Nupe, Kingdom of the

The Ife model of government is adapted at Oyo, where a member of its ruling dynasty consolidates several smaller city-states under his control.

A council of state, the Oyo Mesi, eventually assumes responsibility for naming the alafin (king) from candidates proposed from the ruling dynasty and acts as a check on his authority.

Oyo develops as a constitutional monarchy; actual government is in the hands of the basorun (prime minister), who presides over the Oyo Mesi.

The city is situated one hundred and seventy kilometers north of Ife and about one hundred kilometers north of present-day Oyo.

Unlike the forest-bound Yoruba kingdoms, Oyo is in the savanna and draws its military strength from its cavalry forces, which establish hegemony over the adjacent Nupe and the Borgu kingdoms and thereby develop trade routes farther to the north.

Benin was already a well-established agricultural community in the Edo-speaking area, east of Ife, when it became a dependency of Ife at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

By the fifteenth century, it takes an independent course and became a major trading power in its own right, blocking Ife's access to the coastal ports as Oyo had cut off the mother city from the savanna.

Political power and religious authority reside in the oba (king), who according to tradition is descended from the Ife dynasty.

The oba is advised by a council of six hereditary chiefs, who also nominate his successor.

Benin, which may have housed one hundred thousand inhabitants at its height, spreads over twenty-five square kilometers that are enclosed by three concentric rings of earthworks.

Responsibility for administering the urban complex lies with sixty trade guilds, each with its own quarter, whose membership cuts across clan affiliations and owes its loyalty directly to the oba.

At his wooden, steepled palace, the oba presides over a large court richly adorned with brass, bronze, and ivory objects.

Like Ife and the other Yoruba states, Benin, too, is famous for its sculpture.

Unlike the Yoruba kingdoms, however, Benin develops a centralized regime to oversee the administration of its expanding territories.

By the late fifteenth century, Benin is in contact with Portugal.

Some of the Hausa states—such as those at Kano, Katsina, and Gobir—had developed by the eleventh century into walled towns that engaged in trade and serviced caravans as well as manufactured cloth and leather goods.

Millet, sorghum, sugarcane, and cotton were produced in the surrounding countryside, which also provides grazing land for cattle.

Until the fifteenth century, the small Hausa states were on the periphery of the major empires of the era.

According to tradition, the Hausa rulers descend  from a "founding hero" named Bayinjida, supposedly of Middle Eastern origin, who became sarki (king) of Daura after subduing a snake and marrying the queen of Daura.

Their children founded the other Hausa towns, which traditionally are referred to as the Hausa bakwai (Hausa seven).

Wedged in among the stronger Sudanic kingdoms, each of the Hausa states has acquired special military, economic, or religious functions.

No one state dominates the others, but at various times different states assume a leading role.

They are under constant pressure from Songhai to the west and Kanem-Borno to the east, to which they pay tribute.

Armed conflict usually is motivated by economic concerns, as coalitions of Hausa states mount wars against the Jukun and Nupe in the middle belt to collect slaves, or against one another for control of important trade routes.

Commerce is in the hands of commoners.

Within the cities, trades are organized through guilds, each of which is self-regulating and collects taxes from its members to be transmitted to the sarki as a pledge of loyalty.

In return, the king guarantees the security of the guild's trade.

The surrounding countryside produces grain for local consumption and cotton and hides for processing.

Islam was introduced to Hausaland along the caravan routes.

The famous Kano Chronicle records the conversion of Kano's ruling dynasty by clerics from Mali, demonstrating that the imperial influence of Mali extended far to the east.

Acceptance of Islam was gradual and was often nominal in the countryside, where folk religion continues to exert a strong influence.

Non-Islamic practices also are retained in the court ceremonies of the Hausa kings.

Nonetheless, Kano and Katsina, with their famous mosques and schools, come to participate fully in the cultural and intellectual life of the Islamic world.

Fulbe pastoralists, known in Nigeria as Fulani, begin to enter the Hausa country in the thirteenth century, and by the fifteenth century they are tending cattle, sheep, and goats in Borno as well.

The Fulani come from the Senegal River valley, where their ancestors had developed a method of livestock management and specialization based on transhumance.

The movement of cattle along north-south corridors in pursuit of grazing and water follows the climatic pattern of the rainy and dry seasons.

Gradually, the pastoralists move eastward, first into the centers of the Mali and Songhai empires and eventually into Hausaland and Borno.

Some Fulbe had converted to Islam in the Senegal region as early as the eleventh century, and one group of Muslim Fulani had settled in the cities and mingled freely with the Hausa, from whom they have become racially indistinguishable.

Here, they constitute a devoutly religious, educated elite who have made themselves indispensable to the Hausa kings as government advisers, Islamic judges, and teachers.

Other Fulani, the lighter-skinned pastoral nomads, remain aloof from the Hausa and in some measure from Islam as well, herding cattle outside the cities and seeking pastures for their herds.

The political history of northern Nigeria attains a high point in the sixteenth century.

During this period, the Songhai Empire reaches its greatest limits, stretching from the Senegal and Gambia rivers in the far west and incorporating part of Hausaland in the east.

At the same time, the Sayfawa Dynasty of Borno asserts itself, conquering Kanem and extending its control westward to Hausa cities that are not under Songhai imperial rule.

For almost a century, much of northern Nigeria is part of one or the other of these empires, and after the 1590s Borno dominates the region for two hundred years.

The influence of Songhai collapses abruptly in 1591, when an army from Morocco crosses the Sahara and conquers the capital city of Gao and the commercial center of Timbuktu.

Morocco is not able to control the whole empire, and the various provinces, including the Hausa states, become independent.

The collapse undermines Songhai' s commercial and religious hegemony over the Hausa states and abruptly alters the course of history in the region.

Songhai's sway over western Hausaland includes the subordination of Kebbi, whose kanta (king) controls the territory along the Sokoto River.

Katsina and Gobir also pay tribute to Songhai, while Songhai merchants dominate the trade of the Hausa towns.

It is at this time that the overland trade in kola nuts from the Akan forests of modern Ghana is initiated.

Largely because of Songhai's influence, there is a remarkable blossoming of Islamic learning and culture.

The influence of Songhai collapses abruptly in 1591, when an army from Morocco crosses the Sahara and conquers the capital city of Gao and the commercial center of Timbuktu.

Morocco is not able to control the whole empire, and the various provinces, including the Hausa states, become independent.

The collapse undermines Songhai's commercial and religious hegemony over the Hausa states and abruptly alters the course of history in the region.

Benin, at its apogee in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even encompasses parts of southeastern Yorubaland and the small Igbo area on the western bank of the Niger.

Dependencies are governed by members of the royal family, who are assigned several towns or villages scattered throughout the realm rather than a block of territory that can be used as a base for revolt against the oba.

As is evident from this brief survey, Yoruba and Benin history are interconnected.

In fact, areas to the west of Nigeria, in the modern Republic of Benin, are also closely associated with this history, both in the period before 1500 and afterward.

Igbo society, as argued by most scholars, was "stateless" and the Igbo region did not evolve centralized political institutions before the colonial period.

According to this theory, the relatively egalitarian Igbo lived in small, self-contained groups of villages organized according to a lineage system that did not allow social stratification.

An individual's fitness to govern is determined by his wisdom and his wisdom by his age and experience.

Subsistence farming is the dominant economic activity, and yams are the staple crop.

Land, obtained through inheritance, is the measure of wealth.

Handicrafts and commerce are well developed, and a relatively dense population characterizes the region.

Despite the absence of chiefs, some Igbo rely on an order of priests, chosen from outsiders on the northern fringe of Igboland, to ensure impartiality in settling disputes between communities.

Igbo gods, like those of the Yoruba, are numerous, but their relationship to one another and to human beings is essentially egalitarian, thereby reflecting Igbo society as a whole.

A number of oracles and local cults attract devotees, while the central deity, the earth mother and fertility figure, Ala, is venerated at shrines throughout Igboland.

The weakness of this theory of statelessness rests on the paucity of historical evidence of precolonial Igbo society.

There are huge lacunae between the archaeological finds of Igbo Ukwu, which reveal a rich material culture in the heart of the Igbo region in the eighth century CE and the oral traditions of the twentieth century.

In particular, the importance of the Nri Kingdom, which appears to have flourished before the seventeenth century, often is overlooked.

The Nri Kingdom is relatively small in geographical extent, but it is remembered as the cradle of Igbo culture.

Finally, Benin exercises considerable influence on the western Igbo, who adopt many of the political structures familiar to the Yoruba-Benin region.