Biography of Okomfo Anokye

Name: Okomfo Anokye
Birth Date: N/A
Death Date: N/A
Place of Birth: N/A
Nationality:
Gender: Male
Occupations: priest, statesman

Okomfo Anokye

Okomfo Anokye (active late 17th century) was an Ashanti fetish priest, statesman, and lawgiver. A cofounder of the Ashanti Kingdom in West Africa, he helped establish its constitution, laws, and customs.The original name of Okomfo Anokye was Kwame Frimpon Anokye (Okomfo means "priest"). Some traditions say that he came from Akwapim in the Akwamu Kingdom southeast of Ashanti, but his descendants claim he was born of an Ashanti mother and Adansi father and was related to the military leader Osei Tutu (the other cofounder of the Ashanti Kingdom) through a maternal uncle. When Osei Tutu succeeded about 1690 to the leadership of the small group of Akan forest states around the city of Kumasi which were already grouped in loose military alliance, Anokye was his adviser and chief priest. Tutu and Anokye, who must be considered together, carried out the expansionist policy of their predecessors, defeating two powerful enemies, the …showed first 150 words…

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…showed last 150 words…is recorded in R.S. Rattray, Ashanti Law and Constitution (1929). Also useful for an understanding of Anokye and the Ashanti is A. Adu Boahen's account, "Asante and Fante, A.D. 1000-1800," in J.F. Ade Ajayi and Ian Espie, eds., A Thousand Years of West African History (1965; rev. ed. 1969).Basil Davidson, Black Mother: The Years of the African Slave Trade (1961) and The Growth of African Civilization: A History of West Africa, 1000-1800 (1965; rev. ed. 1967), treat Anokye enthusiastically and vividly. John E. Flint, Nigeria and Ghana (1966), is more scholarly and tries to distinguish between the contributions of Tutu and Anokye. Anthropologist Ivor Wilks appears to doubt the authenticity of the Anokye tradition, or at least to question his contemporaneousness with Tutu; in his "Ashanti Government" in Daryll Forde and P.M. Kaberry, eds., West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (1967), he accounts for the rise of the Ashanti Union without reference to Anokye.

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