Overview
The city walls of Kano and Dala Hill sit at the centre of the old walled city in Kano State, in the North West zone. The walls are among the most substantial surviving earth fortifications in West Africa, and Dala Hill is tied to the traditions of the city's founding.
History
Kano tradition associates Dala Hill with the earliest settlement on the site, linked to ironworking communities, and the Kano Chronicle records a sequence of rulers from that beginning. Building of the city wall is placed by tradition in the eleventh to twelfth centuries, with successive rulers extending and strengthening it and adding gates; the circuit came to enclose farmland as well as housing, which allowed the city to hold out during a siege. The wall was breached during nineteenth-century conflict and again during the British advance at the start of the twentieth century, after which its defensive role ended. Long stretches have since eroded or been built over, while others and several gates survive and have been the subject of conservation proposals.
What to expect
The surviving stretches read as long earth ramparts with a ditch on the outer side, and the named gates give the clearest sense of the original scale. Dala Hill rises within the old city and looks over the roofs of the Kurmi market quarter and the palace. Condition varies greatly along the circuit, so what can be seen depends on the section, and current access information should be checked locally.
Connected history or culture
The walls and the city they enclose are the seat of the Kano Emirate, whose palace and administration are covered on that page, and the earth building tradition of the city is described in Hausa wall decoration.