FULANI

also called Peul, or Fulbe, 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 Fulfulde (Fula), 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 Fulani were a pastoral people, their lives and organization dominated by the needs of their herds. Such pastoral Fulani today enjoy greater prestige than town and sedentary agricultural Fulani as the most truly representative of Fulani culture. 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 Fulani have adopted the Hausa (q.v.) language and culture, and where, as a result of a series of holy wars (180410), purporting to purify Islam, they established an empire, instituting themselves as a ruling aristocracy. The urban Fulani are the most ardently Muslim; pastoral Fulani 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 Fulani is egalitarian, in marked contrast to that of other Muslim groups, such as the Hausa, and to most sedentary Fulani. 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.