Fula people

The Fula (Fulani, Fulbe), 25 to 40 million people from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, are the world's largest nomadic pastoral community: a third still move cattle between rainy and dry pastures across the Sahara, Sahel and West Africa. Bound by language, history and the pulaaku code of patience, shame and cattle-care, they live as herders, settled farmers, scholars, artisans, merchants and nobles. Almost all Muslim, the Fulbe fired the 18th and 19th century jihads that built the Sokoto Caliphate, Massina and other reform states; West African presidents from Buhari to Barrow descend from them. Cattle camps with calabash and milk, Qur'anic schools under thorn trees, and the Gerewol beauty contests of the Wodaabe keep one civilisation moving. Farmer-herder wars over land and water now test the old transhumance, but the herds still cross every border the maps draw. Fulani presidents from Ahidjo to Barrow still address crowds in Fulfulde across four republics.