BORNU 273 of the whole place." It was therefore determined to make new houses for the Bornu party in an open field shaded by locust trees, between Kano and a frontier town at which they had paused. The King of Kano did all that he could to please his guests, and the next King of Bornu, recovering his throne, was known by the title of the Haussa King, or the King from Haussaland. Fifty years later another King of Bornu was driven to beg for similar hospitality from Kano, and it was not refused. The name of the Bornu king was Othman Kalnama, and he remained in Kano to the time of his death. This was under the great King of Kano, Mohammed Rimpa, and marks perhaps the highest point of the prosperity of Kano, and the lowest point of the fortunes of Bornu before the rise of the Songhay Empire in the West.

All these obligations did not affect the memory of the rulers of Bornu when, after a long succession of civil wars, they at last made good their position on the throne, and, in the person of Ali Ghajideni, who began to reign in 1472, opened a new and glorious epoch of Bornu history. Ali Ghajideni, who built the old capital of Bornu, now known by the name of Birni, three days west of the modern town of Kuka, on Lake Chad, reigned from about 1472 to 1504, and therefore brought the history of Bornu up to the moment of the Songhay conquest of Haussaland. He reformed the government, reorganised the army, and renewed the ancient glory of Bornu. He fought many and successful local wars, and amongst other exploits marched against Kano, where his immediate predecessor had dethroned a weak and incapable ruler.

It will be remembered that the Wankore, or Wangarawa, were mentioned as having brought Mohammedanism in the thirteenth century to Kano. This people effected a settlement in the Haussa country, and in the fifteenth century the province of Wangara, or Ungara, is described as lying south-easterly of Zamfara s