CHAPTER XVI

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?