Published for the International African Institute by the Oxford University Press
London. Ibadan. Accra. 1959. 257 pages.
Pastoral Fulani population which is the subject of this book is only a small part of a numerous, widespread, and diverse African people, about whom much has been written.
Fulani populations are scattered over the vast West African savannah belt of wooded grasslands, from Senegambia in the west to French Equatorial Africa in the east. Considerable difficulties have been encountered in estimating the total numbers in populations describing themselves as Fulani or speaking the Fulani language. It is likely that they total well over six millions, distributed roughly as follows:
| Territory | Approximate numbers | Reference |
| Afrique Occidentale Française: Mauritanie Sénégal Soudan Dahomey Guinée Niger Côte d'Ivoire & Hte-Volta Afrique Equatoriale Française: Tchad Oubangui-Chari Cameroun Français Brit. Cameroons & Nigeria Gambia Gold Coast Guiné Portuguesa |
12,000 250,000 600,000 54,000 720,000 269,000 52,000 No figures available No figures available 305,000 3,630,000 58,700 51,500 36,500 |
Westermann & Bryan (1952) " " " " " " Rapp- Ann. (1954) Pop. Cens. (1951-3) Col. Rept. (1954) Pop. Cens. (1950) Moreira (1948) |
The most important concentrations of Fulani are found in:
These populations are known by various names in different areas. The Wolof term « Peul(s) » is widejy used by the French. The British in Gambia call them by the Bambara term « Fula » . In Nigeria and Ghana they are known by the Hausa term « Fulani » . The Kanuri and other peoples of the Chad Basin call them « Felaata » . In German works they are termed Fulɓe. This, with its singular Pullo, is their own term for themselves. Following Northern Nigerian usage, they will be called Fulani in both singular and plural in this book.
The Fulani are not basically of Negro stock, although it is clear that through the centuries Fulani populations have interbred in various degrees with the Negro populations among whom they are dispersed. Fulani communities, as well as individuals within them, display a remarkable range of combinations of Negroid and non-Negroid physical traits. Whatever their observed physical characteristics, Fulani communities in general recognize as an ideal the distinctive characteristics of the purest of the stock; light copper-coloured skin, straight hair, narrow nose, thin lips, and slight bone structure. 2
The classification of the Fulani language, generally known as Fulfulde, has long been a matter of controversy. In part, this has been due to several distinctive features of the language such as noun classes and initial consonant alternation 4 which were considered anomalous in relation to the other languages of the Western Sudan. Confusion has also arisen through attempts to correlate the distinctive features of the Fulani language with the facts of their non-Negroid physical traits and with hypotheses concerning their dissemination over the Western Sudan. Thus
Structural similarities between Fulfulde and Western Sudanic languages such as Wolof, Serer, and Biafada have long been pointed out, notably by:
Fulfulde is currently classified as belonging to the West Atlantic group of Sudanic languages (Greenberg, 1949; Westermann and Bryan, 1952).
Although the massive task of a detailed overall study of the dialects of the Fulani language has not been attempted 5, the following appear to show significant dialect differences:
There are some structural differences between these dialects, such as the number and content of noun classes employed and the pronominal forms associated with them. But the major differences lie in the vocabulary, which is adapted freely from the dominant or autochtonous, languages of the area concerned. In addition to their own tongue, Fulani usually speak the local lingua franca where this is not Fulfulde, and often master an additional minority language. Moreover, the mobility of certain sections of the Fulani population must always have placed, as it does today, speakers of different Fulfulde variants in the same community. Continuous and often rapid linguistic changes occur. Numerous writers, especially Fliegelmann (1931, 1932), have commented upon the comparative richness, refinement, and flexibility of Fulfulde, which must be due in large part to these circumstances.
Fulani populations show marked differences in their mode of life, social organization, and degree of political autonomy. A number of types may be discerned.
The first of these is the cattle-owning population, or Pastoral Fulani. They are known popularly by similar terms (which they do not use themselves) in various areas. In Senegambia they are called « Fulɓe Burure » , and in the Chad region « Abore » . Elsewhere they are called « Bororo » or « Bororoje » . They retain non-Negroid physical characteristics to the greatest extent, speak the purest Fulfulde, and have in general been least amenable to conversion to Islam. Pastoral Fulani populations are found in those areas of the savannah belt where the population density is lowest, principally at its northern limits in the Sahel or semi-desert scrub zone, and in well-favoured highland areas such as the Jos Plateau and the Adamawa Highlands. Their subsistence and wealth derive solely from their herds of cattle, sometimes supplemented with small holdings of sheep, goats, or camels. In Damagaram in French Colonie du Niger, and in Sokoto and Bornu Provinces in the Northern Region of Nigeria, live a Fulani tribe known as Udaen, who subsist on their flocks of sheep. Pastoral Fulani live on dairy produce, surpluses of which are sold or exchanged for grain in the markets of agricultural villages. In the dry season herds are dispersed southwards in response to shortages of pasture and water, and congregate again in the north to avoid tsetse fly in the wet season. A wide variation in the distance and impetus of these movements is found, depending on local variations in savannah habitat, but seasonal movement is a consistent feature of Fulani pastoralism throughout this zone. Exceptions to it occur in highland areas, where movement is either reduced to a minimum or follows a hill-and-valley pattern. These are not the only factors which determine seasonal movement; presence of bovine disease and availability of markets are also taken continuously into account. 6
In Pastoral Fulani populations today the simple or compound family has a large measure of economic independence. The household head is the herd-owner, his sons are his herdsmen. His wife or wives have rights to the milk of all or part of the herd; in most areas, it is the women who do the milking. Their daughters assist them in its preparation and marketing. The family subsists on its herd and the herd depends for its effective increase on the pastoral skill of the family. Meat is eaten only on ceremonial and ritual occasions and cattle are sold only to meet an overriding need for cash, principally to pay taxes or fines, or to buy consumer goods. The material equipment of the Pastoral Fulani family is slight, being limited to the amount which can be readily transported on pack oxen or donkeys; dwellings are rudimentary shelters. Where the syntrophy of the family and herd breaks down, assistance is found primarily among the group of herd-owners constituting an agnatic lineage group. 7
The agnatic lineage group preserves a partial endogamy by a system of preferred cousin marriages. Widow inheritance within this group ensures the support of widows and orphans and maintains patrilineal inheritance of cattle. The agnatic lineage group has a leader selected by acclamation according to criteria of patrilineal descent, age, and prosperity. He represents his group in external affairs, and brings the weight of his experience and authority to camp councils in which herd-owners decide their future moves.
Agnatic lineage groups are linked to form clans by putative agnatic relationships of their several male ancestors. Although dispersed for most of the year, the clan, like the agnatic lineage group, is endogamous, and is a unit of cooperation with regard to cattle and labour. In some areas the clan was formerly a congregation for the observance of rites connected with the fertility of cattle, the puberty initiation of youths and maidens, and their induction into married life. Whether in former times Pastoral Fulani (for reasons of defence) characteristically moved in concert by clans or by agnatic lineage groups cannot be ascertained. It seems likely that the ecological conditions of most of the savannah belt of the Western Sudan imposed some degree of dispersal, and that areas where continuous organization for defence was required were avoided in favour of those where pastoral interests could be pursued unhindered. Today, when considerations of defence do not apply, the clan and the agnatic lineage group show an inherent instability engendered by the relative independence of the simple or compound family.
In general, the pursuit of their pastoral interests has kept the Pastoral Fulani aloof from the life of village and town, and from the convulsions which attended the foundation and aggrandizement of the States of the Western Sudan. But this detachment should not be exaggerated. Except possibly in the Sahel, in what the French call the « Zone Nomade » , the pastoral life is pursued not in isolation, but in some degree of symbiosis with sedentary agricultural communities. Alongside the continuous exchange of dairy products for grain and other goods, there have existed, possibly for many centuries, arrangements for pasturing cattle on land returning to fallow, and for guaranteeing cattle tracks and the use of water supplies. Pastoral Fulani did not, and do not, merely graze at will, but obtained rights to the facilities they required from the acknowledged owners of the land. The payments in kind made for obtaining these rights were not merely economic transactions but involved the Pastoral Fulani in the local ritual observances relating to land. When Pastoral Fulani pastured in Muslim States, other duties towards the territorial authorities were added to these local relationships. Rights to graze were affirmed by the payment of tribute to the ruler or his local representative. Pastoral Fulani further became liable to a tax on livestock sanctioned by the Muslim law of public alms. Although the jurisdiction of the State was ill-defined in just those areas which the Pastoral Fulani found most congenial, there is evidence that these bonds were recognized, if rarely implemented. The Pastoral Fulani gained their ends by the peaceful means of economic reciprocity in the local context, and carried out their obligations to Muslim States only when they deemed it politic or were forced to do so. They participated in State wars usually when this served to extend their rights to grazing ground, and only rarely for ideological motives. 8
There are many variants of this pastoral way of life which give rise to populations of Fulani best described as semi-sedentary, whose members not only raise cattle but also have farms. This is not mixed farming in the accepted sense of the term. It is rather a reliance on a dual mode of subsistence in which farming and stockraising at once complement and circumscribe each other. Farms are made according to local practices of shifting cultivation. They are likely to be smaller than those held by the sedentary population, and planted with grain crops rather than with cash crops or local market crops. At the same time, herds are likely to be smaller than those held by Pastoral Fulani in the same area and to be moved in a more restricted cycle of transhumance. The area in which the farm is located is regarded as the « home » area. Often, but not necessarily, this lies at the point in the transhumance cycle most convenient for the transfer of labour from pastoral to agricultural activities, especially farm clearance and harvesting. A common feature of the semi-sedentary Fulani community is the split household and the, split herd. The household head remains in the home area where the farm lies, sometimes keeping a small herd of milch cows. His married or unmarried sons deploy the herd away from the home area in the wet or dry seasons, returning to the locality in time to help with farm clearing or harvest. Where these duties cannot be carried out by the personnel of the family itself, co-operation in herding is sought from kinsmen, or paid labour engaged to help in farm work. Sometimes (during the period between clearance and harvesting) the whole family resides in the area in which its farm is located; stores its grain in the granaries of sedentary kinsmen and friends; moves off to dry-season pastures, collecting the supplies it needs throughout the dry season, and returns to its home area as the wet season becomes due.
There is little doubt that semi-sedentarism arises principally through losses of cattle by disease, when widespread reductions in the size of herds below the level necessary for entire subsistence upon them render inoperable the mechanisms of loan or gift which enable the Pastoral Fulani herd-owner to recoup his losses. Semi-sedentary communities have been viewed as transitional communities in which erstwhile Pastoral Fulani are moving towards absorption in the cattleless agricultural communities which surround them. This transition is often marked by the abandonment, in the home area, of one of the traditional types of Pastoral Fulani shelter in favour of the hut type common among the sedentary population. The pressures involved in maintaining this dual economy, as well as the attractions of the sedentary life, are largely responsible for this. There is, however, evidence that Pastoral Fulani who engage in agricultural pursuits as a consequence of cattle losses do succeed in re-establishing herds capable of supporting them completely, and then take up the nomadic life once more. Short-term studies of semi-sedentary communities would give the impression that this mode of life is well established under certain ecological conditions and densities of population. The return to pastoralism or the relapse into sedentary agricultural life can rarely be documented.
Semi-sedentarism may not necessarily be the result of poverty in cattle. For example, Pastoral Fulani moved on to the Jos Plateau in Northern Nigeria as recently as 1910. They found there a high, fly-free grazing ground with abundant water and pasture. Their seasonal movements decreased in scope and their herds multiplied. The growth of the tin-mining industry and the establishment of creameries assured them profitable markets for their dairy surpluses. At the same time the pagan inhabitants increased their agricultural holdings. Favourable pastoral conditions made extensive seasonal movements unnecessary; the need to establish permanent rights to wet-season pasture which in the absence of the pastoralists would readily be taken over by the agriculturalists, made a form of settlement desirable. A considerable number of Pastoral Fulani in this area have in the last twenty years or so established permanent household sites around which some cattle graze throughout the year, while the remainder move down the valleys to the savannah lowlands in the dry season. The Pastoral Fulani surround their settlements with gardens of Indian corn which are cleared, planted, tended, and harvested by pagan labourers paid in cash. Pagans also assist as herdsmen in the wet season, and are recompensed, in the traditional Pastoral Fulani manner, in kind. On the Jos Plateau, it is the richest cattle-owners with the largest families who adopt this form of settlement. They do no agricultural work, and some of the work of the herds is turned over to non-Fulani. Semi-sedentarism is here correlated, not with poverty in cattle, but with its converse. 9
A considerable proportion of the Fulani communities of the Western Sudan are sedentary and agricultural. They merge into the major ethnic groupings among which they are found and with which they have many cultural affinities, sometimes including a common language. Their traditions link them in various degrees to Pastoral Fulani populations and they demonstrate a further stage in the progress towards a sedentary way of life outlined above. The principal concentrations of sedentary populations of this sort are :
A further population of sedentary Fulani, described by the Pastoral Fulani as Ndoowi'en, has emerged in Bornu, Adamawa, and the eastern parts of French Niger Colony. We should perhaps add to this category of sedentary Fulani the populations of pilgrims who are forced to settle and farm for shorter or longer periods on their way to Mecca across what was formerly the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. They are known as Takarir, a term derived doubtless from the ancient kingdom of Tekrur in Senegal. These sedentary populations should not be confused with communities of serf cultivators and former slaves of the Fulani, which will be discussed below.
We have so far described Fulani communities which are distinguished by their mode of subsistence. Living in these communities, or in contact with them, are specialists, the Muslim holy men (Ful. moodiɓɓe, sing. moodibbo). 10 Their specialism consists in their relation with the supernatural which is manifest in their possession of sanctity (barka) — a term common to many Western Sudanese languages, and to the Berber dialects of Maghrebine North Africa. Sanctity may be inherited genealogically, or acquired from one's teachers. Ultimately, barka derives from Allah himself, through the Prophet and his Companions. Holy men may belong to one or other of the Islamic fraternities — Kadiriya, Tijaniya, Mahdiya, and so on, which ramify throughout the Western Sudan. Holy men live on the fees, obtained by the performance of their special tasks, which have the quality of alms for the Muslim donor. But many also have farms, or are craftsmen or traders. They may work alone in a community or they may form hamlets, around which they farm, and from which they travel in pursuit of their calling.
The term « holy man » covers many degrees of proficiency in magic, Islamic ritual, law, and tradition, but in general the status of a holy man depends upon his ability to read the Arabic of Koranic texts and such Maghrebine writings as are copied and circulated in the Western Sudan. Some holy men are little more than magicians or diviners, fashioning amulets, making decoctions of the ink in which pious texts have been written, manipulating sand patterns, or telling the stars. Others have received a more extensive grounding in Muslim ritual and dogma after years of study by rote in a Koranic school. In addition to practising as magicians and diviners, they may instruct others in the niceties of religious observance, or officiate at name-givings, weddings, and funerals. They may compose disputes by recourse to the principles of Islamic law as they understand them. They may acquaint their listeners with details of the lives of Islamic divines who have attained sainthood, and whose tombs they have visited. Yet others achieve a wider fame after making the pilgrimage, studying in Cairo, or travelling between Western Sudanese centres of learning. They establish their own followings and schools, with whose members they have a continuing bond wherever they may be.
Each holy man has his own sphere of influence, proportional, we may say, to his barka. As we shall see, in the past, Muslim divines had great influence in the States of the Western Sudan, converting princes, reforming systems of administration, and, in the last resort, leading popular uprisings. Men of this calibre are today found in high administrative or judicial posts, their talents curbed, perhaps, by the demands of European government. Their religious zeal, we may rest assured, is no less fervent. Others remain in the background, maintaining their links with the Islamic Middle East, leading their fraternities, and encouraging the dissemination of their doctrines. Yet others have a more restricted sphere of action in the towns and country districts, continually transmitting by precept and example the fund of Islamic learning, the observance of its rites, and the rudiments of its law. Finally we come to the holy man of the village — the scene of compromise and the amalgamation of Islamic popular beliefs and practices with those of pagan origin and sometimes of Christian dissemination.
Their efforts at proselytism are, at best, circumscribed by their own narrow vision; or, at worst, merely batten on the credulity of those who seek their aid. But whatever their accomplishments or fields of activity the holy men are the spearheads, blunt or keen, of an Islam which is distinctively Western Sudanese. 11
For many centuries the Western Sudan has seen the rise of States and political organisms to which the term « Empire » has been applied. A study of the more general works on the history of the Western Sudan shows that some of these endured for centuries, others were short-lived, but the career of all was marked by continuous warfare, extensions and contractions of territory, and internal rivalries and insurrections.
But alongside this sanguinary aspect lies the other face of the Western Sudan State. Cities were established, and within their walls were to be found not only the pomp of the king's court and the splendour of his military power, but also more peaceful manifestations of urban culture. Some cities became centres of Islamic learning. Most displayed considerable diversity in their arts and crafts, whose practitioners were organized into guilds under the king's patronage. Many were commercially important, not only gathering into their markets the produce of the surrounding countryside, but also maintaining a far-flung caravan trade with other Western Sudanese cities and with commercial centres on the opposite Maghrebine shore of the sand sea which is the Sahara. Many of the urban populations of the Western Sudan could truly be called cosmopolitan. The city was the nodal point of the State, which more often than not was described by the city's name. Surrounding it to a greater or lesser depth was the city's countryside, from which produce was drawn and to which the city's products percolated. Within this area, as in the city itself, the affluence of the State was maintained by the arts of peaceful administration, in the levying of all manner of tolls and taxes, the quidpro quo of which was effective defence.
Still farther out was the zone entrusted to governors who, though often residing in the city, were responsible for the defence of its various, sectors, and the safeguarding of such trade routes as passed through them. Here public administration was manifest not in tax, but in tribute, collected from populations only loosely bound to the State. The affluence of the State did not depend solely on the maintenance of a vigorous internal and external trade, fostered by peaceful conditions. Apart from the trade in gold, salt, and diverse consumer goods, one of the principal resources of the Western Sudan was its human material, in the form of slaves. These were sought in a more distant zone outside the governors' domains, which was a no-man's-land between one State and the next. In the Islamic era in the Western Sudan, these zones assumed a dual importance and the activities of States in them had an ideological as well as an economic impetus. They lay outside Dar-el-Islam, the Community of the Faithful; their populations were either to be subdued and converted by force and thus brought into the web of Muslim State administration, or carried off as slaves. Thus on the States' peripheries the art of government merged into the art of war. Where the territorial interests of one State collided with those of its neighbour, the slave-raiding column became an instrument of aggression. Here too, ideological reasons were brought to bear, and accusations of backsliding in the faith were used as justifications for extending territorial claims.
The State was thus committed to a ceaseless course of expansion; trade had to be guaranteed and tax and tribute levied in order to support further military endeavours in the name of Islam, which, if successful, brought not only new wealth but also new administrative problems.
This expansion was facilitated by geographical and technological considerations. The savannah zone of the Western Sudan rarely affords natural barriers upon which a frontier line can be established. The horse was widely used in warfare and made possible military formations of great mobility. It was therefore not surprising that, in periods of affluence, the nominal boundaries far outran the area which could be effectively administered, and that in periods of adversity the periphery of the State was quickly overrun. Moreover, at all points in the territorial organization of the State a strong governing hand was required. At the centre, in the city, there were the inevitable court intrigues; merchants with diverse and distant connexions; peripatetic Muslim preachers and holy men. In the countryside the peagants were always seeking to avoid taxation. In the governors' domains, military forces at the disposal of local commmanders might be indispensable to the State, but were equally likely to be used against the ruler. Here, too, the tributepaying populations might be of diverse ethnic origins, with their own local traditions and religions, eager to regain a semblance of autonomy, and willing to ally themselves with any power that would help them. Outward again, the no-man's-land was the home not only of pagan tribes jealous of their time-hallowed customs, but also of bands of freebooters, selling their services at will. And throughout the State roamed the pastoralists, elusive and unpredictable, now innocent herdsmen of camels or cattle, now welldisciplined bands of bowmen or cavalry, with an unrivalled knowledge of the bush. 12
Fulani have played their part in the foundation, administration, and overthrow of States throughout the course of Western Sudanese history. The Fulani founded pagan kingdoms, but the Fulani States which confronted European powers at their annexation of West Africa, and which survive in modified form today, are Islamic.
Some writers (Delafosse, 1912; Bovill, 1933) suggest that the founders of Melle were the forebears of the Fulani, though this is open to doubt. The principal pagan States founded by Fulani were Fouta Jalon in the tenth century, and Fouta Senegal, founded in the sixteenth century by the Fulani clan Denianke, who fled westwards from the rule of the Songhai. The Fulani dynasties of these States were noted for their persecution of Muslim populations. Other pagan principalities, founded by Fulani before the eighteenth century, arose in Macina, Yatenga, Gobir, and Bagirmi.
But the most striking contribution to the history of the States of the Western Sudan was the Fulani creation and usurpation of Muslim States which were no less fanatic than their pagan predecessors. These Muslim States arose within a century in widely separated parts of the Western Sudan, and at one juncture it seemed likely that they would be united under a single emperor. So marked was this essentially Fulani development that some writers (Richard-Molard, 1949; Gouilly, 1952) have seen in it a concerted effort which could be described as the « Fulani phase of Islamization » . The first manifestation occurred in Fouta Jalon. During the seventeenth century this well-endowed highland area was the scene of a considerable immigration of Fulani pastoralists who, although of different clans, were all Muslims of the Kadiriya persuasion.
In 1725 a Muslim Fulani known as Alfa Ba put himself at their head and declared a Holy War (jihaad) not only against the pagan Sosso and Mandingo inhabitants but also against the pagan Fulani dynasty which ruled the country. Alfa Ba died during the course of preparations for the Holy War, but his son, a holy man, known as Ibrahim mo Timbo or Karamoko Alfa, continued his work with the aid of a war leader, Ibrahim Sori.
[The above passage is factually inaccurate and misleading. For adequate accounts of Fuuta-Jalon's complex history, the reader should peruse the genealogy of the Bari (not Ba) dynasty that ruled the theocracy and, overall, the webFuuta site index and library. — Tierno S. Bah]
They conquered and converted by force all except the least accessible parts of the country and established a territorial organization which, although much modified, is the basis of present-day administration. There were nine provinces (Diiwe ; sing. Diiwal) under regional chiefs. These were divided into « parishes » (Misiide) which in turn were composed of settlements of freemen (Fulaso) and of slaves (Runde). Dissensions between the war leader's party (Soriya) and the followers of the holy men (Alfaya) led, in 1840, to a cumbersorme compromise by which administrative offices alternated every two years.
The second Muslim Fulani State was Fouta Toro, which, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had been ruled by a pagan Fulani dynasty, the Denianke. In 1776 the Muslim Fulani minority rose under Abd-el-Kadr Torodi and established the Muslim State. In Fouta Toro there was little of the internal dissension seen in Fouta Jalon. Abdel-Kadr had both preached and waged war, and his kingdom consisted of provinces under the rule of Muslim divines. The State expanded after the death of Abd-el-Kadr in 1788 and its dependencies in the Senegambia region — Dimar, Damga, and Boundou — were in situ on the arrival of the French.
The Bambara kingdom of Macina was the scene of the creation of the next Muslim Fulani kingdom. Here the Muslim Fulani had for long been tributaries of the Bambara. One of them, Amadu Sisi, led the revolt and proclaimed himself Amir of Macina. His conquests included Jenné and Timbuktu and his rule was marked by a fanaticism which included the destruction of mosques whose devotees he declared to be lax in their religious observances.
The greatest feat of empire-building on the part of the Fulani was the Jihad of Usuman dan Fodio, who established a widespread empire in what is now Northern Nigeria, both founding new States and usurping the rule of the old-established Hausa kingdoms. Usuman was a Fulani of Degel in Gobir. He was brought up strictly in the Maliki rite and at an early age found his vocation as teacher and writer, but above all as a preacher. In his sermons he was at pains to point out the errors and shortcomings of the Hausa, who mixed pagan with Muslim practices. This disquieted Nafata, king of Gobir, who, although formerly a pupil of Usuman's, saw in these activities a threat to his position at the centre of the pagan rites of kingship. Before his death, Nafata made proclamations designed to restrict the effect of Usuman's efforts. His son Yunfa was more energetic and in 1803 attacked Gimbana, an important Muslim village, destroying the scribes' writings and carrying off their wives and children. In February 1804 Usuman declared a Hegira or Flight from Degel, which was a demonstration of defiance of the constituted government. It took the Muslim leader into an ill-administered part of the kingdom, from which messages might be sent to Fulani communities urging them to join the instigator of the rising, and from which the first deployments of insurrection might be made. Usuman was speedily joined in his flight by a considerable number of fervent supporters. In June 1804 Usuman met Yunfa in battle at Kwotto lake and defeated him. The victorious Muslim army proclaimed Usuman Commander of the Faithful (Arab. Amir al Muminin; Hausa Serkin Musulmi; Ful. Laamiiɗo Julɓe) and he was thenceforth known as Sheik or Shehu. He declared Holy War against the enemies of Islam and, in the next decade or so, Shehu, or his son and successor Bello, gave the flag of Holy War to trusted followers who took existing kingdoms by insurrection or carved out new ones by war. Usuman himself retired early to a life of contemplation, and is revered to this day as a saint.
By 1810 four of the seven Hausa States — Katsina, Kano, Zaria, and Daura — were taken by the Fulani, and the city of Sokoto, from which the Empire was to be governed, had been established. During the next twenty years, Fulani dynasties were set up in other States, principally Ilorin and Nupe. During the same period new kingdoms were established, chief among which was Adamawa. On the eastern borders of the Empire developments took place with which we shall be more concerned later in the text. Bornu resisted the Fulani invaders, but in large portions of its western territory small kingdoms, such as Hadeijia, Katagum, Bauchi, Misau, and Gombe, were established by the Fulani. The history of the Fulani States during the nineteenth century is one of attempts at expansion and internecine strife, which neither the military power of the suzerain State of Sokoto nor the religious authority of its ruler were able to compose. Nevertheless, on their arrival in Northern Nigeria, the British recognized the legitimacy by conquest of the Fulani rulers, and the present Emirs of the States are for the most part the descendants of the flag-bearers of the Jihad.
The final manifestation of Fulani Islam was the rise of Umar Saidu Tal. He was born in 1797 into a family of holy men of Podor in Senegal. He went on the pilgrimage in 1827 and studied in Mecca, Medina, and Cairo. He returned to the Western Sudan in 1838 and was well received in Bornu, Sokoto, and Macina. The Fulani rulers of Sokoto [and Macina] gave him their daughter[s] in marriage. He attempted to seize power in Fouta Toro but was unsuccessful, although he succeeded in raising followers prepared to preach the Holy War elsewhere. He moved to Dinguiraye in Fouta Jalon, which he established as a fortress and centre of learning. He led a Holy War in the Bambouk country and by 1861 had established his son as king of Macina. Under his hand, Nioro, Bandiagara, and Segou became important religious centres. But in 1857 he was checked at Khosso by the French, and in 1861, was defeated near Bandiagara by the dispossessed Fulani of Macina. Hadj Umar Tal's career was one of spectacular failure. French writers (Richard-Molard, 1949; Gouilly, 1952) see in him the potential unifier of all the Muslim Fulani empires and States of the Western Sudan, whose pursuit of this hegemony was foiled only by the arrival of the French and British as colonial powers. However, we may speculate that, had his career gone unchecked, his empire would have suffered the same internal instability as beset others in the history of the Western Sudan. 13
The Fulani Muslim States, founded and ruled by holy men carrying out the final duty of the believer, that of waging the Holy War, were, at least at the outset, militant theocracies. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of the variations in Fulani administration in different parts of the Western Sudan, but we should note one common feature. The Fulani rulers added to their proselytizing zeal an ethnic consciousness derived no doubt from their long history as alien minorities among the Negro populations of the Western Sudan. In their tribally heterogeneous kingdoms they preserved many features of the earlier administration, but interpreted them in accordance with their own notions of ethnic dominance. Fulani were free; they were rulers, divines, herdsmen. Pagan Fulani, principally Pastoral Fulani, were to be converted but not taken into slavery. Within the kingdom the various non-Fulani occupational groups organized by families or clans — the blacksmiths, metal-workers, butchers, leather-workers, weavers, tailors, dyers, and minstrels — were subject to special taxes and their output or services were at the disposal of the king or his local representatives. In the governors' domains, tribute was often paid in slaves. Some of these rose high in the king's military or administrative service and certain titles were reserved for men of slave origin. Slaves were in large measure the currency of tribute; with horses, they were also the means of rewarding services rendered to the king. Thus throughout the Fulani kingdoms there were communities of slave cultivators (runde, ruumde'en, ruumdanko'en, in different dialects) whose Fulani masters claimed their share of produce. Slaves (maccuɓe, sing. maccuɗo) and female slaves (horɓe, sing. korɗo) also served in menial positions in Fulani households. Concubinage and miscegenation took place, and the operation of Muslim law in these respects gave rise to communities of enfranchized slaves or serf cultivators (rimayɓe, sing. diimaajo).
Just as the economic and military power of a kingdom depended in large measure on these non-Fulani groups, so the latter were part of the Fulani social order at all levels. They had their place in Fulani ceremonial, mastered Fulani etiquette, and spoke the Fulani language, and many of their members might claim to be part Fulani. In spite of the decrees and ordinances of colonial governments against various forms of slavery, these relationships persist, although with many modifications. Communities of slave or serf origin may have the outward appearance of Fulani communities of sedentary farmers, semi-sedentarists, or even pastoralists. Their origin and present status require careful elucidation. 14
Confronted with the wide and discontinuous distribution of Fulani, their non-Negroid physical characteristics, the distinctive features and doubtful origin of their language, and the variety of social systems in which they participate, European writers have addressed themselves to a number of ethnological and linguistic problems concerning them.
The first of these was the absorbing problem of origins. The second was that of the antiquity and the mode of the dispersal of the Fulani throughout the Western Sudan. The third was the problem of the evolution and differentiation of Fulani communities. The fourth — and this was often the vehicle of the foregoing inquiries — was the observation and ethnographic description of specific Fulani communities.
Ethnologists and others have been provoked to seek the origins of the Fulani far outside their present habitat, in remote periods and states of society, and to describe the successive migrations which are supposed to have brought them into their present habitat before documentary evidence from the Western Sudan became available. Considerable ethnological debate has surrounded the widely divergent hypotheses of the origin of the Fulani. Tauxier (1937) lists the majority of these.
The myths of the Fulani themselves do little to confirm hypotheses linking them with events of the Classical or Near Eastern world. They often describe the marriage of a Muslim Arab or Moor with a Negress which is blessed with children. One infant is left in the care of an elder brother while their mother goes to draw water. It cries and is comforted by its brother in an incomprehensible language which the mother overhears on her return. She runs to tell the father, who takes this as a sign, predicted by the Prophet, that the child will be the founder of a new people who do not speak Arabic, but will be the saviours of Islam. This child is the ancestor of the Fulani. In some versions his brothers learn the new language, Fulfulde, from him and found the four great branches of the Fulani people. In others they become the ancestors of other, Negro, populations of the country. In all its versions (e.g. Madrolle, 1885; de St. Croix, 1944) this myth relates the racial affinities of the Fulani, their linguistic peculiarities, and their historical role in theWestern Sudan.
Other, less homely, traditions have been encountered. Clapperton (1829) records the statement of Shehu Bello of Sokoto that the Fulani are of Jewish origin. Delafosse (1912) records the myth that the four ancestors of the traditional major divisions of the Fulani in the Niger-Senegal region — the Ba, Bari, So, and Diallo — are the offspring of a Jewess of Sinai and her husband Okba who was sent by the Caliph Omar (634-64) to convert the Jews and later became governor of Egypt. Variants of this myth are found in Guebhard (1910), Vicars-Boyle (1910), Lauture (18556), Clapperton (1829), and Logeay (1909). These and similar traditions appear to be current in Islamic circles and are disseminated by Fulani preachers (Tauxier, 1937). But, as we have seen, by no means all Fulani shared the beliefs and outlook of the Islamic communities of the Western Sudan or were conversant with their myths. Pastoral Fulani, who have always been least amenable to conversion, had their own myths of origin, which were bound up with the origin of cattle. A common version (de St. Croix, 1944; Stephani, 1912) runs somewhat as follows. The first Fulani to own cattle is expelled from a Fulani settlement. The context of this expulsion is not stated. He wanders alone in the bush, enduring great hardship. A water spirit appears and tells him that if he obeys his orders he will acquire great wealth and be the envy of those who despised him. In one version he waters all the wild animals in turn, until finally, in reward for his exertions, the spirit sends him cattle to water. In another version the Fulani is enjoined to wait patiently by a lake until the source of his future wealth appears. The water spirit then tells him to lead the cattle away and never to fail to light a fire for them at dusk, lest they revert to their wild state and leave him. The settled Fulani despise the nomad and pour ridicule upon his harsh way of life. But he takes a wife from them, and his progeny are eventually able to pursue their pastoral existence without intermarriage with those who spurned their ancestor. While explaining and justifying the way of life of the cattle-owning Fulani, this myth retails a stereotype of the relations of Pastoral and sedentary Fulani. In addition it gives a faint clue to the nature of the pre-Islamic Pastoral Fulani religion, which has been characterized as « boomanie sans boolatrie » though its beliefs and practices have eluded description.
The search for the origins of the Fulani was based on racial and linguistic criteria, and attempts were made to link these with Classical, Biblical, and Near Eastern history. No convincing case has been made for linking the Fulani, as an identifiable ethnic group, with historical events outside the Western Sudan. A more tenable supposition, based on the same evidence, is that they are a product of the long and sustained impact of pastoral tribes, themselves of Mediterranean affiliation, upon the indigenous Negro populations of the Western Sudan, and lets the matter rest there. The nature of this impact in its early stages can only be conjectured. From the earliest records of the Western Sudan by Arabs and Europeans, commencing with Yakubi in A.D. 872 (see Bouche and Mauny, 1946), the Fulani have been essentially a Western Sudanese phenomenon, part of its geography, history, and sociology.
The dispersal of the Fulani within the Western Sudan has been documented by a number of European writers, principally those mentioned on the question of origins, with the addition of Delavignette (1932), Duhring (1926-7), and Gaden (1890). The reconstruction of this migration relies for the most part on Fulani oral traditions. These traditions are in part substantiated by Western Sudanese chronicles such as those of Kano, Bornu, and Agades (Urvoy, 1936; Palmer, 1928) since the latter recount in summary form some of the events in the history of the Western Sudan with which the Fulani were connected. It is greatly to be regretted that many of the State chronicles were destroyed by the Fulani themselves on their assumption of power. In turn, recourse has been had to Arab or Moorish travellers' accounts, principally those of El Bekri (Slane, 1859), Es Sa'adi (Houdas, 1900), and Leo Africanus (Brown, 1896). The writings of European travellers before the colonial era, such as
complete the sources of our information.
Although the details of these migrations may be open to doubt, their general sense is quite clear. The general mass movement of the Fulani (known by one or other of their various names) within the Western Sudan has been from Senegal eastwards. The periods at which stages of this movement were accomplished are not so clear. It appears that the exodus of the Fulani from the kingdom of Tekrur in Senegal occurred in the eleventh century A.D. (Delafosse, 1912). It is clear that by the time of the rise of the Fulani Muslim States in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Fulani formed more or less substantial minorities in the various regions in which their Holy Wars were fought, since these were in no case invasions, but insurrections. Since that period, largely owing to the pacification of hitherto inaccessible areas by colonial administrations, Fulani have penetrated farther into areas such as the Jos Plateau in Nigeria and parts of British and French Cameroons. We may conclude that the present distribution of the Fulani was more or less completed during a period of at most eight hundred years.
There is little doubt that the main impetus of this vast ethnic movement was provided by the pastoral elements of the population. The transhumance systems of the Pastoral Fulani have probably always been of a conservative nature, involving close knowledge of the grazing potentialities of relatively limited tracts of country. The independence of the simple or compound family with its own herd has militated against the formation of extended kinship groups having well-defined grazing and water rights in specific tracts which might be defended by force. Thus herds have been maintained, not by cattle-raiding, feud, and war, but by the continuous adjustment of transhumance patterns to subtle changes of an ecological nature. The resultant movement may be described as « migratory drift » , and it is this type of movement which accounts for the spread of Pastoral Fulani populations. As we have seen, Pastoral Fulani have always formed minorities within wider societies, and intolerable political conditions within these have been countered by a more dramatic form of movement — migration from the scene of war, excessive tribute, and the like. Pastoral Fulani have remained pastoralists, in the sense we have described, only by continuous seasonal movement, which develops imperceptibly into migratory drift, and by periodic migration. They have left behind them Fulani populations more closely wedded to the soil, the semisedentary and sedentary populations.
But in affirming the importance of the pastoralists in dispersing communities of Fulani throughout the Western Sudan, the role of holy men of Fulani descent should not be minimized. They served to crystallize these groups into self-conscious communities which later became the nuclei of Fulani States. For the pastoralists the savannah grassland of the Western Sudan was a vast potential grazing ground. For the holy men it was a field of missionary and reformist endeavour among the courts of pagan and Muslim rulers no less than among Fulani populations. We may suppose that Fulani were converted to Islam before the eleventh century owing to the efforts of Malikite Mauretanian Arabs in Senegal (Delafosse, 1912). These were fortified by the establishment of the Almoravid Empire on the ruins of the kingdom of Ghana (Bovill, 1933). These events gave rise to the Fulani Toroɓɓe (those who pray to Allah). The Fulani Toroɓɓe of Senegal themselves moved eastwards in the wake of the Fulani migrations, initiating members of Fulani sedentary communities and forming their widely dispersed brotherhoods. These men not only preached among existing Fulani communities wherever they found them, forming links based on their own influence with the central authorities of the alien States; they also often formed the foci of new communities drawn together by real or imagined persecution and cemented by a common language and common faith. Such dissident communities were formed by the « Flights » of holy men and were located in ill-administered parts of the States in which they were found.
The rise of the Fulani Muslim States through the activities of the Fulani holy men thus depended in large measure on their influence among communities of their own people. But to describe the Holy Wars as demonstrations of Fulani « nationalism » is not entirely accurate. In Fouta Jalon, Fouta Senegal, and Macina, the Fulani reformists ousted pagan Fulani dynasties. In Hausaland Fulani resisted the agitations of Usuman and on occasion fought on the side of the Hausa kingdoms, while Shehu Usuman gave flags to Hausa and Bornuese preachers as well as to Fulani. Finally, Muslim Fulani themselves belonged to rival sects of the Malikite rite. Hadj Umar belonged to the comparatively recently formed sect of the Tijaniya. His failure in Fouta Toro and his war with the Fulani of Macina were due as much to doctrinal differences as to conflicts of political ambitions.
The work of numerous writers on the Fulani makes it clear that no simple formula for the evolution and differentiation of Fulani communities can be laid down. Communities of pastoralists persist, and will continue to do so in their present form in regions of the savannah belt where sedentary populations remain at a low density. 15 Administrative action coupled with ecological reform may create demarcated areas where cattle-raising will flourish on a basis more akin to ranching; enclosure may lead to mixed farming. 16 Communities of semi-sedentarists do not represent an inevitable stage in the process towards a sedentary way of life; they may arise through poverty in cattle, or its reverse. Sedentary Fulani populations are evidence of this process of sedentarization, but here again, there are populations of non-Fulani origin who have been included in the orbit of Fulani political domination and who regard themselves as Fulani. Finally, from the evidence at our disposal, it is not possible to refer the development of Western Sudanese States to a race of Fulani « shepherd kings » . The early development of centralized government may have been due to Berber invasions, and the early pagan Fulani kingdoms may have been of this nature. But before the establishment of the Fulani Muslim States there were powerful Negro kingdoms in the Western Sudan. The Fulani States themselves, which persisted until the period of European colonization, were largely usurpations of existing State systems, and owed their rise, not to invasions of warlike nomads, but to the ideological and political ambitions of holy men, whose principal adherents were Fulani communities already subject in some degree to the States' jurisdiction.
This book deals with changes in some of the salient features of the way of life of a community of Pastoral Fulani in only one small part of the Western Sudan — the Woɗaaɓe 17 of Bornu Emirate in North-eastern Nigeria.
Although their material equipment is rudimentary, their social groupings small, fluid, and isolated, the Woɗaaɓe are not in the classical sense a primitive people. In the pages which follow, the reader will see that none of the features described above for Fulani communities in general are alien to the Woɗaaɓe. They have migrated to their present habitat, and some have moved on eastwards. They have experienced the pressures towards the sedentary life, and some have capitulated. They trade and barter continuously with non-Fulani communities whose languages they speak. Some have briefly visited capital cities in the Muslim States-Maiduguri, Yola, Kano, Zaria-where they have lived, not as homeless immigrants ill-adjusted to the life of the city, but in centuries-old 'quarters' where people of their own regional or ethnic background congregate. The Woɗaaɓe have been converted to Islam by holy men. They worship, however imperfectly, the God of millions of co-religionists. They help on his way to Mecca the pilgrim from far places; some of them have themselves made the pilgrimage. They are being drawn into the legal and administrative system associated in West Africa with Islam. Their legends are those of Muslim kings, and the religious wars which have swept the country. Their tribal heroes are men who profited by the wars, who acquired slaves and horses for services rendered to kings. The Woɗaaɓe, like other Fulani communities, are historically and culturally part of the Islamic world of the Western Sudan.
Nevertheless, the reader will detect a vein of opportunism in the dealings of the Woɗaaɓe with the alien States and communities in which they move. They have accepted the protection of States when it was convenient to do so. They have traded or fought with neighbouring communities of non-Fulani as political events dictated. They have accepted only those forms of Islamic canon law which suited them, and have evaded the rest. These attitudes extend to the administrative provisions current under the system of Indirect Rule which affect them.
The yardstick of this involvement with, or withdrawal from, a wider social system, has been the welfare of Woɗaaɓe herds and the maintenance of the family system with which cattle are so closely bound. And the success of their opportunism has been due to the mobility with which families and their herds are endowed.
« Social change » for the Woɗaaɓe, as for many another Pastoral Fulani community, does not lie, even today, in the impact of Western technology, modes of distribution, and the new forms of social organization and ideology attendant upon them. The main manifestations of social change for the Woɗaaɓe are their incorporation into an Islamic State organization, administrative system, and ritual idiom, with which, until the post-war period, British administration had little concern. This, for the Woɗaaɓe, has been a slow process, lasting for perhaps a century and a half. The stresses in Woɗaaɓe society resulting from these changes may be slight compared with those described for African societies confronted more squarely with changes of a Western origin. This book attempts to chronicle them.
Notes
1 See map p. 24.
2. Tauxier (1937) discusses work on the physical anthropology of Fulani communities, principally that of Verneau (1931), Deniker (1926), Buisson (1933). and Chantre (1918). More recent work is that of Pales (1951, 1952, 1953). Casual references in the literature on West Africa to the physical characteristics of Fulani, particularly the beauty of their women, are too numerous to be mentioned here.
3. An extensive bibliography of the Fulani language is to be found in Westermann and Bryan (1952). See also Struck (1911-12) and Labouret (1955).
4. A succinct description of these structural features is furnished by Greenberg (1949).
5. See the recent work of deTressan (1951, 1952). In 1955-6 D.W. Arnott, of School of Oriental and African Studies, made extensive tape recordings all areas where Fulani are found. See Arnott (1957).
6. For a discussion of the factors affecting the various forms of pastoral movement practised by the Pastoral Fulani see my paper « Transhumance, Migratory Drift, and Migration; Patterns of Pastoral Fulani Nomadism » (J.R.A.I, vol. 87, pt. 1. 1957).
7. The maintenance of the economic independence of the family household within the agnatic lineage group is described in my paper « Pastoral Fulani Family Development » (Cambridge Annals of Anthropology, no. I, 1958).
8. For observations on the life and social organization of the Pastoral Fulani, see:
9. Descriptions of semi-sedentary communities are found in Hopen (1958), de St. Croix (1944), and Tauxier (1912, 1917, 1937). I carried out fieldwork on the Jos Plateau between April and September 1953.
10. Hausa: mallam.
11. There is a French bibliography of Western Sudanese Islam in Gouilly (1952), in which the works of Marty, especially (1920), are of particular importance. For a résumé of the history and organization of Islamic fraternities and the function of the holy man within them see also Gouilly (1952) and Pottier (1947). In English, there is a discussion of the relative statuses of Islamic and pre-Islamic belief in a Nigerian society in Nadel (1954). The relevant institutional and historical background is analysed, for the same society, in Nadel (1942), Greenberg (1946) describes the work of holy men, and in Smith (1954) there is a first-hand account of a holy man's expedition of conversion. Fremantle (1911-12) summarizes the influence of holy men upon pagan rulers.
12. The best general description of the rise and fall of Western Sudanese States in a general historical setting is that of Bovill (1933). Delafosse (1912) and Hogben (1930) are useful for accounts of the rivalries of States in French West Africa and Nigeria respectively. The incorporation of various ethnic groups in the State is analysed by Nadel (1942). First-hand accounts of Western Sudanese State administration, rivalry, war, slave-raiding, and life in the cities are found in Barth (1857-8).
13. In addition to those mentioned above on the States of the Western Sudan, including the Fulani Muslim States, there are a number of works, mostly in Fulfulde with translations, which describe the Holy Wars and eulogize the motives and characters of their leaders:
14. In addition to works mentioned above see the following for organization and administration in Fulani States:
15. The plight of Pastoral Fulani in Bamenda, where onward migration is inhibited by geographical conditions, is described by Stapleton (1948).
16. Proposals for these developments are discussed in Shaw and Colvile (1950) and in Proceedings of a Conference called to consider the Report of the Nigerian Livestock Mission, Lagos, 1952.
17. Sing. Boɗaaɗo.