Atiba Atobatele
Yoruba · mortal · post oyo · Recorded classification
Atiba is the salvage operation. The empire was gone, the old capital was abandoned, and the man who put a kingdom back together had been a bandit with a private army in a market town — which is the honest version, and the reference treatments give it without embarrassment. What he did that mattered was political rather than military: Ibadan had the soldiers and could have simply ignored him, and he talked Oluyole into taking the title of Bashorun under a nominal Alaafin instead of ruling in his own name. The office survives to the present because of that conversation. He is the son of Abiodun, which closes the arc: the last Alaafin who ruled, and the son who rebuilt the throne fifty years after him.
Parentage
- parent: Abiodun
Domains
- kingship
- city founding
- statecraft
Sources
- Atiba Atobatele, a son of Alaafin Abiodun, was chosen after the death of Oluewu to rebuild the kingdom, moved the capital to Ago Oja where New Oyo was founded in 1838, reigned to 1858, and brought Oluyole of Ibadan to accept the Alaafin as nominal sovereign.: Reference treatments of Atiba Atobatele's parentage, his rise at Ago, the founding of New Oyo and his settlement with Ibadan. (secondary)