Why did the Kingdom of Oyo rise?

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  • Why did the Kingdom of Oyo rise?
    • Geography
      • located in savannah grasslands, facilitating agriculture and mobility allowing for easier farming and thus a steady growth in population
      • protected from coastal raids by thick forests which stretched north of the lagoon at Lagos
      • traded with trans-Saharan Arab merchants and competed with Nupe for supremacy over cloth production
    • Religion
      • c14 - according to myth, Oranmiyan split from his brother after the launch of a raid on their northern neighbours and founded the kingdom where a serpent stopped following the advice of a local chief
        • claim an origin at the city of Ife-Ife as a kingdom of the Yoruba people
      •  leadership was conferred upon Shango after Ajaka, later defined as the deity of thunder and lighting
    • Military
      • Oranmiyan was succeeded by Ajaka but he deposed due to lacking Yoruba military virtue and allowing his sub-chiefs too much independence
      • post-1535 – Oyo was restored through a re-conquest in which horses and cavalry, acquired in Borgu were applied to the reconstruction of a centralised and expansive state
      • using its cavalry developed around the western fringes of the Nigerian forest belt and conquered the Egba and Egbado Yoruba
    • Political
      • in the capital of Oyo-Ile, the two most important structures were the afalin and the Oja-oba
        • surrounded by a tall earthen wall with 17 gates
        • Oyo-Ile was divided into 11 separate quarters
      •  patrilineal society, individuals owed their first alliance to their father's idile
      • towns consisted of clusters of large thatched family compounds

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