Abiodun

Abiodun is the last Alaafin who ruled rather than presided. He killed Gaa and got fifteen quiet years out of it, and Yoruba tradition treats his reign as the empire's last good period — which is a way of saying that everything after 1789 goes wrong quickly. It went wrong partly because of how he won: he beat the Bashorun by calling in provincial commanders, which taught the provinces that the capital could not manage its own affairs. Afonja learned that lesson from the same event. Abiodun is also the father of Atiba, who is the reason there is still an Alaafin.

Children

• Atiba Atobatele

Domains

• sovereignty
• statecraft

Relations

• enemy: Bashorun GaaGaa had killed his daughter Agbonyin; Abiodun killed Gaa.Reference treatment of the conflict between Alaafin Abiodun and Bashorun Gaa. (secondary)
• killer of: Bashorun GaaHe did not do it with the palace's own resources, which is the point: the palace no longer had any.Reference treatment of Abiodun's raising of the Onikoyi and Oyabi against Gaa and of the execution he ordered at the Akesan market around 1774. (secondary)
• father of: Atiba AtobateleThe son who rebuilt the kingdom fifty years after his father's death, in a different place.Reference treatment of Atiba Atobatele as the son of Alaafin Abiodun of Oyo and of Eni-Olufan Adegoolu of Akeitan. (secondary)
• grandfather of: OluyoleThrough his daughter Agbonrin. The two men who divided post-imperial Yorubaland between them, Atiba at Oyo and Oluyole at Ibadan, were his son and his grandson.Reference treatment of Oluyole as born to Olukuoye by Omoba Agbonrin, a daughter of the Alaafin Abiodun. (secondary)

Sources

• Abiodun is the Alaafin of Oyo of c. 1770/1774-1789 who destroyed Bashorun Gaa around 1774 and whose reign afterwards is remembered for peace and prosperity; he was succeeded on his death in 1789 by Awole.: Reference treatments of Abiodun's reign, his overthrow of Gaa and his death in 1789. (secondary)