ABSTRACT
The Hausa States, which form a large portion of the country now called Nigeria, have been ruled since the beginning of the nineteenth century by Fulani, who, under their chief Othman Dan Hodio, about the year 1807, ousted the former Hausa rulers on the plea of a religious revival. As it was known that Arabic literature and the Moslem faith had been introduced in the fifteenth century at latest, it was natural to suppose that some records had been kept of the reigns of the Hausa kings (Sarkis). Little, however, had in 1903 come to light except for two manuscripts which Dr. Barth discovered in Bornu dealing with that country, and the Kano Chronicle, of which there are several copies in existence, and which is mentioned by Lady Lugard (Tropical Dependency, p. 236). The copy, however, to which Lady Lugard alludes, is not complete, since only forty-two kings or Sarkis are mentioned. The manuscript which I have attempted to translate below, was found at Sabongari, near Katsina, and goes down to, and breaks off in, the time of Mohammad Belo, the forty-eighth Sarki.
