Call me Oramfe

Funny enough, the Arabic divination system that some people claim is the origin of Yoruba Ifa may not even have been invented by the Arabs. 🤣 The system, known as Ilm al-Raml (the Science of Sand), has possible origins in North Africa, with some theories suggesting roots extending as far back as predynastic Egypt. Although such an early Egyptian origin has not been established, scholars have seriously considered indigenous North African contributions to the development of geomancy. The practice subsequently spread throughout the Islamic world and reached medieval Europe through Arabic-language scholarship, including transmission through Moorish Spain during the 12th century. So why do people automatically assume that because a divination system was preserved in Arabic, it must have been invented by Arabs? Now, if I wanted to be petty, I could easily turn this argument around. 🤣 I could point to the Ifa tradition in which Orunmila dispatched the sixteen principal Odu toward the four cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. Then I could argue that the knowledge of Ifa travelled northward, entered North Africa, and eventually spread across the Islamic world. After all, if people can claim that Ifa came from Arabic geomancy simply because both systems have sixteen principal signs, why couldn't I reverse the argument? I could even bring genetics into the discussion. Ancient DNA research has proposed Taforalt-related ancestry in genetic models involving Yoruba populations. Taforalt refers to an ancient North African population that lived in present-day Morocco approximately 15,000 years ago. I could argue that ancient population movements connected North Africa and West Africa, and that ancestral groups may have carried related forms of divination southward. Or perhaps older West African traditions travelled northward. But I won't make either claim as established history, because genetic connections and mathematical similarities do not prove the transmission of a religious system. That is the difference between investigating history and inventing conclusions to support an argument. The reality is that Yoruba Ifa and Arabic geomancy are two significantly different divination systems. Ifa has sixteen principal Odu, which combine into 256 Odu, each associated with an extensive corpus of sacred verses, philosophical teachings, historical narratives, and ritual prescriptions. Arabic geomancy uses sixteen fundamental figures arranged through a different method involving geomantic houses, witnesses, and a judge. The instruments, divination procedures, interpretive traditions, and religious foundations are substantially different. Only an idiot who has never actually studied or practiced Ifa would look at sixteen binary signs and confidently declare that the two systems are identical. Sharing a mathematical structure does not establish common origin, much less prove that one civilization borrowed its entire religious tradition from another. If you believe Arabic geomancy gave birth to Yoruba Ifa, provide historical evidence demonstrating that transmission. Otherwise, stop confusing similarities with proof of invention. And perhaps spend some time actually studying Ifa before lecturing Yoruba people about where their religious knowledge supposedly came from. You Muslims need to stop creating fake history. This only gives Islam, your faith, a bad name.