Oyo Empire

The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba state in West Africa centered in what is now western Nigeria and extending into modern Benin, which grew from the sixteenth century into the largest and most powerful Yoruba-speaking kingdom through effective political organization, control of regional trade, and a cavalry-based military suited to the open savanna terrain of its northern territory. From the late sixteenth through the early eighteenth century Oyo was one of the most influential states in West Africa, holding sway over most other Yoruba kingdoms and over neighboring states including the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey to its west. The empire was governed by a ruler known as the Alaafin, advised by a council of chiefs called the Oyo Mesi, a structure that balanced royal and aristocratic power but also produced repeated succession disputes. Oyo declined through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries amid civil war and collapsed in the 1830s under pressure from expanding Fulani forces to the north.