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TWENTY REASONS WHY QUEEN AMINA OF ZARIA NEVER EXISTED
By Ndagi Abdullahi
1 – The earliest Zaria traditions never mentioned Queen Amina of Zaria.
By Ndagi Abdullahi
1 – The earliest Zaria traditions never mentioned Queen Amina of Zaria.
2 – The people of Zaria first heard of Queen Amina of Zaria from two non-Zaria sources, namely, the Kano Chronicle from Kano & the Infakul Maisuri from Sokoto
3 – The utterly Islamic name Amina was not a Hausa name in the 16th century that Queen Amina was supposed to have lived
3 – The utterly Islamic name Amina was not a Hausa name in the 16th century that Queen Amina was supposed to have lived
4 – The Queen Amina of Zaria described by the Kano Chronicle is completely different from the Queen Amina of Zaria described by the Infakul Maisuri.
5 – Apart from the Kano Chronicle and the Infakul Maisuri no any other primary source document in history ever mentioned Queen Amina of Zaria.
6 – No contemporary source, written or oral, ever mentioned Queen Amina of Zaria.
6 – No contemporary source, written or oral, ever mentioned Queen Amina of Zaria.
7 – None of the pre-Colonial European explorers, including Mungo Park, Captain Hugh Clapperton, the Lander brothers, Dr. Heinrich Barth, Dr. William Baikie, etc., heard about Queen Amina of Zaria.
8 – Queen Amina of Zaria was completely unknown to native griots until European Colonial historians popularized her at the beginning of the 20th century.
9 – The Northern Nigerian story of Queen Amina of Zaria is evidently a rehashing of the Middle Belt story of Kisra.
9 – The Northern Nigerian story of Queen Amina of Zaria is evidently a rehashing of the Middle Belt story of Kisra.
10 – The Original Zaria Province or State is the ancient Nupe Province of Old Gbara formerly known as Gunguma or Kangoma and now known as Wushishi or Dunguru (Zungeru).
11 – Al Sadi’s ‘Tarikh Al Sudan& #39; of 1655 and al-Mukhtar’s Tarikh Al Fattash of the 1660s both are completely unaware of the existence of a Queen Amina of Zaria who was supposed to have been born in 1533.
12 – The earliest of the Arab historians to write on West Africa, including the celebrated El Bakri, wrote that today’s Nigerian Middle Belt was known as Mina or Al Mina.
13 – Gigantic idols and massifs bearing the name the ‘Goddess of Mina’ or the ‘Goddess of Al Mina& #39; replete the plains of prehistoric Central Nigeria centuries before the supposed birth of Queen Amina of Zaria in 1533.
14 – Lady Flora Shaw Lugard wrote that the people of the Nigerian Middle Belt used to worship the idol of a fertility Goddess referred to as the ‘Queen of Al Mina’.
15 – It was Hausa city chroniclers who unprofessionally transcribed the ‘Queen of Al Mina& #39; as ‘Queen Amina’.
15 – It was Hausa city chroniclers who unprofessionally transcribed the ‘Queen of Al Mina& #39; as ‘Queen Amina’.
16 – The Hausa city chroniclers then hijacked the well-known history of Kisra the Nupe King of Zozo and rehashed it as the story of Amina the ‘Queen of Zazzau’.
17 - The official royal history of early Zaria written by professional palace historians and titled the ‘Abuja Chronicle’, published in 1952, tellingly did not include Queen Amina on the Zaria king-list.
18 – The detailed biography of Queen Amina of Zaria we see today was fabricated by the playwright Umar Ahmed in 1954 in his drama play titled ‘Amina Sarauniyar Zazzau’.
19 – It was unsuspecting scholars, including the Colonial historian S.J. Hogben and the post-Independence academician Professor Abubakar Sa’ad who unwittingly gave scholarly credence to the Queen Amina of Zaria myth.
20 – World renowned historians, including Professor Abdullahi Smith and Professor Murray Last, have conclusively demonstrated that Queen Amina of Zaria never existed.
