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 (Mommsen 1867, p. 28 and 62). 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 ( the latter were considered by that time a branch of the Sanhaja) by Arabized writers such as Ibn Hawqal and El Bekri and others. (Levtsion and Hopkins, 2000, pp. 50, 67, 237; Palmer, 1970, p. 61)
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, the presence of Zebu cattle thought to be native to India, certain inconsistencies with regard to their phenotype and their current linguistic affinities which were thought to not match their phenotype. Due to European colonialist ideas about indigenous African origins and especially North African “racial” origins, the notion has gradually evolved – as it has with the Tuareg and other dark-skinned Africans once prevalent in North Africa - that their ethnic roots were “enigmatic” or “unknown”. Yet, in fact, the earliest Fulani were one of the few peoples for which there is an abundance of evidence for origins in the Sahara oases and North Africa since the Neolithic. The evidence is both archeological and anthropological and tends to show that original Fulani population belonged to a group of neolithic pastoralists in the central and northern Sahara who were spread to Kharga, Kerma and possibly further east in Africa in later times. They appear to have been among the first people to be known to ancient Egyptians as under the names Tjehenu or Temehou.
Their presence in stone age north Africa probably led to contact with other groups as far back as the late stone age which has led to their current so–called non-African features such as notably lengthy and less frizzly hair than other west African tribes and perhaps the introduction of a curvature to their innately narrow long noses.
As for the current linguistic situation of the Fulani, it should be said that there are many peoples in Africa that over the past 2,000 years have adopted dialects foreign to their own that subsequently evolved into newer forms. This has happened for various reasons, often due to trade or immigration. A good example is the current situation of North Africa where many groups of varied ethnicity and diverse biological origin over the last 2,000 years have adopted either the Arabic or Berber dialects and claim either Arabic or Berber origin or nationality today.
At one time Berbers themselves were said to have been largely “Romanized” while now it appears descendants of Romans, Vandals, Scythians, Central Asians and other peoples who have settled in North Africa (or have otherwise been brought in) have themselves been somewhat Berberized and Arabized through admixture and adopting of certain linguistic and cultural patterns and mores.
The Nilo-Saharans are an example of indigenous Africans who are known to have mixed with and adopted Niger-Congo dialects of the Atlantic branch, becoming the Sarakholle, Serer, Soninke, Djallonke, Jahanke and other groups now designated “Mande” or “Mandinke”. Thus, the fact that certain groups now speak a specific dialect doesn’t always say much about their cultural origins.
Due largely to Fulani physical appearance and culture, early colonial observers viewed them as part of an imagined great warlike “Caucasoid” race near black in complexion which they called “hamitic” that had amalgamated with what they called “Negro” tribes. This idea was spurred and bolstered by the fact that when colonialists first encountered Fulani in the Sudan they were often viewed by other Africans as a separate, lighter-skinned caste in places like the region of Massina where they were even described as “whites” by their own and in Arabic writings (a description that is used in Africa for many black African groups that are somewhat dark brown in tint rather than black or brown black).
Furthermore, in many places there was a certain ethnic rivalry between Fulani and other groups as is common between more nomadic and more settled agricultural peoples in Africa. And these tensions (which haven’t completely disappeared in Africa since they were aggravated by European colonialist notions) in various regions was often attributed to “racial “differences between the “lighter-skinned” “nobles’ of “hamitic stock” and the so-called “black African” or “Negro” agriculturalists.
Of course Africa is made up of diverse populations of various complexion and phenotype from the yellow brown of the San and Kung Bushmen to the blue black of some Nilotic groups, and copper or bronze brown of certain Fulani and Beja. None of these groups can obviously be considered more black or African than the other as each has specialized development that has led to their particular phenotype.
That being said, it is true that the Fulani especially the northern Fulani like the Woodabe often have a lighter caste to their skin than African tribes they live amongst and very often preserve features that are similar to the Nilo-Saharans and Cushitic speakers further much further east. The latter also often have a complexion that is often more of a dark copper brown than it is black brown. Still the Fulani were and are one of the major African groups contributing to the ancestry of blacks in the Americas (until recently known as “Negroes”), a fact that is now being confirmed by genetics, but was already established from colonial records in the U.S. and elsewhere. Thus, the conception of them as a “non-black” African group, as had been commonly suggested was a bit silly to entertain – and disingenuous, to say the least.
Fulani came in large numbers to America during the Atlantic slave trade and have been said by scholar Sterling Stuckey to have greatly influenced the cowboy and cattle culture in the United States. They have been cattle and sheep herdsmen for thousands of years and have kept many traditions alive. Herdsmen often affectionately name each member of their herd and know each by name. Cattle were not slaughtered for their meat, but useful for their milk and other things. Long ago the ancestors of the Fulani and related people came to make the cow a symbolic of their gods in the Sahara and along the Nile.
Abdul-Rahman had been a student at Timbuktu (Tin Buqti) even then a world famous capital of learning in Mali. But he fell into hard times after serving as a leader in battle under his father against an enemy tribe. After being ambushed by his enemies with some of his war party on the way back to his father, he was sold as a prisoner of war by an enemy tribe. Like numerous other Fulani - Abdul-Rahman was brought to America by slavers. The year was 1788, and he was 26 years old. He spent the next 40 years as a slave and slave overseer in Mississippi. He won his freedom and liberated his family moving to Liberia where he fell ill and died only a few months later.
