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A Glance to the History of the Fulani/Hallpulaar
 The people who are known to the English speakers as Fulani,Peulh or Toucouleur for French speakers, refer to themselves as Haalpulaar or Fulbe (Pullo, singular). The British have adopted the Hausa`s name for them because they first came into contact with them in Hausaland (Northern Nigeria). The French in the other hand, have adopted the name used by the early Arabs Historian “Takruri” meaning the inhabitants of Tekrur in reference to their kingdom in the middle Senegal valley.
While their origins is a subject to many theses, the Fulani Historian Aboubacry Moussa Lam, of the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, one of the leading Egyptologist in Africa, favored the Nile theses. In his well documented book De L`Origine Egyptienne des Peuls, Professor Lam developed a theory supporting a migration from East to West (Egypt, Ethiopia, along the Sahara), and then a second migration to the opposite direction (Eastward).
Many archaeological artifacts found at Tissilli and Hoggar region of central sahara (now southern Algeria) testifies that the ancestor of the modem Fulani occupied the Great Sahara long before its transformation to a desert which was completed around 2000 B.C.
The galleries of pictures engraved on stones and splendidly painted images of the early inhabitants of Great Sahara, their God, their cattle and the animal which flourished then, have led many specialists in the field, to conclude that, these are Fulani. Referring to these archaeological founding Henri Lhote Said:” Face to these documents, old of thousands of years, hidden under to the rocks of Tassali and Hoggar, I was marveled by resemblance and, my first reflex was to say: “these are Fulani.”
From mobil pastoralism to Empires builders.
The majority of Fulani people today are sedentary and live in urban centers, but originally their way of life was mobil pastoralism.
Around the fIfth Century BC, the Fulani have played a signifIcant role along with the Soninke (a northern Mande group) in the rise of the powerful Ghana Empire.But one result of the growth of this settled agricultural society was to disperse pastoralist outwards, and to make them settle to the South-West in the steppe land astride the middle Senegal Valley, where they later developed another kingdom known to the history as Tekrur. With the rise of lslam in seventh century, some of them were converted to it as soon as the tenth century, and chose to participate in settled and Muslim society, and become the people now called Tukulor, meaning "people of Tekrur". But about eleventh century other Fulani who did not accept the settled and Islamic way of life, sought to preserve their traditional pagan pastoralism and filtered eastwards through the grassland of the sudan. By the fIfteenth century, they had settle in consideration numbers in Fuuta Jalon highlands, and in around Masina, the inland delta of the Niger upstream of Timbuktu. They were also beginning to appear in Hausaland. By the eighteen century large numbers of them were settling in the grassy uplands of Cameroon.
In this remarkable emigration the Fulani had occasionally mixed with the earlier inhabitants of the land in which they settled, however, most of the time they remained distinct communities, each under its own leader, the ardo, continually moving themselves and their herds through the bush pasture around the fields of the agricultural villages.
Many Fulani indeed, maintain into today this way of life intact. However, in cours of time some Fulani did break away from this distinctive pagan pastoralism to settle in the growing urban centers, and there they converted to Islam.
The urban Fulani of the dispersion maintained their ethnic links not only with the wondering herdsman in the rural district, but also with the Islamized Fulani ( Tukulor) population in Fuuta Tooro (ancient Tekrur) and Fuuta Jalon in the far West.
The Almamiyat of Fuuta Tooro and Fuuta Jalon
In eighteenth century the Fuuta Tooronke and Fuuta Jalonke,the earliest sedentary Fulani, now largely Islamized, began to reorganize traditional West African society into Muslim theocracy, which resulted to the foundation,in 1725 of Muslim State, the Almamiya (Imamate) of Fuuta Jalon (guinea). In Fuuta Tooro, (northern Senegal and southern Mauritania) a Fulani Muslim clerical group, known as Toorodbe followed the example of their kin Fuuta Jalonke by overthrowing the rule of another Fulani pagan dynasty called Deniyanke,in 1775-76 and founded the Almamiya of Fuuta Tooro
A Map of Fuuta Tooro and the neighboring Kingdoms
Sokoto Empire
Shortly after this there developed the most famous of the Fulani Muslim rule, The Sokoto Empire, founded by Sehu Usman dan Fodio (1754 - 1817), in what is now northern Nigeria. Over some 180.000 squire miles and more than 10 million people, the size and strength of this empire have always attracted notice. More recently, increasing attentiom has been paid to its history thr°l!gh studies of its considerable literary output, mainly in Arabic but also in Fulani and Hausa languages. Usman dan Fodio and his principle lieutenants, his brother Abdullah and his son Muhammad Bello, are alone known to be the authors of over 260 works-books and treatises on religion, law, politics and history, and also poetry.
Sehu Usman Danfodio
The Masina Empire
Ahmadu Ibn Hammadi (1775-1844) another Fulani Muslim cleric, and contemporary with Usman dan Fadio, founded In Masina (Mali) a new empire of some 250.000 squire miles which included within its borders the legendary cities of Jenne and Timbuktu.
The Omarian Or Toucouleur (Tukulor) Empire. 
In nineteenth century the charismatic Elhaaj Omar Taal (c. 1795-1864) founded the Tukulor Empire. EIhaaj Omar was born in Halwaar in the Tooro region of Fuuta Tooro. After completing his education in Islamic science of the day, he left his homeland at the age of twenty five to visit the greatest learning centers of the western Sudan, which led him to Fuuta Jalon, Masina, and Sokoto, where he spent about twelve years, associate himself with Bello's court and took one of his daughters to wife. He also had been to Makkah and to Egypt,and had been in contact with its greatest Saykhs, and with those of the AI-Azhar University in Cairo. In Cairo, El-haaj Omar meet Seykh Muhammad al-Ghali who appointed him the Khalif of the Tijjaniya order in Western Africa. After twenty years away from home, he returned to Fuuta Tooro in 1840 with many disciples from Bornu and Hausaland. Nine years later, with such followers as he had, he migrated to Dinguiray on the borders of Fuuta Jalon and Bambuk, where he established a ribat , a religious sanctuary for the training of recruits to the Tijjania order. As such it attracted people from many walks of life and from a variety of ethnic groups.
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