Lost history · 15th-17th century · Fact and tradition
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Between Binji and Silame lies a silent field of stone walls, fourteen gates, a ditch of fire and a baobab that has stood for five centuries. It was the capital of Kebbi, built by a warrior king whose walls amazed even Muhammad Bello.
Drive out between Binji and Silame, two local government areas of Sokoto State, and you come to a wide, quiet stretch of land, about 19 square kilometres of it. Today it is mostly silence. But this place, called Surame, was once the busy seat of power of the Kebbi kingdom, which people there call Kabi. It sat on the bank of the River Rima, on one of the busiest routes that crossed the Sahara.
Its first king was a warrior named Muhammadu Kanta. The accounts say he died on the road home from a war in the Kanem-Borno empire. Kanta is remembered for many things, but at Surame he is remembered for stone. The way the stones of his city were laid was so unusual that he came to be called the Pharaoh of the Western Sudan.
He was not the only one impressed. In the 19th century, Muhammad Bello, the son of Usman dan Fodio, visited the old Kebbi city and was struck by its stone walls. He is reported to have said he had never seen walls like them anywhere in the region, except at Ngazargamu, the old capital of Borno. Much later, a British archaeologist, P.K. Darling, called them the largest ancient stone walls in the whole of Africa. Together with a second site nearby called Gungu, the stone remains spread over more than 28 square kilometres.
Why stone, and why here? The whole landscape around Surame is stony, and the stone is rich in iron. Some people think Kanta chose the place for exactly that reason: a king who meant to conquer needed iron for his weapons. That is a guess, not a proven fact. But diggers working at the king's palace did find something they believe was a furnace.
Surame had fourteen gates. Seven were great gates that opened the city to the outside world. Seven were smaller ones that joined one part of the city to another. Some of them are still standing. One is called the Dashe tree gate, because a dashe tree stood on that spot before the gate was built.
Walk the site and you can still trace how the city was meant to keep enemies out: two rings of stone wall, one inside the other, narrow paths squeezing in through the gates, guard posts and watchtowers. Inside it all were the rectangular walls of the palace.
Kanta's palace itself was shaped like a trapezium and is said to have stood several metres high. It has fallen now, but the rubble of its foundations still shows its outline. Inside the palace area are a well thought to be more than 500 years old and the round foundations of houses built for the king's wives and his followers. At the very centre stands a baobab tree, also believed to be over 500 years old. When Kebbi was strong, that tree stood for the king's power.
The city was laid out by rank. The ruling class had its own quarter. Close to the palace lived the spiritual men, both Islamic scholars and traditional priests. The king turned to them on matters of the spirit, and they were expected to see the plots of enemies before those plots were hatched. Before any war, they were asked how it would end. The soldiers lived around the outer edge of the city, where they could meet an attack first.
There is one more place people still point to. Its name is given as Wuta-da-Aljanah, and in English it is called the Heavenly Bridge. By local account, this was where wrongdoers were judged. Those found guilty were thrown into a ditch where a fire was kept burning for 24 hours. On the other side, the king honoured those who had done good. There are graves too, of rulers and of ordinary people, and old wells that once watered the city, now filled with earth after years of neglect.
After Kanta died, quarrels inside the kingdom and pressure from outside pulled Surame apart. In the 17th century the Kebbi people left and moved to Birnin Kebbi. About a hundred years later they moved again, and in 1831 they settled at Argungu under their first ruler there, Ismaila Nabame. That is why the people who carry Surame's memory now live mostly in Kebbi State, while the stones themselves are in Sokoto State.
The dates are not all neat. The writing about Surame speaks of Kanta in the 15th century, but when Ahmadu Bello University dug at the site in 2012 to find out whether the walls were all built at one time, it found they went up in stages between the 16th and 17th centuries. Earlier, in 1991, a dig by researchers the reports name as Dr Leseigang and Gerhard had found signs that three different peoples had lived at Surame before Kanta ever came.
The site has been protected, slowly. In the 1950s the Sokoto Native Authority made it a forest reserve. In 1964 the Federal Government declared it a national monument. In 2009 the National Commission for Museums and Monuments began preparing it for the UNESCO World Heritage List. Scientists from Usmanu Danfodiyo University counted 56 kinds of flowering plants there that people use as medicine. One, called geza, is said to help women who cannot have children.
In 2016 the site manager, Malam Garba Hassan Mahadi, who is also curator of the Kanta Museum in Argungu, said there was still work to do before Surame could even go on UNESCO's waiting list: a trail for visitors, resting spots, a welcome centre, a car park. Kebbi, he said, holds the memory, and Sokoto holds the stones, so the two states would have to work together. At the time, the whole 19 square kilometres was watched over by just twelve guards.
