text: Further to the east, in the region of present-day Northern Nigeria, there are several states founded by the Hausa. Although now typically Negro in appearance, it is more than likely that the Hausa absorbed a great many Hamitic and Arabic elements and became the forgers of many empires. Such well-known states as Sokoto and Kano evolved during the Hausa rule, which reached the zenith of  
  its development during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
  All these states of the western Sudan had a social and political structure which was in many respects analogous to the European feudal institutions of the Middle Ages. They had the character of oriental despotism, in which the authority of the ruler or of the aristocracy which surrounded him was the only law. Feudal lords who owed allegiance to the sultan or emir were appointed by him and were required to supply fixed contingents of armed forces. As was customary in Europe, so here feudal lords often attempted to gain their independence or submitted to the rulers of adjacent states, a fact which accounts for much of the fluctuating history of these Sudan states, which at times covered wide regions and again fell almost into oblivion.