This is a list of rulers of Kano since the establishment of the Bagauda Dynasty in 998. The early rulers are known almost exclusively from a single source, the Kano Chronicle,[3] which was composed in the late 19th century.[4]
Shehu Suleiman dan Aba Hama from the Fulani Mundubawa clan led the Jihad of Usman dan Fodio in Kano, and overthrew the almost eight-centuries-old Bagauda dynasty. He pledged allegiance to the Sokoto Caliphate and became the first emir of the Kano Emirate. He was a wise and just king.
Shehu Ibrahim Dabo from the Fulani Sullubawa clan was a mystic and scholar. He is the eponymous founder of the Dabo dynasty as the khalifa of Emir Suleiman which has ruled Kano for over two hundred years.
Aliyu was on a visit to Sokoto in 1903 when Kano fell to the British during the Battle of Kano. Aliyu gathered his forces on a long march to retake the city but his cavalry was annihilated by the Lord Lugard at the sanguinary Battle of Kwatarkwashi. His brother Wambai Abbas was proclaimed Emir by the British and Aliyu subsequently went on a Mahdist Hijra north into the Sahara but was captured by the French and handed over to the British who exiled him to Yola and then Lokoja
Ado Bayero had the longest reign in the royal history of the city-state spanning over five decades. His reign started three years before the fall of the first republic and saw 14 heads of state and 17 state governors. His funeral was the largest gathering in the modern history of northern Nigeria.
Sanusi II was the first Sullubawa prince since the 19th century founding of the Dabo dynasty to become emir not through royal primogenitureship. His six-year reign marks also the first to usher in a dynastic generational-shift away from the old regime of 1903; he is the second emir to be dethroned after his grandfather Sir Sanusi I
