The town of Illorin was founded, towards the close of the 18th century, by Yoruba, and rose to be the capital of one of the Yoruba kingdoms. About 1825 the kingdom, which had come under Mahommedan influence, ceased its connexion with the Yoruba states and became an emirate of the Sokoto empire. The Fula, however, maintained the Yoruba system of government, which places the chief power in a council of elders. In 1897 Illorin was occupied by the forces of the Royal Niger Company, and the emir placed himself "entirely under the protection and power of the company." After the assumption of authority by the British government in 1900, Illorin was organized for administration on the same system as the remainder of northern Nigeria. The emir took the oath of allegiance to the sovereign of Great Britain. A resident was placed at his court. Courts of justice have been established and British garrisons quartered at various places in the province. (See also NIGERIA and LAGOS.) ILLUMINATED MSS.--"Illumination," in art, is a term used to signify the embellishment of written or printed text or design with colours and gold, rarely also with silver. The old form of the verb "to illuminate" was "to enlumine" (O. Fr. _enluminer_; Lat. _illuminare_, "to throw light on," "to brighten"), as used by Chaucer (_A.B.C._, 73), "kalendres enlumyned ben they," and other medieval writers. Joinville likens the action of St Louis in adorning his kingdom with monastic foundations to a writer "qui a fait son livre qui l'enlumine d'or et d'azur"; while Dante (_Purgat._ xi. 79) alludes to this kind of decoration as "quell' arte che alluminare chiamata è in Parisi." But while the term should be strictly applied to the brilliant book-ornamentation which was developed in the later middle ages, it has been extended, by usage, to the illustration and decoration of early MSS. in general. Early.