Rise of the Kingdom of Ife, cradle of Yoruba civilisation
- Date
- c. 1170 CE
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- West Africa (modern Nigeria)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
By the late 12th century the city-state of Ife (Ile-Ife) in what is now southwestern Nigeria had emerged as a prosperous and influential kingdom, the sacred and political heartland of the Yoruba people.
Revered in Yoruba religion as the site of creation, where the deity Oduduwa was said to have founded the first dynasty, Ife became the seat of divine kingship from which numerous later Yoruba states traced their royal legitimacy. From roughly the 12th to the 15th centuries its artisans produced extraordinarily naturalistic heads and figures in copper alloy (often called bronze), terracotta, and stone, cast using the sophisticated lost-wax technique. These lifelike sculptures, including the celebrated Ife heads later unearthed at the Wunmonije Compound in 1938, are counted among the masterpieces of world art and once led astonished Europeans to doubt their African origin. Ife's artistic and political traditions profoundly shaped the neighbouring Kingdom of Benin and other Yoruba polities before the city declined in prominence by the 16th century.
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Empires active in c. 1170 CE
- Jurchen Jin Dynasty1115 CE – 1234 CE
- Song Dynasty960 CE – 1279 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE – 1258 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Kingdom of Chimor (Chimú)900 CE – 1470 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Zhu Xi completes the Neo-Confucian synthesis and the Four Booksc. 1175-1190
- Ibn Rushd writes his commentaries on Aristotle1170s–1190s CE
- Birth of Gothic architecture at Saint-Denisc. 1140–1144 (Saint-Denis choir)
- The Toledo School and the Latin translation of Greek-Arabic learning12th century (Gerard of Cremona d. 1187)
- Building of Angkor Wat by Suryavarman IIc. 1122–1150 CE
- Al-Ghazali completes The Incoherence of the Philosophersc. 1095 CE
Further reading
The wider story
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