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Fulbe (Fulani) Pastoralists

1000 – 1900
CultureAfrica

The largest nomadic pastoral society on earth, herding cattle across the whole Sudanic belt from the middle Senegal valley to Lake Chad and the Adamawa highlands. Fulbe herders spread east from Futa Toro over centuries by ordinary transhumance — moving between wet- and dry-season pasture, negotiating grazing rights with farming states rather than conquering them — and formed a cattle-keeping layer living inside and between the Wolof, Mande, Songhai, Hausa and Kanuri polities. This is that pastoral society, deliberately DISTINCT from the Fulbe jihad states the atlas already carries (Sokoto, Hamdullahi/Massina, Futa Jallon, Futa Toro), which were founded by settled and clerical Fulbe.

Not an ending: by 1900 the entire Fulbe range lay inside French, British and German colonial territory, and colonial grazing rules and boundaries replaced the herders' own negotiated tenure. Some 7–10 million Fulbe remain pastoralists across eleven countries, and their seasonal movements — and the farmer–herder conflicts along them — are a defining feature of the modern Sahel.

Borders in 1000 · drawn from 1 sourced border frame
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