THE FULANI IN WEST AFRICAN HISTORY
“In every kingdom and country on each side of the river there
are some people of a tawny colour called Pholeys.... They live
in hoards or clans, build towns, and are not subject to any
kings of the country, though they live in their territories:
for if they are ill-treated in one nation they break up their
towns and remove to another. They have chiefs of their own, who
rule with so much moderation that every act of government seems
rather an act of the people than of one man.... They plant near
their houses tobacco, and all round their towns they open for
cotton, which they fence in together; beyond that are their
corn-fields, of which they raise four kinds.... They are the
greatest planters in the country, though they are strangers in
it. They are very industrious and frugal, and raise more corn
and cotton than they consume, which they sell at a reasonable
price, and are very hospitable and kind to all; so that to have
a Pholey town in the neighbourhood is by the natives reckoned a
blessing.... As they have plenty of food, they never suffer any
of their own nation to want; but support the old, the blind,
and lame equally with the others; and, as far as their ability
goes, assist the wants of the Mandingoes, great numbers of whom
they have maintained in famines.”—FRANCIS MOORE on the Fulani
of the Gambia (1734).
“A race in which self-reliance and colonising instincts are
prominently developed. Education and mental training are
carefully attended to. In every town and village are men who
devote themselves to the instruction of youth. Nearly every man
and woman can at least read Arabic. Under the enlightened rule
of Alimami Ibrahim Suri, life is held in reverence, property
is sacred, robbery committed in the highway is punishable with
death.... There is a woman in Timbo who knows the whole of the
Moallaket by heart, an accomplishment in Semitic lore which
many an Oriental scholar in Europe might envy.”—DR. BLYDEN on
the Fulani in Futa-Jallon.
“They occupy a high place in the scale of intelligence.”—BAIKIE
on the Fulani of Northern Nigeria.
The earliest mention we have of an Empire existing in West Africa is
contained in the _Tarik_,[107] a history of the Western Sudan, written
in the seventeenth century by one Abderrahman ben Abdallah ben Imran
ben Amir Es-Sa’di, and apparently ascribed by Barth in error to the
celebrated _savant_ of Timbuctoo, Ahmed Baba. That Empire was the Empire
of Ghanata, so called from its capital Ghana, which has been identified
with Walata or Biru. The spread of the Empire was enormous and extended
to the Atlantic, embracing the valleys of the Senegal and the Gambia.
Ghana was situate in the central province of the Empire, by name Baghena,
the modern Bakunu according to Commandant Binger. The _Tarik_ states
that twenty-two kings had reigned in Ghanata prior to the Hejira. Barth
approximated the foundation of Ghanata to 300 A.D. It was attacked and
defeated in the eighth century[108] by a Berber tribe (Zanaga, Senhaja?),
the invaders subsequently succumbing, at what period is obscure, to
the Mandingoes—or Mandingo-Fulani, _i.e._ Tukulors—who from its ruins
constructed another Empire which grew to even larger proportions, that
of Melli, Melle,[109] or Mali, as it is variously spelt. Who were the
original founders of the Ghanata or Walata Empire?
[Illustration: FULANI CHIEF—FUTA JALLON]
Dr. Robert Brown, in his most admirable edition of Pory’s translation of
Leo,[110] says: “Walata is the Arab and Tuareg name, while Biru is the
one applied to it by the Negro Azer, a section of the Aswanek, who are
the original inhabitants of the place.” At the time the above was written
no complete copy[111] of the _Tarik_ was obtainable, and Dr. Brown was
unable consequently to consult the work, and to observe how closely
it corroborates Barth’s famous chronological history of the Songhay.
Had he done so the passage in question would, no doubt, have undergone
modification, for the _Tarik_ distinctly tells us that the name of the
original founder of the Ghanata (Walata) dynasty was Quaia-Magha,[112]
and Magha, as M. O. Houdas points out, is a Fufulde word meaning “great.”
Thus it is legitimate to assume, in view of the absence of rebutting
evidence, that the original founders of probably the oldest Empire in
West Africa, of the first Empire at any rate of which record is left
to us, were of Fulani blood. In any case, it would appear to point
conclusively to the existence of the Fulani language, and therefore to
the presence of the Fulani in the Senegal region of West Africa from the
very earliest times.
It may be argued that a single word is a slender basis upon which to
construct a theory. But when it is borne in mind (1) that the ensuing
historical record of the very same region, 1500 years later, viz.
the arrival at the court of the Bornuese king Biri of two religious
chiefs _of the Fulani of Melle_, proves the presence of the Fulani in
the country which the _Tarik_ asserts was ruled over by a king with a
Fulfulde[113] affix to his name; (2) that every successive account,
both Arabic and European, referring to the same region corroborates the
circumstance, it will be conceded that the assumption goes far beyond
mere plausibility. There is every reason to believe that the Fulani
were numerous in the Empire of Melle[114] (if, indeed, the rulers of
that Empire were not of mixed Fulani blood, which seems probable[115]),
sometimes in the ascendant, sometimes the under-dogs, according as their
political fortunes rose and fell.[116] In the middle of the fifteenth
century they were certainly the ruling race in Baghena (the central
province, as already stated, of the Ghanata Empire, which seems to have
preserved its name subsequent to the Mellian conquest), having succeeded
apparently in getting the upper hand. We know this from the Songhay
records, which tell us that at that period Askia, the powerful Songhay
king, “conquered Baghena and slew the Fulani chieftain Damba-Dumbi.”[117]
Thirty years before that event the chief of Baghena was also a Fulani,
as is testified by the records of Askia’s predecessor. About 1450
Ca-de-Mosto speaks of “el rey dos Fullos” on the banks of the Senegal.
Later on, John II. of Portugal sends an embassy to Tamala, “powerful
king of the Fulas.” De Barros, the Portuguese historian, refers to a
great war, “incendia de guerra,” in the Senegal country (1534). Masses of
Fulani, says de Barros, left the country of “Futa”—probably Futa-Toro—in
a southerly direction. So numerous was the host, he continues, that
“it dried up the rivers in its passage.” Marmol also refers to this
southward movement. The Fulani, “who had raised so formidable an army
in the southern parts of the province of ‘Fura’ (Futa) which borders
on Mandingo, which they were marching against, that they pretended it
dried up rivers.”[118] No doubt that was the beginning of the Fulani
migration into Bondu and Bambuk, to be followed at a subsequent period
by a continuation of the movement into Futa-Jallon. The _Tarik_ gives us
the story of the foundation of the Fulani State of Toro by Salta Tayenda,
“the false prophet,” in 1511.[119] According to the _Tarik_, the Fulani
were ruling as far eastward as Masina in the fifteenth century, and
Barth’s chronological table of the Songhay mentions an expedition by a
Songhay king against the Fulani of Gurma, still farther east.
Coming to a later period, we have Jobson (1628) talking of the Fulani
as oppressed by, and in subjection to, the Mandingoes in the Gambia
region. In 1697 the Sieur de Brüe pays his first visit, on behalf of
the French Senegal Company, to the court of the Fulani ruler on the
Senegal River. Labat’s description of the event is most picturesque.
They were the days when African monarchs were treated with respect by
the European who desired to trade with their subjects. Even the cynical
prelate to whom we are indebted for the relation of Brüe’s voyage, and
who chuckles over the small villainies practised upon the Fulani by
the Company, expresses astonishment with the Fulani institutions, the
judiciary and administrative systems, the agricultural and commercial
aptitude of the inhabitants. “As far as the eye could reach,” he says,
quoting from Brüe’s papers, “not an inch of ground was left uncultivated
or neglected.” Farther on he speaks of “vast plains covered with cattle.”
“They”—the Fulani—he continues, “cultivate the soil with care and make
abundant harvests of large and small millet, cotton, tobacco, peas and
other vegetables, and they rear prodigious quantities of cattle.” In
short, we find the same well-defined characteristics in the Fulani Empire
in the Senegal of the seventeenth century as are observable in their
Empires of more recent date. Herdsmen and agriculturists by nature, they
produce, when circumstances have placed the government of the countries
in which they have settled into their hands, a class of statesmen and
administrators.
[Illustration: HALF-CASTE FULANI GIRL—FUTA-JALLON]
I have quoted a considerable number of authorities—the list might easily
be extended—to show that the Fulani have lived in the Senegal and Gambia
region from remote times, and that their identification by the _Tarik_,
and by Barth, with the Ghanata Empire, estimated by the latter to date
back to A.D. 300, is, therefore, inherently probable. From the region
in which they have alternately been rulers and ruled, and where they
reside to-day under French domination, the Fulani have gradually spread
themselves south and east, throughout almost the entire region of inland
Western Africa. The movement continues and is one of the most interesting
ethnological factors in Western Africa. On the west, the forest belt has
prevented the Fulani from reaching the ocean, although on two occasions
they were very nearly doing so, from behind Lagos in the middle of last
century, as mentioned in the previous chapter; from behind Sierra Leone
about thirty years before their defeat at Osogbo, their cavalry (as in
Yoruba) being ineffective against the opposition of the forest dwellers,
Sulimas and others—the free Negroes of the Sierra Leone Protectorate,
upon whom Downing Street in its wisdom imposed a property tax in 1898.
Ashanti tradition mentions the advent of “red men” from the interior as a
contributive cause of their migration southward.[120] To-day the Fulani
have reached the borders of the great Congo forest, and according to some
accounts are present in very large numbers on the Sangha River.[121] Will
they seek to penetrate the forest or will they turn aside, oblique to the
north,[122] once more and, as though impelled forward by an inscrutable
decree of Providence, gravitate imperceptibly towards the spot where they
crossed into the Dark Continent from Asia, and first set foot upon that
African soil which for some four thousand years has been their home?