The Fula

The Fula people, also called Fulani, Peul, or Fulbe, are a primarily Muslim people found scattered in 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. The Fulani language, known as Fula (Fulfulde), is classified within the West Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo family.

Interaction of the widely dispersed Fulani with disparate other groups has produced a variety of socioeconomic patterns. Originally, the Fula were a pastoral people, their lives and organization dominated by the needs of their herds. Such pastoral Fulas today enjoy a greater prestige than those in towns or in sedentary agriculture.

Interaction with other groups has sometimes resulted in a considerable degree of cultural absorption. This is most notably the case in northern Nigeria, where perhaps half of the Fula have adopted the Hausa language and culture, and where, as a result of a series of holy wars (1804-10), purporting to purify Islam, they established an empire, instituting themselves as a ruling aristocracy.

The township Fulas are the most ardently Muslim; pastoral Fulas are frequently lax and sometimes even pagan. The pastoralists also exhibit a much higher incidence of non-Negroid physical traits. They wander in nomadic groups, making temporary camps of portable huts. Some of their dairy produce is usually exchanged at markets for cereal foods; cattle are rarely killed for meat. Many sedentary Fulani, who frequently have become sedentary as a result of the depletion of their herds, also own cattle but rely principally on cultivation.

The social structure of the pastoral Fula is egalitarian, in marked contrast to that of other Muslim groups, such as the Hausa, and to most sedentary Fulas. The influence of Islam on kinship patterns is evident in the general preference for cousin and other intralineage marriages. Most men are polygynous, the typical household unit comprising the family head, his wives, and unmarried children.