Arabic Legend About Ifa

The myth of Ifa being the Arabic equivalent of "Setiyu" was popularized by the Fuji exponent, Ayinde Barrister. In his signature style of mixing Quranic narratives with Yoruba philosophy, Barrister treated his listeners to the story of "Anabi Setiyu," which goes like this: "I know the name of Setiyu......the name of Setiyu is the name of Ifa."

It's plausible that Ayinde Barrister, like many Yoruba Muslims, constructed Ifa-Setiyu parallelism out of the Arabic legend that links the origin of Ifa or divinatory geomancy to their famous prophet, Idris (aka Djehuti the Egyptian; Enoch the Hebrew and Hermes Trismegistus the Greek).

There are only two verses dedicated to Idris in the Quran; they're vague at best and had nothing to do with Ifa. Although, the Quran is silent about Ifa, but somehow it found its way into the Hadith. In the Hadith, Arab pseudo-scholars, in their usual style of mixing Greek mythology and Egyptian mysteries to interpret Quranic verses, constructed a legend around Idris, linking him to Ifa.

According to this legend, Idris received the science of divinatory geomancy (I.e. Ilm al-Raml or Ifa) from Jubril in a dream, and he subsequently passed the story to a learned King of India, Tumtum al-Hindi, who documented the story in detail for Idris. Other legends abound!

Let me separate the truth from the legends and set the story straight. The Quran is essentially the Torah or the book of the upright ones. And as I've previously mentioned, the Hadith is a compendium of Arabic narratives outside of the Quran, which itself is an odd attempt by Arab pseudo-scholars to use Greek mythology and Egyptian mysteries to interpret the Torah. Consequently, the Hadith must be taken with a grain of salt.

It suffices to note that Ifa has nothing to do with Setiyu, nor does it have anything to do with Idris. Ifa is the totality of Yoruba's spiritual, moral and natural philosophies.