Kukawa

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Kukawa
Kukawa Location in Nigeria
Coordinates: 12°55′N 13°34′E / 12.917°N 13.567°E / 12.917; 13.567
Country	Nigeria
State	Borno State

Kukawa (previously Kuka) is a town in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, close to Lake Chad.

The town was founded in 1814 as capital of the Kanem-Bornu Empire by the Muslim scholar and warlord Muhammad al-Kanem after the fall of the previous capital, Ngazargamu, conquered in 1808 in the Fulani War. The town had great strategical importance, being the southern terminal of an important trans-Saharan trade route to Tripoli. The town was capotured and saked in 1893 by the Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr, and then by the British in 1902.

Historically the city was much larger than today, with a population estimated by the British at 50,000-60,000 in the late nineteenth-century.

Coordinates: 12°55′N 13°34′E / 12.917°N 13.567°E / 12.917; 13.567