Look Around

How Yorùbá people actually live with three religious traditions at once, the real tensions, what scholars document about coexistence, and the full range of positions people hold.

The fall of Ọ̀yọ́, the Ilọrin and Sokoto dimension, the Ọ̀wu war, the rise of Ìbàdàn, the Sixteen Years War at Kiriji, and the political map they left behind.

The CMS mission and Crowther, how and why Yoruba people converted to two world religions, the British annexation, indirect rule and what it did to kingship, and the making of "Yoruba" as one identity.

The 2005 proclamation and 2008 inscription, the state of practice in Nigeria and the diaspora, commercialisation and the online problem, and what a curious outsider should and should not do.

Yoruba burial and funerary practice, the good death and the bad death, the ancestor as continuing presence, atunwa and rebirth, and how all of this actually works in Christian and Muslim Yoruba families today.

How many practitioners there actually are and why nobody knows, the real relationship with Christianity and Islam including genuine syncretism, Susanne Wenger and the Osogbo grove, the Ooni and traditional authority, and the return-to-tradition movement.

The Ọ̀yọ́ war commander whose revolt broke the empire, the Fulani scholar whose community he armed, and how Ìlọrin passed from a Yoruba town under a Yoruba general to an emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate.

Guide to the six files on how Christianity, Islam, and indigenous Òrìṣà tradition are actually practiced, contested, and governed in Yorùbáland today, and the order to read them in.

How Islam took root in Yorùbáland centuries before Christianity, how Ìlọrin became its scholarly capital, and how Yorùbá Muslims built their own schools, associations, and clerical practice alongside the older òrìṣà tradition.

How Yoruba families and towns hold Christianity, Islam, and indigenous Orisa devotion together at once, and the scholarly argument over whether "syncretism" is even the right word for what is happening.

A comprehensive scholarly history of the Yoruba kingdom of Ìwó, covering its dynastic origins from Ile-Ife, spatial structure, king list, Islamic legal traditions, refugee integration, and contemporary status.

A comprehensive scholarly analysis of the principal Odù Òtúrá Méjì, including its geometric signature, competing ranking positions, published poetic verses, thematic associations with peace and Islam, and textual history.

A comprehensive scholarly examination of modern Yoruba diasporic communities across the United Kingdom and continental Europe, detailing migration waves, institutional structures, religious adaptations, and systemic divergences from homeland practices.

A comprehensive scholarly analysis of the 1835 Malê uprising in Salvador da Bahia, examining its West African roots in the collapse of the Ọ̀yọ́ Empire, its Islamic-Nagô organizational networks, sacred texts, urban warfare, and transatlantic repercussions.