Esigie
Esigie was the Oba of Benin for nearly half a century, the king who beat the Igala at Idah with Portuguese guns and Portuguese soldiers, who could read and write in Portuguese and sent an ambassador to Lisbon, who opened the kingdom to Christian missions and then let them lapse, and who gave his mother the title of Queen Mother and a palace of her own, the origin of the ivory masks and brass heads of Idia that are the best-known objects Benin ever made. He was Ozolua's son, called Osawe as a prince, and had been placed by his father with the Portuguese at Ughoton, where he learned their language. On Ozolua's death about 1504 his brother Arhuaran, who held the town of Udo across the river, disputed the succession, and Esigie won a war against him that lasted some years. The greater test was the Igala, whose ruler the Attah marched on Benin from the north about 1515 or 1516. Esigie met them at Idah on the Niger and won, with a small force of Portuguese who had come with the Lisbon embassy, and the war is remembered in the palace in the figure of a bird that cried a bad omen and was killed by the king. The Portuguese king wanted converts and pepper. Esigie let the priests baptise his son and build a church, and the Portuguese wanted in return a monopoly on slaves which he refused; by the 1530s the mission had thinned and the trade had moved to the Slave Coast. His court was the richest in the region. The brass plaques for the palace, which show Portuguese soldiers with long hair and matchlocks beside Edo chiefs, were cast mostly in his time, and the palace tradition says the number of brass-casters' guilds was fixed under him. His mother Idia, who was said to have used medicine and command in the Idah war, was given the rank of a senior chief and a court at Uselu, and every Oba since has had an Iyoba. He died about 1550 and his son Orhogbua, who founded Lagos, succeeded.
- Nationality: Edo
- Roles: king, monarch
