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Zaria is a premier city of Kaduna State in Northern Nigeria. First known as Zazzau, it was one of the original seven Hausa city-states. Zaria was captured by the Fulani in 1805 and included in the Sokoto Caliphate. British forces led by Frederick Lugard then took the city in 1901. The 2007 estimated population was 1,018,827. ^[1]

The people of Zaria are predominantly Muslim, and their culture is primarily agricultural. Staples are guinea corn and millet, and cash crops include cotton, ground-nuts and tobacco. ^[2] The city is considered by some to be a main center of Hausa agriculture, and Zaria is the seat of Ahmadu Bello University (1962), a major Nigerian university and a prominent agricultural institution.

The old part of the city is surrounded by walls, and people typically reside in compounds. The current Sarkin Zazzau (meaning Emir of Zaria) is Dr. Alhaji Shehu Idris.

Contents 1 History 2 Transport 3 People from Zaria 4 References

Zaria's history is explicably linked to the kingdom of Zazzau. Zazzau was an Habe kingdom founded by the legendary Queen Amina around the sixteenth or seventeenth century.^[2] Zaria became the capital and also eponymously a name for the kingdom. However, human settlement predates the rise of Zazzau, as the region like a few of its neighbors had a history of sedentary Hausa settlement, with indigenes engaged in institutional but pre-capitalist market exchange and farming. The people are predominantly muslim although it has a large pagan and Christian settlement. Late 1490's, Islam arrived Zaria by the way of its sister Habe cities, Kano and Katsina. Along with Islam, trade also flourished between the cities as traders brought camel caravans filled with Salt in exchange for slaves and grain.^[2] Between the fifteenth and Sixteenth century the kingdom became a tributary state of the Songhai Empire and around the early nineteenth century under the weight of the Fulani jihad it became a Fulani state headed by a Fulani emir.

Because Zaria is north of the rail junction at Kaduna, it has rail equal access to the seaports at Lagos and Port Harcourt.

• Shola Ameobi (born October 12, 1981), English-Nigerian football player
• Isaac Promise (born December 2, 1987), Gençlerbirliği football player in Turkey.
• Adewale Olukoju (born July 27, 1968), discus thrower
• Rumun Ndur (born July 7, 1975), ice hockey player, formerly of the National Hockey League

Coordinates: 11°04′N 7°42′E

• Smith, M. G. (Michael Garfield). Government in Zazzau 1800-1950

1. ^ "The World Gazetteer". Retrieved on 2007-02-20.
2. ^ ^{a b c} "The Britannica Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-02-04.