States of Zanfara, Kebbi, Nupe, Gwari, Yauri, Yoruba, and Kororofa. In these states the Haussa language, though spoken, is not original, and we have alreadyseen that Yoruba claims for itself a separate descent of more than respectable antiquity. Yoruba, if included, would carry Haussaland practically to the sea at Lagos.

Nupe, as we have seen, was considered in the fourteenth century to be one of the most important of the purely native states of the Soudan. In Ibn Batuta's day it still maintained its reputation of being wholly impenetrable to the white man. The period at which these ** illegitimate " states became infused with Haussa blood, or were made dependent upon Haussaland, is left, so far as the myth is concerned, indefinite. No part of the account deserves more than such credit as a myth may receive.

When we come to examine the few historical documents which are available, we find no trace of political union between the Haussa States, except when, for certain periods in their history, one among them assumed or acquired a temporary dominance over the others. On the contrary, their history, as embodied in the chronicles to which allusion has been made, and which date back to the eighth or ninth centuries of our era, show them as independent kingdoms in a state of more or less chronic internecine war. Any union which may have given rise to the myth must therefore have existed before the year 800 of our era.

In considering the civil and political conditions of the Haussa States we are necessarily reminded of the organisation of the early states of antiquity. The peoples of Asia Minor, of Arabia, and of Egypt itself, in days before the rise of the Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires, were commonly organised in a number of allied but separate cities. Heeren tells us that, amongst the Syrian populations, as far as the light of history carries us back, we find everywhere a number of single cities, with the territory around them, under