Gobir occupied the northernmost position among the Hausa states discussed in the excerpt. The original homeland of the Gobirawa lay farther north, stretching from the region of Agades to the Air massif, known in Hausa as Azbin or Abzin. Gobir referred not simply to a people but to the political entity formed by Gobirawa groups in different locations and at different times.

Pressure from the Tuareg began pushing these groups southward from the twelfth century. Some settled on the plains of Adar and became known as Adarawa, while others established the Gobir kingdom. Up to approximately 1405, Gobir was located in what is now the Republic of Niger, with a centre possibly at Marandet. It later moved farther south and maintained a capital at Birnin Lalle for a time.

The chronology and early political development of Gobir remain difficult to reconstruct because the available written and oral sources are scarce. Marandet had already been an important commercial and industrial centre by about the ninth century through trans-Saharan trade with Gao, raising the possibility that Gobir had centralized earlier than the surviving king lists suggest. The excerpt leaves this possibility open rather than treating it as established.

Gobirawa groups played a defensive role in the northern part of Hausaland. Despite continuous pressure from the Tuareg, they are described as successful defenders of the northern frontier, both during the period under discussion and later. The arrival of Abzinawa in Gobir during the mid-fifteenth century is associated in the Kano Chronicle with the wider availability of salt in Hausaland.