Òṣogbo and the Ọ̀ṣun State Towns

Present-day Ọ̀ṣun State holds two very different kinds of Yoruba town. Ilé-Ifẹ̀ and Ilésà, treated in their own files, are ancient centres with their own dynastic traditions. Most of the rest, including Òṣogbo, Ìwó, Èdè, Ìkirun, Ìlobù and Ejigbo, were provincial towns of the Ọ̀yọ́ empire, organised into its provinces and ruled by ọba who owed the Aláàfin defined obligations. Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún belongs to a third category again, being an Ìgbómìnà town with a crown counted among the senior Odùduwà foundations.

The single most significant thing in the state is the Ọ̀ṣun grove at Òṣogbo, which is the only Yoruba sacred grove on the UNESCO World Heritage List and one of the last remnants of the forest that once surrounded every Yoruba town.

Òṣogbo

Ruler. The Atáọ́ja of Òṣogbo.

The founding covenant

The founding story is a bargain between a town and a river, and it is still performed annually.

The migrant ruler Laroye, the hunter Ọlútìmẹ̀hìn and their people came to the river and learned that the name of the spirit of the forest was Oṣo-Igbo, from which Òṣogbo derives; Laroye became the first Atáọ́ja 1. The tradition holds that the party felled a tree that fell into the river, disturbing the goddess, who surfaced to complain, and that a covenant followed: Ọ̀ṣun would grant the settlement protection, prosperity and children, and in exchange the people would make an annual sacrifice and hold the festival 2.

The sacred stone stool called the Stone of Authority stands in the temple that Laroye, the first Atáọ́ja, used more than four hundred years ago 1.

The title Atáọ́ja is traditionally glossed from a-tẹ́wọ́-gba-ẹja, one who stretches out his hands to receive fish, referring to the fish the goddess is said to have placed in the king's palms as the sign of the covenant. Treat that as a traditional gloss.

The grove

Ọ̀ṣun-Òṣogbo Sacred Grove covers 75 hectares with a buffer zone of a further 47 hectares, along the Ọ̀ṣun river on the outskirts of the city 3. It is dense forest, one of the last remnants of primary high forest in southern Nigeria, and it holds sanctuaries and shrines, sculptures and works in honour of Ọ̀ṣun and other òrìṣà 4.

It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005 3.

That the grove exists at all is the point. Every Yoruba town historically had a forest belt outside the walls, and it held the shrines. Urbanisation and farming removed almost all of them, and Òṣogbo's survives because a specific twentieth-century intervention saved it.

Susanne Wenger and New Sacred Art

The grove was in serious decline through the 1950s: shrines were neglected and priests abandoned it as customary responsibilities and sanctions weakened 35. Susanne Wenger, 1915 to 2009, an Austrian artist who settled at Òṣogbo, initiated its restoration and founded the archaic-modern art school called New Sacred Art, a branch of the wider Òṣogbo school 5. With the encouragement of the Atáọ́ja, custodian of the shrine, and the support of local people, Wenger and the New Sacred Art artists challenged land speculators, repelled poachers, protected the shrines and brought the deteriorating grove back into use 6.

The large sculptural works in the grove, in cement and iron, are the physical result. They are not restorations of older shrines but new works in an idiom Wenger and her collaborators developed, and this raises a question that should be stated rather than avoided: the grove UNESCO inscribed contains a substantial body of twentieth-century sculpture made under the direction of a European artist. UNESCO's own framing treats the development of the movement of new sacred artists and the absorption of Wenger into the Yoruba community as a fertile exchange of ideas that revived the grove 6, and Wenger was initiated as a priestess and lived at Òṣogbo for over fifty years. The point is not that the intervention was illegitimate but that the grove as it now stands is a mid-twentieth-century collaborative work as well as an old sacred site, and both facts belong in any honest description.

The festival

The Ọ̀ṣun-Òṣogbo festival is held annually in August over roughly two weeks, and its documented components are:

• Ìwọ́pọ́pọ́, the ritual cleansing of the city.
• The lighting of the sixteen-point lamp, Ìnà Olójú Mẹ́rìndínlógún.
• Ìbọríadé, the assembly and blessing of the crowns of past rulers.
• The grand procession to the shrine led by the Atáọ́ja with the Arugbá, the calabash bearer, re-enacting the foundational meeting 35.

The Arugbá is the central figure and deserves precision. She is a young unmarried woman of the royal lineage who carries the covered calabash of sacrificial materials on her head from the palace to the grove, in silence, and whose passage is understood to carry the town's burdens with it. She is not a priestess and the role is not permanent; it ends at her marriage.

The festival draws large crowds including a substantial diaspora contingent from Brazil, Cuba and the United States, which makes Òṣogbo one of the principal sites where Atlantic òrìṣà practice and Nigerian practice meet in person. That circulation is treated in the diaspora section.

Òṣogbo is the capital of Ọ̀ṣun State. It was also the site of the battle of 1838 at which Ìbàdàn defeated the forces of the Ìlọrin emirate, the engagement that halted the southward expansion of the jihad, and it is one of the six nineteenth-century Yoruba cities documented as exceeding forty thousand inhabitants 7.

The Ọ̀yọ́ provincial towns

Within the imperial Ọ̀yọ́ structure, Èdè was a prominent member of the Ìbọ̀lọ̀ province, alongside the Akirun of Ìkirun, the Olóbù of Ìlobù, the Atáọ́ja of Òṣogbo and the Adimula of Ifẹ̀-Odan. The Epo province contained the Olúwo of Ìwó 8.

That provincial organisation is the frame for most of the towns below. They were not independent kingdoms in the way Ifẹ̀, Ìjẹ̀ṣà or Ìjẹ̀bú were; they were towns of the empire, and their ọba held crowns within it.

Ìwó

Ruler. The Olúwo of Ìwó.

The Ìwó kingdom was established in the fourteenth century, and the Ìwó people, like others of Yoruba stock, are said to have come originally from Ilé-Ifẹ̀ and to have migrated in that century 9. The earliest settlement was founded by Adékọ́lá Telu, described as the son of an Ọ̀ọ̀ni of Ifẹ̀ 10.

There is a discrepancy in the sources about which Ọ̀ọ̀ni. One account makes Adékọ́lá Telu the son of the sixteenth Ọ̀ọ̀ni; another makes him the son of Ọ̀ọ̀ni Lúwo Gbàgìdá, the twenty-first Ọ̀ọ̀ni 910. The second is the more interesting claim because Lúwo Gbàgìdá is the only woman in the Ifẹ̀ king list, and Ìwó tradition connects the town's name to hers. Which is correct cannot be settled from the accessible sources; report both.

Ìwó was one of the six Yoruba cities documented as exceeding forty thousand inhabitants in the nineteenth century 7, which makes it a substantial town in its own period rather than a minor provincial one, and it remains one of the largest towns in the state. It is a strongly Muslim town and the seat of a long-established Islamic scholarly tradition.

Èdè

Ruler. The Tìmì of Èdè.

Èdè is the clean case of an Ọ̀yọ́ foundation. Unlike most Yoruba towns it has no direct link to Ilé-Ifẹ̀; all variant accounts of its origin trace it to Ọ̀yọ́-Ilé, and it was during the reign of Aláàfin Kórí that Tìmì Agbalẹ̀ was sent to Èdè 8.

The town was founded as a frontier post. Its function was to guard the Ọ̀yọ́ trade route east and to hold the line against raiding, and the Tìmì's title carries the military content: Tìmì Agbalẹ̀ Olóf̀à-ìnà, the Tìmì who carries the arrow of fire, is the received praise formulation, referring to the fire-arrow the founder is said to have used. Èdè's tradition is a warrior tradition and the town is described in its own materials as the home of warriors 11.

Tìmì Abíbù Lágunjù, reigning in the later nineteenth century, was among the earliest Muslim ọba in Yorubaland and is a documented figure in the history of Islam in the region 12.

Èdè was among the six nineteenth-century Yoruba cities exceeding forty thousand inhabitants 7.

Ìkirun

Ruler. The Akírun of Ìkirun, in the Ìbọ̀lọ̀ province of the Ọ̀yọ́ empire 8. Ìkirun is the site of one of the significant engagements of the nineteenth-century wars, the Jalumi war of 1878, in which an Ìbàdàn force defeated an Ìlọrin and allied force at the town.

Ìlobù and Ifẹ̀-Odan

The Olóbù of Ìlobù and the Adimula of Ifẹ̀-Odan complete the named Ìbọ̀lọ̀ province rulers 8.

Ejigbo

Ruler. The Ògìyán of Ejigbo. The title is the short form of Ògìrìnìyàn, the father of the founder of Ejigbo, Akínjọlé, and the holder is traced in the tradition to Odùduwà and the ruling family of Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Ògìyán and his brothers, particularly the Akíre, founder of Ìkire-Ile, are said to have left Ilé-Ifẹ̀ with Ọ̀rànmíyàn, founder of old Ọ̀yọ́, to establish their own towns 13.

Ejigbo is unusual in modern terms for the size and organisation of its diaspora in Côte d'Ivoire, where an Ejigbo community has been established in Abidjan for generations and maintains active links with the home town.

Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún and the Ìgbómìnà

Ruler. The Ọ̀ràngún, in full Ọ̀ràngún of Ìlá, paramount ruler of one of the ancient Ìgbómìnà kingdoms, with its seat and capital at Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún 14.

The Ọ̀ràngún is counted among the senior Odùduwà crowns, and Èkìtì tradition names the Alárá, Ajẹrò and Ọ̀ràngún as uterine brothers, which is a claim about the standing of the Ìlá crown relative to the Èkìtì ones.

The Ìgbómìnà occupy country that now falls across Ọ̀ṣun and Kwara states, and they are one of the Yoruba groups most systematically overlooked in general accounts, largely because the state boundary divides them and because Ìlọrin's emirate dominates the Kwara narrative. Ìgbómìnà towns include Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún, Òkè-Ìlá Ọ̀ràngún, Ọ̀mù-Aran, Òkè-Ọdẹ, Ìṣanlú-Ìṣin and Ajase-Ipo. The Ìgbómìnà were subjected to Ìbàdàn's tributary system in the nineteenth century and joined the Èkìtìparapọ̀ against it.

Ìgbómìnà is significant for the arts as one of the principal centres of Egúngún masquerade and of the Èpa headdress tradition, which is treated in the arts section.

The other towns

Ọ̀ṣun State's other established towns include Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún and Òkè-Ìlá Ọ̀ràngún, Ìrágbìjí, Ada, Ìkirun, Ìpetu-Ìjẹ̀ṣà, Ìjẹ̀bú-Jẹ̀ṣà, Èrìn-Òkè, Ìpetumodù, Èdè, Ìlobù, Ìwó, Ejigbo, Ìbòkun, Ode-Omu, Otan Ayegbaju, Ifetedo, Èsa-Òkè, Okuku, Otan-Ile and Ìgbàjọ 15. Ìgbàjọ and Ifẹ̀wàrà both claim founders from named quarters of Ilé-Ifẹ̀, which is treated in the Ifẹ̀ file.

Ìpetumodù, under the Apetu, and the Ifẹ̀ North towns sit in the immediate hinterland of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ and their traditions are closely tied to it.