The Bafour or Bafur may have inhabited present-day Mauritania and the Western Sahara before the arrival of Islamic peoples.

Some sources say this is a loose term to encompass the pre-Sanhaja peoples, who were "part Berber, part Negro, and part Semite."(James L.A. Webb, "The Evolution of the Idaw al-Hajj Commercial Diaspora", Cahiers d'études africaines, 1995, Volume 35: Issue 138-139, pp. 455–475, accessed May 11 2017)

Others say they occupied these territories in the fifteenth century and, before the end of the seventeenth century, are assimilated by other tribes, including the Wolof, Berber, and Fula.