Updated Throwback Blog. The Ife Empire: Small in Land; but Powerful, Attractive & Influential in Scope (Medieval West Africa)
King Oduduwa, the Divine King of the Yoruba (Ife) Kingdom and the Ife Empire
“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, author of A History of the Yoruba People
The origins of the Ife Kingdom (i.e., Ile-Ife), the capital of the Ife Empire was during the 9th century, but the kingdom became a powerful, attractive, and influential empire from 1200 to 1420 AD. The geography of the Ife Kingdom played an important role in shaping this dramatic history of the Yoruba people, because by the mid-first millennium, the physical landscape of the Ife Kingdom was characterized by a seasonally flooded, swampy 14-kilometer-wide valley ringed by voluminous granitic hills and inselbergs with steep slopes.
The Opa River is ancient, and it originates in the Ife hills in this tropical-savannah region of Central Yorubaland. 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.
The Ife Bowl, an area dotted with many settlements, was poorly drained but a resource-rich landscape that was not attractive for settlement until about the end of the first millennium. In contrast, settlements and farmlands were concentrated on the rims or edges of the Ife Bowl or Ife Rims, where well-drained, fertile soils existed. It was in this area, overlooking the seasonally flooded and swampy valley below, where population buildup took place between the 5th and 9th centuries.
The Ife Empire was in the center of what is now present-day Southwest Nigeria, which is a region that is a mixture of heavily forested and savannah grasslands, the heavily forested and lagoon territory of the Atlantic coast of Southern Nigeria, and barley crossing the boundary of present-day Benin Republic, which is also a heavily forested and savannah grassland region.
Although the Ife Empire was only 186 mi (300 km), its commercial prowess reached different West African regions due to their local and long-distance trade networks where Ife (Yoruba) resources were spread far and wide, like to the golden Mali Empire, present-day Burkina Faso, present-day Mauritania, and present-day Senegal. Ife resources were traded using the Niger River to reach the West African savannah nations, to the Sahara in Tuareg country, and finally to the Mediterranean world.
Ibn Battuta, the 14th century Moroccan scholar was informed during his visit to the golden Mali Empire about a powerful kingdom to the south. The name of the kingdom is rendered in Ibn Battuta’s travel account as Yufi (i.e., Ife Kingdom, Empire), which he described as “one of the most considerable countries of the Sudan, and their sultan, one of the greatest sultans.”
To find out more about the powerful, attractive and influential Ife Empire during medieval West Africa, check out my updated throwback blog, by clicking here: https://www.calmandstrong.net/post/the-influential-west-african-empire-of-ife-during-medieval-times
“Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse.” – African Proverb
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.
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.
Rest in Power & Peace and Happy Juneteenth...
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 era of the European Transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery.
