Fulani: Lifestyle and Origins

Agencies – Sudan Events

The original Fulani appear to have been fairly widespread in North and Saharan Africa from a very ancient period. They are probably mentioned in northern Algeria or what was considered Mauritania Caesarea as the Fulitani or Barzu Fulitani on the late 4th map of Julius Honorius .
They are also mentioned as having come down a few centuries later from the Tichit region by the Tariq es-Sudan written in the 1600s. They, thus are likely the Warith/Wariz (a probable variant of Barzu) said to have been pushed down from the Mauretanian Adrar region by the Arab Quraishi conqueror, Uqba ibn Nafi and converted to Islam.
As for the Banu Warith or Waritan of the medeival period, they are described as a clan of the Sanhaja or of the Geddula or Banu Joddala Berbers .
By the 10th century and 11th century Fulani were living amongst several peoples of other Nilo-Saharan groups who had mixed with and adopted the dialect of Niger-Congo groups in kingdoms of the Sudan.
The Fulani gradually spread as far east as Ethiopia where they are known as Bororo and from Mauretania across Senegambia along the West African costs and savannah they spread to places like the Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso, but appear to have been the same adversaries appearing in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings of the time of Seti and called Tjehenu.
Many of the groups that today speak the Fulbe, Fulfulde or Pulaagu dialects are in fact a mixture of the original Fula or Fulitani and these various Songhai and Mande ethnic groups.
They are also associated with the people and place name Futa or Futabe. A good example of such groups are the Toucouleur, formed and perhaps named from the Takruri and Fulani who had come to occupy the region of Futa Toro and Futa Jallon. In the northern Sahel and Sahara the group preserving the earliest Fulani lifestyle are known in Western texts “Wodaabe”a variant of the earlier Futa-be.
Although the Fulani had been mainly vassals in the early Sudanic kingdoms of Songhai and Ghana, by the 1500s the Fulani were at Macina/Massina in the Middle Niger river region in Mali. They are associated with coming to occupy and dominate the Empire called Sokoto and kingdom of Bornu originally founded by peoples of Nilo-Saharan and Tuareg ethnicity.
The origins of the Fulani have stir some lasting controversy over the last several decades due to their physical appearance or phenotype, Arabic records concerning their origins.