Aisa Kili Ngirmaramma
Kanuri · mortal · Kanuri traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Aisa Kili Ngirmaramma is one of the very few women named in the dynastic tradition of Bornu, remembered as a royal woman who held the throne during a sixteenth-century interregnum and preserved the succession, in several accounts safeguarding it until Idris Alooma could reign. Sources differ on her exact kinship to the mais and on the length of her rule, and some scholars question the details of the story, but her figure preserves the strong Kanuri institution of powerful royal women, of whom the queen mother (magira) and the senior wife (gumsu) held recognised offices of state. She belongs to the semi-legendary memory surrounding the Sefuwa kingship rather than to securely documented history.
Domains
- sacred kingship
Powers
- hold the throne in regency
Epithets
- Ngirmaramma — the great, one of exalted rankRonald Cohen, The Kanuri of Bornu (1967) (secondary)
Sources
- Aisa Kili Ngirmaramma is remembered in the Bornu king tradition as a female ruler or regent who held the throne for several years and secured the succession, in some accounts for Idris Alooma.: Yves Urvoy, Histoire de l'empire du Bornou (Paris: Larose, 1949) (secondary); H. R. Palmer, The Bornu Sahara and Sudan (London: John Murray, 1936) (secondary)