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Barth, who was probably the most
intelligent of all the African explorers, described the Fulani as
the most intelligent of all the African tribes. They are certainly
one of Africa's great enigmas. They have been living in the Sudan
for well over a thousand years, but their physical characteristics
are so different from those of other Sudanic peoples that there can
be little doubt that they originated elsewhere.
Physically, except where miscegenation over several generations has
blurred the image, they run remarkably true to type. It is possible,
for example, to pick Fulani out of a group of other Africans with
much greater certainty than, say, Scandinavians out of a group of
Europeans. Typical Fulani approximate closely to their own physical
ideals of light copper-coloured skin, straight hair, narrow nose,
thin lips, and a slight but wiry frame.
These physical characteristics and their undoubted talents
have given rise to all kinds of notions about their origins. The
most romantic but least probable theories are that they are either
one of the lost tribes of Israel or that they are descendants of I
Roman Legion which missed its way and was engulfed in Black Africa.
More seriously it has been suggested that they may be descended from
the Phoenicians or from the ancient Egyptians, whose custom of
wearing chin-tufts they still follow. Other theories have sought to
link them with the Berbers of North Africa, the Ethiopians, and even
with Hindus and Malayo-Polynesians 2.
In the task of tracing ethnic origins, the best clues
are usually provided by language. To follow this line of deduction
with the Fulani, however, is merely to come up against a new enigma.
If Fulfulde, as their language is called, belonged to what are
variously defined as the Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic Groups, it would be
easy to believe that ethnically, like the Hausas, they were the
products of intermarriage between North African and Negro stocks. As
it is, however, modern authorities agree that there is virtually no
connection between Fulfulde and any of the languages in these
groups, but that on the contrary it unquestionably belongs to the
Sudanic or Niger-Congo Groups 3.
It follows, therefore, that the Fulani either originated in the most
westerly corner of the Sudan or else that, in the course of a long
sojourn there, they abandoned an earlier language in favour of the
one that they now speak. As they are prone to change their language 4,
and as their physical characteristics are so markedly different from
those of their linguistic neighbours, the second alternative is much
the more likely.
The most widely accepted theory is that the
Fulani came originally from the Middle East or North Africa and
gradually worked their way round the bulge of the continent to the
region of Senegambia. There they are believed to have made a lengthy
sojourn and adopted the language, which they now speak. Some of them
are still there, but in historical times the majority have been
drifting slowly eastward along the great corridor of the Sudan.
Like most African peoples, the Fulani cherish a myth or
legend about their origins which has survived in a number of
similar, though not identical, forms. One version describes the
marriage of a Moslem Arab, who is usually identified as Ukuba, to a
woman of the Sudan called Bajjo Mangu. One day the mother goes to
the well and leaves her youngest child in the care of one of its
brothers. On her return she overhears the brother comforting the
child in a strange language. She tells her husband who predicts that
this is a sign that the child will be the founder of a new people
who will not speak Arabic but will nevertheless be the saviours of
Islam 5.
In his history of the Fulani, Alhaji Junaidu, the
Waziri of Sokoto, gives a different version of this story. He says
that the Toronkawa, the branch of the Fulani people to which the
Sultans of Sokoto belong, are of the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and
Esau. They spoke a language called Wakuru 6,
and after leaving Palestine they traversed North Africa until they
came to Futa Toro in Senegambia, the place from which they have
taken their name. There they rested and multiplied. Later they were
peacefully converted to Islam by Ukubatu, who married Bajjo Mangu, a
daughter of their ruler. By her Ukubatu, became the father of four
sons. Deita, Woya, Roroba, and Nasi. These boys were the first to
speak Fulfulde, which the Toronkawa also adopted, and they became
the ancestors of all the Fulani tribes. Their descendants grew so
numerous, however, that they had to move to Falgo and there they
slipped back into paganism. This brought enmity between them and
their Toronkawa cousins who had continued in the ways of Islam. In
the fighting which followed many of the Fulani were dispersed, but
those who remained in Senegambia, after being chastised and brought
back to their faith, were finally reconciled with the Toronkawa with
whom they thenceforward lived in amity 7.
One of the interesting features of this legend is
the identification of the Toronkawa with the descendants of Esau.
They too, it will be will be remembered, were wandering pastoralists:
And Esau took his wives, and his
sons, and his daughters, and all the persons of his house, and his
cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got
in the land of Canaan; and went into the country from the face of
his brother Jacob. For their riches were more than that they might
dwell together; and the land wherein they were strangers could not
bear them because of their cattle 8.
The Falgo of this tradition may well be Futa Jallon, where the
Fulani are known to have established a State in about the tenth
century. The assertion, however, that in the disputes between the
backsliding Fulani and faithful Toronkawa it was the Toronkawa who
prevailed is not borne out by other evidence, for both Futa Jallon
and Futa Toro remained pagan States until the eighteenth century 9.
What seems more probable is that it was the Moslems among both the
Toronkawa and the Fulani who were defeated and forced to emigrate.
The Ukuba who appears in most versions of these Fulani
and Toronkawa legends is Uqba b. Nafi, who led the Arab invasion of
North Africa in the middle of the seventh century and founded the
famous city of Kairwan 10.
The retention of his name in the folk memory suggests that the
Fulani were somehow caught up in the turmoil, which this invasion
caused. On the other hand, the ancestress who married Ukuba is
usually described as coming from Palestine and this supports the
view that the Fulani, though the Arab invasion may have caught them
in North Africa and displaced them from there, actually had their
origins somewhere in the Middle
East.
So much for tradition and myth. Though we cannot be
sure about where the Fulani originally came from, there is no doubt
that a thousand years ago they were concentrated in the western
Sudan not far from the Atlantic seaboard. In the tenth century, as
already noted, they founded the pagan State of Futa Jallon 11.
Delafosse considers that the dispersal from Senegambia began in the
eleventh century. We do not know what the cause was but it may well
have been the religious wars between Moslems and pagans, which seem
to have broken out at this time. On the other hand, as the period
coincides with the second Arab invasion of North Africa, it is
possible that this upheaval brought a new influx of displaced tribes
to Senegambia, as it did to Hausaland, and that the ensuing
confusion and competition for land and grazing caused the Toronkawa
and many of the Fulani to set off again on their travels.
Today the Fulani number well over six million and
are to be found in all parts of the Sudan between the Atlantic and
the Nile. By far the greatest concentration is in northern Nigeria,
where over half of them are to be found. Other places where they
abound are Senegambia and Futa Jallon, the Middle Niger, the Chad
region, and the Cameroon uplands 12. A few of the more
adventurous have even passed beyond Chad to Baghirmi, Wadai, and the
Republic of the Sudan.
They have been kept within these latitudes by the
desert to the north and the presence of tse-tse fly, which is fatal
to their cattle, to the south. They have therefore had no choice but
to settle somewhere or continue to make their way down the corridor
of savannah and this is what they have been doing for the last nine
hundred years. Stenning has termed their slow advance a migratory
drift. To understand its true nature we must first distinguish
between different types of Fulani.
In the past it has been usual to divide them into
two groups, the settled Fulani and the nomadic pastoralists. It has
been shown, however, that this is an over-simplification and that
there are at least four different groups 13.
First there are the true nomads whom the Fulani call Bororo'en. They
shun settled communities as much as possible and like to lose
themselves and their herds in large tracts of bush. Physically, as
they have never intermarried with other peoples, they are all cast
in the true Fulani mould. They are brave, tough, hardy, and
independent. At the same time they are unsophisticated, shy, and
suspicious of the world and its ways. Their whole life revolves
round their herds and they have few thoughts for anything else, even
religion. They are a survival from the past and today they have
become a dwindling minority.
Next there are the semi-sedentary pastoralists
who are known as FulBe na'i. Their way of life has many variants,
but its essential feature is that the family is no longer completely
footloose but has acquired a base of some kind and engages in
farming as well as raising stock. But, as most of the cattle of the
Sudan have to be taken in search of water and grazing during the
long dry seasons, it becomes necessary to spli14.
The third group are the TorooBe or the Fulani who belong to the
ruling and professional classes. They may of course own a few
cattle, but only as a side-line, and their real interests lie in
administration, law, religion, and education 15.
The fourth group are the FulBe siire. These are erstwhile
pastoralists who, having lost all their cattle through disease or
poor husbandry, The Fulani Empire of Sokoto have been compelled to
settle among the local peasantry and adopt their way of life 16.
While the Fulani were drifting across North
Africa towards the Atlantic seaboard it seems probable that they all
led a nomadic existence similar to that of the bororo'en of today.
Once they had reached Senegambia, however, they must have turned
more and more to the other modes of life, some through choice and
others through force of circumstance. Later, when they were uprooted
from Senegambia, they had, of necessity, to take once more to a
nomadic existence but, having once lived a sedentary or
semi-sedentary life, they were probably more ready than before to
try it again. Those who found places where their cattle thrived and
they themselves felt at home, in the Middle Niger for example, no
doubt settled there. If their cattle sickened, however, or if they
themselves were persecuted or taxed too highly, then they would have
no compunction in pulling up the roots which they had begun to put
down and moving on. The characteristics of this migratory drift were
that it was completely uncoordinated and almost imperceptibly
gradual.
Not the least important of the four groups were
the men of learning. The Fulani and their Toronkawa cousins are a
highly intelligent people and they seem always to have had a
reverence for knowledge and wisdom, especially the Moslems among
them. It is noteworthy, for example, that in the religious wars
between the Toronkawa and the Fulani, the Moslem Toronkawa were led
not by Chiefs but by Mallams or men of learning 17. It was not until the
eighteenth century that the Fulani created any Islamic States of
their own, but long before then individual Fulani who were learned
in religion and law were making their influence felt in many
different parts of the Sudan.
Religion, law, and Arabic letters were the
subjects in which the Fulani tended to specialize. Some, no doubt,
possessed little learning outside these fields, but there were
others who were surprisingly well informed on other topics. In 1852,
for example, when the explorer Barth was in Baghirmi, he met a
Fulani called Sambo, elderly and completely blind, whose family had
been settled in Wadai for many generations. He himself had once held
a prominent position at Court, but with a change of Sultan he had
fallen from favour and been banished. Here is Barth's description of
him.
I could
scarcely have expected to find in this out-of-the-way place a man
not only versed in all branches of Arabic literature, but who had
even read (nay, possessed a manuscript of) those portions of
Aristotle and Plato which had been translated into, or rather
Mohammedanised in Arabic, and who possessed the most intimate
knowledge of the countries which he had visited.... When he was a
young man, his father, who himself possessed a good deal of
learning, and who had written a work on Hausa, had sent him to
Egypt, where he had studied many years in the mosque of El Azhar. It
had been his intention to go to the town of Zebid in Yemen, which is
famous amongst the Arabs on account of the science of logarithms, or
el hesab; but when he had reached Gunfuda, the war which was raging
between the Turks and the Wahabiye had thwarted his projects, and he
had returned to Dar Fur.... Having then returned to Waday, he had
played a considerable part as courtier in that country, especially
during the reign of Abd el 'Aziz, till the present king, Mohammad e'
Sherif, on account of his intimate relations with the prince just
mentioned, had driven him from his court and banished him from the
country.
After having
made the acquaintance of this man, I used to visit him daily; and he
was always delighted to see, or rather to hear me for he had nobody
with whom he could talk about the splendour and achievements of the
Khalifat, from Baghdad to Andalos [Spain] —particularly of the
latter country, with the history of whose towns, kings, and literary
men he was intimately acquainted. He listened with delight when I
once mentioned the astrolabe or sextant; and he informed me with
pride that his father had been in possession of such an instrument,
but that for the last twenty years he had not met a single person
who knew what sort of thing an astrolabe was.
He was a very enlightened man and in his inmost soul a Wahabi.... I
shall never forget the hours I passed in cheerful and instructive
conversation with this man.... 18
This evidence, even though it came two
generations later, serves to show that the best of the men of
learning among the Fulani were very far from being narrow-minded
schoolmen.
It must be remembered that in Islam there is no established
hierarchy like that of the Christian Church. Consequently the
manifold duties, ecclesiastical and lay, which in medieval Europe
were performed by the clergy, tended in Moslem countries to fall to
men who established a reputation for piety and learning. They
officiated at weddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies. They
settled disputes by expounding the principles of Islamic law. They
taught the young in Koranic schools and gave instruction to the old
in Moslem dogma, ritual, history, and tradition. For these services
they were rewarded by fees, which, to the Moslem donor, had the
quality of alms.
These learned men usually belonged to one of the
great sects or brotherhoods of Islam of which the two most important
in the Sudan were the Kadiriyya, founded in the twelfth century by
Abd el-Kadir el-Jilani of Baghdad, and the Tijaniyya, founded in the
early nineteenth century by Ahmad Tijjani of Fez. The genuinely
pious among them led lives of devotion and austerity, sometimes as
anchorites, and strove to acquire the quality of sanctity and the
supernatural powers which were thought to go with it. The more
worldly, on the other hand, exploited the superstitions of the
people and made their livings by fashioning charms and amulets,
foretelling the future through patterns traced in the sand, or
curing illnesses by means of concoctions made from the ink in which
holy texts had been written. A few of the more unscrupulous even
studied and practised the black arts. Pious or cynical, they were a
force to be reckoned with.
In the eighteenth century the Fulani, who until
then had remained divided between Islam and paganism, seem to have
received a powerful new impulse towards Islam. Many of those who had
not previously been converted now abandoned their pagan beliefs and
those who were already Moslems became more strict and aggressive.
Whatever the cause of this spiritual change, it was to have very
important political results. Its first manifestation came in 1725
when Moslem Fulani began a long struggle against the pagan dynasty
(?) of Futa Jallon, the uplands where the Senegal and Gambia Rivers
rise. It was not until 1776 that this movement succeeded and a
Moslem régime was established, but in the same year, after a much
shorter tussle, the Moslem Fulani of Futa Toro overthrew their pagan
kinsmen and set up a second Islamic State in the same region 19.
These developments in the western Sudan probably had an indirect
bearing on the events that followed in the central Sudan a
generation later, the establishment by the Moslem Fulani of
Hausaland of the Empire which is the subject of this book. This in
turn influenced the creation by the Fulani of the Upper Niger of two
more Moslem States, Seku Ahmadu's kingdom of Hamdallahi and the
short-lived empire of Haj Umar that superseded it 20.
It is not known for certain when the first Fulani
reached Hausaland: it may have been as early as A.D. 1300 21 and was certainly not later
than the middle of the following century 22. The conditions obviously
suited them and, as more and more of them arrived from the west,
they halted and decided to go no farther. In this way, slowly and
almost imperceptibly, their numbers must have grown until by the
middle of the eighteenth century they had become an important
minority. We have no knowledge of how large a proportion of the
population they then formed, but as in modern times the ratio
between them and the Hausas is about 1: 3 or 1: 4 it is reasonable
to suppose that they were not less than a fifth or sixth of the
whole.
The day-to-day relationship between the pastoral
Fulani and the Hausa farmers at the end of the eighteenth century
was no doubt much the same as it is now. There was, first of all,
the continuous exchange of dairy products for grain and other goods.
With individuals there were arrangements for kraaling cattle on
farms so that the land got the benefit of the manure. With villages
there were agreements about cattle tracks, grazing grounds,
rainy-season laagering, and dry season access to water. With the
authorities there was bargaining over jangali, the official
cattle-tax, which was levied from at least as early as the first
half of the seventeenth century 23,
and over the unofficial tribute that all Village Heads expected to
receive as one of their perquisites 24.
In many different ways, therefore, the
semi-sedentary pastoralists were drawn into the life of the settled
communities among whom they lived. For the Fulani who belonged to
the professional classes or the stockless peasantry the contacts
were of course even closer. There was not, it is true, much
intermarriage between the two races, but Fulani of the upper classes
did not spurn concubines taken from the Hausa community and those
who had lost their cattle may well have had to seek their wives in
the same quarter. In towns and villages the two societies probably
occupied separate wards or quarters, as they sometimes do even
today. In almost every other respect, however, their lives seem to
have been fairly closely integrated. In language, for example, all
the pastoral Fulani, save some of the bororo'en, could doubtless
speak and understand Hausa, indeed many of them were probably
bilingual, while among the two settled groups there must already
have been large numbers, particularly of stockless peasants, who had
begun to lose their facility in Fulfulde as the majority of their
descendants long since have.
Nevertheless, even though many of the Fulani
families in Hausaland had been living there for ten or fifteen
generations, they did not always enjoy the same privileges as the
Hausas. Traditions have survived, for example, that in Gobir their
right to own slaves was curtailed and that later, when there was
tension between them and the Chief, they were even forbidden to
carry arms 25.
Such discrimination must have been a common experience for them in
their centuries of wandering and was perhaps an indirect tribute to
the awe in which their hosts held them.
In character the Fulani are very different people
from the Hausas. Where the Hausas are usually tolerant and
easy-going, the Fulani tend to be passionate and intense. This basic
dissimilarity of temperament is reflected in many differences of
outlook.
The Fulani take life more seriously than the
Hausas and are less ready to laugh at themselves. They have a
greater reverence for learning. They have more highly developed
powers of leadership. They throw themselves with more singleness of
purpose into the causes which they adopt. They have a superior faith
in their own destiny. In short, though not necessarily abler or more
intelligent, they have more fire in their bellies than the genial
worldly Hausas.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the
time had arrived when these qualities would be put to the test.
Notes
1. The Fulani go under many names. For further
information on nomenclature see Note 7 in Appendix I.
2. D. J. Stenning, Savannah Nomads, London,
1959, pp. 18-19.
3. Westermann and Bryan, op, cit. pp. 1.8-19
and 24-30, and J. H. Greenberg, op. cit. pp. 7 and 43.
4. See Note 8 in Appendix I.
5. Stenning, op. cit. p. 19.
6. The explorer Barth identified this with the
language of the Wangarawa or Mandingoes of the western Sudan. See
Travels and Discoveries in North and Central
Africa, London, 1857, vol. IV, pp. 144-5.
7. Alhaji Junaidu, Tarihin Fulani, Zaria. 1957,
p. 1.
8. Genesis xxxvi, 6-7.
9. Stenning, op. cit. p. 14.
10. Ahdallah ibn Muhammad, Tazyin al-Waraqat (TW),
translated and edited by M. Hiskett, Ibadan, 1963, p. 97.
11. Stenning, op. cit. p. 13.
12 Ibid. p. 1 and map opposite p. 24.
13. C. E. Hopen, The Pastoral FulBe Family in
Gwandu, London, 1958, pp. 1-3.
14. Hopen, op. cit. pp. 1-3.
15. Ibid.
16. Hopen, op. cit. pp. 1-3.
17. Alhaji Junaidu, op. cit. pp. 1-2.
18. Barth, op. cit. vol. III, pp. 373-5
19. Trimingham, op. cit. pp. 161-2.
20. See Note 16 in Appendix I.
21. Hogben and Kirk-Greene, op. cit. p. 429.
22. K Ch (Palmer, p. III).
23. K Ch (Palmer, p. 119).
24. Stenning, op. cit. pp. 4-9.
25. Hopen, op. cit. pp. 11-13.
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