ZARIA, a province occupying a central position in the North ern Provinces of the British protectorate of Nigeria. It has an area of 23,695 sq.m. and a population (1926) of 1,031,567. The province was enlarged in 1926 by the transference to it of the Katsina emirate from Kano province (see KATSINA). The prov ince, of which a great portion consists of open rolling plains, is watered by the Kaduna affluent of the Niger and its many tribu taries, and is generally healthy. There is an area of high land (2,000 ft. and over) in the centre of the province which in the south consists of parksland—"orchard brush." In the north the country is more open and becomes semi-desert where the Katsina emirate adjoins the French Niger colony. The chief towns are Zaria, the capital of the emirate, 87 m. S.W. of Kano, and Kaduna, the capital of the Northern Provinces. Both Zaria and Kaduna are in direct railway communication with Kano, Lagos and Port Harcourt, the Western and Eastern railways of Nigeria having their junction at Kaduna. There is also a railway from Zaria to the Bauchi tin-fields, and another railway goes N.W. from Zaria towards Sokoto. There are over 1,000 m. of motor roads in the province. Cotton is very extensively grown.
The ancient state of Zaria, also called Zeg-Zeg by the geog raphers and historians of the middle ages, was one of the origi nal seven Hausa states. It suffered all the fluctuations of Hausa
history, and in the 13th and early 14th centuries seems to have been the dominating state of Hausaland. At later periods it submitted in turn to Kano, Songhoi and Bornu. At the end of the 18th century it was an independent state under its own Moham medan rulers, but, like the rest of northern Hausaland, it was conquered in the opening years of the 19th century by the Fula. It remained a Fulani emirate up to the period of the British occupation of Nigeria. The emir of Zaria professed friendliness to the British, and in March 1902 the province was taken under British administrative control. It was found that, notwithstand ing his friendly professions, the emir of Zaria was intriguing with Kano and Sokoto, then openly hostile to Great Britain, while he continued to raid for slaves and to perpetrate acts of brutal tyranny and oppression. He was deposed in the autumn of 1902, and after the Sokoto-Kano campaign of 1903, which assured the supremacy of Great Britain in the protectorate, another emir, Dan Sidi, was appointed to Zaria.