Adamawa

The Adamawa are the many peoples of the Adamawa Plateau and upper Benue valley, grasslands spanning eastern Nigeria and northern Cameroon, whose some eighty related languages Joseph Greenberg grouped in the Adamawa branch of the Niger-Congo family; the Mumuye of the Benue headwaters are the largest group.

In the Benue lowlands the Kwararafa confederacy grew rich on the salt trade before 1500. Its cavalry raided northern Hausa cities and in 1680 sacked Ngazargamu, capital of Bornu, before declining in the eighteenth century. A Chamba invasion exiled its last king about 1810, and a Jukun dynasty at Wukari inherited the remnants.

Fulbe pastoralists had settled among the plateau peoples; in 1809 Modibo Adama, a lieutenant of Usman dan Fodio, carried the Fulani jihad into the region and founded the Adamawa Emirate, built on cavalry conquest and slave raiding in the hills through the 1830s.