THE DOMINATION OF KANO 247 other native states as far as the navigable reaches of the Lower Niger.

Legend and history seem in this instance to have alHed themselves, for, while the worship of the goddess was long anterior to the existence of any lady bearing the suspiciously orthodox name of the Mother of the Prophet, and allusions to the statue are to be found in the very earliest writers, the Kano chronicle places an excellent queen, Amina of Zaria, who reigned for thirty-four years, in just the place in which we might expect to find her — that is, towards the end of the fourteenth century, about a hundred years after Mohammedanism was introduced into the Haussa States. The theory of the domination of Amina over the Haussa States is still further disposed of by the statement that in this reign the long struggle between Kano and Zaria was brought to an end by the final subjugation of Zaria. Queen Amina seems, however, to have been a person whose importance was fully recognised, and after the conquest the King of Kano assigned to her use the whole of the land tax from the southern provinces of Nupe to Kororofa — that is, the country lying on the right bank of the Benue — and also laid on Nupe a special tax of eunuchs and kola nuts to be paid to the queen.

'' The country of Haussa," says Sultan Bello, who wrote in the nineteenth century, "consists of seven provinces, to each of which a prince is appointed to superintend its affairs, and the inhabitants of the whole speak one language. The central province of this kingdom is Katsena, the most extensive is Zaria, the most warlike is Gober, and the most fertile is Kano."

Sultan Bello thus places Katsena in the centre of the Haussa States, and references to Katsena in the writings of the Arabs imply that it was a place of importance in the later development of Haussaland, famous alike for the industry and the learning of its inhabitants. The myth, to which reference has been made in