through which the river Ona flows. It is enclosed by mud walls, which have a circuit of 18 m., and is encompassed by cultivated land 5 or 6 m. in breadth. The native houses are all low, thatched structures, enclosing a square court, and the only break in the mud wall is the door. There are numerous mosques, orishas (idol-houses) and open spaces shaded with trees. There are a few buildings in the European style. Most of the inhabitants are engaged in agriculture; but a great variety of handicrafts is also carried on. Ibadan is the capital of one of the Yoruba states and enjoys a large measure of autonomy. Nominally the state is subject to the alafin (ruler) of Oyo; but it is virtually independent. The administration is in the hands of two chiefs, a civil and a military, the bale and the balogun; these together form the highest court of appeal. There is also an iyaloda or mother of the town, to whom are submitted all the disputes of the women. Ibadan long had a feud with Abeokuta, but on the establishment of the British protectorate the intertribal wars were stopped. In 1862 the people of Ibadan destroyed Ijaya, a neighbouring town of 60,000 inhabitants. A British resident and a detachment of Hausa troops are stationed at Ibadan.
IBAGUÉ, or San Bonifacio de Ibagué, a city of Colombia,
and capital of the department of Tolima, about 60 m. W. of
Bogotá and 18 m. N.W. of the Nevado de Tolima. Pop. (1900,
estimate) 13,000. Ibagué is built on a beautiful plain between
the Chipalo and Combeima, small affluents of the Cuello, a
western tributary of the Magdalena. Its elevation, 4300 ft.
above the sea, gives it a mild, subtropical climate. The plain
and the neighbouring valleys produce cacao, tobacco, rice and
sugar-cane. There are two thermal springs in the vicinity, and
undeveloped mines of sulphur and silver. The city has an
endowed college. It is an important commercial centre, being
on the road which crosses the Quindio pass, or paramo, into the
Cauca valley. Ibagué was founded in 1550 and was the capital
of the republic for a short time in 1854.
IBARRA, a city of Ecuador and capital of the province of
Imbabura, about 50 m. N.N.E. of Quito, on a small fertile plain
at the northern foot of Imbabura volcano, 7300 ft. above sea-level.
Pop. (1900, estimate) 5000. It stands on the left bank
of the Tahuando, a small stream whose waters flow north and
west to the Pacific through the Mira, and is separated from
the higher plateau of Quito by an elevated transverse ridge of
which the Imbabura and Mojanda volcanoes form a part. The
surrounding country is mountainous, the valleys being very
fertile. Ibarra itself has a mild, humid climate, and is set in the
midst of orchards and gardens. It is the see of a bishop and
has a large number of churches and convents, and many substantial
residences. Ibarra has manufactures of cotton and
woollen fabrics, hats, sandals (alpargates), sacks and rope from
cabulla fibre, laces, sugar and various kinds of distilled spirits and
cordials made from the sugar-cane grown in the vicinity. Mules
are bred for the Colombian markets of Pasto and Popayan.
Ibarra was founded in 1597 by Alvaro de Ibarra, the president
of Quito. It has suffered from the eruptions of Imbabura, and
more severely from earthquakes, that of 1859 causing great
damage to its public buildings, and the greater one of the 16th
of August 1868 almost completely destroyed the town and
killed a large number of its inhabitants. The village of Carranqui,
114 m. from Ibarra, is the birthplace of Atahualpa, the Inca
sovereign executed by Pizarro, and close by is the small lake
called Yaguarcocha where the army of Huaynacapac, the father
of Atahualpa, inflicted a bloody defeat on the Carranquis.
Another aboriginal battle-field is that of Hatuntaqui, near Ibarra,
where Huaynacapac won a decisive victory and added the greater
part of Ecuador to his realm. The whole region is full of tolas,
or Indian burial mounds.
IBERIANS (Iberi, Ἲβηρες), an ancient people inhabiting
parts of the Spanish peninsula. Their ethnic affinities are not
known, and our knowledge of their history is comparatively
slight. It is almost impossible to make any statement in regard
to them which will meet with general agreement. At the same
time, the general lines of Iberian controversy are clear enough
The principal sources of information about the Iberians are
(1) historical, (2) numismatic, (3) linguistic, (4) anthropological.
1. Historical.—The name seems to have been applied by the earlier Greek navigators to the peoples who inhabited the eastern coast of Spain; probably it originally meant those who dwelt by the river Iberus (mod. Ebro). It is possible (Boudard, Études sur l’alphabet ibérien (Paris, 1852) that the river-name itself represents the Basque phrase ibay-erri “the country of the river.” On the other hand, even in older Greek usage (as in Thuc. vi. 1) the term Iberia is said to have embraced the country as far east as the Rhone (see Herodorus of Heraclea, Fragm. Hist. Gr. ii. 34), and by the time of Strabo it was the common Greek name for the Spanish peninsula. Iberians thus meant sometimes the population of the peninsula in general and sometimes, it would appear, the peoples of some definite race (γένος) which formed one element in that population. Of the tribal distribution of this race, of its linguistic, social and political characteristics, and of the history of its relation to the other peoples of Spain, we have only the most general, fragmentary and contradictory accounts. On the whole, the historical evidence indicates that in Spain, when it first became known to the Greeks and Romans there existed many separate and variously civilized tribes connected by at least apparent identity of race, and by similarity (but not identity) of language, and sufficiently distinguished by their general characteristics from Phoenicians, Romans and Celts. The statement of Diodorus Siculus that the mingling of these Iberians with the immigrant Celts gave rise to the Celtiberians is in itself probable. Varro and Dionysius Afer proposed to identify the Iberians of Spain with the Iberians of the Caucasus, the one regarding the eastern, and other the western, settlements as the earlier.
2. Numismatic.—Knowledge of ancient Iberian language and history is mainly derived from a variety of coins, found widely distributed in the peninsula,[1] and also in the neighbourhood of Narbonne. They are inscribed in an alphabet which has many points of similarity with the western Greek alphabets, and some with the Punic alphabet; but which seems to retain a few characters from an older script akin to those of Minoan Crete and Roman Libya.[2] The same Iberian alphabet is found also rarely in inscriptions. The coinage began before the Roman conquest was completed; the monetary system resembles that of the Roman republic, with values analogous to denarii and quinarii. The coin inscriptions usually give only the name of the town, e.g. plplis (Bilbilis), klaqriqs (Calagurris), seqbrics (Segobriga), tmaniav (Dumania). The types show late Greek and perhaps also late Punic influence, but approximate later to Roman models. The commonest reverse type, a charging horseman, reappears on the Roman coins of Bilbilis, Osca, Segobriga and other places. Another common type is one man leading two horses or brandishing a sword or a bow. The obverse has usually a male head, sometimes inscribed with what appears to be a native name.
3. Linguistic.—The survival of the non-Aryan language among the Basques around the west Pyrenees has suggested the attempt to interpret by its means a large class of similar-sounding place-names of ancient Spain, some of which are authenticated by their occurrence on the inscribed coins, and to link it with other traces of non-Aryan speech round the shores of the Western Mediterranean and on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe. This phase of Iberian theory opens with K. W. Humboldt (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der waskischen Sprache, Berlin, 1821),
- ↑ For the prehistoric civilization of the peninsula as a whole see Spain.
- ↑ P. A. Boudard’s Études sur l’alphabet ibérien (Paris, 1852). and Numismatique ibérienne (Béziers, 1859); Aloiss Heiss, Notes sur les monnaies celtibériennes (Paris, 1865), and Description générale des monnaies antiques de l’Espagne (Paris, 1870); Phillips, Über das iberische Alphabet (Vienna, 1870), Die Einwanderung der Iberer in die pyren. Halbinsel (Vienna, 1870); W. M. Flinders Petrie, Journ. Anthr. Inst. xxix. (1899) 204, and above all E. Hübner, Monumenta linguae Ibericae.
