The kingdom is dominated by the Yankam people who have eventually lost their language to Hausa. located in the southern zone of plateau in Wase L.G.A is a district known Bashar.The town regard their chief as Rekna due to the history of their language. the town is known of a population of over 23,000 peaceful people. The people have made it easy for ALH. Adamu Idris to rule them for currently 57 years by uniting themselves. The history of Bashar have been tapped from different sources as expressed below.
Nomenclature
The Yangkam (Yaŋkam) people have been called ‘Bashar’ or ‘Basherawa’ (the Hausaised name for the people) in almost all the literature (Greenberg 1963; Williamson 1971; Benue-Congo Comparative Wordlist; Hansford et al. 1976; Gerhardt 1989; Crozier & Blench 1992). The correct name of the Bashar language and people is Yàŋkàm, plural aYaŋkam+. Although Yangkam has nearly disappeared as a language, the populations who formerly spoke it are likely to retain Basherawa and Basheranci as their name for the people and language as long as they retain a separate identity.
Location and settlements
The Yangkam live in a region west of Bashar town, 25 km north from Jarme on the Amper-Bashar road, Kanam LGA, in Plateau State. Yangkam is spoken in some four villages, Tukur, Bayar, Pyaksam and Kiram [CAPRO also mentions Gambam and Kwakkwani, but this was not confirmed]. There are many hamlets around Bashar town in Wase local Government whose populations are ethnically Yangkam but who no longer speak the language. In the two main cartographic sources, Hansford et al. (1976) and Blench and Crozier (1992) it is located quite inaccurately. Section gives its correct location, and it should appear in a map correctly sited in the Millennium edition of the Ethnologue (Grimes, forthcoming).
Language status
Crozier and Blench (1992) give a figure of 20,000 speakers of the language located in and around Bashar town, some 50 km east of Amper on the Muri road. This estimate turned out to be entirely erroneous. The Bashar people seem to have been heavily affected by nineteenth century slave raids, perhaps by the Jukun as well as the Hausa. They were converted to Islam and a relatively powerful centre was established at Bashar. At the same time they began to switch to speaking Hausa, while still retaining their Bashar identity. In the region of Bashar town today, there are just two old men who remain reasonably fluent in the language, in the village of Yuli, some 15 km northwest of Bashar. However, it turns out that at the time of the raids, the population split into two and another group sought refuge in Tukur. However, even here Yangkam is only spoken by people over fifty and all the young people speak Hausa. The local estimate of the number of fluent speakers is 100, and falling every year. There seems to be no likelihood that Yangkam will be maintained as speakers are quite content with the switch to Hausa, while remaining proud of their historical identity.