Ifẹ̀

Ifẹ̀ is the sacred city of the Yoruba, where tradition says Oduduwa descended on a chain to make the earth and where his sons and daughters went out to found the kingdoms of Oyo, Ketu, Owu, Ila Orangun and others. Its Ọọ̀ni is the successor of that line, and the city is called the home of 401 deities, whose festivals still bring the votaries of Obatala and Oduduwa into their yearly rivalry at Itapa.

Ife was a substantial settlement between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, with houses floored in potsherd pavement. Around 1300 its artists, under the patronage of Obalufon II, whom the Yoruba honour as the patron of brass casting and weaving, made the naturalistic heads and masks in terracotta, stone and copper alloy that peaked between 1200 and 1400. Ife glass beads have been found as far away as Mali, Mauritania and Ghana. After the fourteenth century this production declined as political and economic power shifted to Benin and Oyo, but Ife kept its place as the origin of Yoruba kingship. Benin's own tradition tells that Oranmiyan, Oduduwa's youngest son, left behind a child, Eweka, who became the first Oba of its second dynasty.