Towns

The city the Yoruba world treats as its origin point, its Ọ̀ọ̀ni institution and ruling houses, its quarters, its groves and sacred sites, the Ọ̀rànmíyàn staff, and the Modáké̩ké̩ question.

The imperial capital in both its forms, the archaeology of the ruined city at Ọ̀yọ́-Ilé, the palace and wall systems, the Aláàfin institution and the constitutional check the Ọ̀yọ́ Mèsì exercised over it.

How a nineteenth-century military camp grew into the largest indigenous city in tropical Africa, and how the Olúbàdàn rotational ladder works, which is the most unusual succession system in Yorubaland.

The refugee city under Olúmọ rock, its four townships each with its own ọba, the Aláké, and the Ẹ̀gbá United Government, which was the only Yoruba state Britain recognised as sovereign.

The kingdom whose courts outranked its king, the Awùjalẹ̀ and the Ọ̀ṣùgbó, Sungbo's Eredo, the trade monopoly that provoked the 1892 British expedition, and Ojúde Ọba.

The island town with three overlapping origins, its Àwórì land-owning chiefs, its Benin-derived kingship, the 1851 bombardment and 1861 cession, and the Brazilian quarter the returnees built.

Adó-Èkìtì, Ìkẹ́rẹ́, Ìkọ̀lé, Ọ̀tùn and Efọ̀n-Aláàyè, the sixteen crowns of the Aládemẹ́rìndínlógún, and the pẹ̀lúpẹ̀lú council that the British convened in 1900.

The hill kingdom Ọ̀yọ́ never took, the seawater story behind its ruler's title, its subjection to Ìbàdàn, and Ògèdèngbé, who commanded the alliance that ended Ìbàdàn's expansion.

The Yoruba country that faced Benin, its female kingship at Ondó, the Ọ̀wọ̀ ivories that link Ifẹ̀ and Benin, and the Ugbo claim to have owned Ilé-Ifẹ̀ before Odùduwà.

The sacred grove that is a UNESCO World Heritage site, the founding covenant behind it, and the Ìbọ̀lọ̀ and Epo towns of the Ọ̀yọ́ frontier: Ìwó, Èdè, Ìkirun, Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún and their neighbours.

The towns of the old Ọ̀yọ́ heartland and its northwestern frontier, Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ under the Sòun, and the Òǹkò country of Ìsẹ́yìn, Ṣakí, Ìgbòho, Kíṣí and Òkèhò.

The Yoruba kingdoms that ended up in Benin Republic and Togo, their destruction by Dahomey, the Anàgó name and where it comes from, and what national status they hold today.

How an Ọ̀yọ́ military outpost passed from Àfọ̀njá to a Fulani emirate inside the Sokoto Caliphate, what the sources actually establish about that sequence, and the four positions people hold about Ìlọrin's identity today.

The Ìjẹ̀bú-derived towns of the northwest and the lagoon, the 1872 assembly that made Ṣàgámù out of thirteen towns, and Badagry's slave-trade and mission history.

Three Yoruba groupings that standard accounts leave out, the Àwórì who own the ground under Lagos, the Ẹ̀gbádò who renamed themselves Yewa in 1995, and the Ìbàràpá seven towns.

What a Yoruba town is made of, the palace at the centre, the market before it, the wards and compounds around it, and the wall and ditch that closed it in.

Sungbo's Eredo, the Ọ̀yọ́-Ilé circuits, the Ifẹ̀ ditches and the Ìbàdàn wall, what they were for and what they prove about the labour a Yoruba polity could command.

The praise poetry that attaches a person to a place of origin, why Yoruba people carry a town identity they may never have lived in, and how that identity crossed the Atlantic.

A single table of significant Yoruba towns with the title of the ruler, the state or country, the subgroup, and a one-line note, assembled from the sourced entries in this section.