In the twelfth century, Katsina was a Hausa village, governed by the Durbawa, which was a royal dynasty that had emigrated from a region whose name tradition has lost. One of the Durbawa kings, Janzawa, married a Daura princess from another Hausa state. The Queen Katsina, gave her name to the village which became the terminal of the commercial transsaharien route from Tripoli( Lybia ).

Before the Jihad( holy war ), the prosperity and security of the inhabitants of Katsina depended upon the goodwill of the Sarki( king ). If the soverain-god showed signs of mental or physical weakness, the lords of the palace would choose his successor, that they would place beneath a black ox whose throat would be cut. The new Sarki would therefore be purified and washed in the ox's blood, while one of the lords strangled the fallen soverain.

The deceased Sarki was then envelopped in the ox's skin and burried standing up.