Yaji I

Ali Yaji Dan Tsamiya was a King and later the first Sultan of Kano, a state in what is now Northern Nigeria. Yaji I ruled from 1359-1385 CE. In 1350, Yaji converted to Islam, relinquished the Hausa Animisnt Cult of Tsumbubura and proclaimed Kano a Sultanate. He violently crushed a subsequent rebellion by the Animist cult at the Battle of Santolo waging in the processes the first Islamic Jihad in Sudanic Africa. He conquered the Kwararafa and the numerous Hausa Kingdoms around Kano laying the seeds for Kanoan dominance in the Bilad as Sudan. He died in 1385 having laid the seeds for an eventual Kanoan Empire