## Kingdom of Nri The coastal Kingdom of Nri was located west of what is now Gao, along the Niger river. It was administered by a priest-king who managed trade and diplomacy on behalf of the Nri people, a subgroup of the Igbo-speaking people, and possessed divine authority in religious matters. The Kingdom of Nri was a religio-polity, a sort of theocratic state, that developed in the central heartland of the Igbo region. The Nri had a taboo symbolic code with six types. These included human (such as twins), animal, object, temporal, behavioral, speech and place taboos. The rules regarding these taboos were used to educate and govern Nri's subjects. This meant that, while certain Igbo may have lived under different formal administration, all followers of the Igbo religion had to abide by the rules of the faith and obey its representative on earth. The kingdom was a haven for all those who had been rejected in their communities and also a place where slaves were set free from their bondage. Nri expanded through converts gaining neighboring communities' allegiance, not by force. Nri's royal founder, Eri, is said to be a 'sky being' that came down to earth and then established civilization. Tradition held that at least seven years would pass upon the death of the _eze_ Nri before a successor could be determined; the interregnum served as a period of divination of signs from the deceased _eze_ Nri, who would communicate his choice of successor from beyond the grave in the seven or more years ensuing upon his death. - - - I read about the Kingdom of Nri (one of the little-known [[West African Kingdoms]]) in an article posted on the Mythic Scribes writing forums by SinghSong called [Obscure Non-European Historical Settings / Cultures](https://mythicscribes.com/community/threads/obscure-non-european-historical-settings-cultures.22937/). Highlights were: > the Kingdom of Nri was ruled by an elected priest-king, comparable to the early Popes, known as the eze Nri, a divine ruler who held ritual and mystic (but not military) power. > ... > Unlike the more paganist and animistic religions which are stereotypically deemed to have been universally practised across pre-colonial Africa, the Nri believed in an omnipotent, omniscient supreme deity, whose being encompassed the entirety of creation. > ... > One of the core tenets of the state religion, Odanini, was religious pacifism, rooted in a belief that violence was an abomination which polluted the earth. Instead, the eze Nri could declare a form of excommunication from the odinani Nri against those who violated specific taboos (including slave trading and ownership). Members of the Ikénga, the priests and the nobility of Nri, could isolate entire communities via this form of ritual siege, resulting in their impoverishment and in starvation, given that the nobility also controlled the means for agriculture (in essence, comparable to the imposition of blockades and/or sanctions). > ... > the Kingdom endured for almost a millennia.