THE YORUBA-SPEAKING PEOPLES.

Since 1807, Afunja had remained in possession of Ilorin, where he sought to strengthen himself by encouraging Mohammedans to settle. Around 1825, while Amodo was occupied with invading tribes from the north, Afunja attacked Yoruba again. He captured and destroyed several towns and was apparently about to conquer everything when, for reasons that remain unknown, he was brought back to the town of Ilorin by the very Hausa mercenaries he had hoped would help him become Alafin, and was publicly burned alive. The Mohammedan party, which had been dominant in Ilorin for some years, declared that it would no longer recognize a pagan king; it elected a Mohammedan to supreme power and severed its connection with Yoruba.

Ilorin took the lead in the Mohammedan invasion of Yoruba, and the Yoruba people seem to have been consistently defeated. In 1830, when visited by Lander Richard Lander, an English explorer of West Africa., Old Oyo was still the capital of Yoruba, but between 1833 and 1835 it was captured and destroyed by the Mohammedans. The Yoruba people fled southward, founding their present capital, Oyo, about ninety miles south of the old one. The Egba people, taking advantage of the overthrow of Yoruba, declared themselves independent, but the Yoruba, once settled in their new territory, attacked them vigorously and drove them out of all their northern towns. A scattered war continued until about 1838, when the Egba abandoned their territory, moved south, and founded their current capital, Abeokuta. The new town was divided into several distinct quarters, or townships, named after the various towns destroyed in the war.