Legend has it that these beads were first made by Olokun, a female deity and member of the Yoruba founding family. The original materials likely came from gravesites in and around Ife, such as the famous Olokun Grove. Later, as the original sources became exhausted, newly imported glass bottles and beads were substituted. "Kori" stones are an intermediate step in the process, but these "stones" were also objects of veneration and worship, known locally as aje ileke and aje Olokun, "wealth of beads" and "wealth of Olokun", respectively.

Ray Silverman has documented a sizable number of large metal Mamluk (Egypt, 14th century) basins at sites near the gold fields in Ghana (where they were integrated into shrines and carefully preserved). In Ife specifically, we have visual references to metal crotals. Textiles, alas, have not survived, but at a site of royal retreat near Ife, silk worms were being harvested into the late 20th century, the silk being woven into ritually important fabrics — suggesting to me that Ife may have been part of the Silk Road perhaps as early as the early fourteenth century, i.e. in the decades after Marco Polo’s return. Textiles at Ife are identified with King Obalufon who ruled in this era. At this same time silk factories were being set up in Italy and France among other places. (The only other place in Africa I know where silk worms were harvested is Madagascar; I think there also was silk production at this time in Egypt.)

For books (manuscripts): several Yoruba and other scholars have identified a group of Arabic texts as a partial source for Ifa divination. The authors of these manuscripts are praised by Yoruba diviners and healers today as part of rituals; one of best known of these Muslim authors lived and wrote in the fourteenth century, and his writings are said to show evidence of ties to both Persia and China.

I believe that Battuta is describing Ife in his early fourteenth century reference to a kingdom to the west of Mali, notable in part for its extraordinary wealth. Ife in this era seems to have had an international “pulse.” The famous blue-green Ife glass beads were found as far away as Mauritania, Mali, and Ghana. At Ife itself there is evidence of cowries from the Indian Ocean and crotals (an ancient bell form) which have early prototypes in southeast Asia, India, north East Africa (Egypt) and Europe as prestigious decorative items for humans and horses. For other examples of international trade in this broader region one can point to a Nubian work discovered Niger to the north of Ife and Coptic language forms that today are common in the Hausa area. In Ife itself, a stone pendant unearthed by Ekpo Eyo at the royal burial site of Lafogido (along with the famous “royal” animals) bears a Maltese (Coptic) cross, similar to one that also appears on the robe of the standing copper alloy figure from the Niger River crossing site of Tada.

bears a Maltese (Coptic) cross, similar to one that also appears on the robe of the standing copper alloy figure from the Niger River crossing site of Tada.

lakal:



Stone statue of the deity Idena (the gatekeeper). Has iron nails in its coiffure and elaborately tied sash, circa 11-12th Century.