Introduction
In the words of Thomas Carlyle, “no great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men”. So far, we have x-rayed Lady Florence Nightingale, George Washington Carver, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Bishop (Dr.) Samuel Ajayi Crowther and Haile Selassie I. These were great icons and historical figures that stood out of the crowd. Today, we shall continue our discourse into the Kingdom of Benin, Oyo Empire, Mansa Musa I and Shaibu Usman Dan Fodio.
The kingdom of Benin
The kingdom of Benin began in the 900s when the Edo people settled in the rainforests of West Africa. In the 1400s, they had created a wealthy kingdom with a powerful ruler, known as the Oba. The Oba lived in beautiful palaces decorated with shining brass.
Gradually, the Oba won more land and built up an empire. They also started trading with merchants from Europe.
For 200 years, Benin was very successful, but in the 1600s, the Obas started to lose control of their people. By the 1800s, Benin was no longer strong or united. The kingdom came to a sudden end in 1897, when a British army invaded and made it part of the British Empire.
How did the kingdom begin?
Around the year 900, groups of Edo people began to cut down trees and make clearings in the rainforest. At first, they lived in small family groups, but gradually the groups developed into a kingdom.
The kingdom was called Igodomigodo. It was ruled by a series of kings, known as Ogisos, which means ‘rulers of the sky.’
In the 1100s, there were struggles for power and the Ogisos lost control of their kingdom.
The Edo people feared that their country would fall into chaos, so they asked their neighbour, the King of Ife, for help. The king sent his son Prince Oranmiyan to restore peace to the Edo kingdom.
Oranmiyan chose his son Eweka to be the first Oba of Benin. Eweka was the first in a long line of Obas who reached the peak of their power in the 1500s. Edo legend says that no one in Benin had ever seen a horse before Oranmiyan arrived!
How did Benin become an empire?
Around 1440, Ewuare became the Oba of Benin. He built an army and started winning land. He also rebuilt Benin City and the royal palace.
Oba Ewuare was the first of five great warrior kings. His son Oba Ozolua was believed to have won 200 battles. He was followed by Oba Esigie who expanded his kingdom eastwards to form an empire and won land from the Kingdom of Ife. Ozolua and Esigie both encouraged trade with the Portuguese. They used their wealth from trade to build up a vast army.
The fourth warrior king was Oba Orhogbua. During his reign, the empire reached its largest size. It stretched beyond the River Niger in the east and extended west as far as present-day Ghana.
Oba Ehengbuda was the last of the warrior kings. But he spent most of his reign stopping rebellions led by local chiefs. After his death in 1601, the empire gradually shrank in size.
How did the kingdom end?
By the 1860s, Benin was no longer a powerful empire and the Obas struggled to rule their people.
Benin was also under threat from Britain. The British wanted to gain control of Benin so they could get rich by selling its palm oil and rubber. The Oba tried to stop all contact with Britain, but the British insisted on their right to trade.
In 1897 a group of British officials tried to visit Benin. They were sent away because the Oba was busy with a religious ceremony, but they decided to visit anyway. As they approached the borders of Benin, a group of warriors drove them back and several British men were killed.
This attack made the British furious. They sent over a thousand soldiers to invade Benin. Benin City was burnt to the ground and the kingdom of Benin became part of the British Empire.
Benin belonged to the British Empire until 1960. Then it became part of the independent country of Nigeria. Today, the Oba of Benin leads religious ceremonies, but he no longer rules his people.
Oyo Empire
Oyo empire, in present-day southwestern Nigeria, was a dominant power during its apogee (1650 – 1750). Most of the states between the Volta River in the west and the Niger River in the east. It was the most important and authoritative of all the early Yoruba principalities.
According to tradition, Oyo derived from a great Yoruba ancestor and hero, Oduduwa, who likely migrated to Ile-Ife and whose son became the first alaafin (alafin), or ruler, of Oyo. Linguistic evidence suggests that two waves of immigrants came into Yorubaland between 700 and 1000, the second settling at Oyo in the open country north of the Guinea forest. This second state became pre-eminent among all Yoruba states because of its favourable trading position, its natural resources, and the industry of its inhabitants.
Early in the 16th century, Oyo was a minor state, powerless before its northern neighbours, Borgu and Nupe, by whom it was conquered in 1550. The power of Oyo was already growing by the end of the century. However, thanks to Alaafin Orompoto, who used the wealth derived from trade to establish a cavalry force and to maintain a trained army.
Oyo subjugated the kingdom of Dahomey in the west in two phases (1724 to 1730 and 1738 to 1748) and traded with European merchants on the coast through the port of Ajase (now Porto-Novo). As Oyo’s wealth increased, so did its leaders’ political options; some wished to concentrate on amassing wealth, while others advocated the use of wealth for territorial expansion. This difference was not resolved until Alaafin Abiodun (reigned c. 1770to 1789) conquered his opponents in a bitter civil war and pursued a policy of economic development based primarily on the coastal trade with European merchants.
Abiodun’s neglect of everything but the economy weakened the army, and thus the means by which the central government maintained control. His successor, Alaafin Awole, inherited local revolts, an administration tenuously maintained by a complex system of public service, and a decline in the power of tributary chiefs. The decline was exacerbated by quarrels between the alaafin and his advisers; it continued throughout the 18th century and into the 19th, when Oyo began to lose control of its trade routes to the coast. Oyo was invaded by the newly risen Fon of Dahomey, and soon after 1800 it was captured by militant Fulani Muslims from Hausaland in the northeast.
Strong leader
Over the next four decades, Haile Selassie presided over a country and government that was an expression of his personal authority. His reforms greatly strengthened schools and the police, and he instituted a new constitution and centralised his own power.
In 1936, he was forced into exile after Italy invaded Ethiopia. Haile Selassie became the face of the resistance as he went before the League of Nations in Geneva for assistance, and eventually secured the help of the British in reclaiming his country and reinstituting his powers as emperor in 1941. Haile Selassie again moved to try to modernise his country. In the face of a wave of anti-colonialism sweeping across Africa, he granted a new constitution in 1955, one that outlined equal rights for his citizens under the law, but conversely did nothing to diminish Haile Selassie’s own powers.
Final years
By the early 1970s, famine, ever-worsening unemployment and increasing frustration with the government’s inability to respond to the country’s problems began to undermine Haile Selassie’s rule.
In February 1974, mutinies broke out in the army over low pay, while a secessionist guerrilla war in Eritrea furthered his problems. Haile Selassie was eventually ousted from power in a coup and kept under house arrest in his palace until his death in 1975.
Reports initially circulated claiming that he had died of natural causes, but later evidence revealed that he had probably been strangled to death on the orders of the new government.
In 1992 Haile Selassie’s remains were discovered, buried under a toilet in the Imperial Palace. In November 2000, the late emperor received a proper burial when his body was laid to rest in Addis Ababa’s Trinity Cathedral.
Mansa Musa I
Mansa Musa I was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa from 1312 to 1337 CE. Controlling territories rich in gold and copper, as well as monopolising trade between the north and interior of the continent, the Malian elite grew extremely wealthy. A Muslim like his royal predecessors, Mansa Musa brought back architects and scholars from his pilgrimage to Mecca who would build mosques and universities that made such cities as Timbuktu internationally famous. Mansa Musa’s 1324 CE stopover in Cairo, though, would spread Mali’s fame even further and on to Europe where tall tales of this king’s fabulous wealth in gold began to stir the interest of traders and explorers. Mansa Musa, the Mali Empire’s greatest ever ruler, was said to have spent so much gold in the markets of the Egyptian city that the value of bullion crashed by 20 per cent.
Death and successors
Mansa Musa was succeeded first by his son Mansa Maghan I (r. 1337-1341 CE), who had also ruled as regent while his father had been on his famous pilgrimage, and then by his brother Mansa Sulayman (c. 1341-1360 CE).
Shaibu Usman Dan Fodio
(December 15, 1754 – April 20, 1817)
Usman was born in the Hausa state of Gobir, in what is now northwestern Nigeria. His father, Muhammad Fodiye, was a scholar from the Toronkawa clan, which had emigrated from Futa-Toro in Senegal about the 15th century. While he was still young, Usman moved south with his family to Degel, where he studied the Quran with his father. Subsequently, he moved on to other scholar relatives, travelling from teacher to teacher in the traditional way and reading extensively in the Islamic sciences. One powerful intellectual and religious influence at the time was his teacher in the southern Saharan city of Agadez, Jibril ibn Umar, a radical figure whom Usman both respected and criticised and by whom he was admitted to the Qadiri and other Sufi orders.
(To be continued)
Thought for the week
“The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity – or it will move apart.”
(Franklin D. Roosevelt)