The Influential West African Empire of Ife during Medieval Times

“One of the most considerable countries of the Sudan, and their sultan, one of the greatest sultans.” – Famous Historian of the Medieval World, Ibn Battuta

The Ife Empire: Small in Land; but Powerful, Attractive & Influential in Scope (Medieval West Africa)

Image I (Left): In 1910, a majestic bronze sculpture was found in the Nigerian (Yoruba) city of Ife (Ile-Ife).

Image II (Top Right): Oduduwa Flag. King Oduduwa of Ife was known as the father of the Yoruba people and all people of the world.

Image III (Bottom Right): Ife Empire. c. 1200 – 1420 AD. The Ife Empire during the mid-14th century. 

Yoruba: “Ifẹ̀ oòyè, If̀ẹ̀ oòdáyè, ibi tí ojúmọ tí n mọ́ wá, Ifẹ̀ olórí ayè gbogbo.”

English Translation: “Ilé-Ifẹ̀, the place of survivors, the birthplace of the world, the source of daybreak, the leader of the entire world.”

The origins of the Ife Kingdom started in the 9th century, but the Ife Kingdom became a powerful empire from 1200 to 1420 AD. Ife rose to power through trade with the Sahelian and the forest states. The capital of the Ife Empire was Ile-Ife, which was one of the largest urban centers in the 14th century in West Africa, and it is estimated that Ile-Ife had a population of 70,000 to 105,000 people. The Opa River is ancient, and it originates in the Ife hills in this tropical-savannah region of Central Yorubaland. The river influences its hydrologic characteristics, because geologically, the Opa River's catchment area is underlain by crystalline basement rocks, comprising granite, gneiss, and schist. The river flows through the royal and sacred Kingdom of Ife, and the present-day Obafemi Awolowo University campus. The Opa River spans about 25 mi (40 km) in length.

At the height of Ife’s power during the 14th century, the Ife Empire extended across around 186 mi (300 km), and encompassed the kingdoms of Owu, Jebba, Tada, and Oyo in the north, and Great Benin and Ijebu in the south. Ife’s cultural influence spread far westward to the southwestern region of present-day Togo. As the Ife Empire grew, it became more ethnically diverse, especially the northern parts of the Ife Empire around the Niger River. In the Oyo Kingdom region of the Ife Empire, Oyo had multiple other African ethnic groups or tribes such as the Nupe, Ìbàrìbá, and various Songhai peoples like the Zarma subgroup, who were the most prominent. Although Yoruba was the main language of the Ife Empire, there were also various spoken dialects and languages. These various ethnic groups or tribes all migrated to the Ife Empire for commercial and resource opportunities. The Zarma of the Songhai were the main carriers of Yoruba goods into the Sahel region of West Africa during the Classical period of Ife, and showed a great amount of political and religious influence.

The Ife Empire was one of the oldest trading empires in West Africa, and an early partner in the trans-Saharan trade. One of the Ife’s earliest trade routes was up the Niger River to the Songhai kingdom of Gao, and the route became active as early as the 9th century. The Gao Kingdom later eventually became the capital of the Songhai Empire during the 15th and 16th centuries. At its height in the 16th century, the Songhai Empire was the same size as all of Europe combined.

Glass beads were one of the most sought-after items in West Africa, and Ife had a near monopoly of this market. Ife was probably the third place in the world where glass was indigenously invented. Dichroic glass beads from Ile-Ife have been found in different parts of West Africa, like at Kissi in present-day Burkina Faso; Diouboye in present-day Senegal; Gao Ancien, and Essouk in present-day Mali; and Kumbi-Saleh in present-day Mauritania, all in 12th and 14th century contexts. Ile-Ife was the only known industrial center for HLHA glass production. Glass beads were used as a form of currency in Ife, and strings and other standard measurements of Segi beads were used for purchasing high value products and services.

Items traded to Ife were Saharan copper and salt, Mediterranean and Chinese silk, and other clothing materials, which entered the region from across the Niger River by the 11th or 12th century. In exchange, Ife would trade sundry rain forest goods, of which glass beads and ivory were the most highly prized. The Ife Empire was also likely a part of the Silk Trade on the famous Silk Road between the 12th and 14th centuries, with long-distance trade routes going all the way to Nubia from Kanem-Bornu during the 14th century.

Image I (Left): The word “Ife” when translated from the Yoruba language to the English language means “Love.” The “Ife” people are the “Love” people.

Image II (Right): Beautiful Yoruba Bride

Ife’s fame and glory had spread far and wide, because in 1352, famous historian Ibn Battuta was informed during his visit to the Mali Empire about a powerful Black so-called “Pagan” kingdom further south called Yufi, which he described as “one of the most considerable countries of the Sudan, and their sultan, one of the greatest sultans.”

Ife was almost certainly called Yufi, and Dr. Akinwumi Ogundiran, author of The Yoruba: A New History, wrote:

“Ilé-Ifè was the largest urban center, the biggest emporium, and the wealthiest polity in West Africa’s rain forest belt south of the Niger River during the mid-fourteenth century, with more than two centuries of trading contact with the Western Sudan. On account of these facts alone, it is the best match for Ibn Battuta’s Yufi. Moreover, on linguistic grounds, Yufi is a Mandé or an Arabic transliteration of 'Ufè,' the proper name for 'Ifè' in a central Yorùbá dialect.”

There was even evidence of Coptic cross motifs found on objects, burial sites, and statues in the Ife Empire. Historic Ife ritual contexts also suggest possible early Coptic Christian contact through long distance trade. There is also likely Ife regalia modeled on an ancient Nubian shield ring that probably reached the Ife Empire between the 12th to the 14th Century era through trade.

“In the centuries of Ife’s great wealth and influence, it does not seem to have had any significant military establishment. The traditions provide no account of external wars or military action; the impression one gets is that, after the suppression of the Igbo-Igbo (i.e., not to be confused with the Igbo African ethnic group or tribe from present-day Southeastern Nigeria) raids, Ife did not have to defend its interests with any major force. Small royal establishments held the toll posts on the main trade routes to provide security and collect the king’s toll. Beyond that, no military establishment seems to have been needed or created.” – Dr. Stephen Adebanji Akintoye, author of A History of the Yoruba People

The Ife Kingdom (Ile-Ife) gradually became the exalted leader of the world around, not by the use of arms, but by the influence of the expansion of its enormous cultural heritage. The Kingdom of Ife was held together by power of commerce, the belief in a common ancestry, and the manifested oneness of cultural heritage.

Image I (Slide I): Ori-olokun sculpture which sits at the entrance of the ancestral city of Ile Ife. The ancient city is home to beautifully preserved artworks in bronze and terracotta which holds the potential for authentic ethnological studies of Yoruba culture, these are on show in its museum of Ife antiquities located in the Kings palace at Enuwa Square Ile Ife.

Image II (Slide II): 14. Orisanla priests, Ile-Ife. Photo: R. Manny, 1949, IFAN.

Image III (Slide III): Ife Empire. c. 1200 – 1420 AD. The Ife Empire during the mid-14th century. 

The Ife people are the first Yoruba people who are ancient, originally spiritual, highly advanced artistically, creatively, and intellectually, and master agriculturalists.

“The royal city of Ile-Ife, the heart of the kingdom of Ife – and source of light to the Yoruba people – had come to stay.”

– Dr. Stephen Adebanji Akintoye

The "Calm and Strong" & "Mighty Lord" of Ife: King Oduduwa and The Ife Empire

Image I (Left): King Oduduwa, the Divine King of the Yoruba (Ife, Ile-Ife, Love) Kingdom.

Image II (Right): Map of the Ife (Love) Empire during the mid-14th century. The Ife Empire covered some of what is now present-day Southwest and Southern Nigeria, and barley crossing the boundary of present-day Benin Republic (West Africa).

The Ife Empire was the first successful nation in Yoruba history during medieval West Africa. 

“For nearly five hundred years (from Oduduwa's time, to the fourteenth century) the Ife kingdom was the richest and economically most powerful state in Yorubaland.”

- Dr. Stephen Adebanji Akintoye

#ife #yoruba #medieval #westafrica 

The Ife Empire fell during the 15th century, which was the same century when the European Transatlantic slave trade reached the shores of West Africa. I strongly believe the Ife Empire, specifically the Ife Kingdom, was the Yoruba state my ancestors came from before boarding the European slave ships to their forced exile and becoming enslaved people to and for the benefit of the land territory that would one day be known as the United States of America. 

Darryl C. Richie

A Peaceful Warrior's Mentality with the Soul of a Philosopher Poet

I PERSONALLY BELIEVE BEFORE I BECAME AFRICAN AMERICAN, I WAS A DESCENDANT OF “IFE,” OR THE “LOVE" PEOPLE, WHO ARE A SUBGROUP FROM THE YORUBA ETHNIC GROUP OR TRIBE. THE IFE KINGDOM WAS IN CENTRAL YORUBALAND, WHICH IS IN THE CENTRAL REGION OF PRESENT-DAY SOUTHWEST NIGERIA. THE YORUBA PEOPLE ARE ANCIENT, BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN LIVING IN THEIR PRESENT WEST AFRICAN HOMELAND AS FAR BACK AS 8,000 YEARS AGO. 

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“Of all this West African cultural development our knowledge is fragmentary and incomplete, jumbled up with the African slave trade … Nearly all this disappeared in the frantic effort to paint Negroes as apes fit only for slavery and then forget the whole discreditable episode, wipe it out of history, and emphasize the glory and philanthropy of Europe … Yet on the West Coast was perhaps the greatest attempt in human history before the twentieth century to build a culture based on peace and beauty, communism of industry and of distribution of goods and services according to human need. It was crucified by greed, and its very memory blasphemed by the modern historical method. There can be no doubt but that the level of culture among the masses of Negroes in West Africa in the fifteenth century was higher than that of northern Europe, by any standard of measurement – homes, clothes, artistic creation and appreciation, political organization and religious consistency.” – Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois

West Africa: Nigeria before the Storm

“The great civilizations in Nigeria; all of these were advanced cultures.” - Dr. Chancellor Williams

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West & Central Africa: During the Storm

“They consulted together with one concern and said let us cut them off from being a nation that their name may be no more in remembrance.” - Psalms 83:3

The Subregion of West and Central Africa

“They (i.e., Black, African people) were ‘Children of the Sun’ blessed with blackness by the Sun God (i.e., ancient Kemite, Egyptian Sun God Ra) himself and thus protected from his fiery rays. They were his children. Their very blackness, therefore, was religious, a blessing and an honor.”

– Dr. Chancellor Williams

Southwest and Central Africa may be considered as an eastern extension of West Africa

Although slavery existed for centuries before, in Europe, Asia and Africa, but the European Transatlantic slave trade was a human trafficking institution that made it legal for one race of people to enslave another race of people for economic and political power under the disguise of religion: Western (European) Christianity. Every link between the Black captives with their indigenous culture and religion was purposely destroyed, along with the destruction of their nations. The Black people forced onto the slave ships were some of Africa's strongest, the youngest, the healthiest, most beautiful and the most intelligent. The lame, the maimed, the sick, the elderly, the extremely nervous and weak were left behind.

Even the European slave captains of the slave ships always complained about the slow movement and the many weeks it took for the Black captives to reach the west coast of Africa to board the waiting slave ships. The arrogant European slave captains never considered how much the Black captives were forced to slow down by trampling and stumbling over skeletons and rotting bodies of Black captives that went along the same trails before them.

For every 2 million Black people enslaved over 1 million died.

The Black people from inner West, Southwest, and Central Africa didn't have concrete proof that they were being hemmed in from all directions from the European enslavers, but it was possible that their intuition told them without having any exact knowledge of being encircled, that danger was approaching several hundred miles away from the west African coast. Not only were whole villages destroyed, but entire kingdoms and empires were depopulated, and the formally proud citizens were forced to march in chains, collard and joined together by heavy poles to the European slave ships. Also, many African holy royal families were among the captives, including African kings, queens, and chiefs. This means that the ancestors of African Americans, and the ancestors of other Black people taken to various regions throughout Western (European) civilization may have royal blood running through their veins and not even know it.

Various authorities of history agree that upward of 100 million Black people were taken out of Africa as prisoners-of-war between 1591 (i.e., the fall of the Songhai Empire) to 1858. The African American ancestors from the Songhai Empire were never slaves, because they were prisoners-of-war, which means they were stolen by the enemy and made to be slaves.

“All knowledge of former greatness was lost. Even their kinship and family relationships were destroyed along with their true names. They were not regarded as human beings. They became a race of outcasts hating themselves for being. The Caucasian triumph was complete.” - Dr. Chancellor Williams

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West Africa: The Storm Only Comes to Destroy: The Destruction of Black Civilization

“The greatest victory of the white world over the black, was not the conquest of their land (Africa), as tragic as that was. It was not the conquest of all the wealth, mineral wealth and otherwise from that land, as devastating and tragic as that was. It was not even the conquest of their bodies and enslavement of their bodies, as tragic and degrading and devastating as that was. But the white man’s greatest triumph over the Blacks and what seems to be an almost permanent triumph was the conquest of the Black man’s mind.”

- Dr. Chancellor Williams

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“. . . The first, and perhaps the most important fact is that the general enslavement of Africans, proclaimed to the world as savages, began during the very period and in the very West Africa in the center of which one of the great universities of the world and other colleges were located.” – “The Black Revival of Learning,” p. 247

Alkebu-lan (Africa): The Land of the Spirit People & Land of the Gods

Timbuktu was the kingdom of gold during the 16th century in present-day Mali. Under Songhai rule, Timbuktu had a population of 100,000 people, and the Songhai people supplied 80% of the world’s gold for several centuries. Note the three-story homes made of polished stone sitting on a tree-lined avenue; not huts made of scrap wood. In the background is the famous and luxurious University of Sankoré.

According to Songhai writers, Timbuktu was equivalent to the present-day United States of America cities of Chicago and New York, and Paris, France all combined and blended into an African setting.

About 93% of the present-day African Americans came from the Western Sudan in West Africa, which was the same region where ancient Ghana, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire and the Kingdom of Timbuktu were located.

Yorubaland (Yoruba) is one of the many successful West African civilizations, and some others are Hausa, Igbo, Nupe, Edo (Great Benin), Borgu, Jukun, Tukulor, Mandinka (Kaabu), Dahomey, and Asante to name a few. The greatest of them all was Kanem-Bornu, because after the fall of the Songhai Empire (the last great empire of West Africa before the Transatlantic slave trade), it maintained strength and leadership that was needed in West Africa, because Kanem-Bornu was able to preserve independence from the invading Moroccans and Europeans as long as they could before the Western Sudan was conquered and colonized by Europe (i.e., France).

Some of these West African civilizations are often cited by scholars as examples of being great West African nations before and during the European Transatlantic slave trade era reached the shores of West Africa.

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“An intertwining philosophy based on the culture of the Songhai Empire, and out of the experiences of the degradation suffered on this American soil. We, in this country, having been subjected to the greatest trauma in the history of mankind was yet able to develop some of the world's greatest talented people; such as statesmen, poets, doctors, scientists, philosophers, inventors, lawyers, and many other people of renown.” - Dr. Edward W. Robinson, Dr. Calvin R. Robinson & Redman Battle, authors of The Journey of the Songhai People

Rest in Power & Peace and Happy Juneteenth...

"Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse." - African Proverb

“When the people are immature, violent, and savage; when the people kill in the name of religion or in the thirst for wealth and riches, God dictates what must be prescribed to the people. Heaven requires a dictator among the people to lead, cultivate, and develop them and the country as one would raise a child.”

- Oxala Aye, author of God's Mysteries: Lwas and Orishas

This Blog is dedicated to my Yoruba (i.e., Yorubaland) ancestors, especially the Ife subgroup, and my Edo (i.e., Great Benin) ancestors. Also, to the millions of Black people, known and unknown, whose lives were lost during the unjustifiable and unrelenting "Hell on Earth" era of the European Transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery, which started from the 15th century and ended during the 19th century.

#ife #yoruba #edo #westafrica #africanamerican #happyjuneteenth

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