Amina of Zazzau
Amina, or to give her full name Aminatu, is described in The Kano Chronicle (Palmer, p. 109) as a Chieftainess who lived in the first half of the fifteenth century and pursued a career of conquest over a period of thirty-four years. She does not, however, appear in either of the lists of Zazzau Chiefs that have come down to us (Heath, Appendix I and LHdM, vol. I, pp. 43-44. The

Abuja Chronicle describes her as the daughter of Bakwa Turunku, who was Chief or Chieftainess of Zazzau a hundred years later than the date given by The Kano Chronicle and who in any case reigned for only three years. The Labarun Hausawa da Makwabtansu list does not mention Amina at all and clouds the issue by describing the Abuja Chronicle’s Bakwa Turunku as Bako Turunku (thereby suggesting that he was a man and not a woman) and giving him a reign of thirty years instead of only three. Sultan Bello follows the Abuja Chronicle in describing Amina as the daughter of a Chieftain and not as a Chieftainess in her own right (Arnett, p. 12).
It is just conceivable that the Abuja Chronicle and Sultan Bello were right and that Amina was an Amazon of the ruling house who flourished about A.D. 1540, but for a number of reasons it is very unlikely. First, as already mentioned, The Kano Chronicle places her a century earlier. Secondly, if she had in fact lived about 1540 she would have overlapped Kanta in time, whereas we know that some of her reputed conquests, such as Nupe and most probably Zazzau itself, formed part of his Empire. Thirdly, her fame rests partly on her activities in fortifying towns with walls, but The Kano Chronicle (Palmer, p. 100) gives the early twelfth century as the period when walls were first built and by 1540 the art was certainly already several hundred years old.
For these reasons it is very difficult to believe that Amina lived as late as the sixteenth century and this doubt is reinforced by the shadowy nature of her legend. Even The Kano Chronicle may have placed her too late and, if wall-building is the key to her period, we may guess that it was the twelfth or thirteenth century. Alternatively, she may never have existed but simply be a myth with its roots in an earlier matriarchal era.