Look Around

An examination of the Yoruba market as a nexus of civic governance, trade regulation, female political authority, and sacred civic peace.

The town that replaced Ọ̀yọ́ as the dominant Yoruba power, the achieved-title constitution that let a farmer or an Ifá priest rise to command it, and the men who did.

The Ìyálóde, the Ìyálọ́jà, the Lóbùn of Ondó, the titled women inside the Ọ̀yọ́ palace, the documented cases of female ọba and regents, and what indirect rule did to all of it.

What the century of wars did to Yoruba women: as captives and ransomed persons, as provisioners and arms dealers, as slaveholders and traders, as returnees building a new elite, and what it did to their position overall.

Bolanle Awe's case for oríkì as historical evidence, worked through two towns' founding oríkì, with a plain statement of what a historian can and cannot recover from the form.

Town praise for a war camp, a dyers' sanctuary and a warrior-founded hill town, each read for the specific civic identity its oríkì stakes a claim to.