All about the ancient tribes
Timeline of Fulani history
Time | Events |
---|---|
1235 | Great warrior leader Sundiata Keita of the Mandinka people founds the Mali Empire in present-day Mali, West Africa; it expands under his rule |
1240-1250 | Mali absorbs Ghana, Tekruur and the Songhai Empire |
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Beginning as early as the 17th and 18th centuries, but mainly in the 19th century, Fulas and others took control of various states in West Africa. These included the Fulani Empire founded by Usman dan Fodio (which itself included smaller states), Fouta Djallon, Massina and others.
The Fula people, often described as the Fulani, are regarded as the world’s largest nomadic group: about 20 million people dispersed across Western Africa. They reside mostly in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, and Niger. They also can be found in Central African Republic and Egypt.
Fulani have rich and powerful people on their side The Fulani herdsmen in most cases enter into an agreement on how the calves or milk will be shared. This reason also makes them powerful since the herdsmen know that they are the major source of meat in Nigeria and they have prominent people to shield them.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Sheikh Usman dan Fodio led a successful jihad against the Hausa Kingdoms founding a centralized Fulani Empire (anglicized as the Sokoto Caliphate).
Although some historians postulated an origin of the Fulani in ancient Egypt or the Upper Nile valley [3], written records suggest that the Fulani spread from West Africa (currently Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania) around 1000 years ago, reaching the Lake Chad Basin 500 years later [4, 5].
No, the Fulani are not a Bantu people. The Fulani speak Fula, which belongs to a separate branch of the Niger-Congo language family rather than the
Fulani, also called Peul or Fulbe, a primarily Muslim people scattered throughout many parts of West Africa, from Lake Chad, in the east, to the Atlantic coast. They are concentrated principally in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, and Niger.
There are an estimated 20-25 million Fulani people. There are generally three different types of Fulani based on settlement patterns, viz: the Nomadic/Pastoral or Mbororo, The Semi-Nomadic, and the Settled or “Town Fulani”.
The Fulani, a people of obscure origins, expanded eastward from Futa Toro in Lower Senegal in the 14th century. By the 16th century they had established themselves at Macina (upstream from the Niger Bend) and were proceeding eastward into Hausaland.
Over the centuries, Fulani migrations have interacted with all the other groups in western and central Sudan. Today, Fulani people live in nearly every country of the West African savanna, between Senegal and Cameroon.
Fulfulde (Fula) A Niger-Congo language and a member of the West Atlantic branch, spoken by c. 15 million people in north-west Africa, mainly in Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, Chad, and other West African states. It is used as a lingua franca through the region and also in the Central African Republic.