Kukawa

Infobox Settlement
official_name =Kukawa
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pushpin_label_position =bottom
pushpin_map_caption =Location in Nigeria
subdivision_type = Country
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subdivision_type1 = State
subdivision_name1 = Borno State
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latd=12 |latm=55|lats= |latNS=N
longd=13|longm=34 |longs= |longEW=E
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Kukawa (previously Kuka) is a town in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, close to Lake Chad.

The town was founded in 1814 as capital of the Kanem-Bornu Empire by the Muslim scholar and warlord Muhammad al-Kanem after the fall of the previous capital, Ngazargamu, conquered in 1808 in the Fulani War. The town had great strategical importance, being the southern terminal of an important trans-Saharan trade route to Tripoli. The town was taken in 1893 by the Sudanese Rabih az-Zubayr, and then by the British in 1902. Historically the city was much larger than today, with a population estimated by the British at 50,000-60,000 in the late nineteenth-century.