Note 122 — Chapter IX · THE FRENCH IN WEST AND NORTH AFRICA

It might be advisable at this juncture to explain clearly about the Fula power in French Nigeria and Senegambia. The Ful or Fulbe people appeared first in the 13th century in West African history as peaceful cattle-keepers on the lower Senegal; but as a matter of fact they had probably reached the Upper Niger and Senegal many centuries before. The Western Fulbe had become Muhammadans at quite an early date—between the 12th and 15th centuries. Those in the more eastern part of Nigeria remained pagan in some settlements down to the 19th century, and are pagan even still. About the 16th century those of the Senegal began to emigrate as cattle-keepers into the cooler highlands of Futa Jallon, and became the ruling power on this upland two hundred years later. At the same period—the beginning or middle of the 18th century—they likewise founded dynasties of Muhammadan kings in Futa Toro and Bondu (south of the Upper Senegal). In 1802, a Fula religious mystic and imam or religious preacher, Othman Dan Fodio, arose like a Mahdi in Eastern Nigeria (Sokoto), called on the Muhammadan Fulas of the central Sudan to join with him in a holy war, and in a few years conquered a vast Fula Empire, which was almost conterminous with the British (Northern) Nigeria of to-day. Fired no doubt by this example another Fula ‘sheikh’ or holy man—Ahmadu Lobo, in the country of Masina, between Timbuktu and Jenné—about 1813 attacked with his followers the vestiges of Moorish power on the Upper Niger, the “Roumas” (as they were called, from their having come originally from Andalusia—“Rome”) and took all power from them, creating in Central Nigeria between Jenné and Gao the powerful Fula kingdom of Masina, which lasted until about 1861, when Ahmadu Ahmadu, the last Fula Emperor of Masina, was attacked and killed by a rival Fula Mahdi from the west.

This personage was ’Omaru bin Saidi, a Fula of Futa Toro, who had spent some years in Mekka and Medina, and had acquired the reputation of a holy man and a doctor of religion. On his return to West Africa he was received with great respect by the Fula princes of Futa Jallon, and with their support he rallied to the cause of Islam the Fula-negro peoples of Futa Toro and Bondu—the Takrur, Torobe, or “Toucouleurs” as they came to be called. Al Hajji ’Omaru (as he was called), after his return from the pilgrimage (Al Hajj) to Mekka was unsuccessful in his attack on the French (1857), and so turned his army against his fellow Moslems of the Upper Niger. Two years after the defeat and death of Ahmadu Ahmadu, the Fula Sultan of Masina, ’Omaru himself perished at Bandiagara, in the Masina kingdom. The Toucouleur power was, however, maintained by his sons and successors till it finally fell in 1892 with the capture of Segu on the Niger by a French force.