bä), people of SW Nigeria and Benin, numbering about 20 million. Today many of the large cities in Nigeria (including Lagos Lagos , city (1991 est. pop. 1,274,000), SW Nigeria, on the Gulf of Guinea. It comprises the island of Lagos. Lagos is Nigeria's largest city, its administrative and economic center, and its chief port...... Click the link for more information. , Ibadan Ibadan , city (1991 est. pop. 1,263,000), SW Nigeria. The second largest city in Nigeria, it is a major commercial center. Manufactures include metal products, furniture, soap, and handicrafts.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Abeokuta Abeokuta , city (1991 est. pop. 377,000), SW Nigeria. It is the trade center for an agricultural region producing rice, yams, cassava, cotton, fruit, vegetables, and palm products. Manufactures of the city include beer, cement, dyed textiles, and canned foods.
..... Click the link for more information. ) are in Yorubaland. The old Yoruba kingdom of Oyo was traditionally one of the largest states of W Africa, but after the mid-1700s its power slowly waned. At the beginning of the 19th cent., Fulani invasions, slave raids from Dahomey, and the growing contact with Europeans divided the Yoruba into a number of small states. In the second half of the 19th cent. the Yoruba gradually fell under British control, and they were under direct British administration from 1893 until 1960. Yoruba religion includes a variety of gods. Vestiges of Yoruba culture are also found in Brazil and Cuba, where Yoruba were imported as slaves.
Bibliography
See G. J. A. Ojo, Yoruba Culture (1967); E. Krapf-Askari, Yoruba Towns and Cities (1969); R. S. Smith, Kingdoms of the Yoruba (1969); H. Courlander, Tales of Yoruba Gods and Heroes (1973).
Yoruba
One of Nigeria's three largest ethnic groups, numbering more than 22 million. The many dialects comprising the Yoruba language belong to the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family. The Yoruba states, including the Oyo empire, were built in the 11th–16th centuries. Yorubaland remains divided into politically autonomous kingdoms, each centred on a capital city or town and headed by a hereditary king (oba), traditionally considered sacred. Most Yoruba men are farmers, growing yams, corn, and millet as staples; cocoa is a cash crop. Yoruba women control much of the complex market system. Craftsmen work in blacksmithing, weaving, leatherworking, glassmaking, bronze casting, and ivory- and wood-carving. Though some Yoruba are now Christians or Muslims, belief in their traditional religion continues, and it remains alive, too, in the New World countries to which may Yoruba were transported to work as slaves (see Candomblé; Macumba; Santería; vodun). The Yoruba language has an extensive literature of poetry, short stories, myths, and proverbs.
Yoruba
a people living in western and southwestern Nigeria (10 to 12 million persons in 1972, according to rough estimates); Dahomey (more than 200, 000 persons), where they are called the Nago or Anago; and Togo, where a small number lives.
The ethnic Yoruba groups include the 6yo, Ife, Ijesha, and Egba. They all consider themselves a single people and have a single culture. They speak the Yoruba language, which has a number of dialects. The Yoruba language has its own literature; newspapers are published in the language, and it is used for instruction in the schools. Islam and Christianity coexist among the Yoruba, along with a polytheism with a well-developed pantheon of gods. States existed among the Yoruba long before the arrival of Europeans in West Africa (in the 15th century). The Yoruba were the creators of remarkable bronze and terra-cotta sculptures that flourished from the 12th to the 14th century and that were possibly associated with the more ancient Nok culture (end of the first millennium b.c.). The Yoruba art of bronze-casting was taken up by the Benin peoples. The chief occupation of the Yoruba is farming (yams, cacao). Among the Yoruba, developing capitalist relations are closely intertwined with strong survivals of earlier social structures.
REFERENCES
Ismagilova, R. N. Narody Nigerii. Moscow, 1963.Forde, D. The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of Southwestern Nigeria. London, 1951.
Johnson, S. The History of the Yorubas: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate. London, 1921.
R. N. ISMAGILOVA
Yoruba
the language of the Yoruba people. Yoruba is related to the Kwa subgroup of the Guinean language group. Yoruba is spoken mainly in the western and southwestern regions of Nigeria, in some areas of Dahomey, and in the eastern regions of Togo. The number of Yoruba speakers is approximately 10 to 12 million (1972, estimate). Yoruba is divided into a number of dialects. It has seven pure and seven nasal vowels. Elision and vowel harmony are common. Monosyllabic and dissyllabic words predominate. High, low, and mid tones are clearly distinguished, although there are also sliding tones (rising and falling). The tones have semantic significance (for example, fo, “to break”; fo, “to wash”; fo, “to speak”). Yoruba is an isolating language. Grammatical gender and nominal declensions are absent. The verb is not marked for person, number, and voice. Syntactic relations are expressed by rigid word order and auxiliary words. The Yoruba writing system is based on the Roman alphabet.
REFERENCES
Iakovleva, V. K. Iazyk ioruba. Moscow, 1963.Gaye, J. A., and W. S. Beecroft. Yoruba Grammar, 3rd ed. London, 1951.
Abraham, R. C. Dictionary of Modern Yoruba. London 1958.
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