Kukawa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kukawa
Kukawa
Location in Nigeria
Coordinates: 12°55′N 13°34′E / 12.917°N 13.567°E / 12.917; 13.567
Country Nigeria
State Borno State

Kukawa (previously Kuka) is a town and Local Government Area in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, close to Lake Chad.

The town was founded in 1814 as capital of the Kanem-Bornu Empire by the Muslim scholar and warlord Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi after the fall of the previous capital, Ngazargamu, conquered in 1808 in the Fulani War. The town had great strategical importance, being the southern terminal of an important trans-Saharan trade route to Tripoli.[citation needed] The town was visited in 1892 by the French explorer Parfait-Louis Monteil, who was checking the borders between areas of West Africa assigned to the French and the British.[1] The town was captured and sacked in 1893 by the Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr, and then by the British in 1902.

Historically the city was much larger than today, with a population estimated by the British at 50,000-60,000 in the late nineteenth-century.

Towns in the Kukawa Local Government Area include Cross Kauwa and Baga.

References

  1. Emil Lengyel. Dakar - Outpost of Two Hemispheres. READ BOOKS, 2007. p. 170ff. ISBN 1-4067-6146-X. Retrieved 2010-10-11. 

Coordinates: 12°55′N 13°34′E / 12.917°N 13.567°E / 12.917; 13.567


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.