The only king in all of West Africa, including the Yoruba kingdoms, to wear a leather crown is TIMI of Ede. The Timi Ede wear leather crowns (Adé Awọ Ẹkùn), or “The Crown made from Leopard’s skin,” in contrast to the majority of Yoruba Obas who often wear crowns made of glass, gold, or coral beads. This indicates their military ancestry as Oyo Empire soldiers.
As a warrior camp to guard the trade route between Oyo and the Coast in the south and Benin in the east, Ede was founded around 1500 by Timi Agbale Olofa Ina under Alaafin Kori of Oyo. In Yorubaland, leopards are regarded as animals of courage and bravery.
Timi Kubolaje Agbonran and his siblings, Oyefi, Ajenju, Arohanran, and Oduniyi, all descended from Lalemo, had to relocate the first Ede settlement, which had been founded as a military outpost by the Oyo authorities in the sixteenth century, to the opposite side of the Osun River sometime between 1818 and 1819.
