Tag: Women of the palace

Continuing on the badass women of Dahomey, this post will focus on the ahosi. I’ll add that the well-known Dahomey “Amazons” were considered under this category even though I will not be talking about them here. Any dependent of the Dahomean King regardless of biological sex was ahosi of the King. Ahosi is translated to…

I find the high ranking women of Dahomey fascinating (but I find most things concerning West African women fascinating so…) Dahomey was a lot more brutally complex compared to Oyo (in many ways it was a rival kingdom to it). And unlike Oyo which remembered few women by name, Dahomey recorded and emphasised not only…

An interlude before the post on royal women in Dahomey in which I shed some light on the fascinating subject of women becoming men in Yoruba tradition. In the previous post, we learned that among the ladies of the palace in Oyo, two presented themselves as men and were addressed as “Baba”, meaning father. But…

I’m reading Mother is Gold, Father is Glass for the second time. I bought it first on my kindle and found it so useful I bought a physical copy too. I’ve found that though I’m reading both copies in the space of say two years, it’s the same things I’m highlighting and bookmarking. The most…