Amina (Civ6)/Civilopedia

In the late 1500s, the lord of Zazzau, a city-state in northern Nigeria, began to notice something about his daughter. She was preternaturally bold and assertive, and held her kitchen knife not like a tool, but like a weapon of war. This was Amina, of the Hausa, and when her father and brother both died, she took control of Zazzau and expanded it into a major force in the region. Zazzau was one of a series of states at the far western edge of Saharan trade routes, sending raw resources – and, at the time, enslaved people – across the desert into the Middle East, and as the region had seen the rise and fall of multiple related powers – Ghana, Mali, Songhai, among others, the area was constantly on the verge new wars and conquests. Amina, upon taking the throne, called upon her followers to ‘sharpen their weapons’ and moved from city to city, first sacking the place, and then erecting new fortifications to consolidate her rule. She was also unapologetic about being a female leader in a Muslim society. She allegedly took a lover in each town she captured for one night, and then had the (un?)fortunate man executed the next morning. This perhaps was not only a display of her capacity for military conquest, but also a way to ensure that patriarchal systems of dynastic succession would never threaten her right to rule.
Her rule was the height of women’s power in Hausaland, which in years afterward experienced a gradual decline. She remains a folk hero, though, and is fondly remembered by people in the region – at least, those who lived to tell the tale.