Timeline : History of the Yoruba people
Rulers (Oba): Ọma-Jagun · Eléko · Ìchà · Ọọ̀ni · Alárá · Alákétu · Òṣemàwé · Aláàfin · Àkárìgbò · Oníṣabẹ · Ọlọ́ghọ̀ · Awùjalẹ̀ · Aláké · Òràngún · Dééjì · Ọwá · Ọlọ́fà
The Yoruba people (Yoruba: Ìran Yorùbá, Ọmọ Odùduwà, Ọmọ Káàárọ̀-oòjíire[29]) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabits parts of Nigeria, Benin and Togo that constitute Yorubaland. The Yorubas constitute around 45 million people in Africa, are a few hundred thousand outside the continent, and bear further representation among members of the African diaspora. The vast majority of the Yoruba population is today within the country of Nigeria, where they make up 15.5% of the country's population according to CIA estimations,[30] making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. Most Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language, which is the Niger-Congo language with the largest number of native or L1 speakers.[31]
In Africa, the Yoruba are contiguous with the Yoruboid Itsekiri to the south-east in the northwest Niger Delta, Bariba to the northwest in Benin and Nigeria, the Nupe to the north and the Ebira to the northeast in central Nigeria. To the east are the Edo, Ẹsan and the Afemai groups in mid-western Nigeria. To the northeast and adjacent to the Ebira and northern Edo groups are the related Igala people on the left bank of the Niger River. To the southwest are the Gbe speaking Mahi, Gun, Fon and Ewe who border Yoruba communities in Benin and Togo, to the west they are bordered by the Kwa speaking Akebu, Kposo of Togo, and to the northwest, by the Kwa speaking Anii, and the Gur speaking Kabiye, Yom-Lokpa and Tem people of Togo.[32] Significant Yoruba populations in other West African countries can also be found in Ghana,[33][34][35] Benin,[33] Ivory Coast,[36] and Sierra Leone.[37]
Outside Africa, the Yoruba diaspora consists of two main groupings; the first being that of the Yorubas dispersed mainly to the New World between the 16th to 19th centuries, notably to the Caribbean (especially in Cuba) and Brazil, and the second consisting of a wave of relatively recent migrants, the majority of whom began to migrate to the United Kingdom and the United States following some of the major economic and political changes encountered in Africa in the 1960s to 1980s.[38]
The oldest known textual reference to the name Yoruba is found in an essay (titled – Mi‘rāj al-Ṣu‘ūd) from a manuscript written by the Berber jurist, Ahmed Baba in the year 1614.[39] The original manuscript is preserved in the Ahmed Baba Institute of the Mamma Haidara Library, while a digital copy is at the World Digital Library.[40] Mi‘rāj al-Ṣu‘ūd provides one of the earliest known ideas about the ethnic composition of the West African interior. The relevant section of the essay which lists the Yoruba group alongside nine others in the region as translated by John Hunwickand Fatima Harrak for the Institute of African Studies Rabat, reads:
We will add another rule for you, that is that whoever now comes to you from among the group called Mossi, or Gurma, or Bussa, or Borgu, or Dagomba, or Kotokoli, or Yoruba, or Tombo, or Bobo, or K.rmu – all of these are unbelievers remaining in their unbelief until now. Similarly kumbe except for a few people of Hombori[41]