About this project

The Heritage and History of the Yoruba

This app is in beta. The reading text is still being proof read and corrected from the original scans, the wiki and account features are evolving, and content may contain errors. Please treat it as a work in progress, not yet a definitive reference.

Samuel Johnson finished The History of the Yorubas in 1897 “that the history of our fatherland might not be lost in oblivion.” This app treats his 1921 book as the canonical spine of Yoruba history — and treats disagreement honestly.

How it works

Every paragraph of the book carries a stable reference (for example hoty:2.1.p200 — Part II, Chapter 1, a paragraph). Everything else — alternative accounts, people and places, facts — anchors to those references.

Where sources disagree (the origin of the Yorubas, how Ṣàngó’s reign ended), the best-evidenced account is presented as primary and the others are one tap away — each ranked (preferred / alternative / deprecated) with the reason stated, and each labelled with its provenance:

Oral traditionEyewitnessDocumentaryArchaeologicalLinguisticModern scholarshipAuthor's inference

We follow one rule throughout: settled facts are stated plainly, while every disputed claim is attributed in the text — “per the royal bards,” “Johnson records,” “modern historians hold” — and weighed by the evidence behind it, never given false balance. Accounts now thought mistaken are kept too, with their reasons: how the history came to be understood is part of the story.

The text and its editions

The reading text is edition corrected-draft-v2 (content version 0.2.0), built from OCR of the original 1921 printing (scans at the Internet Archive; the work is in the public domain).

Contributing

The accounts here are carefully reviewed and cited rather than openly editable, so every claim can be traced to a source. If you spot an error, or know of a tradition or source we should include, we’d be glad to hear from you — please get in touch with the team.

Credits

Rev. Samuel Johnson (author, Ọ̀yọ́), Dr. Obadiah Johnson (editor, Lagos).
Mr D Ajayi - (Founder, Ìjẹ̀bú-Jèsà).