ABSTRACT
A systematic re-examination of historical texts for information on the growth and organization of Kano state is long overdue, but that cannot be fruitfully undertaken without prior reconstruction of the Hausa polity, since this alone can furnish adequate guidance to significant and appropriate data. To treat the Chronicle as significant mainly or solely because of the external relations it reports, grossly underestimates its content and value; but to appreciate its internal significance, the outsider needs a key to its many concrete and apparently disconnected data, which only a reasonably detailed and accurate model of the native polity at some point before the jihad can provide. Yaji’s achievement in raiding thus far and occupying Jukun territory for seven months indicates a considerable access of strength at Kano following the end of organized local resistance. If Yaji’s reign established the chiefship as the dominant unit in the Kano state, this development owed a great deal to his Mandinka allies and supporters.
