THE FULANI IN NIGERIA
“Remember that Paradise is found under the shadow of swords.
These wretches are come to fight for an impious cause. We have
called them into the right way, and to reward us they threaten
us with arms. Meet this attack with courage and be certain
of victory for the Prophet has said, ‘Even if a mountain is
guilty against another mountain, it is swallowed up in the
earth.’”—The speech of OTHMAN, the Fulani conqueror of Hausa,
to his soldiers on the outbreak of war.
“The King of Gober took many of their cows. The Phulas said nothing. He
returned again to seize their cows. The Phulas said, ‘Is it right on us
to take vengeance?’ But the King of Gober took some of their cows and
returned them to them, saying, ‘Let there be peace between us; you leave
this place and return to some place near me.’ They replied they would not
go. In the morning he commenced fighting with them, with one thousand
horse soldiers to seize the Phulas; but they drove him back with great
force. From that time he did not make open war with them again; but he
brought poison, put it into the water, and all who did drink of it died.
After this the Phulas made war with him, and when they had conquered
his people, they caught many of them and made them slaves; in this way
it was that the Phulas got possession of Gober. In the same way it was
that they sent their people to all parts of Hausa and fought with the
Pagans.”[97] Thus does a native version explain the origin of the great
Fulani uprising in the Hausa States in the early part of last century
which started a great wave of Muslim conquest, sweeping southwards from
the Chad Basin almost to the ocean. “We will dip the Koran in the sea,”
swore the conquering host of white-clad horsemen, and but for the
concentration of the agricultural Yorubas, which checked their advance
and led to their overthrow, by a night surprise, outside the walls of
Osogbo,[98] they would have fulfilled their vow.
The story of the Fulani revolution—misnamed by some “invasion”—in Hausa
has been often told, sometimes correctly,[99] sometimes with obvious
bias against the reformers, and _minus_ several important facts, such,
for instance, as the co-operation which the revolutionists sought and
found among the Hausas themselves. To describe it once again would be
superfluous. Suffice it to say that “victims of persecution,” as their
own records assert and as Barth confirms, and as we are at least as
warranted in believing as those other accounts which make them out to
be the oppressors rather than the oppressed; in much the same position
of social and political inferiority to men whose intellectual superiors
they are, as their compatriots find themselves to-day in Borgu, the
pastoral Fulani of Northern Nigeria, remembering the performances of
other of their brethren when similarly situated, and acting under the
influence of their mallam Zaky, or Othman Dan Fodio, to give him his
European appellation, flung aside the crook, took to the sword, and with
the name of “Allah” on their lips completely subjugated in a few short
years the mutually antagonistic Hausa States, made themselves masters of
the principal cities, converted the natives to Islam, and so ably and
justly administered the country,[100] that, in Clapperton’s words, “The
whole country, when not in state of war, was so well regulated that it
was a common saying that a woman might travel with a cask of gold upon
her head, from one end of the Fellatah[101] dominions to the other.”[102]
From cattle rearers and herdsmen the Fulani temporarily became warriors,
administrators and statesmen, a minority retaining these attributes to
this day, while the bulk of the people continue their usual avocations.
Their capacity for combination enabled them to overcome the Hausa States,
perpetually engaged in intestine quarrels; their statesmanship induced
them to foster and encourage the caravan trade with the Tripolitan ports;
their administrative genius was observable in a hundred ways, not the
least in obtaining their revenue by the maintenance of existing forms of
taxation.[103] Their intense religious zeal has been so communicative
that the Hausas have never even fractionally relapsed into Paganism.[104]
When we contemplate the achievements of the Fulani in Nigeria we are lost
in wonder, and there is no difficulty in endorsing what Sir Frederick
Lugard has said of them—and what many French administrators and officers
have said before him—“they are born rulers and incomparably above the
negroid tribes in ability.” What potent allies these men can be to the
wise administration which makes use of their services in Western Africa,
which gains their confidence and enlists their sympathies!
[Illustration: FULANI SWORD]
The wholesale manner in which the Fulani have succeeded in stamping
their individuality upon the races with whom they have come in contact
is astonishing. Everywhere in their wonderful _trek_ from east to west,
and from west to south, from the valley of the Senegal to the valley of
the Binue, new and more virile generations have sprung up beneath their
fertile tread, destined in the course of time to found for themselves
separate kingdoms, almost to become separate nationalities. Thus in
Futa Jallon, that mountainous region abounding in the fine cattle the
Fulani themselves introduced in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries,
and which before the French occupation supplied the Freetown markets
with fresh meat, we find the Fulani powerfully affecting the ethnic
elements of the country by their unions with the indigenous Jalonkes and
Mandingoes. In Senegambia, a well-nigh distinct race has arisen in the
Tukulors, Fulani crossed with Joloff and Mandingo. Hausas and Kanuri of
Bornu, Tuareg of the southern confederations, and Susus from the Northern
Rivers[105] have all received an infusion of Fulani blood. And yet the
pure Fulani element has preserved itself, and while absorbing countless
tribes and becoming itself greatly modified in certain districts,
has succeeded in perpetuating the parent strain which has never been
absorbed.[106] At the present time may be found, scattered throughout the
Western Sudan, in the Futa Jallon highlands, and in the regions abutting
upon Lake Chad—in Adamawa notably—the same type of nomadic herdsmen,
refined, hospitable and courteous in demeanour, simple and patriarchal in
his habits, with clear-cut features and copper-coloured or olive-tinged
complexion, who tended his hump-backed cattle and roman-nosed sheep a
thousand years ago in the oasis of Tuat and the plains round Timbuctoo.
And by his side, his wives, rejoicing in a greater degree of liberty and
authority in the household than any of their African sisters, with the
charm of another land upon them, soft-eyed, spice-loving daughters of the
East, from whence they came in those dim and distant days shrouded in
impenetrable mist.
[Illustration: PURE-BRED FULANI GIRL, ADAMAWA]
The history of the Fulani is not confined to Nigeria. Their rise to power
in the old Hausa States, and the foundation of the Sokoto Empire is, as
we have seen, quite a modern event, and it is only partially accurate
to say that their dominating influence in inland Western Africa dated
from the Jihad of Othman. The latter’s successes certainly inspired the
Fulani (but perhaps more especially the cross races of Fulani blood)
west of the Niger to warlike deeds. The Fulani revolution in Hausa was
followed by the Fulani uprising in Segu against the pagan Bambarras
and Soninkes. Timbuctoo fell into their power in 1826. Mohammed Lebo
started a crusade in Massina, directed as much against the pagans as
against his co-religionists and compatriots, for their lack of zeal and
the impurities which had crept into their religious observances. After
Mohammed Lebo, the great Tukulor chief, El-Haji-Omar, a man of remarkable
ability, belonging to the fanatical sect of the Tijaniyah, gathered
an immense host around him, by means of which he waged war on all and
sundry, showing particular animosity towards the parent stock from which
he sprang. But his religious zeal was untempered by political purpose,
his constructive powers appear to have been small, he fought entirely for
his own hand, and his collision with and subsequent defeats by the French
resulted in the revolt of those who had suffered from his excesses. It
is a curious fact that he should have finally been driven to desperation
and suicide, and his power extinguished, by the Fulani themselves,
notwithstanding the ties of blood which bound them to the Tukulors, from
among whom Omar naturally obtained most of his recruits. Nevertheless,
El-Haji-Omar is still a name to conjure with in the Western Sudan, and
other adventurers of his type have from time to time given the French
a deal of trouble. But the Fulani had been masters in a considerable
portion of Western Africa long before Othman raised his standard in
Gober of Hausa. In the next chapter endeavour will be made to search
the earliest records throwing light upon the presence of the Fulani in
Western Africa. This will help us to approach the problem of the origin
of a race which constitutes the ruling factor in the foremost, in point
of size and importance, of the British Protectorates in West Africa.