[Mamadou_Diouf,_Mara_A _Leichtman]_New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal(1)(1)

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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal
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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal
Conversion, Migration, Wealth, 
Power, and Femininity
Edited by Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman
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NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAM IN SENEGAL
Copyright © Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United 
States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, 
NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, 
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, 
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, 
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and 
has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the 
United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60648-7
ISBN-10: 0-230-60648-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
New perspectives on Islam in Senegal : conversion, migration, wealth, power, 
and femininity / editors, Mamadou Diouf and Mara Leichtman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-230-60648-2
1. Islam—Senegal. 2. Islam and state—Senegal. 3. Islam and politics—
Senegal. 4. Senegal—Politics and government. 5. Senegal—History—20th 
century. I. Diouf, Mamadou. II. Leichtman, Mara.
BP64.S4N49 2008
297.09663—dc22 2008021602
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: January 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Contributors ix
Glossary xiii
Acronyms of Muslim Movements and Political Parties xvii
Introduction: New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: 
Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity 1
Mamadou Diouf (Columbia University in the City of New York) 
and Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)
Part 1: Histories, Ethnographies, and Pedagogies of Islam
1 The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State in Senegambia 21
Rudolph T. Ware, III (University of Michigan)
2 The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 51
Cleo Cantone (School of Oriental and African Studies)
3 Murid Modernity: Historical Perceptions of 
Islamic Reform, Sufism, and Colonization 71
John Glover (University of Redlands)
Part 2: Conversion and Spiritual Translations
4 The Greater Jihad and Conversion: 
Sereer Interpretations of Sufi Islam in Senegal 91
James Searing (University of Illinois at Chicago)
5 The Authentication of a Discursive Islam: Shi’a Alternatives to Sufi Orders 111
Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)
6 Searching for God: Young Gambians’ Conversion to the Tabligh Jama‘at 139
Marloes Janson (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)
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Contentsvi
Part 3: Gender, Marriage, and Sexuality
7 Migration, Marriage, and Ethnicity: The Early Development 
of Islam in Precolonial Middle Casamance 169
Aly Dramé (Dominican University)
8 Beyond Brotherhood: Gender, Religious Authority, 
and the Global Circuits of Senegalese Muridiyya 189
Beth A. Buggenhagen (Indiana University, Bloomington)
9 Jambaar or Jumbax-out? How Sunnite Women Negotiate 
Power and Belief in Orthodox Islamic Femininity 211
Erin Augis (Ramapo College of New Jersey)
Part 4: Modernity, Politics, and Dialectics
10 Dialectics of Religion and Politics in Senegal 237
Roman Loimeier (Center for African Studies, 
University of Florida, Gainesville)
11 Islam, Protest, and Citizen Mobilization: New Sufi Movements 257
Fabienne Samson (L’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 
Centre d’études Africaines, Paris)
Index 273
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Illustrations
Maps
1. Senegal viii
2. Precolonial Senegambia 74
Photos
2.1 The Mosque of Guede, Futa Toro 52
2.2 Lamp Fall, Great Mosque of Touba 54
2.3 Great Mosque of Dakar 56
2.4 The Ihsan Mosque, Saint Louis 59
2.5 The Mosque of Soprim 63
3.1 Mechanized Well of Darou Mousty 73
3.2 Grand Mosque of Darou Mousty 73
5.1 Library of Aly Yacine 114
5.2 Aly Yacine Calendar 122
5.3 Ashura Conference 124
5.4 Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche Mosque 128
5.5 Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche Dome 129
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Map 1. Senegal
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Contributors
Erin Augis is an associate professor of sociology at Ramapo College of New Jersey, 
where she teaches courses on gender, race relations, social movements, and the devel-
oping world. A recipient of Fulbright IIE, Social Science Research Council, National 
Science Foundation, and Center for American Overseas Research Centers funding, 
Augis has been conducting research on the Sunnite movement in Senegal since 1997. 
In addition to her book manuscript, Dakar’s Sunnite Women: Femininity, Politics, and 
Transnationalism in Islamic Reform, Augis has authored three articles on Senegalese 
reformist women. She also conducts a secondary research project on the economic 
migrations of Saharan Tuaregs to sub-Saharan tourist cities. Augis is currently a board 
member of the West African Research Association.
Beth A. Buggenhagen is an assistant professor of sociocultural anthropology at Indi-
ana University, Bloomington. Her research interests include circulation and value, 
diaspora and transnationalism, neoliberal global capital, gender, and Islam and visual-
ity. Buggenhagen is currently working on a book manuscript, Prophets and Profits: 
Gender and Islam in Global Senegal, on the global circuits of Senegalese Muslims and 
the politics of social production.
Cleo Cantone was born in Sicily to an Anglo-American mother and a Sicilian father. 
She pursued higher education in England. After receiving her first degree in Rus-
sian, she taught English as a foreign language before starting a Master’s in Islamic 
Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She majored in 
Islamic architecture and went on to write her PhD thesis on mosques in West Africa—
particularly Senegal—and women’s spaces in Islamic places of worship. She taught a 
term’s course at Birkbeck College on Islamic architecture in the Mediterranean and is 
currently writing a book based on her thesis. Cantone lives in London with her two 
children.
Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner family professor of African studies in the Middle 
East and Asian languages and cultures and history departments, and director of the 
Institute of African Studies at Columbia University in New York. His primary research 
has focused on the colonial, postcolonial, urban, and cultural history of Senegal and 
Francophone West Africa. He is the author of many articles, book chapters, and books 
including, Le Kajoor au 19ème siècle. Pouvoir Ceddo et Conquête Coloniale (Paris: Kar-
thala, 1990), Histoire du Sénégal: Le Modèle Islamo-Wolof et ses Périphéries (Paris: Mai-
sonneuve & Larose, 2001) and a collaboration, La Construction de l’Etat au Sénégal 
(Paris: Karthala, 2002).
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x
Aly Dramé received his PhD in African history from the University of Illinois at Chi-
cago. His current research focuses on processes of ethnic identity transformation in 
Southern Senegambia before colonial rule, through interfaith marriage, Islamic edu-
cation, and military jihad. He is currentlyan assistant professor at Dominican Univer-
sity, Illinois, where he teaches African history, Islam, world history, and immigration.
John Glover received his PhD in African history from the University of Illinois at 
Chicago. He is an associate professor of history at the University of Redlands in 
southern California where he teaches courses on African, world, and Islamic history. 
His latest publication is Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal: The Murid Order (Roch-
ester: University of Rochester Press, 2007). His research concerns the production, 
meaning, and use of historical narratives by the Sufi orders of Senegal as they relate to 
notions of modernity. His current research project concerns the Lebu fisherfolk and 
the Layenne Sufi order of the Cap Vert peninsula.
Marloes Janson holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Leiden University, the 
Netherlands. She has conducted research on griottes, oral traditions, local Islamic 
expressions, and religious reform in The Gambia and Senegal. Currently, she is a 
researcher at Zentrum Moderner Orient/Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO) 
in Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on youth participation, that of female youth 
in particular, in the Tabligh Jama’at in The Gambia. Janson has published various 
articles and book chapters and is working on a book manuscript entitled, Young, 
Modern and Muslim: The Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia.
Mara A. Leichtman is assistant professor of anthropology and Muslim studies at 
Michigan State University. During the 2007–2008 academic year she was a visit-
ing fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient/Centre for Modern Oriental Studies 
(ZMO) in Berlin, Germany, and the International Institute for the Study of Islam 
in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, the Netherlands. She has been conducting 
research and teaching in Senegal since 2000. Her research is multisited, including 
fieldwork in Lebanon, France, and England, examining ties between Senegal and 
Lebanon and linkages with transnational Shi’a institutions headquartered in Europe. 
She has published various articles and book chapters and is working on a book manu-
script entitled, Becoming Shi’a in Africa: Lebanese Migrants and Senegalese Converts.
Roman Loimeier presently teaches at the University of Florida, Gainesville (Center 
for African Studies). He has done extensive work in Senegal, Northern Nigeria, and 
Zanzibar (since 1981) and has numerous publications on the history of African Mus-
lim societies, Sufi brotherhoods, and movements of reform, including Islamic Reform 
and Political Change in Northern Nigeria (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 
1997).
Fabienne Samson holds a PhD from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 
Centre d’études Africaines, Paris (France). She is an anthropologist and researcher at 
the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). Her current work is on new 
Christian and Muslim movements among urban youth in West Africa. Her publica-
tions include articles on Islam in Senegal and Les Marabouts de l’islam Politique. Le 
Dahiratoul Moustarchidina Wal Moustarchidaty, un movement néo-confrérique seneg-
alais (Paris: Karthala, 2005).
Contributors
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xi
James Searing is the chair of the history department at the University of Illinois at 
Chicago, where he teaches African history. His research focuses on the history of 
Senegal, combining an ethnographic approach to peoples and cultures with Senegal’s 
historical encounters with Islam, the Atlantic world, and French colonial rule. His 
publications include West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River 
Valley, 1700-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and “God Alone is 
King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal, 1859–1914; The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor 
and Bawol (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001). His current research examines ethnicity 
and conversion through a fieldwork based study of the Sereer Safen, an ethnic minor-
ity in the Thiès region who converted to Islam in the colonial period.
Rudolph (Butch) Ware holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is 
assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan. He researches knowledge 
transmission in Islamic West Africa. His first book manuscript, “A Walking Qur’an: 
Embodied Knowledge, Qur’an Schooling, and History in Senegambia,” interrogates 
the role of traditional Islamic education in shaping Muslim identity and society. Ware 
also conducts research on private libraries in Senegal and Mauritania, new media and 
Islamic thought, and slavery in Islamic Africa. His publications include (with Robert 
Launay) “Comment (ne pas) lire le Coran: Logiques de l’enseignement religieux au 
Sénégal et en Côte d’Ivoire” in Gilles Holder (ed.) l’Islam en Afrique: vers un espace 
public religieux (forthcoming, 2008); “Slavery in Islamic Africa, 1400–1800,” in 
Stanley Engerman and David Eltis (eds.), Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume 
III (Cambridge, forthcoming, 2008); and “Njàngaan: The Daily Regime of Qur’anic 
Students in 20th Century Senegal,” International Journal of African Historical Stud-
ies, 37, no. 3 (2004): 515–38.
Contributors
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Glossary
adat: Tradition, customs.
addiya: Religious offerings.
adhan: Call to prayer.
alal: Wealth.
amal (pl. a’amal): Work, religious tasks.
arabisant(s): Those educated in the Arabic language.
ashura: The tenth day of the month of Muharram on which Shi’a commemorate the 
martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad from his 
daughter Fatima and his cousin and son-in-law Ali.
bab al-nisa: Women’s entrance to a mosque.
baraka: Blessing or gift of grace.
batin: The esoteric knowledge of Sufi Islam.
bid’a (pl. bida): Innovation in religion.
Caliphate: A series of Sunni Caliphs who were the selected or elected successor of 
the prophet in political and military leadership, but not religious authority.
cosaan: Tradition.
daara: Quran school, also rural work group.
dahira: Prayer circle.
dar al-islam: Land ruled by Islam.
dar al-imara: Governor’s palace.
dar al-kufr: Land of the infidels, also dar al-harb.
dhikr: Litany of prayers.
din: Religion.
fatwa: Ruling on Islamic law.
fawz: Success and accomplishment in this world and in the hereafter.
fiqh: Islamic jurisprudence.
fitna: Division within Islam.
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xiv
griot: Poet, praise singer, bard; an expert on oral tradition.
gris-gris: Amulets.
hadith (pl. ahadith): Collections of oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of 
the prophet Mohammad.
hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the 5 pillars of Islam.
hawza: Seminary of Shi’i Islamic training.
hijab (pl. hijabat): Veil, headscarf.
hijra: Migration of the prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE.
ijtima’ (pl. ijtima’at): Conference (religious).
imam: Head of a mosque, to be differentiated from Shi’a Imams as described in 
Imamate.
imam ratib: Principal Imam.
Imamate: A series of (some believe twelve) Shi’a leaders, called Imams, who were 
both political leaders and religious guides, and the final authoritative interpreters 
of God’s will as formulated in Islamic law.
jahiliyya: Ignorance, the time before Islam.
jakka jigeen: Women’s mosque.
jellaba: Traditional Muslim robes.
jihad: To strive or to struggle, this can be in the context of religious war or a 
personal struggle within oneself or against poverty.
jum’a: Friday prayer.
ka’ba: Sacred granite cuboid enclosure at Mecca, considered the holiest place in 
Islam.
kabila: Patrilineal descent group, tribe.
kafir: Infidel or pagan.
Khalife General (Arabic: khalifa): Head of a Sufi order in Senegal.
khums: Shi’a Islamic tax of one-fifth of all income.
khutba: Friday prayer sermon.
madhhab:Islamic school of thought. There are four main madhahib (pl.) in Sunni 
Islam: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali schools, while the Shi’a follow the 
Ja’afari school. Most Senegalese Sufis follow the Maliki school.
madrasa (pl. madaris): Islamic school.
magal: Pilgrimage. The largest magal in Senegal is to Touba.
maghrib: The fourth daily prayer in Islam, offered at sunset.
marabout: Muslim religious specialist (in the French colonial lexicon).
masjid: Mosque, place of prostration.
Glossary
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xv
mawlud: The celebration of the birthday of the prophet Mohammad.
medina: Old city.
mihrab: Niche in a wall of a mosque indicating qibla.
muezzin: The chosen person at a mosque who leads the call to prayer.
muqaddam: Representative of an important Sufi leader.
ndawtal: Gifts given during life cycle rituals.
ndiggel: Maraboutic order.
ñeeño: Caste.
njebbel: Initiation rite into a Sufi order.
pénc: Public Square
qibla: The direction of Mecca toward which a Muslim should pray.
qutb al-alam: Pole of the world.
qutb al-zaman: Pole of the age.
sahabah: The companions of the prophet.
salat: Prayer.
shahada: The profession of faith, “there is no God but God and Mohammad is the 
Messenger of God,” the first pillar of Islam.
shari’a: Islamic law.
sherif: One who claims descent from the Prophet Mohammad.
Shi’a: From shi’at Ali, the partisans of Ali. Shi’a Muslims believe that Ali, the 
prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, should have been his first successor, followed by 
other family members of the prophet.
silsila: Genealogies.
sokhna: Female spiritual leaders, often the daughters or wives of marabouts.
sunnah: The body of Islamic law based on the words and deeds of Mohammad and 
his successors.
tabaski (eid al-adha): The holiday commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice 
his son Ishmael, which also commemorates the sacrifice offered during the 
pilgrimage to Mecca by slaughtering sheep.
tabligh: Missionary work to teach about Islam.
tafsir: Quranic commentary.
tahara: Ritual purity.
talibe: Disciple.
tariqa (pl. turuq): Sufi order.
tasbih: Prayer beads.
Glossary
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tawhid: Oneness of God, monotheism.
terranga: Hospitality.
timiss: Maghrib, or sunset, prayer.
turba: The small clay tablet representing the earth of Karbala to which Shi’a 
Muslims touch their foreheads in prayer.
tuyaaba: Religious merit.
ummah: Muslim community at large.
ustaz: Teacher.
Wahhabi: Reformist Islamic movement named after the Saudi Arabian founder 
Mohammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703–1792). This name is rarely used by 
members of the group today, and was first designated by their opponents. The 
movement accepts the Quran and hadith as fundamental texts and advocates a 
puritanical and legalistic theology in matters of faith and religious practice.
wakil: Authorized representative of a marja, a Shi’a leader who is a reference for 
emulation.
wali: Holy man, friend of God.
wazifa: Sufi repetition of sacred phrases.
wird: Prayer formula.
zawiya: Headquarters of a Sufi order.
ziyara: Visit to a Muslim holy place or spiritual leader.
Glossary
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Acronyms of Muslim Movements 
and Political Parties
AEEMS Association des Elèves et Etudiants Musulmans du Sénégal
AEMUD Association des Etudiants Musulmans de l’Université de Dakar
AMEA Association Musulmane des Etudiants Africains
BFM Brigade de la Fraternité Musulmane
CIRCOFS Comité Islamique pour la Reforme du Code de la Famille au Sénégal
DEM Dahira des Etudiants Mourides de Dakar
DMM Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat
FAIS Fédération des Associations Islamiques du Sénégal.
FAL Front pour l’Alternance
HF Harakat al-Falah (lil-thaqafat al-Islamiyya)
HT Hizb al-Tarqiyya
IID Institut Islamique de Dakar
JIR Jama‘at Ibadu Rahman
MF Matlab al-Fawzayni
MMUD Mouvement Mondial pour l´Unicité de Dieu (Arabic: Diwan Silk 
 al-Jawahir fi-Akhbar Sagharir)
PUR Parti de l´Unité et du Rassemblement
PVD Parti de la Vérité pour le Développement
TJ Tabligh Jama‘at
UCM Union Culturelle Musulmane (Arabic: ITI, Ittihad al-Thaqafi 
 al-Islami)
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I n t r o d u c t i o n
4
New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal
Conversion, Migration, Wealth, 
Power, and Femininity
Mamadou Diouf (Columbia University in the City of New 
York) and Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)
The literature on Islam in Africa has been dominated by two main tracks: the mak-
ing of Muslim societies and the “Africanization of Islam.”1 It has tended to reproduce 
a reductive binary in which the processes of “Africanization” provide content, select-
ing the local factors that constitute the key drivers in determining the character of 
Islam in Africa, while the “Islamization of African societies” lays out the structures 
from which the faith deploys itself. The issues with which scholars engaged were 
constructed around additional binaries such as universal and local manifestations and 
appropriations of Islam, literate (doctrinal modes) and magical (imagistic modes) dis-
courses and practices,2 individual religious responsibility and submission to religious 
leaders, and spirituality and economic and political functions of the brotherhoods.3
Islam has been a dominant theme in studies of Senegal since the colonial period. 
Following the studies of Paul Marty in 1917,4 the French colonial administration and 
community of scholars distinguished between Arab Islam and Islam noir. This concept 
captures the colonial perception of Islam south of the Sahara defined as the product 
of spiritual and ritualistic transactions between Islam and African traditional religions. 
African Islam was seen as less pure, less literate, more magical, and flexible enough to 
be incorporated into “French Muslim policy.” Such a perspective has been dominant 
in historical, anthropological, sociological, and political studies. Marty remained the 
main reference for the study of Islam in Senegal until the end of the twentieth cen-
tury. His typology of Muslim groups and discussion of the brotherhoods and their 
founders provided the foundations for later studies. Marty’s Etudes sur l’Islam au 
Sénégal developed the underlying repertoire of concepts and arguments by which 
Western-trained (African and non-African) scholars as well as indigenous historians 
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman2
and intellectuals have thought about the trajectories of Islam and the brotherhoods. 
Discussions continue to focus around the conformity of African Muslim practices 
with orthodoxy, which mainly referred to North Africa and the Middle East. Most of 
the Marty-inspired literature lacked articulations of the interactions and interplays 
of the three modes of inscribing Islam in the social and political landscape of the 
Senegambia: the intellectual and doctrinal, the imagistic, and the institutional. Sufi 
brotherhoods centrally located in the rural areas—in particular in the Wolof regions 
of groundnut production—were structured along authoritarian lines commanded by 
a Muslim cleric. The focus on these brotherhoods overlooked the contrast and com-
petition with an urban, literate, and deliberately Arab and orthodox Islam of colonial 
and postcolonial bureaucrats, centered especially in Saint Louis, until the last three 
decades of the twentieth century. It also obscured the cultural and historical forma-
tions fabricated in the daily engagement with the Senegambian traditional polities 
(before the establishment of colonial rule), colonial ethnography and native policies, 
postcolonialgovernance, and the leftovers of traditional ideologies to accommodate 
or retreat to Islam’s political and religious challenges.
The established political science accounts of Islam in Senegal are a particularly 
telling illustration of the problems posed by such an approach.5 They privilege the 
structure of economic forces, the state, and the power of marabouts (religious leaders) 
over the religiosity of the masses of talibe (disciples). The centrality of the political 
economy approach privileged the Murid brotherhood as the epitome of Senegalese 
Islam both in Africa and abroad, emphasizing the constant reconfiguring of their 
religious identity to adapt to different economic circumstances, from the colonial 
peanut economy of the mid-nineteenth century to the global economy of the late 
twentieth century. Murid adjustments to colonial rule and postcolonial politics (first 
by dominating the rural landscape and later the central marketplace in Dakar, as well 
as migrating to Paris, New York, and Turin) led them to engage with Western moder-
nity and global Islam in a distinctly Senegalese way with particular Wolof idioms. In 
this volume Beth Buggenhagen offers a convincing critique of the dominant approach 
for understanding the Murid way only as an economic force while privileging an 
analysis of the state over the religiosity of the talibe, focusing more on structure than 
on meaning. She suggests that if Murid disciples have practiced total devotion to 
religious authority, as Cruise O’Brien has insisted, they have done so to mask what 
they keep back from the pressure to give; and Sufi guides were not the only persons 
in whom they were investing value. In addition, Buggenhagen interrogates the liter-
ature’s recognition of men and brotherhood and dislodges this mistaken emphasis by 
focusing on relations of hierarchy and difference among members of the tariqa (Sufi 
order), the role of women in particular.
Other scholars complicate the conventional picture of Murid historical trajecto-
ries. Cheikh Anta Babou has written the first biography of Amadou Bamba based 
on internal documents to revisit the relationship between the Murid work ethic and 
its relationship to spirituality.6 John Glover’s chapter provides a revisionist history 
of a branch of the Murid order founded by Sheikh Ibrahima Faty Mbacke (Mame 
Thierno) at Darou Mousty. Contesting the French conquest as the starting point 
for understanding the Murids, Glover recasts this debate using discursive analyses on 
modernity and envisioning their establishment as the outgrowth of at least a century of 
precolonial African historical developments. He depicts the emergence of the Murid 
order as the culmination of a long history of Islamic reform movements and Bamba’s 
interpretation of Sufi beliefs and practices in relation to the historical context of Islam 
in Senegambia. In Darou Mousty Bamba’s ideology resulted in developments that 
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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal 3
were distinct but not entirely divorced from the larger Senegambian milieu. Despite 
the onset of French colonial rule, Murids of Darou Mousty preserved some of their 
autonomy through accommodating the new sociopolitical and economic environ-
ments. Events such as taxation or military or labor recruitment were translated to fit a 
Murid historical understanding of these changes, transforming the original settlers of 
Darou Mousty into cultural and religious heroes. For example, Murids from Darou 
Mousty who fought in World War I were perceived as not actually engaged in this 
effort on behalf of the French but in labor to Mame Thierno and Amadou Bamba in 
fulfillment of the ndiggel (maraboutic order).
Scholars have widened the scope of the earlier emphasis on the Murid brother-
hood by moving the focus of Islamic scholarship from rural to urban areas. Historians 
have also addressed the domination of Murid and Wolof historical trajectories by 
examining other religious groups in Senegal and interethnic and gendered relations. 
Ousmane Kane, David Robinson, and Jean-Louis Triaud7 have shed new light on 
the Tijan order as well as its political dealings, intellectual heritage, and fragmented 
identities. Aly Dramé agrees with Glover that historical narratives on Islam in Sen-
egambia focus too much on the period after the mid-nineteenth century. He argues 
further that they have consistently overlooked the role of marriage in the Islamiza-
tion of Senegal. In fact, he contends that the first stage of the development of Islam 
in the Middle Casamance was exogamous marriage, marriage bonds between early 
Muslim migrants and non-Muslim local women who took their husbands’ religion. 
Widening the dar al-Islam by bringing in new converts is seen as a high accom-
plishment for a Muslim, in this case for the Mandinke and Bainunk, and Islamic law 
permits Muslim men to take non-Muslim wives if their offspring follow the father’s 
religion. James Searing has explored the relationship with Wolof traditions and colo-
nial prescriptions using the concept of accommodation.8 In this volume he revisits, 
on one hand, the interplay between the Islamization of Africa and the Africanization 
of Islam and, on the other hand, the dominant paradigm of conversion (Quarantine, 
Mixing, and Reform) in the context of modern conversions to Islam. He points the 
way to rethinking these binary oppositions in the case of the Sereer Safen. The Safen 
quickly took steps to abandon matrilineal inheritance, traditional funerals, and initia-
tion ceremonies for men and women. In doing so they adapted Muslim intellectual 
traditions to deal with their situation, discussing the boundaries between customs 
(adat) and religion (din). According to Searing, in the transition Islam did not play 
the role of a monolithic with readymade answers, but it provided a vocabulary and 
a historic model of change (based on the Quran) that was appropriated by converts. 
Safen interpretations of Islam also addressed anxieties about Wolofization and loss of 
ethnic identity, allowing the Safen to adopt some Wolof customs while still retaining 
an extremely critical stance in relation to the Wolof social order and monarchy.
New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal describes the new processes, revisits the old 
ones, and extends the scholarly dialogue on Islam in Senegal. It represents a break 
from the established literature. It also deals with an ever-changing Senegalese society 
by examining the spaces of religion and modes of religiosity;9 structures of religious 
communities10 and their social, economic, and intellectual processes of production 
and reproduction both locally and through mobility (transnationalism, real or sym-
bolic); and the rapidly shifting and often unpredictable identities of youth. This book 
examines multiple emergent formations of religious identities, expressions, and mani-
festations located within national and transnational dynamics of neoliberal reforms, 
changing gender roles, and religious globalization. It seeks to chart a path of account-
ing for the complexity of the ways these “modes of religiosity” forge new spaces 
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman4
of affiliation, movements, civic cultures, and communities.11 We focus our attention 
on actual practices around fashion, institutions of education and marriage, and the 
emergence of new religious movements and their effect on democratic practices and 
the public sphere. We highlight the discourses and practices in the context of broadly 
defined sites: conversion, education, politics and economics, sexuality, popular cul-
ture, and their impact on Muslim identities.
Such an emphasis for this book is both appropriate and timely. Although most are-
nas of the academy have wholly understood (if not embraced) the new realities faced 
byMuslim groups, others remain locked in stereotypical images of Islam’s colonial 
past or the West’s present obsession with terrorism. Equally important to our explora-
tion are the multiple and changing articulations of Muslim identities in Senegal and 
their social, economic, cultural, political, and intellectual expressions within local and 
global dynamics and their intersections. It charts the new paths to identify and analyze 
the complexity in how Islamic groups and thoughts forge new spaces of affiliation, 
movement, ideas, behavior, and so forth, while contesting, redefining, or disdaining 
older sites and intellectual territories. How do we understand and analyze these shifts, 
reconfigurations of old identities and markers, and creation of new ones as well as the 
spaces where they are deployed? How are local attachments and idioms played out 
in global contexts facing global challenges and, vice versa, in engaging nation, race, 
class, ethnicity, and gender?
The studies have been grouped to explore many aspects of Islam. As an inter-
disciplinary project, drawing from anthropology, sociology, history, political science, 
and religious studies philosophies, the different chapters provide a complex picture 
of Islam in Senegal and The Gambia. The chapters interrogate the new structures 
and conditions of Islam as religious beliefs and practices translate into multiple codes 
defining behavior; dreaming, loving, and living together; intervening in public and 
private domains; and interacting socially and culturally within and outside the dar al-
Islam, both locally and globally. In addition the volume charts the multifarious ways 
that Senegalese and Gambian Muslims resisted being passive recipients of a religion 
controlled from outside their territory, race, and cultural environment. In a limited 
and somehow revised way, they appropriated the Arabic language and scripture and 
adapted it to suit their own needs and anxieties about religion, society, and history. 
For example, some converts in Senegal envision Shi’a Islam as an intellectual move-
ment and pride themselves on their fluency in Arabic, conversing among themselves 
in the Arabic language, and acquiring libraries of Arabic texts on Shi’a theology. In 
contrast, and unlike other reformist associations, the Tijan Dahirat al-Mustarshidin 
wal-Mustarshidat and the Murid Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu do not 
see Arabic teaching as a struggle against French, where Islamization does not require 
Arabization. Youth in The Gambia are attracted to the Tabligh Jama’at from tape 
recorded sermons in English rather than books in Arabic, which they cannot read, or 
even English translations, which they cannot afford.
The issues we set out to examine require a meticulous review of the literature on 
Islam and society in Senegal and The Gambia to identify the questions that have not 
been dealt with, in particular the relationship between the marabout and the disciple 
as the foundation of a new community after the defeat of the traditional aristocracy 
and the establishment of colonial rule. Senegambian societies faced the critical chal-
lenge of building a new ethical architecture and moral economy for communities in 
search of stability, peace, and identities. The new generation of clerics proposed fresh 
approaches and articulated innovative agendas. First they refilled with new meanings 
the social, ethical, and cultural territories deserted by the traditional leadership since 
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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal 5
at least the Atlantic slave trade with successful attempts at state building in Futa Jal-
lon, Futa Toro, and Bundu as well as active military resistance jihad activities from 
the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries. The limited successes of the 
armed social movements were followed by the foundation of more spiritually ori-
ented Sufi orders all over Senegambia. In a context of violence and political instability 
dominated by the search for certainty and security, the Sufi orders initiated a process 
that had a paradoxical effect: ensure the autonomy of Muslim communities from the 
encroachments of political powers and establish a firm centralization of power and 
hierarchies along the lines of the colonial administration. Therefore, Sufi Islam in 
Senegambia could be best understood as a distinctive reaction to the imposition of 
colonial rule and the decomposition of the moral, cultural, and economic narrative 
and practices of traditional communities. The procedures entailed the production of 
basic values and the reconfiguring of an Islamic library to circulate new spiritual ref-
erences. The Sufi orders became solid spaces irrigated by the knowledge and power 
derived from their structures and grammars. The function of the close reading of the 
history of the appropriation of Sufism in Senegambia in our endeavor is to avoid two 
traps in the scholarly literature: first, reaffirming the narratives of the Sufi orders that 
eulogizes and overemphasizes their role in the propagation of Islamic knowledge and 
behavior, and their resistance to colonial rule and the “French civilizing mission,” to 
document the complex process of accommodation and transactions; and second, the 
conventional institutional approach to privilege a sociointellectual and sociological 
framework woven with a dense ethnography to account for the everyday reconfigura-
tion of Islam and the practices associated with it. Each chapter seeks to give due value 
to practices and discourses as well as the context of their production, appropriation, 
rejection, and revision. Together they nicely trace the contours of this study that 
connect practices and discourses to the larger structures of the mental and material 
worlds of the Muslim communities of Senegambia and their engagement with global 
forces.
During the same period in the colony of Senegal (Saint Louis) and later in the Four 
Communes of Saint Louis, Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar, along with and in contrast 
to the Sufi orders, a social group made up of Muslim traders was emerging as a moral 
community with a civic culture that drew on Islamic religious resources as well as the 
political, economic, and social rights conferred on them by their citizen status as origi-
naires.12 By constantly making claims based on their citizenship rights, they initiated a 
twofold process, inserting themselves in the colonial narrative and fabricating a world 
of their own through a daily engagement with colonial policy and knowledge as well 
as with traditional moral and social prescriptions. Their economic and philanthropic 
activities provide precise indications of their cultural, economic, and political idioms, 
logic and the social networks they put in place. The symbols, myths, rituals, infra-
structures, and spaces and places with which they were associated have produced an 
urban civility with various manifestations. This civility borrowed proudly from three 
sources: the Senegambian traditions, especially Wolof and Halpulaar; the religious, 
aesthetic, and erotic library of Islam, which ensured a connection with the North Afri-
can, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern Arabic and Muslim literary world; and finally the 
administrative, political, and institutional resources of the Senegalese colony. By col-
laborating with the colonial administration, and adeptly using French legislation and 
their civil rights,13 these traders had managed to create an autonomous civic space for 
themselves. Educated in the arts and sciences as well as the Islamic court system, they 
also had perfect knowledge of the arcane colonial administrative system and a mastery 
of the professional rules that governed commercial activities.14 Their respectable level 
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman6
of education predisposedthem to an active participation in the moral, theological, 
and political debates that outlined the civic15 and political culture of both the Senega-
lese colony and Saint-Louis civil society.16 Their literary imagination,17 supported by 
a scriptural and literary Islamic modernity, submitted the hegemonic pretensions of 
the colony’s civilizing mission to regular criticism. It introduced a civility made from 
a multiplicity of heritages, whose core remains, without contest, an Arab and Muslim 
textuality.18 In some way they had the dexterity to outline a native and Wolof con-
ception of assimilation through a series of operations creating hybrid and vernacular 
versions of Islamic, colonial, and Senegambian libraries.
It takes a unique approach to assemble the most recent statements on the varied 
aspects of Islam in Senegal and The Gambia. Today’s age of globalization provides a 
different context for Islam than the colonial hierarchies of privilege and responses of 
accommodation and assimilation that existed at the moment of the emergence of the 
Sufi orders. Furthermore, the new scholarship also brings fresh perspectives, alterna-
tive methodologies, and provocative theories on different topics. These include the 
interconnection between transnationalism and Islam, a new look at religious conver-
sion, revisionist histories, and an investigation of patterns of conspicuous consump-
tion in relation to gender and Islam. Uniting contributions from the work of these 
emerging scholars, this collection highlights new religious movements, textualities, 
public and private discourses, behavior—the art of proselytizing and dating—and the 
like.
The emerging scholarship continues to move away from the Murid dominance in 
the previous literature, focusing in particular on the new religious paths and discourses 
that have engaged with both the Sufi modes of spirituality and its various operations 
in the public space. Mara Leichtman, Erin Augis, Marloes Janson, and Fabienne Sam-
son offer a rare, vivid, and thoughtful examination of new reformist movements: Shi’a 
Islam, Sunnite women’s organizations, the success of Tabligh Jama’at among Gam-
bian youth, and attempts to modernize the Sufi orders with the creation of vibrant 
and militant youth branches. Leichtman insists on a sharp contrast between the politi-
cal awakening resulting from the Iranian Revolution, which is perceived to dominate 
Shi’a Islam as a global force, and the self-portrayals of Senegalese Shi’a converts as 
leaders of an intellectual movement aimed at using Islamic knowledge originating 
from both Sunni and Shi’a sources to educate the population. Converts were exposed 
to new ideas about Islam through their travels abroad, Lebanese and Iranian mission-
ary work in Senegal, and the spread of media technologies. Leichtman describes the 
discovery of Shi’a Islam as a search for an authentic Islam, which depends on textual 
study and historical inquiry as well as a particular notion of rationality. Yet conversion 
did not lead to cultural authenticity because converts were not true to their com-
munity and faith but went beyond their Sufi origins to incorporate the Shi’a faith and 
demonstrate that Shi’a Islam can be authentically Senegalese. By closely examining 
how Senegalese converts create their own past—unveiling discourses of Shi’a Islam’s 
historical roots in Senegal19—she questions Eva Rosander’s division of “African Islam” 
and (reformist) “Islam in Africa,”20 arguing that Shi’a Islam is not purely an outside 
Islamist force, but has become localized and vernacularized along its journey.
In contrast to Leichtman’s interpretation of the development of a Senegalese Shi’a 
network as an alternative to joining the Sufi orders, and not as a means to shake up or 
dismiss them, Augis insists on the subversive or revolutionary role of Dakar’s Sunnite 
groups that has proliferated in the last two decades, investigating the role of women 
in reformist religious movements. The movement conceived as a turn toward a more 
orthodox Islam is a symbol of solidarity with the ummah and has been attracting 
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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal 7
mostly young people. It provides a path toward personal spirituality and identitarian 
aesthetics of global, pan-Islamic affiliation. In addition, it is a radical critique of the 
cultural practices of peers and elders, especially leading to conflict with parents and 
teachers, in a rebellion against Senegal’s colonial past and Sufi religious traditions, 
which are embodied in elders’ worldviews and actions.
Janson and Samson point to the same direction of contestation and subversion 
led by the youth to restore true religion and reimagine power relations and commu-
nity cohesion. According to Janson, The Gambia appears to be a flourishing center 
of Tabligh activities in West Africa. Adherents from other African countries, such as 
Senegal, regularly assemble in The Gambia to exchange ideas of the proper Tabligh 
method, that is, missionary work aimed at the moral transformation of Muslims. The 
Tabligh Jama‘at represents a new expression of religiosity of young Muslims, which 
could be seen as a form of rebellion against the authority of the elders and of tradi-
tions. Examining the expansion of the movement from South Asia and its spread to 
The Gambia, Janson explores the emotional, often tearful, process through which 
Tablighi youth cultivate a virtuous self that has submitted completely to God and his 
prophet. She argues that this new mode of religiosity can also be seen as a form of 
resistance against Sufi Islam. This resistance is generational and assumes the form of 
conversion to a reformist Islam that asserts a new set of Islamic values, which cultivate 
simplicity, austerity, integrity, piety, a renewed moral order, and greater social and 
economic equality between the age sets and men and women.
Samson’s contribution to the volume, while in dialogue with the interventions of 
Leichtman, Augis, and Janson, looks at the rebellious operations taking place within 
Sufi orders. She compares two new Sufi movements, the Tijan Dahirat al-Mustarshi-
din wal-Mustarshidat and the Murid Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu, 
that are attempting to be innovative with respect to the teachings of the founders 
of their leading families, turning into Sufi movements influenced by ideas of reform. 
Located at the intersection of modernity and globalization, and strongly urbanized, 
they address themselves exclusively to a young audience, aiming to gradually trans-
form society. In the same move, they propose to Islamize modernity and reject the 
Western world and its conception of modernity and reproach Senegal for letting itself 
fall under the influence of the former colonizer, France. Adherents are reborn in these 
communities, take pride in their new identities as good Muslims, and find in them a 
true family. More than their elders, they place their movements of Sufi origin within 
the orbit of a more reformist political Islam, opening themselves up to religious trends 
from the Arab Muslim world to transform the local system of Sufi orders.
In the cases of the new reformist movements, such as the groups studied by Augis, 
young people refer to themselves as Sunnites to indicate that they are the only Sen-
egalese who correctly practice the sunnah. Reformists in Senegal are not marginalized 
and powerless, as they are often depicted in the literature.21 Leichtman critiques such 
arguments, suggesting alternatively that Shi’a influences in Senegal should not be 
judged by their success in political awakening and calls for revolution, which is not 
their ultimate goal. Instead, converts portray themselves as an intellectual movement 
and use their knowledge of Islam as a weapon to educate—and develop—the Senega-
lese population. Women and youth in particular describe their decisions to becomeSunnite, Shi’a, Tablighi, or even better Sufis as a conversion and an experience of 
spiritual rebirth that requires them to completely reorient their world views to eschew 
their former cultural practices.
All four previously discussed chapters engage with the notion of conversion as the 
(in)appropriate concept to describe movement within Islam, from one path or one 
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman8
school to another. Such debates, in the context of the proliferation of new Muslim 
religious movements, reveal the continuities and discontinuities in the literature on 
religion in Africa, in particular if we compare these chapters with the contributions of 
Dramé and Searing. The six chapters are compelling in both the stories of conversion 
they tell and the issues they raise when they ask about the spiritual, physical, cultural, 
linguistic, and fashion consequences of conversion. For example, Janson, Searing, 
and Dramé debate theories of conversion in vastly different contexts (in particular 
the Horton/Fisher controversy22), in addition to the manipulation and redefinition 
of marriage, gender norms, and clothing to exhibit spiritual and physical rupture 
with the old order and belief systems in the strive for moral perfection. But more to 
the point, juxtaposing multiple narratives of conversion, from indigenous traditional 
religions to Islam (as in the cases examined by Searing and Dramé) or within Islam 
from one path to another (as in the cases studied by Janson, Leichtman, Augis, and 
Samson), points to the various resources mobilized from stories of redemption as well 
as revision or rupture with every aspect of daily life. Converts can escape the negative 
political baggage associated with jihad and militant Islam; they can form marriage alli-
ances that enable economic prosperity; or they can find a replacement for the failed 
state by joining movements that provide basic services such as education, health care, 
and training in manual trades, which reward followers with spiritual and economic 
benefits.
Searing describes the meaning of conversion by evoking funerals and baptisms as a 
shorthand for the most dramatic changes that occurred. By converting to Islam, Safen, 
who came of age after World War I, overturned a system of matrilineal inheritance and 
descent that had defined the social order. Searing rethinks the binary oppositions in 
Fisher’s paradigm of Quarantine, Mixing and Reform. Sufi Islam had advantages for 
the Sereer: Conversion was a rebellion led by young men against their elders, who 
resisted Islam as long as they identified it with the Wolof social order. Sereer interpre-
tations of conversion allow accommodation with Sereer history and reduce the dif-
ference between new and old converts (Sereer and Wolof) by insisting that true Islam 
arrived with the failure of jihad and the emergence of new Sufi orders at the beginning 
of the twentieth century. Horton and Fisher depict conversion as a long-term process, 
whereas Searing focuses on the moment of conversion in the recent past, thereby 
opening up possibilities of analysis missing from their models. Searing emphasizes 
the agency of converts, who decide which aspects of “tradition” must be discarded 
or may be preserved and need reformation. Reform was central to the conversion 
process because the Safen abandoned matrilineal inheritance, traditional funerals, and 
initiation ceremonies and gave up alcohol and tobacco. Searing finds Peel’s recent 
study of Yoruba conversion more helpful through the concept of the “inculturation” 
of Christianity.23 Inculturation facilitated the identification of secret, mystical powers 
attributed to elders, diviners, and shrines with the new forms of secret knowledge 
brought by Sufi Islam. The ethical teachings and peaceful methods of Sufi orders after 
the abandonment of jihad were perceived as being in harmony with Sereer values.
Dramé sheds light on the critical issue of conversion by examining the interwoven 
relationships between migration, Islam, ethnicity and identity change in the Middle 
Casamance before the colonial era. Like Searing, he challenges Fisher’s three-step 
process for conversion to Islam in West Africa, showing that rather than quaran-
tine, consistent patterns of marriage alliances between Mandinka Muslim migrants 
and the non-Muslim local communities (Bainunk landowners) among whom they 
settled changed the spiritual geography of the region, fostering the early development 
of Islam. Analyzing how Muslims prospered through trade, cotton manufacturing, 
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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal 9
and the teaching of Islam, he proposes his own three phases of exogamous marriage 
(between Muslims and non-Muslims), endogamous marriage (between Muslims), 
and subsequent consolidation of Islam through religious toleration and peaceful rela-
tions. Early Muslim migrants were restricted in their ability to find Muslim spouses, 
and local marriages also resulted in entitlements such as land grants for the settlement 
of strangers. Bainunk elite favored marriage ties between local women and Muslim 
migrants because of the prestigious status of Muslim scholars in the Middle Casa-
mance in the period before colonial rule.
The volume also explores the specific circumstances involving Islam, the colonial 
encounter, and the social and material postcolonial consequences. Our purpose is to 
help fully comprehend how these new multilayered and unstable globalized religious 
identities are and will affect multiple sites, including schools, mosques, economic 
sectors and practices, and sexualities. We therefore focus attention on the actual prac-
tices of Muslim groups and individuals in Senegal, the new spaces in which they find 
themselves, the travels between multiple local and cosmopolitan identities in relation 
to different sites of identification: nation, race, class, ethnicity, gender, and so forth. 
As a whole, we seek to address the openings and closures of Muslim group struc-
turing, intellectual and religious formation in local circumstances, the configuration 
of civic public and religious spaces (urban and rural landscapes), and the intersec-
tions of the local and the transnational in a country caught between “Islam and the 
West”24 (clothing, music, education, norms of sexuality, modes of spirituality, etc.). 
For example, carefully tracking objects and subjects of worship and veneration, narra-
tives of remembering and (re)fashioning the saints and their miracles and teachings, 
the institutions of sociability, and transmission of power and discipline, Cleo Cantone, 
Butch Ware, and Glover offer a rich ethnography of the material culture of some of 
the Muslim communities of Senegambia.
The mosque has acted as focal point for and an important marker of Muslim com-
munities’ identities. Its polyvalent role as a place that combined dwelling, prayer, 
tribunal, garrison, and commercial activity in the Medinan period is often extolled by 
so-called reformist movements. According to such a discourse, the mosque does not 
discriminate against race, ethnicity, or gender, instead placing the emphasis on belief 
in the puritanical tenets of Islam in contrast to Sufi groups whose mosques are often 
tariqa-specific. But in architectural terms, the message of this particular discourse is 
not always as clearly advertised from the point of view of the buildings of Islam. 
Cantone explores these debates as well as their effect on the physical act of rebuild-
ing mosques in durable materials (mud mosques replaced by cement and modern 
Middle East–inspired designs) and changes in their spatial organization to accom-
modate women. She examines architecturally various mosques in Senegal (and Mali) 
that facilitate women’s participation by integrating them within the mosque,locating 
them in the courtyard of men’s mosques, or housing them in former men’s mosques 
that were too small for the growing congregation. Other styles of women’s inclusion 
include a loudspeaker or a dark cloth preventing women from seeing or being seen.
In addition the Quranic school (daara) served as the most important institution 
for the production of Muslim sensibilities and identities. Ware argues in this volume 
that Sufi revolutions of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries are illegible with-
out a close examination of Quranic schooling. His chapter is an exploration of the 
religious and cultural meanings produced through the daara as well as an analysis of 
how changing educational dynamics have informed social and political developments 
in historical time. The clerical (marabout) lineages dispensing Islamic education were 
able to build sizeable social constituencies based on their knowledge of the Quran. 
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman10
By the sixteenth century clerical communities had established a modus vivendi with 
secular authorities, but they also came to constitute a threat to extant political author-
ity. From the seventeenth century on, because of the sizeable followings they were 
able to attract, they became a major factor in the political developments of Senegam-
bia. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sufi movements successfully produced 
new forms of social and political order and established Muslim states, dramatically 
altering the political landscape of Senegambia. Ware argues that these processes have 
obscured the ongoing roles Quran schools have played in shaping Muslim societies 
in West Africa.
Since the last century, Quranic schooling has faced a series of new challenges. 
Colonial conquest most directly shaped the clerisy and fate of Quran schools, where 
the fight against Islamic influence, which the French feared as a site for the produc-
tion of anti-French sentiment and jihadist political doctrine, took the shape of an 
educational, rather than military, war. Ware insists on a social Sufi educational revolu-
tion (1880–1920). The efforts of the Muridiyya and Tijaniyya and their new visions 
for Islamic education were critical in changing Sufism from the spiritual quests of 
introspective elites into a moving force for social change. Their control of the rural 
masses was vigorously questioned in the 1940s and 1950s by reform-minded Muslims 
who began their own critiques of the daara. Arabic schools deconstructed existing 
religious hierarchies while also constructing a social constituency for the reformists. In 
the postcolonial period, the Republic of Senegal saw the potential of a controlled and 
co-opted reformist movement that could sap the strength of the Sufi orders, giving 
the state direct access to the populations.
In spite of competition the daara has remained a valued educational option 
because of its complex religious, cultural, and social meanings. Glover’s exploration 
of a branch of the Murid order founded by Sheikh Ibrahima Faty Mbacke (Mame 
Thierno) at Darou Mousty—a noted Murid center for its agricultural and educa-
tional activities—echoes nicely Ware’s discussion of Quranic schooling. He provides 
an exhaustive analysis of the rich, varied, nuanced, and complex Murid identity. At the 
heart of his chapter is the examination of the production of Murid historical narratives 
and the establishment of an “economy of knowledge”25 that has been shaping a fluid 
and symbiotic identity. Glover argues that the historical events or trends addressed 
and interpreted by these sources confound the usual bifurcation of global and local 
historical forces and influences. He notes that the construction and interpretation of 
historical narratives among both elite and common Murids act to preserve as well as 
redefine the past to produce an identity capable of dealing with and incorporating 
further change. Glover examines the construction of Murid historical narratives as a 
form of architecture that reflects and contributes to collective and individual Murid 
identities. Through oral and written sources he addresses Murid interpretations of 
modernity through their creation of a historical text that positions the order within 
a complex narrative of Islamic reform, Sufism, European colonization, and postco-
lonial nation-state building and globalization. By describing two different modern 
events—the inauguration of a new French-built mechanized well and pumping sta-
tion (recorded by the colonial administration as an example of the material benefits 
of colonization and a validation of the civilizing mission) and the Murid construction 
of a grand mosque in the town—Glover unveils how they take on a complementary 
hybrid meaning rather than one of opposition, because the well came to be as much 
a Murid symbol of modernity as the mosque. He focuses on how the production 
and employment of historical narratives shed light on the composition and meanings 
of alternative modernities and adapts Foucault’s interpretation of modernity to the 
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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal 11
experiences of Murid disciples in Senegal in the early twentieth century. In contrast 
to the relegation of Sufi orders to a historical anachronism incapable of change and 
inherently an antimodern other, Glover has shown how Murid modernity looks to 
both the past and the future in its perception of how global and local historical forces 
have combined to help share a contemporary understanding of the order in history 
among its notables and disciples.
Focusing on women, Buggenhagen and Augis likewise precisely examine the com-
bining of local and global forces in shaping the presence and actions of Murid and 
Sunni movements. Globalization is increasingly being defined by new structures and 
changing conditions of modernity, the processes of accelerating economic interactions, 
the intensification of commodification and consumer culture,26 the shifting nature of 
the public sphere, the changing role of nation and national identity, the growth and 
affect of immigration, and the new relations and dynamics made possible by technol-
ogy. In accordance with these global trends within Islam elsewhere in the world, 
Islam in Senegal has also been affected by multiple factors related to the conditions 
of modernity.27 The Murids have been taking advantage of literacy and technology 
(computers) in the context of migration to shape a Murid library, claiming autonomy 
from the Arab world and global Islam while pursuing a project of a vernacular cosmo-
politanism and modernity.28 The changing parameters of the imagined communities 
have been reshaping the conditions of Islam in Senegal, leading to the emergence of 
Orthodox Sunni Islam29 and even Shi’a Islam,30 imposing a new dialogue and conflict 
with Sufi orders around issues of fashion and the appropriate ways of dressing (in par-
ticular for women), praying, greetings, interacting, and acting politically.
Buggenhagen examines Murid insertion into the global economy in the context of 
neoliberal economic reform in Senegal in the 1990s through two interlocking circuits 
of exchange. First is the circuit of blessings into which disciples enter through offerings 
to Murid hierarchy, blessings that are at once spiritual and material, what she refers to 
as concrete wealth and the cementing of social relationships. These include offerings 
of labor, cash, crops, or livestock to the spiritual hierarchy during pilgrimages and 
contributing to the building of Touba’s mosque and infrastructure, including build-
ing homes in Touba. The second is the circuit of honor into which men and women 
enter through gifts of cloth, cash, and merchant goods during family ceremonies, 
which she refers to as corporal wealth. Buildingon recent work on the new African 
and Muslim migration to the United States and Europe,31 she discusses the conditions 
through which Senegalese Murids seek their livelihoods abroad and the implications 
for the lives they seek to construct at home in Senegal. She illuminates how men and 
women construct and adorn domestic interiors and exteriors, bodies, and fashions 
to defy the potential for loss inherent in the desire to circulate valued objects and 
invest value in others (children, affines, etc.) to project themselves and their vision 
for their community into the future, reenvisioning the state and social services. While 
men invested in cement bricks and land, women invested in cloth and dressing well, 
which symbolized their productive and reproductive potential. Unlike offerings made 
to religious clergy, gifts of cloth to female kin ensured an eventual replacement to 
themselves or their offspring that would form the basis of future wealth and lineage 
continuity. Hard objects (gifts to religious leaders) signified submission, whereas soft 
objects (textiles) indicated the desire to keep something back from the pressure to 
give. Hence the debate about cloth among Murid adepts was not merely about con-
spicuous consumption among the faithful but about women’s authority in the ritual 
sphere and thereby the creation of new centers of authority and the production of 
sociocultural difference.
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman12
By carefully tracking and documenting the role and importance of women in the 
disciple–sheikh relationship,32 Buggenhagen draws attention to the forms of wealth 
and value they control to find evidence of a more complex landscape of spiritual 
authority. She argues that women contribute considerably to the order through tuy-
aaba (the search for religious merit), offerings of cooked food on ritual occasions, 
and gifts given during life cycle rituals (marriage, naming ceremonies, and funerals). 
The meticulous restoration of the role of women in the success of the Muridiyya, 
from analyzing their ability to mobilize and organize followers to engaging with the 
debates and controversies (in the communities of disciples and scholars) about wom-
en’s ritual practices, contribution to gift giving and receiving as well as demands for 
valued objects for family ceremonies, enable Buggenhagen to move away from the 
political economy tradition and critically engage with approaches more sensitive to 
gender.33 Like Ware, Glover, and Dramé, she faults the emphasis of the literature on 
religious leaders and not on the mass of disciples for ignoring the importance of mar-
riage, birth, and funerary rituals on Islam in West Africa.
Following the same lines as Buggenhagen, Augis draws our attention to the jux-
taposition of historical, local, and global Islamic codes for behavior. She argues that 
Dakar women’s participation in Sunni orthodoxy is a simultaneous engagement with 
personal spiritual cultivation, local activism, and a feeling of solidarity with orthodox 
Muslims worldwide. She focuses on the dialectic of the spiritual and the political for 
female adherents at three interwoven levels of Sunnite Islam—the self, local activism, 
and the transnational imaginary—examining the tensions and conflicts generated by 
the articulation by young Senegalese women of alternative codes regarding religious 
rituals and social interactions to challenge mainstream rules about feminism, seduc-
tion, and proper attitudes. Augis describes the public discourse comparing veiled and 
unveiled women (those who wear miniskirts and expose their navels, or jumbax-out), 
precisely tracking the move toward recasting dating, love, and marriage in light of the 
desires of Sunnite women to improve their spirituality according to the movement’s 
standards for religious ceremonies and male–female relationships as well as in inten-
tional defiance of their parents’ expectations and Sufi customs. In addition to nego-
tiating global orthodox discourses and challenging Senegalese social norms, female 
adherents adapt Sunnite leaders’ teachings on polygamy, the family code, and marital 
gender roles in ways that uphold orthodox values while fitting their desires for eco-
nomic independence and romantic love.
Augis documents how Sunnite women are caught in between universal canons 
of their faith and political affiliation with a global movement, and their local plans 
for marriage in the name of private spirituality, national programs, and awareness of 
Senegal’s international position as a Muslim country. They exhibited conflicting dis-
courses on polygamy, birth control, and work outside the home, which highlight their 
private efforts to adhere to orthodox values and accommodate their personal desires 
for love, sexuality, and often also economic independence. They view themselves as 
moral militants in solidarity with a global Muslim diaspora under siege by western 
world hegemonies. In this context African women’s local discourses and actions about 
veiling and marriage illuminate the dialectics of political and spiritual agency in pri-
vate, local, and global spheres of Islamist religiosity.
The two last chapters by Roman Loimeier and Samson bring the volume to close 
with their exploration of the political realm and the presence of religious groups in 
the context of the proliferation of political organizations. The end of the ndiggel 34 
in the last elections seems to indicate that more room is opened to younger disciples 
seeking new social and political imaginaries. Thus in the new Sufi practices in Senegal, 
pal-diouf-00int.indd 12pal-diouf-00int.indd 12 08/11/11 1:49:31 pm08/11/11 1:49:31 pm
New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal 13
Islam always narrowly overlaps in the country’s social and political affairs. The two 
chapters are properly located in moments of crisis and confrontation to investigate 
the structure of political power, authority, and the form, level, and grammar of politi-
cal participation, demarcating the boundaries of community (tariqa) and permissible 
political behavior. How the lines of authority, styles, and languages of leadership as 
well as boundaries of community have been expressed and challenged are central to 
the interrogations put forth in the last two chapters.35
Loimeier examines the recent dramatic changes in Senegal. These changes have 
led to a remarkable proliferation of political groups. In the presidential elections of 
2000, for instance, more than forty-five parties took part in the campaign, and the 
Sopi coalition of Abdoulaye Wade alone rallied forty-one political groups. At the 
same time, the number of Islamic associations has expanded considerably and even 
marabouts have tried to position themselves in the sphere of politics. Despite a strong 
reformist religious discourse in the late 1980s, religion has not become a major topic 
of Senegal’s political agenda. Loimeier closely studies the dialectics of religion and 
politics in Senegal’s recent history and tries to explain why religion has not become 
a pervading or even hegemonic element of the Senegalese public sphere, despite the 
fact that politicians have sought religious legitimization for their policies. The Senega-
lese state has always seen religious leaders as important translators of state politics into 
local realities, despite the fact that religious actors have tried to position themselves 
prominently in the political arena.
Samson nicely complements Loimeier’s chapter in proposing a case study on the 
Tijan Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Murid Mouvement Mondial 
pour l’Unicité de Dieu as Sufi movements influenced by ideas of reform and prod-
ucts of modernity and globalization. The Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat 
and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu have settled in urban spaces and 
address themselves exclusively to a youngaudience, aiming to gradually transform 
society. Both movements are built on the same pyramidal model organizing disciples 
successively from neighborhood to town to region, under their two leaders, Mou-
stapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke. Both young leaders bring together political and 
religious discourses so that they reinforce one another. By strongly connecting reli-
gious visions and political perspectives forged exclusively through the language of 
their respective religious orders, Sy and Mbacke have been successful in establishing 
an uncontestable authority among their disciples.
Through Islamic education spanning proper behavior, speech, and dress, to classes 
in family planning, cooking, and handcrafts, these movements become microsocieties 
in which the faithful experience a community life governed by Islam and the prin-
ciples of their order. The politicization of the two leaders derives directly from their 
religious legitimacy. Because Islam encompasses all facets of Muslims’ lives, disciples 
see no conflict between their spiritual leaders’ religious, social, and political responsi-
bilities. Moustapha Sy entered the political field in 1993. His originality was in sup-
porting President Abdou Diouf’s opposition, which led to his imprisonment. Modou 
Kara Mbacke’s first political act in 2000, to the disapproval of his followers, supported 
Abdou Diouf and the party in power, and not the Murid-led opposition. In 1999 
Moustapha Sy rallied his movement to the Parti de l’Unité et du Rassemblement, of 
which he became president. In 2004 Mbacke created his own party, the Parti de la 
Vérité pour le Développement. During the last presidential elections of 2007, both 
leaders refused to contribute to their own parties: Mbacke supported the government 
in position, while Sy supported the opposition.
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman14
Examination of the chapters in this collection suggests the fabrication of new struc-
tures and conditions of Islam in Senegal through the multiple and changing forma-
tions of Muslim identities and their social, economic, cultural, political and intellectual 
expressions, within local and global dynamics and their intersections, has been under-
way for decades. The chapters illustrate the complex and constantly revised processes, 
languages, fashion, and buildings through which Islamic groups and thoughts forge 
new spaces of affiliation, movement, ideas, and so on; meanwhile they contest, rede-
fine, or disdain older sites and intellectual territories to negotiate diversity, ambigui-
ties, and uncertainties of everyday life in Senegal. Islam in Senegal has been affected 
by multiple factors related to the conditions of modernity, the increasing globalization 
of the economy, the intensification of commoditization and consumerism, the growth 
of immigration, and the powerful effect of the new technology of information and 
communication, which have radically transformed the geography of Islam in Senegal. 
The shifting nature of the public sphere and its re-Islamization,36 forming a public 
Islam37 and a constant reconfiguration of the domestic space, brought the double 
challenge of globalizing a local Islam while indigenizing its global counterparts. This 
volume brings to light these new religious movements, textualities, public and private 
discourses, sexuality, fashion, and behavior, as well as the new historical and territorial 
horizons that have been shaping the meaning and configuration of religious identifica-
tions in contemporary Senegal. It creatively contributes to the growing body of stud-
ies that have attempted to shift the focus away from functional explanations based on 
rigid political economy approaches and toward cultural and phenomenological ques-
tions. Revisionist histories of the brotherhoods and explorations of today’s growth of 
reformist groups and their transformations, and especially their attraction for youth 
and women, have blurred the distinction between Sufis and reformists, leaving Islam 
noir and the other binaries of the past defunct analytical categories.
Notes
 Many of the chapters in this volume were presented in a double panel at the Novem-
ber 2006 African Studies Association annual meeting in San Francisco. We would like to 
thank Robert Launay (Northwestern University) and Eva Evers-Rosander (Uppsala Uni-
versity) for serving as excellent discussants and for their valuable feedback on this project. 
Mara Leichtman is much obliged to the Intramural Research Grants Program, the Muslim 
Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University for 
enabling her to be on leave during the 2007–2008 academic year, when the editing of this 
book took place. She benefited greatly from visiting fellowships at both the Zentrum Mod-
erner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin, Germany, and the International Institute for the Study of 
Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, the Netherlands, during this time. She is also 
extremely grateful to Peter Mandaville and the Center for Global Studies at George Mason 
University for providing her with a laptop computer and office space during an unexpected 
lengthy stay in the Washington DC area which was crucial for completing the writing of 
this introduction on a tight deadline. Mamadou Diouf to the Center for AfroAmerican 
and African Studies of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for supporting his participa-
tion in this project; Mara Leichtman and Aly Dramé for organizing the two panels at the 
November 2006 African Studies Association annual meeting in San Francisco; and the 
Columbia University Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures and the Institute of 
African Studies for assisting in the production of the book. We would like to thank our 
editor, Luba Ostashevsky, and her team, Colleen Lawrie, Rachel Tekula, and Daniel Con-
stantino, for assisting us throughout the tedious process of producing a collective book 
with grace, patience, and competence.
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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal 15
 1. Robinson suggests that the two processes (Islamization and Africanization) “were at work: 
first the extension of something that Africans and outsiders would recognize as Islam, and 
second, the ‘rooting’ of that faith in Africa” (Muslim Societies in African History, 27).
 2. Whitehouse, Arguments and Icons.
 3. The early literature labeled the Sufi orders brotherhoods. Later critiques have noted the 
gender discrimination inherent in this term, especially as certain scholars studied the role 
of women in Sufi Islam (see Buggenhagen, chapter 8 in this volume). We use the term 
brotherhood when discussing this early literature, but later refer more generally to the Sufi 
orders.
 4. Marty, Etudes sur L’Islam au Sénégal.
 5. See Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal and Saints and Politicians; Beck, “Reining in 
the Marabouts?”; Gellar, Senegal: An African Nation; Villalón, Islamic Society and State 
Power in Senegal.
 6. Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad.
 7. Robinson and Triaud, eds, Le Temps des Marabouts.
 8. Searing, “God Alone is King.”
 9. Whitehouse, Arguments and Icons.
 10. Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History.
 11. Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa; Willis, “Foot Soldiers of Modernity.”
 12. The originaires are also called the inhabitants. Although they received citizenship rights 
very early, including the right to vote, they constantly refused to submit themselves to the 
French Civil Code for religious reasons. They thereby were able to conserve their “particu-
lar status” by permanently reinforcing this religious identity. On this question, see Diouf, 
“The French Colonial Policy.”
 13. On this distinct culture, see Le Châtelier, L’Islam dans l’Afrique Occidentale, in particular 
chapter 4, and Boilat, Esquisses Sénégalaises.14. Concerning the history of trade and the diasporas of trade, see the following works: Cohen, 
“Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas”; Curtin, “Economic 
Change in Precolonial Africa”; Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola; and Lovejoy, Salt of the Desert 
Sun.
 15. This notion goes back to the historical approach to the definition of civic culture, “a set of 
orientations towards a specific set of social objects and processes” (Almond and Verba, The 
Civic Culture, 12), and the particular characteristics of a civic community, “active participa-
tion in public affairs; equal rights and obligations for all; respect and trust between mem-
bers, and, finally, the embodiment of these qualities in voluntary associations” (Putnam, 
Making Democracy Work, 86–91) tested by Ruth Watson (Civil Disorder is the Disease, 
3–4), questioning the origin and the development in time of norms and values covered by 
the two notions.
 16. See Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, in particular Chapters 5 and 6.
 17. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, notably chapter 1.
 18. The best illustrations are the transcription of the Wolof language with Arabic characters 
and the genealogical reconstructions that tie the notable Northern Senegambian Islamic 
families to those of first Arab communities that joined prophet Mohammad.
 19. Leichtman, A Tale of Two Shi’isms.
 20. Rosander, “Introduction: The Islamization.”
 21. Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power, “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation,” 
and “The Moustarchidine of Senegal”; Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam; Keddie, 
Iran and the Muslim World.
 22. Horton, “African Conversion,” “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part I,” and “On the 
Rationality of Conversion, Part II”; Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered.”
 23. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba.
 24. Gellar, Senegal: An African Nation.
 25. Cohen and Odhiambo, The Risk of Knowledge.
 26. Buggenhagen, At Home in the Black Atlantic.
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Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman16
 27. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Knauft, Critically Modern: Alternatives; Deeb, An 
Enchanted Modern.
 28. Diouf, “The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora.”
 29. Augis, Dakar’s Sunnite Women.
 30. Leichtman, A Tale of Two Shi’isms.
 31. Metcalf, Making Muslim Space; Diouf, “The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora”; Reynolds 
and Youngstedt, “Globalization and African Ethnoscapes”; Soares, Islam and the Prayer 
Economy; Stoller, Money Has No Smell.
 32. A role and importance neglected in the literature.
 33. She disagrees with Rosander in that the disciple-sheikh relationship does not “cut through 
family ties.”
 34. Sufi leaders enjoining their disciples to vote for specific candidates during elections.
 35. Variable visions, imaginaries and references (scriptural or oral) mean that ideas about where 
to locate authority and legitimacy are available.
 36. Esposito and Burgat, Modernizing Islam.
 37. Salvatore and Eickelman, Public Islam and the Common Good.
Bibliography
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Nations. London: Sage Publications, 1989.
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of Sociology, University of Chicago, 2002.
Babou, Cheikh Anta. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridi-
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Beck, Linda. “Reining in the Marabouts? Democratization and Local Governance in Senegal.” 
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Cohen, Abner. “Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas.” In The Devel-
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Oxford, 1972.
———. Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns. 
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———. Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organisation of a Senegalese Peasant Society. London: 
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Curtin, Philip D. Economic Change in Precolonial Africa, Senegambia in the Era of the Slave 
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Deeb, Lara. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: Princ-
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Diouf, Mamadou. “The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Origi-
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———.“The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitan-
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Europe and the Middle East. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2003.
Fisher, Humphrey J. “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects of Religious Conver-
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Gellar, Sheldon. Senegal: An African Nation between Islam and the West. Boulder, CO: Westview 
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Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cam-
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———. “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part II.” Africa 45, no. 4 (1975): 373–99.
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Kepel, Gilles. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. London: I. B. Tauris, 2002.
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P a r t 1
4
Histories, Ethnographies, and 
Pedagogies of Isl am
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C h a p t e r 1
4
The Longue Durée of Quran 
Schooling, Society, and 
State in Senegambia
Rudolph T. Ware, III (University of Michigan)
It should be known that instructing children in the Quran is a symbol 
of Islam. Muslims have, and practice, such instruction in all their cities, 
because it imbues hearts with a firm belief (in Islam) and its articles of 
faith, which are (derived) from verses of the Quran and certain Prophetic 
traditions. The Quran has become the basis of instruction, the foundation for 
all habits that may be acquired later on . . . The character of the foundation 
determines the condition of the building.
—Ibn Khaldun1
This chapter is a narrative of the history of the Quran school (daara/dudal) in 
Senegambia and, later, in Senegal. It is based on primary documentation and a wide 
reading of secondary works on the social, political, religious, and cultural history of 
Senegambia.2 In these pages I explore the social location of Quran schooling from the 
precolonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Islam has been an important 
part of Senegambia since the eleventh century, but it is only one factor that has given 
a certain analytical integrity to the region. The major ethnic groups in contemporary 
Senegambia share intertwined social and political histories stretching back to at least 
the thirteenth century. Speakers of Pular, Wolof, Sereer, Manding, and Soninke all 
mingled in Senegambia, and they had many similar (but not identical) social and 
political institutions. With the exception of many Sereer speakers, all belong to a 
broader distribution of societies containing lineages of royal, free, slave, and casted 
origins.3 Although all the major polities formed in Senegambia in the past millennium 
seem to have had an ethnic core, they were multiethnic states with enough aspects of 
shared social organization that mobility between ethnic groups was often more fluid 
than between social categories.
pal-diouf-01.indd 21pal-diouf-01.indd 21 08/10/09 7:15:24 pm08/10/09 7:15:24 pm
Rudolph T. Ware, III22
Teachers of Islam had to make themselves and their faith relevant to transmit 
Islamic knowledge. This was no easy task. But they were, in the long view, extremely 
successful; institutions of Islamic education multiplied throughout the region, pro-
viding networks of regional integration and, ultimately, a framework for collective 
identity. The success of the clerical educational enterprise is reflected in the pre-
dominantly Muslim religious identities of Senegambian peoples. Of the groups men-
tioned earlier, only the Sereer—and some Mande speakers on the eastern fringes 
of Senegambia—have continued to practice a clearly discernible, coherent form of 
“traditional African religion” since the seventeenth century CE.4 The twentieth cen-
tury brought changes to the human landscape of Senegambia. The region was finally 
pacified by the French at the end of the nineteenth century, and it became a part of 
the colony of Senegal. Senegalese Muslims had to use schooling in new ways in an 
ongoing struggle to define and debate the meanings of Islam in an ever-changing 
world. This process was not new. Quran schools were key sites in the production of 
Muslim identities long before French conquest, and as such they were grounds for 
important social and political struggles. Quran schooling has been the subject of 
much recent controversy in Senegal and beyond, but these recent developments can 
only begin to take their full meaning within a longer narrative beginning deep in the 
precolonial past.
The School in Precolonial Senegambia: 
1000 to 1850
Islam arrived in Senegambia at least a thousand years ago and, we might imagine, so 
did the Quran school. No conquering army forced Islam on War Jabi, king of Takrur; 
his death in 1040 CE preceded the supposed Almoravid invasion of Ghana a few years 
later. His conversion is the first in the written history of West Africa, and the earliest 
mention of Islam in Senegambia.5 In turn War Jabi reportedly converted the people 
of his kingdom on the banks of the Senegal River, but we are left to wonder by what 
means he accomplished this. The larger question of how Islam was spread through-
out Western Africa has long been debated. Colonial observers often preferred dra-
matic and racially charged images of turbaned Arab warriors stirring the blacks from 
their prehistoric slumber, bringing them into Islam—and history—by the sword.6 In 
the past four decades less dramatic, more reasoned, academic interpretations of the 
growth of Islam in West Africa have stressed the function of merchants in expanding 
and establishing the faith. There is good evidence for the commercial argument, but 
there is an important body of research that suggests we ought to pay more attention 
to the proselytizing role of Muslim clerics—teachers, preachers, and healers—in the 
development of Islam in West Africa.7
By the twelfth or thirteenth century, some West Africans were making a calling of 
Quran instruction and developing into a distinct clerisy.8 The development of a local 
West African scholarly tradition in the imperial centers of Ghana and Mali was well 
under way by the twelfth century and may already have been the predominant force 
in proselytizing. The Tarikh al-Sudan, al-Sadi’s famous historical chronicle penned 
in Timbuktu in the first halfof the seventeenth century, mentions that from the 
founding of the city around 1100 CE until 1470 CE the imams in the great mosque 
and the leading scholars were Sudani. Similarly, in Ibn Battuta’s travel account he 
mentions the depth of the Sudani scholarly tradition focused around two towns of 
old Ghana, which were part of the empire of Mali as he wrote. Jagha and Kabara, he 
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 23
noted, were centers of scholarship centuries old in Islam. It is this same Jagha that 
gave birth to the Jaghanke, or Jakhanke clerical tradition. Similarly, Kabara produced 
several leading scholars and imams, including one Muhammad al-Kabari eulogized in 
the Sudanese Tarikhs as the tutor of hundreds of leading scholars including many that 
came to study with him from a number of Arab countries. Seemingly emerging from 
the Saraxolle and Manding worlds, the imprint of this earliest wave of scholarship is 
yet to be fully documented, but tantalizing hints suggest that this early wave of Sudani 
scholarship was foundational in Senegambia proper. Certainly, Takruri intellectuals 
had a part to play in these earliest developments, and the notable presence of Sarax-
olle and Manding place names throughout the eastern regions of Senegambia may 
be another sign of early eastern Sudani interconnections. In recent research in Futa 
Toro in northern Senegal and southern Mauritania, some clerical families claimed a 
tradition of continuous instruction reaching back to the fifteenth century and before. 
In the village of Pate Gallo, for example, oral tradition records that the descendants 
of Njuga Bah taught Quran around the same hearth from the early fifteenth century 
until the end of the twentieth, when a landslide on the river’s edge forced them to 
move the school a few yards away.9
Documentary sources of all kinds confirm that by the fifteenth century, Islamic 
education was firmly established in Senegambia, and making further gains. The Vene-
tian Alvise de Ca Da Mosto visited the court of the Dammel of Kajoor between 1455 
and 1457 and found Sanhaja clerics instructing the king and his court in Islamic law.10 
Ca Da Mosto described neither Quran schools, nor a black clerisy, but we should not 
presume their absence. Several oral historical sources claim both for this period, as 
do documentary sources from Sereer and Manding settlements in Joal, Siin, and the 
area of the Gambia River.11 Portuguese Jesuit Beltesar Barreira left a description of 
schooling in the latter region in 1608: “In these settlements they have mosques, and 
the bexerins [Portuguese. Muslim cleric, Wolof. serign]12 form schools in which they 
teach reading and writing in the Arabic script, which is what they use in their amulets 
. . . When one of the bexerins visits either this kingdom or any other which accepts 
their religion, as happens annually, he is received and respected as if he came from 
heaven. Among those accompanying him are some youths who are under instruction 
and these daily write their lessons and read them out aloud.”13 The foundation of a 
major school at Pir in the Sañoxoor province of Kajoor probably dates back to this 
early period (1603) and another important center for Islamic learning was founded in 
Kokki a century later.14 In the Wolof heartlands of Senegambia, the educational activi-
ties of the local clerisy were central to the spread of Islamic thought and practice. In 
other words, the Quran school in West Africa was a stimulus for—and result of—the 
expansion of Islamic religious culture.
Clerical Lineages
Islamic schools did not, of course, inscribe themselves into empty social spaces. Mus-
lim teachers had to find a professional niche for their calling within a social order that 
had been taking shape over many centuries. In Senegambia, as in many parts of the 
Western Sudan, this meant negotiating a place within a social order consisting of roy-
alty (garmi), the freeborn (géer), slaves (jaam), and endogamous occupational groups 
usually referred to as castes (ñeeño). In this broader social framework, specialization 
in the arts and sciences of religion was reproduced within specific forms that Louis 
Brenner has characterized as Muslim lineages:
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Rudolph T. Ware, III24
[Muslim lineages] seem to have emerged as forms of Islamic socio-political organiza-
tion in contexts that were deeply informed by lineage ideologies and where the regional 
political economy was organized as a collection of various hereditary occupation groups 
(Tamari 1991, 1997). In this context, ‘Islam’ functioned almost as a kind of hereditary 
craft, the expert practitioners of which provided various religious services such as prayer, 
divination, healing, teaching, etc., to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. And like 
other hereditary occupation groups, the Muslim lineages constituted semi-autonomous 
polities with their own social structures, systems of production and reproduction, while 
occupying a specific niche in the wider political economy.15
Not unlike casted ñeeño families, these clerical lineages,16 constructed their distinctive-
ness through their professional activities.
Seeing clerical lineages as an extension of the logic of occupational casting in West-
ern Africa draws attention to the functional elements of their professional activities. 
The ñeeño provided essential services outside of their groups to maintain a clientele 
and earn a living. They transmitted technical and ritual expertise that was conceived of 
as dangerous within endogamous lineages, thereby reproducing themselves as a social 
category. Clerical lineages performed similar functions. They acted on the invisible 
world with techniques and technologies derived from the Quran, and taught esoteric 
sciences (xam-xami batin) within their own social category as a means of in-group 
reproduction. They healed individuals and communities, manufactured amulets, and 
used their literacy in the service of individuals and temporal authorities. All these 
activities were crucial to the development and maintenance of a clientele. But nothing 
assured it in the same way as teaching the Quran.
Teaching the Quran to out-groups cultivated belief in Islam and promoted its 
practice. It led to the production of Muslim sensibilities, which supported faith 
in the efficacy and usefulness of Quranic manipulation of the visible and invisible 
worlds. Teaching the Quran was the basis for all the other professional activities of 
the clerisy. Further, the book itself was the foundation of all secret knowledge. As 
among the ñeeño, secrecy had its value for clerical lineages, and higher instruction in 
the advanced exoteric and esoteric sciences often seemed to be transmitted mainly 
within the clerisy, functioning as a gatekeeping mechanism.17 Teaching was not only 
a means for transmitting and controlling knowledge. Teacher-disciple relationships 
combined with marriage ties to form the very foundation of the clerisy. In clerical 
families spiritual and biological genealogies were interwoven, tying men of religion 
throughout Senegambia to one another and to their analogs throughout the Sudan 
and the Sahara.18
The relationship suggested here between clerical and ñeeño lineages is one of anal-
ogy, not identity. Clerical lineages seem to have discriminated against ñeeño as much 
as the broader society, and had little use for griots because they were simply a differ-
ent sort of discursive intellectuals.19 The clerisy was dominated by “freeborn” géer 
lineages, but was composed of various elements of Senegambian society including 
ñeeño and jaam, as well as royal elements.20 This social amalgamation placed the 
clerisy both within and outside the logic of ascribed status. They operated within the 
logic of birth insofar as the educationalministry of the clerics was aimed primarily 
at the freeborn, to the near exclusion of jaam and ñeeño; but individuals from these 
groups could come to prominence through unusual educational achievement.21 They 
operated outside this logic in that the clerisy encompassed families of free and noble 
lineage while also constituting a category apart.
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 25
The presence of some high noble families within the clerisy, and the prominent 
(and well-documented) role of clerics in royal courts did not mean the clerisy had 
access to political authority. Until the seventeenth century, clerical lineages were in 
positions of clientage to secular rulers who identified themselves as Muslims but were 
distinguished by a hedonistic, aristocratic, lifestyle, and social identity.22 Clerics pro-
vided Islamic education and other services to rulers in exchange for gifts, the accep-
tance of which likely had specific connotations of weakness and subjection in the 
context of patronage and dependency. They could also seek alms—as could ñeeño 
and jaam—an act interpreted by royals as a sign of weakness and a social blight. Still, 
the prominence of freeborn, and even noble, lineages within the clerisy gave them a 
political legitimacy that was not enjoyed by ñeeño or jaam.23
Communities of the Quran
Many clerics lived in peasant communities where they taught the Quran and provided 
services based on its powers to Muslims and non-Muslims. Some clerics lived in prox-
imity to rulers and worked for them. But the social segregation of clerical lineages was 
often residential as well.24 Many clerics lived in settlements centered around Quran 
school farms. These settlements were spatially separated from one another but tied 
together by links of schooling, blood, and trade. Jean Schmitz has called these com-
munities “Maraboutic heterotopias”: “The ‘nodes’ of this network are formed from 
. . . villages, which draw from the tradition of the free city distant from power as well 
as that of the daara where the precepts of the Quran organize the smallest details of 
daily life. The predominance of relations proceeding from the Quranic school lead us 
to speak of a heterotopia to distinguish this type of social organization from ordinary 
villages.”25
Although noble lineages probably conceived of residential segregation as a means 
of social and political quarantine—the extension of the segregation of casted lin-
eages—it resulted in a certain amount of autonomy for religious communities. Seg-
regation always has the potential of becoming congregation. In this case, rather than 
producing isolation, it led to a dispersed network of interconnected clerical communi-
ties. In relatively autonomous settlements centered on agricultural production (using 
student—and, to a lesser extent, slave—labor), Quranic instruction, and trade, some 
clerical lineages found the possibility of developing an extensive and morally com-
mitted clientele.26 In a world where patron–client ties structured all political relation-
ships, the ability to attract and maintain a following made the clerisy a potential rival 
to secular, hereditary powers. In the Wolof states, the royalty attempted to control 
this fact by systematically excluding the serigns from any political office and by enforc-
ing endogamy within their ranks.27 In Senegambia (and southern Sahara) clerical 
communities had established, by the sixteenth century, a modus vivendi with secular 
authorities; they enjoyed relative autonomy within kingdoms led by secular, military 
aristocracies in exchange for political marginalization. But there were multiple social 
and political logics operating. Alms seeking could be interpreted by garmi (royalty) 
as a mark of dependency and social blight, but the clerisy could read it within Islamic 
traditions of ascetism, piety, and poverty, thereby inscribing it with different mean-
ings. The clerisy could interpret distance as autonomy, pious distance from power, 
or even dissidence. Within Islamic legal texts (studied and taught in their schools), 
they found arguments rejecting their political subjugation to secular rulers of dubious 
Islamic pedigree. The Quran school was the ideological, social, and economic engine 
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Rudolph T. Ware, III26
of political independence. In the words of one scholar, “The development of these 
daara was to have considerable consequences. It led to the emergence and consoli-
dation of a religious aristocracy of marabouts which, from the XVIIth century, got 
involved in turn in domestic political and social problems, [and] asserted itself as a 
center of countervailing power.”28
Throughout Senegambia, these communities of the Quran came to constitute a 
threat to extant political authority. The rivalry was to come to its logical end repeat-
edly over the next three centuries. The first major conflagration began in the 1670s 
when Nasir Al-Din launched his reform movement in the southern Sahara, and it 
spread into Futa Toro and the Wolof states to the south.29 According to European 
observers contemporary to the movement, it had a broad popular base. This is a testa-
ment to the extent of clerical success in teaching the Quran and cultivating Muslim 
identities among the people. It is also evidence of widespread disenchantment with 
increasingly authoritarian, slave-raiding regimes, marked by the royalty’s pillaging 
slave warriors (ceddo).30 Subsequent conflicts, conventionally termed “jihads,” first in 
Bundu in 1690 then in various West African contexts throughout the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries can be understood as expressions of the political contradiction 
between secular and religious authorities in West Africa. At the heart of the clerical 
enterprise was the Quran school, which shaped political conflicts at another level as 
well: “In Mauritania and Senegambia, there was a network of rural schools, at which 
the Koran and certain important works of technology and law were studied. The 
more learned marabouts studied at different schools. Some of these schools seem to 
have played an important revolutionary role. Thus, according to Futa Toro traditions, 
all of the major leaders of the 1776 torodbe revolt studied at Pir Saniokhor in Cayor 
[Kajoor].”31 Senegambian Muslims made, remade, and even revolutionized their soci-
eties through schooling.
The nineteenth-century jihads can be seen as an expression of the fundamental 
social and political conflict between the Quranic clerisy and political elites.32 Because 
of the prominence of Qadr and Tijan identities as organizing principles in the move-
ments of Usman dan Fodio and Umar Tal, respectively, it was once thought that a 
reformist strain of Sufism played a central role in the jihads. More recent analyses 
question this presumption.33 Any reformist tendencies inhered in Sufi discourses in 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were grafted onto this older political conflict 
between kings and clerics. Sufism became an element that helped shape the conflict 
between the clerics and the court. In the eighteenth century, the Kunta clan began 
to shape the Sufi order from an association of mystics into a hierarchical religious 
organization held together by the baraka of the Sufi sheikh himself.34 The Kunta 
Sufi movement in the Southern Sahara can in part be read as a response to political 
marginalization of the zwaya clerical lineages that had been disarmed by the hasan 
warrior lineages after Nasir Al-Din. The social and political dynamic in the Southern 
Sahara mirrored the divide between secular and religious authorities throughout West 
Africa. This fact must have helped demonstrate the relevance of the tariqa model in 
the Sudan.35
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sufi movements had famous suc-cess producing new forms of social and political order in Senegambia and beyond. 
Similarly, jihad states profoundly altered the political landscape. Both processes have 
obscured the age-old, elemental, and ongoing roles Quran schools have played in 
shaping Muslim societies in Senegambia and West Africa.
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 27
Jamano Tubaab
Europeans played a role in shaping the conflict between kings and clerics beginning 
with their earliest voyages off the Saharan and Senegambian coast in the middle of 
the fifteenth century. The Atlantic trade fundamentally altered older economic and 
political patterns. As the coastal trade came to be dominated by slave trading, these 
transformations accelerated. In Senegambia, the Jolof empire—which had previously 
encompassed all the Wolof polities and, at times, neighboring states as well—disinte-
grated into several smaller states with increasingly centralized and predatory political 
and economic systems. The clerisy had developed within this context of slave-raiding 
and slave-trading states. The tuubanaan revolution was in large part a response to 
the depredations of the slave trade. This is clear in Chambonneau’s contemporary 
account of the movement, which contains the following summary of the content of 
Nasir Al-Din’s justification for jihad: “God in no way permits Kings to pillage, kill, 
nor make captives of their people, but to the contrary, [he enjoins kings] to maintain 
them and protect them from their Enemies, the people not being made for the Kings, 
but the Kings for the people.”36 Of course in Islamic law, Muslim leaders too were 
able to find justification for slavery and slaving.37 Indeed, in Senegambia during the 
era of the Atlantic trade, it would have been quite impossible for them to develop a 
viable political or economic basis without it. But all understandings of Islam forbade 
the enslavement of free Muslim peasants, which was happening on a significant scale 
in both Wolof- and Pular-speaking zones. Clerical communities drew followers in 
large part because of their capacity to serve as safe havens in an era dominated by 
slaving aristocracies.
But the act of European agency that most directly shaped the political and social 
possibilities of the clerisy as well as the fate of Quran schools was colonial conquest. In 
the 1850s Louis Faidherbe began to conquer the mainland with diplomacy and war; 
his successors had completed the process by the beginning of the twentieth century. 
Colonial domination destroyed the basis of garmi authority. The royals’ claims to 
power had always been based, in principle, on hereditary political expertise, and in 
practice, on force. The French had picked the royalty apart with diplomacy, belying 
the myth of their competence; and more importantly, they crushed their ceddo slave 
warriors militarily.38 The segments of the clerisy that opted for jihads and formed 
states suffered a similar fate.
The garmi never recovered, but the clerisy as a social category was not mortally 
wounded by French conquest because the foundation of the clerical influence was 
much broader and deeper than its incarnation in any specific polities. Centuries of 
teaching, healing, and proselytizing had firmly rooted Islamic religious culture in 
Senegambia. The Quranic community rooted in pedagogical and patron-client rela-
tionships was still a viable model even under colonial rule. In Wolof country, where 
jihad had never really flourished, many clerical lineages had an economic and social 
base that was less affected by European encroachment.39 The classic colonialist argu-
ment is that the imposition of colonial peace and ease of communication may even 
have helped to accelerate the proselytizing activities of the clerics.40
The colonial state did not sit idly and cede influence to these teachers and preach-
ers. After conquest, the fight against Islamic influence took the shape of an educa-
tional, rather than military, war. As early as the Faidherbe era, the colonial power 
began to promote French education in direct opposition to Quran schools. Faid-
herbe personally authored the first decree to that end in 1857. Throughout the latter 
half of the nineteenth century, French officials sought to restrict the free practice 
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Rudolph T. Ware, III28
of Islamic education through legal measures. Their efforts were aimed first at the 
colonial outposts in Saint-Louis, Goree, Dakar, and Rufisque, and later the whole 
mainland colony. The early decrees41 were proffered in the name of public good, and 
the social welfare of children. In reality, they were primarily efforts to circumscribe 
the Arabic language and Islamic culture to the benefit of French language and the 
social norms of Occidental modernity. Muslim populations resisted these early laws, 
which, they accurately surmised, were only thinly veiled attacks on Islam. Because of 
Muslim resistance, like those that came before and after it, the 1896 decree was hardly 
enforced by the regime and ineffectual.
Frustrated by the nineteenth-century failure of administrative efforts to regulate 
the schools, the regime made one dramatic push in the first decade of the twenti-
eth century. A 1903 decree sought to control and constrain Islamic education yet 
again, but with more rigorous enforcement and vigorous intelligence gathering. It 
was apparent within less than a decade, however, that this effort had failed as well. 
In response the French founded (in 1908) the médersa of Saint-Louis, which was 
intended to form a fifth column of loyalist marabouts to counteract the influence 
of the marabout teachers. More importantly, they commissioned a series of studies 
on the nature of Islamic education as part of an overall reconnaissance mission on 
Senegalese Muslim society. Islamic education was feared throughout the nineteenth 
century as a site for the production of anti-French sentiment and jihadist political 
doctrine. Behind every serign-daara French authorities saw an Ottoman conspiracy or 
a Sufi plot. The Sufi orders were closely associated with the jihad movements, which 
posed the most credible military threats to the establishment of the colonial order.42 
But with a few exceptions, the process of armed resistance to colonial rule justified in 
Islamic terms was over.43
Whatever the nature of French misconceptions on the role of Sufi orders in Mus-
lim society in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, they were right in 
assuming activity. They were even correct in presuming that there was revolutionary 
activity afoot. But in Senegambia, particularly the Wolof heartlands, the revolution 
plotted by Sufi leaders was social. And it was based in part on transforming educa-
tional structures.
A Sufi Educational Revolution: 1880 to 1920
In the decades surrounding the turn of the century, the clerisy was responding to the 
changing political circumstances by seeking new ways to spread the reach of Islam 
and secure their own influence. This was a complicated endeavor that was pursued on 
many fronts. The future role of the marabout lineage in a newly emerging social and 
political order was unclear. Sufi turuq (sing. tariqa) ultimately became fundamental 
institutions in articulating the will of Muslim populations within the colonial state, 
but this was not preordained. In Sufi legacies there were no automatic prescriptions 
for the development of an Islamic social order. As Louis Brenner has argued, “the 
emergence of turuq in West Africa . . . was not an accident but the result of conscious 
decisions by Sufi leaders who saw in them a potential not only for religious change, 
but also for social and political transformation.”44
Sufi leaders articulated their vision of a new social order against the backdrop of 
history,but in a period of extensive change. They were not free to innovate without 
end, they had to find ways of interfacing with structures already on the ground to 
build new ones. To extend their respective orders and fulfill their families’ age-old 
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 29
missions as clerics, Sufi leaders needed to respond to changing needs and concerns 
of Muslim populations and proselytize non-Muslims, as well as those who had been 
denied much access to education in the old order. The legal end of slavery may have 
weakened some clerical families by depriving them of a labor force, but more impor-
tantly it created new potential clienteles among people who sought to stake a claim to 
moral and social dignity through Islam.45 Operating in such a sphere was a complex 
task. One of the key institutions in the articulation of new social meanings rooted in 
Islam was the school. The primary function of the clerisy as teachers of the Quran 
guaranteed them a certain social import and a base from which to broaden their influ-
ence. The older marabout-talibe pedagogical relationship became the foundation of, 
and model for, the Sufi sheikh-murid relationship.
In the late nineteenth century, Al-Hajj Malick Sy established an influential zawiya, 
or Sufi lodge, in the colonial town of Tivaouane. From this small town along the rail 
line, Al-Hajj Malick sent teachers forth into every corner of the young colony.46 His 
zawiya quickly became a spiritual center for the Tijaniyya in the Wolof zones. He used 
the daara and the infrastructure provided by the French to promote Islam and the 
Tijaniyya. At the same time, Sheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacke, a Wolof-speaking teacher 
from the old kingdom of Bawol who had been given the Qadr wird by the Kunta fam-
ily, founded his own tariqa. He called it the Muridiyya, from the Arabic word for a 
spiritual aspirant. It was probably the first independent tariqa founded by a black West 
African. Central to Bamba’s mission after the 1883 death of his father Momar Anta Sali 
was a new role for education in the shaping of Senegambian Muslim society.47
The Muridiyya and the Tijaniyya articulated new visions for Islamic education. 
Their efforts were critical in changing Sufism from the spiritual quests of introspective 
elites into a moving force for social change.48 Sufi orders infused Quranic education 
with new social meanings, and socially marginalized groups profited from the collapse 
of the old order to assert their dignity by staking their claim to Islamic knowledge. 
In a manner of speaking, the daara was helping change introspective tasawwuf into 
popular tariqa; and the success of the tariqa model was changing the social position 
of the daara.
Controlling and Narrating Isl amic Education: 
1900 to 1920
The French missed the educational changes that were taking place around the turn 
of the twentieth century. Their collective imagination of Islam was preoccupied with 
shadowy Ottoman conspiracies and Sufi plots.49 But this was not a period of intellec-
tual or political complacency. A massive, freshly pacified colony required the elabora-
tion of an administrative structure to govern the newly minted Afrique Occidentale 
Française (AOF). Part of the process of ordering colonial rule was an aggressive pro-
cess of intelligence gathering on the part of the colonial regime. Colonial authorities 
were attempting to size up the social strength and political potential of Islam within 
their territories as the basis for policy with regards to Islam.50 The study of Quran 
schools was undertaken to provide straightforward guidelines for their regulation. 
The legacy of nineteenth-century educational repression in the Four Communes was 
reassessed through a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of Muslim schools. The 
first two decades of the twentieth century were critical in more broadly framing the 
historical and historiographical development of Senegalese Quran schools and of Sen-
egalese Muslim society.
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Rudolph T. Ware, III30
In historical terms, this administrative and intellectual effort formed the basis for 
French policies toward the schools for the whole of the colonial period. The political 
legacy is still evident in postcolonial policies. In historiographical terms, the scholar-
administrators of the early twentieth century were building the foundation for a way 
to understand Senegalese Muslim societies that has only been seriously challenged 
in the last decade. It is important that we not forget that the historical and historio-
graphical processes were one and the same, as were, in fact, their authors.
Born as a body of colonial knowledge, it is not surprising that early narration of 
Muslim history in West Africa depended heavily on the logic of race. Many adminis-
trators downplayed the age and importance of Islam in black colonies.51 Dark-skinned 
African Muslims were thought of as neophytes, recently emerged from primitive trib-
alism. The French saw the profound success of Sufi proselytizers as conversion from 
paganism rather than a kind of democratization of religious knowledge. They thought 
of Africans as traditional creatures moving slowly through history before colonial 
conquest. Some thought that blacks were biologically and culturally incapable of 
absorbing the Arabic language and Islamic doctrine, and that this new conversion to 
Islam was a political reaction to French conquest. The emerging racialized picture 
of African Muslims—Islam Noir—infantilized Senegalese Muslims, seeing them as 
ignorant, credulous, and blindly obedient to marabouts who were transformed by 
French rhetoric into a kind of god-king, at once replacing both the cult of fetishes 
and the native chief.52
The scholar-administrators focused most of their attention on marabouts because 
they lacked the resources and language skills to carry out detailed monographic 
research, but also because they needed to find politically and economically expedient 
agencies through which to effect their policies. The view of the powerful marabout 
commanding blind obedience can only be understood in this context. Scholar-admin-
istrators developed a kind of marabout-myopia, which was often unwittingly assumed 
by later scholars, who ignored the mass of followers to pay attention to ostensibly 
more important leaders. For the colonialists, race played an important role in shaping 
this understanding. They perceived African political systems, such as they were, as 
essentially despotic in character. The blacks followed because they were followers.
When William Ponty became governor-general in 1909, he instituted a policy of 
divide and rule along ethnic lines. In 1912 he brought Paul Marty, an Algerian-born 
Frenchman with a license and training as an Arabic interpreter, to Dakar to direct 
the newly formed Service des Affaires Musulmanes. Ponty commissioned Marty to 
study various aspects of Islam, including Quran schools in Senegal. Relying heavily (if 
not exclusively) on Mauritanian Berber informants, Marty began to paint a racialized 
picture of Senegalese Islam in four studies completed within a year of his arrival.53 
In his study of Quran schools, completed shortly after his arrival in Dakar, Marty 
recommended that the state cease trying to impose impossible regulations on schools 
because they were useless, not dangerous. He argued that the problems the French 
perceived in the daara, such as rote instruction, poor level of scholarship, and more 
excessive time spent in work and begging, did not threaten colonial rule. He made his 
case, which bucked received wisdom, by appealing to widely held stereotypes about 
blacks.
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society,and State 31
“Instruction which opens all doors”: 
The Challenge of the École Française 
(1900 to 1945)
Marty’s efforts to change policy toward the schools did not begin to take effect until 
after World War I. Before that time, the state still sought to circumscribe Islamic edu-
cation and promote French schools. But the battlefield for this educational war in the 
early twentieth century was much larger than it was in the middle of the nineteenth. 
The stage for struggle was now the whole of West Africa rather than isolated colonial 
islands. At the same time that Sufi orders were giving educational expression to a 
changed social reality, French colonial imposition was further texturing the meanings 
of Quranic education.
French repression of Quran schools was intended to force children out of the 
daara and into the école française. But whatever French intentions, the growth of the 
école française did not relegate the daara to the trash-heap of history. Contrary to 
the revisionist history of administrators, Islamic religious culture in Senegambia had 
been taking shape for a thousand years. Contrary to essentialist stereotypes, Mus-
lim identities were deeply rooted and closely tied to Islamic education. The daara 
would not be so quickly abandoned.54 French education was deeply distrusted by 
many Senegalese Muslims. This fact registered even in the lives of young children. A 
Quranic school student in the 1930s, Sega Gueye illustrated the depth of this distrust 
in a paper written around World War II in the prestigious colonial secondary school 
named after Ponty. “The little talibés,” he writes, “take the écoliers for young atheists. 
They hate them, despise them and distance themselves from their presence.”55 This 
visceral hatred of the French school and its agents contributed to an emergent moral 
dilemma over whether or not Senegalese Muslims should send their children to the 
French schools. As much as the French school was despised and distrusted, it was just 
as clearly perceived as a route of access to wealth and power in the colonial order. The 
tension over how to properly educate Muslim children in the changed circumstances 
played itself out countless times.
In his Cahier Ponty on the subject of Islamic education, Amadou Wane gives us a 
glimpse of the texture of the conflict as it played out in his own family in the 1930s:
A family conflict arises on this subject. My mother, who is very pious, wants me to con-
tinue and become a grand marabout. She is supported by her sisters and the marabouts of 
the family. My father’s party wants me to go the école; it is comprised of: my uncles and 
my brothers, most of whom are educated in French. The principal actors in this drama 
are: on one side my brother Oumar, then elève maître at Goree, on the other side [my] 
first marabout, Thierno Hamadi . . . 
The friend of the Whites [Oumar], understanding the cupidity of his adversary, lays 
out the material advantages of the functionary I will become, if such is the will of Allah. 
He speaks also of this instruction which, they say, opens all doors. The other has only one 
banal, but respectable, response: “All that is for this world and is not worth the effort. 
One must work for the other, which is limitless (sans bornes).”56
This moral tension is beautifully explored in the first third of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s 
novel L’Aventure Ambigüe.57 In Kane’s novel, the protagonist, Samba Diallo, is 
unable to assimilate French education without succumbing to apostasy. He becomes 
a talibe-turned-atheist, and is martyred: a tragic hero of the ideological war for the 
hearts and minds of colonized Africans. Kane’s novel is emotionally, philosophically, 
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Rudolph T. Ware, III32
and psychologically true; but its truths are more philosophical than historical. Sen-
egalese Muslims lived with both the daara and the école without fatally compromising 
their Muslim identities. Many (but certainly not all) made room in their lives for both 
sorts of schools. As early as the 1920s, optimistic official estimates concluded that the 
French schools had equaled the number of pupils educated by the daara.58 The prag-
matic acceptance of the French schools was coupled with a widely respected compro-
mise that children should study the Quran before enrolling in the French school.59
The visible success of French schools in enrolling Senegalese Muslim students 
helped justify the administration’s retreat from aggressive repression of the daara to 
“malign neglect” in the early 1920s.60 It is likely also that French retreat from the 
schools was conditioned by a changing relationship with Senegalese marabouts. After 
an initial phase of mutual distrust, both parties found that Sufi organization and 
colonial rule could coexist to the economic and political benefit of both parties. The 
détente between marabouts and the state constrained the latter’s desire to attack the 
schools.61 But the political compromise did not affect how French administrators 
imagined Islamic education. Several observers have pointed out that one of the most 
consistent aspects of French discourse on Islam in Senegal was its contempt for Quran 
schools.62
Écoles Arabes
The alleged complicity of powerful marabouts in the colonial enterprise was to become 
a central criticism of reform-minded Muslims in the forties and fifties, who began 
developing their own critiques of the daara. The professed reformists began articulat-
ing a new discourse on Islamic legitimacy that openly questioned the clerisy’s claims 
to authority, as well as its complicity in rule by an alien (and Christian) minority.63 
The Union Culturelle Musulmane (UCM), founded in 1953, was the most promi-
nent reform organization, accompanied by the student-led Association Musulmane 
des Étudiants Africains (AMEA).64 It is not surprising that education was a central 
concern of the reformists; as a group, they were defined largely by their educational 
achievements. A few of the originators of the movement were part of a pioneering 
group of Senegalese students that went abroad to study in Algiers in the early 1950s. 
Later, other students went abroad to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, as well as other 
institutions in the Maghreb or the Hijaz. Some reformers stayed home and developed 
views on pedagogical reform of Arabic and Islamic education through their experi-
ences in French schools.65 All were exposed to a modern pedagogical system that was 
quite different from the techniques employed in West African Quran schools, which 
were based on reciting, embodying, and internalizing sacred text. The reformers were 
convinced of the superior efficacy of new techniques in the teaching of formal Arabic, 
which they felt was the key to a more educated Muslim community.
The reformists were also exposed to Wahhabism as well as self-consciously mod-
ernist interpretations of reformist Islam.66 Many arguments they expounded were 
anti-Sufi. In the hands of this new Muslim intelligentsia, educational reform would, 
they hoped, be an important tool in breaking the hold of Sufi miracle-workers over 
an ignorant populace, ultimately allowing more enlightened, reform-oriented elite 
to emerge. But Arabic schools were useful for deconstructing existing religious hier-
archies as well as constructing a social constituency for the reformists. Although they 
probably did not see it in these terms, schools could be a place where the reformists 
built a following, as they had for the clerisy for nearly a millennium. An alternative 
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 33
model of modernized Arabic language education was central in an emergent debate on 
Islamic legitimacy and identity.
The reformists frightened the French. Their radical critique was aimed as much 
at the colonial stateas at the Islamic social order. The French perceived them as a 
dangerous religious element capable of disturbing the state-marabout relations that 
they had so carefully cultivated over the past half century.67 From a French perspec-
tive, new fanatics were disrupting their quietist, marabout-centered Islam Noir. The 
pan-Islamist suspicion that once pervaded thoughts on Sufi orders and their Quran 
schools now applied to these “new Muslims” and their écoles Arabes.68
The Postcolonial Period
Senegal achieved independence from France as part of the Federation of Mali in 1959. 
It became an independent republic after the federation’s collapse in 1960. The major 
educational concern of the postcolonial state was to extend the supply of francophone 
state schools to meet a demand that was unsatisfied since the 1920s.69 The story of 
the state’s interaction with the Quran schools is, in part, a continuation of a colonial 
narrative; it denies the significance of “flag independence.”70 Malign neglect would be 
a useful way to characterize the postcolonial state’s policies toward the school in the 
1960s. They too were little interested in Quran schools. On the whole, they contin-
ued to portray them as obsolete, backwards institutions in much the same language 
employed by the French. With regard to the écoles Arabes, however, the Senegalese 
state broke precedent with its colonial forefather and began to pursue an extended 
flirtation with the reformist educational movement.71
There was an inherent contradiction in the bureaucracy’s courtship of the reform-
ists: The Republic of Senegal was no less dependent on marabouts than the colonial 
state. But flag independence did matter. Whatever similarities nationalist leaders shared 
with the French, they were not black colonialists. Their honest effort to extend access 
to francophone education indicated a more serious commitment to development than 
demonstrated by their predecessors. More importantly, most postcolonial elites were 
also Muslims. They did not inherit the culture of fear that permeated colonial Islamic 
policy. In the reformist movement they saw a potential stimulus to modernist devel-
opment and an affirmation of religious identity. They also hoped to use the move-
ment to erode the state’s dependence on marabouts as intercessors with the populace. 
They saw the potential of a controlled and co-opted reformist movement to sap the 
strength of the Sufi orders, giving the state direct access to populations. In 1960 the 
state redoubled its efforts to include a modest amount of Arabic instruction in some 
of its public school curricula.
Arabic instruction in state schools was not entirely novel. In spite of French mis-
givings, it had a minor presence in one educational venue or another throughout 
the colonial period.72 What changed after independence was the political significance 
of Arabic instruction. The postcolonial state was creating a state-sponsored outlet 
for the skills of the first generations of reformist reformers. The state also extended 
study abroad opportunities in Egypt, the Maghreb, and Saudi Arabia to Senegalese 
students in significant numbers, bolstering the ranks of the reformist category. By the 
end of the 1960s, this policy started to create significant numbers of returnees with 
degrees from Arabic language institutions. Without French language skills, this group 
had little access to the formal economic or political spheres, thus the Arabic language 
intellectuals pursued pedagogical careers either within the limited state structures 
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Rudolph T. Ware, III34
of Arabic language education or in the broader entrepreneurial field of the private 
écoles arabes. The social results of this process were mixed, in large part because the 
patron–client ties binding the state to the now quite powerful clerical families could 
not be kept out of the equation. Religious family heads used their influence to send 
members of their families abroad, and the promise of advanced Arabic and/or Islamic 
education became another commodity in the political economy of the state and the 
Sufi orders.73
This had important consequences for Islamic education because, over time, many 
Quran school instructors from clerical families came to be men who—in addition 
to their formation in Quran schools—also received some elements of modern peda-
gogical formation either in French or Arabic schools, if not both. Many teachers 
developed an acute sense of some pedagogical advantages that these schools had to 
offer but remained committed to teaching the Quran.74 This tension has allowed 
them to inscribe new pedagogies into the daara without compromising their religious 
mission.
Under one-party rule in the 1970s, the Senegalese state ultimately succeeded in 
co-opting the major elements of the Islamic reform movement. Leading reformer 
Cheikh Touré worked as an administrator, and his Muslim Cultural Union’s most 
visible achievement was a semaine culturelle celebrating the legacy of Sufi sheikh Ama-
dou Bamba. This was a far cry from the firebrand assaults on maraboutage, which 
characterized the early movement.75 In absence of detailed information on educa-
tional activities during this period, it is difficult to gauge the extent of the educational 
movement in the first two decades. However, it is clear that disillusionment with the 
direction of the movement through its first two decades led to increased organiza-
tional activity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Jama’at Ibadu Rahman (JIR, 
Association of the Servants of the Beneficent) and the Harakat al-Falah lil-thaqafat 
al-Islamiyya (HF, Movement for Success for Islamic Culture) were both founded in 
this period. Both JIR and HF “were to develop into organizations with a considerable 
following as a result of their activities in the spheres of social welfare and education.”76 
The écoles arabes began to challenge the daara directly by reaching broad urban con-
stituencies by the 1970s, but it is difficult to ascertain the scope of their efforts. They 
were extensive, however; by the end of the 1980s, JIR alone had opened as many as 
three hundred schools in Dakar’s disadvantaged suburbs.77
Natural phenomena contributed to changing perceptions and realities of Quran 
schooling beginning in the late 1960s. Persistent droughts lasted into the mid-1970s 
and began to alter the nature of economic practices in Quran schools, which for 
many centuries were primarily rooted in agricultural production. It is probable that 
the daara came to depend on alms more than it had in the past. As early as 1969, 
government officials began posing the alms-seeking of Quran school students as a 
problem of state.78 Urban begging was increasingly perceived as a major social prob-
lem throughout the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in stringent laws against vaga-
bondage in 1977. Significantly, the state stopped short of including talibe among 
those affected by the new legislation. Instead, they created a working group to study 
the problem, while permitting solicitation of “daily alms, in the places and within the 
conditions consecrated by religious traditions.”79
The nod to an alms-seeking tradition did not resolve the controversy over Quran 
schools, which were becoming a public concern. In 1975 M. J. Traoré released a film 
entitled Njangaan, which has been described as an “extremely irreverent presentation 
of the serign-marabout as a child abuser and heartless exploiter of the religious faith 
and credulity of staunch believers.”80 It is difficult to speak definitively about how the 
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 35
Senegalese public reacted to the film (or even how many saw it), but one observer left 
an account of the debate that followed a showing of the film in a Dakar statutoryasso-
ciation. Roland Colin noted, “in the debate established around Njangaan, a good 
portion of the auditorium brought forth arguments in the dossier of the defense: the 
virtues of early mental training, the child’s integration in the social and spiritual com-
munity, [and] learning to deal with hardship.”81 Indeed, much of the public discourse 
on the controversies of Quran schooling utterly ignore the tight connection between 
suffering and pursuit of knowledge implied in the Wolof concept of yar, which means 
both moral education and the lash.
Whatever the public reaction to the film Njangaan, the daara was becoming a 
political cause célèbre because it preoccupied the reformists as much as the state. In 
the 1970s many of the concerns about Quran schools expressed by the French at the 
turn of the century became matters of public debate. Muslim reformers were con-
cerned with reforming pedagogical methods, state agents were likely more concerned 
with labor and children begging. Both sets of concerns overlapped; they were two 
faces of modernism. Both groups would have probably liked to see the influence of 
marabouts lessened, thus an attack on the schools had political as well as ideological 
components.
The shared dissatisfaction of reform-minded Muslims and state functionaries led to 
a jointly organized Séminaire sur l’enseignement du Coran au Sénégal, in May 1978, 
sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and held at the Islamic Institute of Dakar (IID). 
Speeches by the Minister of National Education and a representative of the Minis-
try of Culture shared central concerns with those delivered by Ravane Mbaye and 
Mamadou Ndiaye representing the IID. Both stressed the need for rationalization, 
standardization, and modernization of Senegal’s Quran schools. Representatives from 
some of Senegal’s historic Quran schools, including Kokki, participated in the confer-
ence. While acknowledging that some marabouts were unqualified and unethical, the 
schools politely defended their own pedagogical methods and labor practices. One 
went further, expressing veiled frustration with the increasing perception of the daara 
as a problem to be solved. He said, “In spite of the numerous criticisms of which it is 
the object, the Quranic school still remains alone in teaching Islam to all the Muslims 
of the country, and [it has done] this for centuries.”82 On the whole the schools called 
for more support of Quranic education rather than its reformulation.83
The 1980s augured a period of important change in the process and narration of 
Islamic education in Senegal. Two important themes should be highlighted. First, the 
reformist movement received a breath of new life through the policies of liberalization 
undertaken by the Diouf government in 1981. These led to the creation of groups 
that promoted effective alternatives to Quranic education on a larger scale.84 The JIR 
and HF were followed by many smaller groups that promoted modernized Arabic 
language education.85 Not all of these groups had broader reform agendas; many 
were merely organizations that sought to meet an emerging educational demand. A 
supply of teachers for these schools was now readily available. The first generation of 
reformers had been providing Arabic education for more than a generation and their 
graduates, who had few career opportunities outside of the educational arena, now 
followed in the footsteps of their teachers. It is currently quite impossible to count 
the number of Arabic schools operated by these ustaz (professors), but there are likely 
more than one thousand. Most are concentrated in towns and cities.
The second major theme emerging in the 1980s and 1990s was the growing per-
ception of the daara as a social problem. In 1989 the United Nations held its Con-
vention on the Rights of the Child, which resulted in a joint project of reforming 
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Rudolph T. Ware, III36
Senegal’s Quran schools undertaken by the Senegalese government and UNESCO 
beginning in 1992. A few years later, the Senegalese government created a journée 
de solidarité avec les talibés intended to sensitize people to the problems of the tal-
ibe. International Human Rights discourses have added another voice to the chorus 
against the daara.86
Conclusion
What is the proper way to educate Muslim children? This question framed the debate 
in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s celebrated novel Ambiguous Adventure. Across the cen-
turies nonfictional Senegambian Muslims have grappled with this question as well. 
But as in Kane’s novel there have been few unambiguous answers, particularly during 
the past century or so. Clear answers have been hard to come by because of rapidly 
changing historical circumstances—a fact Kane so sensitively captured—but they have 
also been difficult to obtain for a more fundamental reason: Any debate on the right 
way to school Muslim children is also a debate on the proper nature and contents 
of Islamic identity. Educational choices have long been central in the discursive and 
practical contestation of what it means to be Muslim.
As recently as the 1880s, there was really only one option for the education of 
Muslim children in Senegambia: the daara. For five hundred years or more, the daara 
was the sole avenue to literary and religious instruction. The clerisy built a complex 
social identity around the teaching of the Quran. Schooling became such a crucial 
component of Muslim identity that over the centuries teachers were able to extend 
the scale and scope of their influence, translating their command of knowledge and 
faith into temporal power. The teacher became the center of a whole religious and 
social ethos. Senegambian Muslims came to define their identities—and their faith—
in reference to the men who possessed knowledge of the Word of God. At the same 
time, however, access to Quranic schooling reflected and reproduced inequities of 
power. People of low status—especially women, slaves, and the casted—were unable 
to fully claim Muslim identities; their social inferiority was religious as well.
Colonial rule brought new circumstances and new choices; old social and political 
orders were dramatically transformed by French conquest. The structures of power 
and authority that held some Senegambians at a distance from Islam and Islamic 
education were irrevocably transformed. Lower-status persons were able to redefine 
themselves and claim full participation in the dominant faith of the region. Ironically, 
colonial rule made clerical authority more attractive than it had ever been before. The 
clerics were able to insert themselves into the void of temporal power left by the col-
lapse of the old kingdoms; the French unwittingly and unwillingly helped spur a social 
and educational revolution. This result was almost wholly against the wishes of the 
colonizers, at least initially. By the first decade of the twentieth century, however, the 
French were intentionally encouraging and developing the social authority of certain 
marabouts.
But the colonialists also introduced a new school and with it new sensibilities. In 
Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel Ambiguous Adventure, the family of protagonist Samba 
Diallo wrestled with a difficult decision. Should they send their child to the daara or 
to the French school? Kane framed their decision between the Quranic school and 
the école française as a choice between tradition and modernity, between material and 
spiritual success. The discussion between the Chief and the Teacher captured Kane’s 
understanding of the dichotomy and the dilemma posed by modern schooling:
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 37
[At the new school] They would learn all the ways of joining wood to wood which we do 
not know. But learning, they would also forget. Would what they learnbe worth as much 
as what they forget? I should like to ask you: can one learn this without forgetting that, 
and is what one learns worth what one forgets?
At the Glowing Hearth, what we teach children is God. What they forget is them-
selves, their bodies, and the futile dream which hardens with age and stifles the spirit. So 
what they learn is worth infinitely more than what they forget.87
Ultimately, Senegalese Muslims demonstrated that one can learn this without forget-
ting that—belying the experience of Samba Diallo whose faith was washed away by 
occidental modernity. They responded to the dilemma by creating space for both 
sorts of school. They sent their children to the daara at younger ages, before the 
French school would admit them, and had them study the Quran during the summer 
vacation from the école française.
Such compromises to accommodate the new school were not without costs. The 
new social and political order generated a bifurcated understanding of education. For 
many Senegalese Muslims, the French school taught its students to prepare for the life 
of this world, jàng àdduna; the daara taught children to prepare for life in the next, 
jàng àllaaxira. In a literal sense, Senegalese Muslims began conceding the world to 
the French school. The meaning of the daara had changed dramatically from the pre-
colonial period; it became a place to affirm Muslim identity in a colonial world that 
inherently challenged it.
By the 1940s some Senegalese began introducing a new element into the dis-
cussion on the right way to educate the children of Muslims. They developed new 
schools, the écoles arabes, which brought European and Islamic pedagogical traditions 
together in new ways. In so doing, they sought both to modernize Islam and Islamize 
modernity. This movement for educational and Islamic reform has been particularly 
strong in the postcolonial period, and it has provided new models for Muslim identity. 
Some reformers have sought to diminish the power and influence of the traditional 
clerisy to develop new conceptions of what it means to be Muslim. They imagined 
that new modern forms of Islamic education would lead to forms of Muslim identity 
and organization that were less dependent on marabouts.
The école française and the école arabe have challenged Quranic schooling intently. 
But neither occidental nor Islamic incarnations of modernity have been able to defeat 
the daara. There has never been precise data concerning the number of students in all 
of Senegal’s Quranic schools. Colonial estimates held that the French schools were 
as well attended as the daara by the 1920s. In 1961 the postcolonial government 
estimated that the élèves in francophone schools (110,000) greatly outnumbered tal-
ibe in the daara (66,000). However, independent research suggests that contrary to 
state estimates, the daara continue to educate many more children than either French 
or Arabic schools. In 1991 Saint-Louis had more talibe (24,304) in its daara (222) 
than it had élèves (21,462) in its écoles françaises (37).88 In rural areas, where there 
are far fewer state schools and écoles arabes, the numbers are likely much more heavily 
weighted in favor of the daara.
The daara have been decried by government officials, vilified in the francophone 
press, and demonized by international human rights organizations. Critics of all sorts 
agree that the daara’s pedagogical methods are backward by twentieth-century (not 
to mention twenty-first-century) standards. They criticize the nearly universal—and 
often severe—corporal punishment in the Quranic schools. They lament the facts that 
live-in students are required to work and beg at nearly any hour of the day or night, 
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Rudolph T. Ware, III38
and access to modern health care for most students is seriously limited if not entirely 
inexistent. Why, they ask, do people keep sending their children to these schools?
There is a saying in Wolof, leketu neen, ñowul béy, which means (in rough transla-
tion) “a goat doesn’t come to an empty trough.”89 Like any good agrarian proverb it 
is subject to innumerable potential uses, but I cite it here only to say that if the daara 
had nothing to offer, people would not keep coming to it for spiritual sustenance. In 
spite of the charges leveled against it, and in the face of heavy criticism, people con-
tinue to choose the daara for the education of their children.
To understand why Quranic schooling has continued to thrive even during a cen-
tury of unprecedented assaults, we cannot gather information solely from those who 
have sought to undermine it. We must listen to the talibe to understand the nature 
and meaning of their educational experiences. But perhaps most importantly we must 
hear and comprehend why parents have continued to choose the daara for the educa-
tion of their children. The first set of reasons is of a moral and religious nature: The 
daara is a social landmark of faith, and sending a child to study the Quran is a pious 
act. For the descendants of slaves and other low-status persons, it has long been a 
claim to dignity.
For people of all backgrounds, the ability to successfully memorize the Quran is 
an attractive religious incentive. In my interviews with former students who had fully 
memorized the Quran, they often talked about the mastery of the book as a posses-
sion (yor).90 Knowledge of the word is, in their view, an inalienable spiritual good. 
A student who learns the book internalizes it and comes to possess it and even to 
embody it. One becomes, as the prophet is portrayed in a famous hadith, “A Walk-
ing Quran.” The daara also has other powerful moral allures. Corporal punishment 
and other hardships in the daara that draw the ire of critics are, in fact, an important 
part of their appeal for many Senegalese Muslims. Senegambian conventions associ-
ate moral education with physical hardship. This is most clearly expressed in the dual 
meaning of yar as education and the lash. Discursive learning in the absence of yar is 
undesirable to many Senegalese Muslims.
Beyond the level of cultural and religious values, there are more purely social rea-
sons why Senegal’s daara continue to attract so many students. Giving a child to a 
serign for education has long been a means of establishing relationships of mutual 
interdependence. In a world where wealth is defined in terms that are as much social 
as they are financial, this has been an important motivation for many. The material, 
political, and social success of the Sufi orders in the colonial and postcolonial periods 
reinforced the attractiveness of clerics as temporal—as well as spiritual—patrons. The 
relative strength of Quranic schooling in Senegal, as opposed to neighboring Mali 
where reformed Arabic schools are gaining ground more rapidly, is directly related to 
the relative social import of the Sufi orders in the two distinct milieux.
And finally, there are political reasons as well. Put simply, the state has not been 
able to meet its citizens’ demand for schooling. Critics will retort that the rote reli-
gious instruction dispensed in the daara hardly qualifies as education. But the sup-
posed ineffectiveness of the daara as a site for purely discursive and literary instruction 
has been vastly overstated. Recent research in the region of Diourbel (Bawol) has 
shown that most Quranic school students develop good reading skills after two to 
four years of study, and more than 60 percent acquire writing ability. In rural areas, 
the rate of literacy among men over forty years of age was still higher in Arabic than in 
French well into the 1990s.91 Quranic schooling continues to be an effective option 
for the formal education of Senegalese Muslims. Even in the cities where state schools 
are most accessible and attractive, the French school is unable to keep its promise of 
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 39
giving the world to Senegalese Muslims. Degrees from French schools do not guar-
antee material success. The cities teem with overeducated and underemployed former 
écoliers.
In those same cities the écoles arabes are gaining ground more quickly than the 
French schools, and perhaps the reformers’ prediction that ultimately these modern 
Arabic schools will become the primary avenues for religious and academic instruc-
tion will yet be realized. But this is not a certainty. If it does become a reality, it will 
be because the écoles arabes will tighten their associations with the Sufi orders and 
lean further in the direction of moral and religious education to respond to the cul-
tural values and religious identities of Senegambian Muslims. The Arabic schools will 
continue to gain ground only by appealing to local understandings of what it means 
to be Muslim.92 In the end, however, I doubt that the centuries of history that have 
shaped the Senegalese esteem for Quran schooling will be so easily washed away by 
new approaches to education. Moreover, there are legions of Quran school teachers 
working to avoid such a result. The most apparent fact that has emerged from my 
ongoing research into Quran schooling is that its practitioners are constantly experi-
menting with elements of pedagogy and moral education drawn from diverse sources 
in order to accomplish the task of inscribing the Quran on the hearts of children in 
an ever-changing world.93 In short, the image of the daara as a timeless institution is 
true insofar as it remains clearly focused on facilitating the memorization, recitation, 
internalization, and embodiment of the Quran. However, the stereotype of the Quran 
school as a changeless institution is a myth promoted by colonialists and modernist 
Muslims alike.
In spite of the growing criticisms, as well as political and social attacks from many 
angles, Quran schools continue to educate several hundred thousand talibe each year 
and play a major role in shaping Islamic religious culture in Senegal. Indeed, the clas-
sical Quran school remains—as it was in the time of Ibn Khaldun—one of the most 
powerful symbols of Muslim identity. It remains so in Senegal even as it seems to lose 
ground or even disappear from many Muslim countries because of a complex history 
played out over the past thousand years across shifting social and political landscapes.
Pape Lamin Ndiaye, a former Quran school student whom I interviewed in 2001, 
closes this discussion with a statement about the timeless importance of Quran school-
ing, because it echoes closely Ibn Khaldun’s opening epigraph, penned roughly seven 
hundred years before:
What does the daara do for a person? First of all, the daara makes you into a person, a 
true human being. What is a true human being? Wherever you may find yourself you 
can handle it, and carry yourself properly. You won’t say things you shouldn’t say; you 
won’t do things you shouldn’t do. It awakens you to the world. It lets you know who 
your Lord is . . . Something other than the daara might make you believe in something 
other than God. What the daara does for the character of a human being is something 
only the daara can do.94
Notes
 1. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqadimmah, 300–301.
 2. The present article is based on research from my doctoral dissertation. See Ware, “Knowl-
edge, Faith, and Power.”
 3. For recent, relevant essays on caste, see Conrad and Frank Status and Identity in West 
Africa. For a comparative, comprehensive, and reasonably convincing argument for the 
pal-diouf-01.indd 39pal-diouf-01.indd 39 08/10/09 7:15:27 pm08/10/09 7:15:27 pm
Rudolph T. Ware, III40
origins of West African caste systems in the empire of Mali in the thirteenth century (and 
possibly an independent origin among the Soninke and Wolof as well), see Tamari, “The 
Development of Caste Systems.” The arguments and evidence therein are an abridged (and 
English language) version of those presented in Tamari, Les castes de l’Afrique occidentale. 
Roderick McIntosh sees the Malian developments analyzed by Tamari as an expression of a 
much older social dynamic towards occupational specialization within a framework of West 
African urbanism in his article “The Pulse Model.”
 4. This has become the widely accepted position after an earlier generation of scholars fol-
lowed French administrators’ shallow dating of Islamization in Senegambia. An early, 
important statement about how to understand syncretism in Senegambia is Colvin’s “Islam 
and the State of Kajoor.”
 5. But it is likely that Jabi’s conversion was preceded by others. There are tantalizing hints 
of an earlier appearance of Islam in Al-Naqar, “Takr?r the History of a Name.” He notes 
that Ibn Yasin, the founder of the al-murabitun (Almoravid) movement in 1042 (or 1048 
after al-Bakri) “when dismayed by Sanhajan resistance to his puritanical reforms, contem-
plated withdrawing among the Sudan ‘among whom Islam had already appeared’” (367, 
my emphasis). Even more interesting is his suggestion that there may have been Takruri 
Muslims in Cairo as early as the tenth century: “A quarter of Bulaq, the suburb of Cairo, 
became known as Bulaq al-Takr?ri, according to al-Maqrizi, because there lived al-Shaikh 
Abu Mu?ammad Yusuf ibn ‘Abdallah al-Takr?ri: ‘Many miracles, karamat were reported 
of him . . . and he is said to have lived during the reign of al-‘Aziz ibn al-Mu‘iz’(975–996) 
[CE]” (370). For a more extended discussion of the various uses of the name takrur see 
the introduction to El Hamel’s, La vie intellectuelle.
 6. See, for example, Delafosse, “L’État actuel de l’Islam.”
 7. Lamin Sanneh’s “The Origins of Clericalism” laid the foundations for a reassessment of 
proselytization in early West Africa, but it has not yet been widely followed. Triaud’s “Les 
agents religieux” asks us to turn our attention to the “obscure militants who dispense 
Islam in its everyday form.” See also Skinner, “Islam and Education.” Skinner argues. 
“The spread of Islam throughout Sierra Leone was the result of the activities of thousands 
of teachers who migrated along the extensive caravan routes from Guinea and beyond 
during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Often these teachers were 
also traders or kinsmen of traders and warriors. They were trained as religious scholars 
and were imbued with the spirit of Muslim missionary activity” (501). See also Levtzion, 
“Merchants vs. Scholars.” The essay also appears as chapter IV in Letvzion, Islam in West 
Africa. Levtzion’s views on the complementarity of the roles of trader and cleric are not 
followed in this work, nor do I follow his view that slavery provided the basis for clerical 
communities.
 8. See Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics, Chapter 1.
 9. Thierno Seydou Nourou Bah, Pate Gallo, and Ndioum, interview with the author, Decem-
ber, 2005.
 10. Ndiaye, L’enseignement arabo-islamique, 13–14.
 11. Mbaye, “L’Islam au Sénégal.”
 12. In the prologue to d’Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea, Jean Boulègue noted 
that Portuguese voyagers between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries invariably 
referred to West African Muslim clerics as bexerins (sing. Bexerim). Boulègue cites Theo-
dore Monod who, in Description de la côte d’Afrique, suggested that the Portuguese term 
was a derivation of the Arabic term mubashirin. In The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics, Sanneh 
arrived at the same conclusion, equating (159) Mungo Park’s use of bushreen with the 
Arabic term bashirun, professional clerics. But bushara is the usual plural for bashir. The 
primary meaning of the root ??? (bashara) is to rejoice or to announce good news; by exten-
sion it means to preach, or to spread or propagate a religion. Indeed Bashir is one of the 
praise names of the prophet. See Cowan and Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic 
(Arabic-English),73–74. Its nominal forms closely approach the word gospel because it is 
understood in English. In the form mubashirin or bashirin its most literal meaning would 
be something like preachers or evangelists, but cleric is perhaps a more neutral term.
pal-diouf-01.indd 40pal-diouf-01.indd 40 08/10/09 7:15:27 pm08/10/09 7:15:27 pm
The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 41
 13. Barreira, “Letter of Padre Baltesar Barreira,” 6.
 14. Mbacké, “Impact de l’Islam.” Although more recently Thierno Ka has questioned this 
early dating of the foundation of Pir suggesting the middle of the seventeenth century (see 
“L’Enseignement Arabe”).
 15. Brenner, “Histories of Religion in Africa.” Lucie G. Colvin, formulated this argument 30 
years ago: “Social discrimination against, and segregation of the clerics fit into the general 
pattern of endogamous hereditary occupational grouping. Social isolation of hereditary 
craft groups such as blacksmiths, leatherworkers, and woodcarvers, took such extreme 
form among the Wolof and Tukuloor that scholars usually describe it as a caste system” 
(“Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 589). Willis, in “The Torodbe Clerisy,” made arguments 
on the origins of torodo Muslim clerics, which can be brought to bear here as well. He 
wrote, “it must be emphasized that those Muslims we have been calling ‘Fulbe’ deserved 
this designation in language and culture only, that they were drawn from diverse strains of 
S?d?n? society and that Turudiyya suggests a métier and not an ethnic category” (202).
 16. Muslim lineage could be applied to any lineages whose members profess Islam as a reli-
gion, not only as a professional calling. Marabout, the gallicized version of the Arabic term 
mrabit, seems more appropriate.
 17. For comparative material from Sierra Leone, see Bledsoe and Robey “Arabic Literacy and 
Secrecy.” See also Mommersteeg, “L’éducation coranique au Mali.”
 18. See Schmitz, “Le souffle de la parenté.” For earlier reflections on this topic see his 
piece, “Un politologue chez les marabouts.”
 19. Willis notes that “the ranks of the Turudiyya remained closed to artisans who continued 
to pursue their traditional crafts” (“The Tordobe Clerisy,” 212). See also Colvin, “The 
Shaykh’s Men.”
 20. See Chapter 9 in Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics.
 21. Sanneh suggests that prior to emancipation the Jakhanke gave only “token instruction” to 
their slaves. In Slavery and Colonial Rule, Klein argues much in this same vein seeing little 
distinction between “aristocratic” and “Islamic” slavery with religion used as a form of social 
control in both instances. I return to the question of slavery and Islamic education in Chap-
ter 3 of “Birth, Wealth, and Gender” In Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power,” (134–65).
 22. The royalty among the Wolof was often portrayed in scholarship as pagan in spite of a num-
ber of sources, including European travelers’ descriptions which refer to them as Muslim 
since time immemorial. Colvin (“Islam and the State of Kajoor”) formulated a powerful 
argument that there were only vestiges of “traditional African religion” in Wolof country 
by the sixteenth century. This interpretation was followed by Charles in “Shaikh Amadu 
Ba and Jihad in Jolof” but was ignored by most analysts of Wolof history until recently. 
Robinson follows this view and extends it to Pular, Hassaniyya, and Berber speakers in the 
subregion as well (see Paths of Accommodation, 16–25). The most thorough analysis on the 
question in Wolof in Senegal is “Patterns of Islamization,” Chapter 3 of Babou, “Amadu 
Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya.” As for traditional religion among the larger 
peasant, casted, and slave populations there were, and are, several practices to manipulate 
the seen and unseen worlds (liggeey, ndëp, etc.), which are seen (sometimes erroneously) 
as being derived from pre-Islamic sources but would be hard to characterize as a religion. 
These might be more fruitfully explored as forms of practical reason.
 23. The Jóob and Faal families of Kokki and Pir, respectively, were of garmi origin and capable 
of using their status to political effect. See Colvin, “Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 592 
(note 11). See also Diop, “Lat Dior et le problème musulman.”
 24. This was an old pattern in West Africa. Rooted in the patterns of urbanization observed 
by McIntosh in “The Pulse Model,” they took on religious significance as early as ancient 
Ghana in the structuring of the famous dual capital described by Al-Bakri. Curtin notes that 
the trend continued in later Soninke/Saraxolle societies as a division within the Muslim 
community. He gives the example of the city of Kajaaga “on the upper Senegal [which] had 
clerical towns enjoying political autonomy within the state as early as the period of Malian 
domination, and the distinction between clerical-mercantile and secular-politico-military 
towns lasted to the beginning of the colonial period” (Curtin, “Jihad in West Africa, 13).
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Rudolph T. Ware, III42
 25. Schmitz, “Un politologue chez les marabouts,” 346.
 26. See Bledsoe and Robey “Arabic Literacy and Secrecy,” 215–17, for a discussion of the 
Quran school as a form of “wealth in people.”
 27. Colvin brings this important point to our attention in “Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 
589–90.
 28. Fall, “Crises socio-politiques et alternatives,” 71, as cited in Diagne, “The Future of Tradi-
tion,” 287 (note 6).
 29. In Mauritania, Nasir Al-Din’s movement is remembered as Shar Bubba or Shurbubba. In 
Wolof, it was called tuubanaan. See Barry, “La Guerre des marabouts,” which interprets 
the movement in light of the Atlantic slave trade. His main documentary source is de 
Chambonneau’s contemporary account of events, “De l’origine des Nègres du Sénégal 
coste d’Afrique, de leur Pays, religion, coutume et mœurs et l’Histoire du Toubenan, ou 
changement de souverains et réforme de relligion desdits nègres, depuis 1673 son origine, 
jusques en la présente année 1677.” Chambonneau’s texts, edited by Carson I. A. Ritchie, 
are available under the title “Deux texts sur le Sénégal (1673–1677).” See also Hamet, 
Chroniques de la Mauritanie Sénégalaise.
 30. See Barry, “La Guerre des marabouts.”
 31. Klein, “Social and Economic Factors,”428. For more on this see Robinson, “The Islamic 
Revolution of Futa Toro,” 190–92, and The Holy War of Umar Tal, 71. This is discussed 
in detail by Kamara, Florilège au jardin.
 32. Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal. See also Hanson, “Islam, Migration and the Political 
Economy.
 33. This is the neo-Sufi thesis by which reformed Sufi orders of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries represent a Sufi response to Wahhabi critiques. Martin’s Muslim Brotherhoods in 
Nineteenth Century Africa makes this argument most directly in an African context. The 
inadequacy of neo-Sufism as a paradigm for understanding either Sufism or reform is laid 
out most clearly in an article by Radtke and O’Fahey, “Neo-Sufism Reconsidered.” See also 
Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis, and Vikør, Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge.
 34. Brenner, “Concepts of Tariqa in West Africa.”
 35. This reading is suggested by Curtin, “Jihad in West Africa.”
 36. Cited in Barry, “La guerre des marabouts,” 568, as Ritchie, “Deux textes,” 339.
 37. Scholars tend to agree with Robinson that in Futa Toro after the jihad, raiding, and 
enslavement of Muslims was not practiced; see “The Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro.” 
Kane argues, with reason, that the Torodo revolution was a reaction to the arbitrary slaving 
of the deñaanke royalty continuing in the tradition of Shur Bubba (“Les Causes de la Révo-
lution”). Again, Kamara (Florilège au jardin) comments on this extensively and transmits a 
number of oral traditions on the topic.
 38. See Colvin, “Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 590–91.
 39. The jihad launched by Maba Jaaxu Ba and Sheikh AmadouBa (Amadou Cheikhou) had 
the greatest direct effect on, and led to the participation of, Wolof Muslims. Al-Hajj Umar 
and Mamadou Lamin operated essentially on the margins of Wolof dominated polities.
 40. However, this argument should not be overstated, because it was primarily invoked in 
French sources to deny substantial attachment to Islam amongst Negroes in the precolonial 
period.
 41. See chapter V of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.” See also Ndiaye, L’enseignement 
Arabo-Islamique, Chapter 3. Also see Bouche, “L’école française et les musulmans au 
Sénégal.”
 42. For the use of Tijan as a label for radicalism in AOF see Robinson’s “French Islamic Policy 
and Practice.” For the broadest view of French suspicion of Islam in nineteenth-century 
West Africa, see Harrison’s France and Islam in West Africa. For a detailed view of the 
similar—and related—process of demonization of the Sanusiyya (North Africa, Chad, and 
Niger) see Triaud, La legende noire de la Sanusiyya. For a view of the order and its founder 
that is untainted by the black myth see Vikør, Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge.
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 43
 43. David Robinson, in Paths of Accommodation, notes that in the latter half of the nineteenth 
century, Muslim scholars in Mauritania and Senegal, who were in some cases associated 
with the French, articulated arguments against military jihad because of the demonstrated 
inequity in relations of strength.
 44. Brenner, “Concepts of Tariqa in West Africa,” 35.
 45. See Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule, which opens an important avenue for discussion—
which I pursue in Chapter III of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power”—about Islam as 
honor and identity for former slaves. Searing makes the argument that the Muridiyya was 
an avenue to land and dignity for many former slaves, ‘God Alone Is King’.
 46. Mamadou Ndiaye, interview with the author, Dakar, June 2002. See also Robinson, Paths of 
Accommodation, particularly Chapter 10, “Malik Sy: Teacher in the New Colonial Order.”
 47. See Chapter 5 in Babou’s “Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya” for the full 
significance of this. Some relevant arguments also appear in Babou’s article “Autour de la 
genèse du mouridisme.”
 48. The community of Abdoulaye Niasse, whose activities were based in Salum, took shape in 
this same period and education had similar functions within it. For an overview based on 
secondary materials, see Gray, “The Rise of the Niassene.”
 49. See again, Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa, on the nineteenth-century Algerian 
School of thought regarding the Sufi orders.
 50. The development of an overall French Islamic policy has been documented and debated 
elsewhere, for an introduction to the discussion see David Robinson “French Islamic Policy 
and Practice.” Harrison, a student of O’Brien, wrote the most authoritative synthetic over-
view of Policy, France and Islam in West Africa. Robinson’s Paths of Accommodation covers 
less historical ground but in bolder relief. His approach brings West African Muslims into 
a dialogue with French colonials, reminding us that the objects of policy were often instru-
mental in shaping it.
 51. For only one example among many, see Delafosse, “L’État actuel de l’Islam.”
 52. The works of Paul Marty best represented, or even exaggerated these views. On the author-
ity of Murid marabouts he wrote: “One can see in it [the Muridiyya] all the native tenden-
cies towards anthropomorphism and its practical consequence: anthopolatry. These blacks, 
tinted with Mohammedanism, return to their antiquated beliefs, to the worship of a man, 
man-as-fetish, to the cult of Saints. The religious wave of Islam has passed, and behind it, 
once more one sees all the individuals of the same race gathering around a local religious 
hearth; all their moral, social and juridical forces moving instinctively in the direction of the 
ancestral beliefs and practices; all their economic faculties concentrating around personages 
who, by mysterious divination or remarkable practical sense, have been able to pose as the 
representatives of these confused aspirations.” (Études sur l’Islam au Sénégal, 280–81)
 53. The reports were on Quran Schools, the Muridiyya, Mauritanian conquest, and Muslim 
amulets in Senegal. The confluence of bidan (white Mauritanian) and French racism during 
the colonial period is an underexamined factor in the development of Islam Noir as well as 
in the history of race relations between Mauritania and Senegal.
 54. At least one French analyst of the Quranic schools, Destaing, cautioned against expecta-
tions for an early demise of the daara. After noting that the families of Kajoor demonstrated 
a greater demand for Quran schooling than did Maghrebi families, he concluded that if the 
former “clamor for French schools, they will not easily forget the Quranic school.” Rapport 
Destaing, Archives Nationales du Sénégal dossier J86, document 111.
 55. Gueye, “L’école coranique,” 52.
 56. Wane, “Trois ans d’école coranique,” also appearing in Colin, Systèmes d’éducation, 789.
 57. Kane, L’aventure ambigüe.
 58. See Bouche “L’école française et les musulmans au Sénégal,” 231: “In 1920, there was no 
longer any attendance problem for Muslims in the cities. For several years, the schools had 
already been refusing people. Since neither the administration nor the municipalities were 
disposed to pay for the opening of new classrooms, the Qur’a-n schools had ceased to be 
considered as rivals for the French school.”
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Rudolph T. Ware, III44
 59. This point is discussed further in Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power,” Chapter I: Becom-
ing a Taalibe.
 60. This was accomplished by a 1922 decree on confessional neutrality in educational insti-
tutions. See Brenner, Controlling Knowledge, 61, and Ndiaye, L’Enseignement Arabo-
Islamique, 133.
 61. The political economy of Sufi sheikhs and state authorities is the subject of a voluminous 
literature. The most nuanced views can be found in Villalón, Islamic Society and State 
Power in Senegal. A succinct and representative argument can be found in Boone, Merchant 
Capital and the Roots.
 62. Klein, Islam and Imperialism, 230; and Behrman, Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in 
Senegal, 55–56.
 63. For a bibliography on the Islamic reform movement, see Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and 
Power,” note 49 in the Introduction.
 64. Many of the original articles from AMEA’s monthly publication have been brought 
together in a collection, Ly, Où va l’Afrique.
 65. See Loimeier, “Cheikh Touré.”
 66. Kaba’s The Wahabiyya opened a debate as to whether the reform groups active in AOF 
in the 1940s and 1950s were tied to the Saudi Arabian Wahhabiyya by affiliation or mere 
affinity.
 67. Triaud gives a close reading of 1950s documentation on Muslim Affairs in the the Archives 
Nationales de France Section d’Outer-Mer (ANFOM) in an important essay, “Le crépus-
cule des affaires,” 493–519. For a view of the battle from the perspective of the leading 
administrator of Muslim affairs in Bamako see Cardaire, L’Islam et le terroir Africain.
 68. Brenner describes the suspicion and repression of the movement in Mali with characteristic 
skill in Controlling Knowledge. Kaba narrated the same process from a somewhat different 
perspective in The Wahabiyya. The full story is yet to be told for Senegal. I address the 
educational challenge that reformers posed to Quran schools and the (now predominantly 
Sufi) clerisy in Chapter 7 of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.”
 69. For the early history of French education in West Africa, see Bouche, L’Enseignement dans 
les territoires français. For a view of the period between World War II and independence 
written by a well-placed colonial official see Cappelle, L’éducationen Afrique Noire.
 70. The term is Walter Rodney’s.
 71. The political economy of reform is best handled by Loimeier in “L’Islam ne se vend plus,” 
but it is also ably documented by Piga in Dakar et les ordres Soufis, 444–56.
 72. This often overlooked history is explored in a sophisticated and well-documented Master’s 
thesis by Mbengue, “L’enseignement de l’Arabe.”
 73. This summary of the movement is informed by interviews with Dr. Mamadou Ndiaye 
(Institut Islamique de Dakar) in May and June of 2002, as well as in informal discussions 
(and one formal taped interview March 17, 2002) with Khadim Mbacké of IFAN. Also 
contributing to the views here are interviews with Sharif Suleiman Aidara, Touba, April 
2002; Abdou Salam Lo, Ngabu April 2002; and Masamba Buso, Mbacke, May 30, 2002.
 74. Sheikhuna Lo, interview with the author, Ngabu, March 8, 2002, May 28, 2002; and 
Khalil Lo, interview with the author, Ngabu, May 28, 2002.
 75. See Loimeier, “L’Islam ne se vend plus,” and “Cheikh Touré.”
 76. Loimeier, “L’Islam ne se vend plus,” 178.
 77. Piga, Dakar et les ordres, 449.
 78. Comité National pour l’Action Sociale, “Rapport de synthèse du groupe.”
 79. Collignon, “La lutte des pouvoirs publics,” 577–78.
 80. Cham, “Islam in Senegalese Literature and Film,” 177. For a more favorable view of the 
film (in a journal number dedicated in part to Traoré’s work), see Diop, “Njangaan de 
Mahara Johnson Traoré.”
 81. Colin, Systèmes d’éducation, 130. The recollections of the debate are those of Colin himself, 
not an interlocutor. Colin was the minister of education in the early 1960s and a close asso-
ciate and friend of deposed Prime Minister Mamadou Dia. He finished the thesis in 1977.
 82. Touré, “Sur l’exemple de l’école,” 2.
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The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State 45
 83. The summary here is my reading of the official extracts from the seminar. These are available 
at the Library of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal and the Institut Islamique de Dakar.
 84. See Loimeier, “L’Islam ne se vend plus.”
 85. The general explosion of Islamic associations in this period is captured by Piga, Dakar et 
les ordres, 444–56, and Gomez-Perez, “Associations islamiques à Dakar.” Both authors 
highlight the importance of educational reform in the associational movement. A more 
intensive analysis of the écoles arabes and their effect on Quran schooling is the subject of a 
chapter of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.”
 86. For historical perspective on the controversies, see my article, Ware, “Njàngaan: The Daily 
Regime,” as well as the final chapter of “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.” For one anthro-
pological perspective see Perry, “Muslim Child Disciples.”
 87. Kane, L’Aventure Ambigüe, 34.
 88. Loimeier, “Je veux étudier sans mendier,” 124. The data is originally drawn from Wiegel-
mann, “Die Koranschule—Eine Alternative.”
 89. Literally, “calabash of nothing, goat comes not.”
 90. Sharif Suleiman Aidara, interview with the author, Touba, April 2002. Mansur Caam, 
interview with the author, Tivaouane, August 2001.
 91. Loimeier, “Je veux étudier sans mendier,” 127. Loimeier’s data here is drawn primarily from 
a German language PhD thesis by Wiegelmann, “Alphabetisierung und Grundbildung.”
 92. During recent fieldwork in Futa Toro in July 2008, the author encountered one such 
school in the village of Bokidiawé operated by a partisan of the Harakat al-Falah Salafi-
inspired reform movement. In the school of Oustaz Amadou Sow, the fusion of educational 
styles is apparent. The focus is on memorizing the Quran and reshaping the character, not 
the mere acquisition of the Arabic language. Sow also teaches Maliki fiqh texts to advanced 
students in spite of the fact that like most Salafis he does not follow the teachings of a single 
madhhab.
 93. For further discussion of the hybridization of educational styles see Ware, “Knowledge, 
Faith, and Power,” 279–316. For two specific examples see pp. 309–14. For more recent 
discussion on this theme, with comparative dimensions, see Rudolph Ware and Robert 
Launay, “Comment (ne pas) lire le Coran: Logiques de l’enseignement religieux au Séné-
gal et en Côte d’Ivoire,” in Gilles Holder (ed.), L’Islam en Afrique: vers un espace public 
religieux?: Editions aux lieux d’être, 2008
 94. Pape Lamin Ndiaye, interview with the author, Tivaouane, August 2001.
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C h a p t e r 2
4
The Shifting Space of 
Senegalese Mosques
Cleo Cantone (School of Oriental and African Studies)
Since its humble beginnings in Medina, the mosque has acted as a focal point for 
the Muslim community. Its polyvalent role as a place that combined dwelling, prayer, 
tribunal, garrison, and commercial activity in the Medinan period is often evoked by 
so-called revivalist movements. According to such a discourse, the mosque does not 
discriminate against race, ethnicity, or gender rather placing the emphasis on belief in 
the puritanical tenets of Islam, in contrast to Sufi groups whose mosques are often 
tariqa specific. But in architectural terms, the message of this particular discourse is 
not always as clearly advertised from the point of view of the building. This may well 
be symptomatic of what Villalón has observed regarding the distinctions between 
Sufi, Reformist, and Islamist groups: “Sufism remains the dominant form of devotion, 
but its dynamic forms and manifestations are adapting in ways that have blurred, if not 
completely erased, the distinctions between ‘traditional’ Sufi and Islamist groups.”1
In Senegal, differences between mosques that belong to the turuq (singular tariqa, 
Sufi order) and those that belong to Ibadus (as members of the turuq refer to those 
who reject a number of Sufi practices) are sometimes marred by shared aesthetic ideas 
of mosque architecture. Decorative (but rarely functional) elements such as the dome 
and minaret are therefore subjects of discussion and debate between the Imam and 
his congregation. This chapter explores these dialogues as well as their effect on the 
buildings themselves. It attempts to identify an Ibadu trademark that accounts for the 
increasing presence of female worshippers and how the return to the original Medi-
nan concept of mosque has introduced a new conception and use of sacred space, 
forging what has shaped the specific identity of jakka ibadou or Ibadu mosques.
The literature on Senegalese mosques is sparse. Nevertheless, it is worthy of note 
that the section on West African mosque architecture in the Encyclopaedia of Islam 
is written by the Senegalese author Amar Samb, hencethe predominant reference to 
mosques in Senegal. Samb differentiates between the substantial and modern mosques 
of towns and cities and the simple enclosures made of bamboo palisade or zinc found 
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Cleo C antone52
in villages, and he adds that the former possess minarets. Bear in mind that this entry 
dates to the late 1980s, and since then most said enclosures have been rebuilt in 
cement and sport as many decorative devices as the community can afford. Yet on 
the issue of different denominations of mosques, the author simply acknowledges the 
various religious brotherhoods, disregarding the rise of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman2 
and their corresponding erection of distinctive places to pray.
Apart from two primary locations in Senegal, namely the capital and the northeast-
ern region of Futa Toro, I have included some mosques in Mali to illustrate the links 
between what remains of the mud mosques (known as mosquées en banco) in Senegal 
(Photo 2.1) and their progenitors in Mali.
Although the mosques of Dakar are analyzed in their globalized and modernized 
context, the mosques of rural Senegal—many of which are still built in mud—belong 
to a different historical context, which in turn gives rise to a different set of spatial 
configurations. In spite of the well-known prophetic tradition according to which the 
whole world was created as a masjid (Arabic for “place of prostration”), Muslims the 
world over attach particular importance to the construction of mosques (itself deemed 
a meritorious act); therefore, the mosque becomes an important identity marker of a 
given Muslim community. The notion of shifting space alluded to in the title refers to 
the physical act of rebuilding mosques in durable materials as well as to the changes 
that take place in the spatial organization of the mosque to accommodate women.
Rather than approach the mosque case studies from the perspective of their reli-
gious affiliation, I attempt a thematic approach based on my observations during 
fieldwork in Senegal and Mali between 1999 and 2005, focusing on the following 
interconnected themes: the topographical context of mosques, the effect of discourse 
on gender and identity, and what I have called ideology by design.
Photo 2.1 The Mosque of Guede, Futa Toro.
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 53
Topography
Although the notion of the Islamic city has been disputed by some scholars,3 the 
importance of the mosque in Muslim settlements goes back to the establishment of 
Medina by prophet Mohammad in 622 AD. Known as Yathrib in pre-Islamic times, it 
consisted of a “collection of scattered settlements”4 (including a large number of forts 
or strongholds). In essence, therefore, the construction of the prophet’s mosque in 
Medina embodied the centralization of settlement and activity—economical, political, 
and spiritual—in proximity to the new prophet. Nevertheless, during the early years 
of Islam’s expansion, Islamic cities and places of worship were rarely founded ex novo 
and were more commonly adaptations of preexisting settlements.
Initially the mosque was located at the center of the camp with the leader’s resi-
dence—the so-called dar al-imara—adjacent to it. Thus its subsequent location 
in the heart of the medina (old city) gradually overshadowed the seat of temporal 
power—often in the form of the leader’s palace—and became more closely linked to 
the market.5 The palace and the mosque do not make easy bedfellows, because the 
spiritual leader was at once the political leader whose remit was to emulate the humil-
ity of the prophet. It appears that as the leader became increasingly separate from his 
congregation (i.e., no longer living in or immediately adjacent to the mosque), more 
emphasis was placed on the embellishment of his residence, thereby architecturally 
separating between his spiritual and temporal authority.
In West Africa, however, this was not always the case. With the arrival of Islam, 
when both the king and the population converted to the new religion, the mon-
arch no longer had a religious function, and he gradually assumed a secular role as 
governor. Rather, it was the religious chiefs who incorporated temporal power into 
their spiritual regime.6 As Eric Ross illustrates with specific reference to Touba—the 
spiritual capital of the Murid tariqa—such an alliance between spiritual and tempo-
ral power is evident in the topography of the city centered around what its founder 
Cheikh Amadou Bamba intended to be the biggest mosque in Africa.7
Alongside the mosque (and tomb of Bamba) is the pénc, the public square where 
elders “gather and palaver,” reflecting the political and temporal aspects of the heart 
of the city. Thus the mosque and the pénc are the architectural embodiments of the 
Imam and/or leader of the tariqa and the chef du village.8 Not only was the city of 
Touba founded on the spot where Amadou Bamba used to sit under the mbéb tree 
during his spiritual retreats, but he planned the city’s streets to radiate from the site of 
the great mosque. Just as the mosque is the center of the city, Touba “is the center of 
the Murid universe, and, according to Murid historiography, its centrality has univer-
sal significance for humanity.”9 And as Ross points out, it is the main minaret, the so-
called Lamp Fall (Photo 2.2), that “personifies Touba’s axis mundi, a qutb al-alam 
(pole of the world) or vertical axis to complete the qibla axis of Islam.”10
In contrast to most mosques in Senegal, Touba mosque is exceptional in its 
demarcation of sacred space beyond the perimeters of the building itself. In other 
words the mosque represents the material and spiritual center of a holy city in earthly 
terms and the gate to paradise in otherworldly terms. Indeed, the city of Touba is 
an extension of the mosque in that certain religious prohibitions that apply within 
the sacred precinct also apply outside it: the consumption of alcohol and tobacco 
as well as all forms of “secular entertainment.” Similar demarcations of space are 
found in the quartier Mame Ndiegen in Thiès. But unlike Touba, this small district 
is not a legal communauté rurale autonome; rather, its holiness is defined by the 
Ndiegen family whose founding father, Mame Baro Ndiegen, first settled in the area 
pal-diouf-02.indd 53pal-diouf-02.indd 53 08/11/11 1:52:53 pm08/11/11 1:52:53 pm
Photo 2.2 Lamp Fall, Great Mosque of Touba.
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 55
and around 1880 constructed a mosque on the site where a newer mosque now 
stands.11
With rapid urban expansion, few cities can boast a similar spiritual foundation with 
accompanying symbolic typography. Indeed, the capital of Senegal, Dakar, acquires 
an altogether different meaning when we consider that the French moved their capital 
there from Saint Louis and thereby transformed a quiet Lebu fishing village into a 
burgeoning commercial center. Yet the capital is not without its religious significance; 
each denomination of Senegalese Islam is represented by an important building. Thus 
although each tariqa is presided by a great mosque in its rural seat (Tivaouane for 
the Tijaniyya, Touba for the Murids, Yoff for the Layen, etc.), there is normally a cor-
responding monumental building to represent the tariqa in the political capital of the 
country. The Great Mosque of Dakar is particularly significant in this respect, because 
it houses an adjoining library and Islamic Center in addition to teaching facilities and 
offices. Official state visitors from Muslim countries are invited to say their prayers in 
this mosque.
Even after long delays and deliberations between the then–colonial administration 
and Senegalese religious dignitaries,the Great Mosque’s origins testify to its official 
status. Its inauguration, on March 27, 1964 (and not in the mid-1970s as stated by 
Holod and Khan12), in fact was held in the presence of King Hassan II of Morocco 
and President Leopold Senghor.13 The appointed Grand Imam was Abdoul Aziz Sy, 
the grand marabout of the Tivaouane Tijans who led the prayer on this occasion, thus 
making a clear statement of the official Tijan orientation of the mosque.
This monumental structure (Photo 2.3) that presides over the Medina of Dakar 
reflects at once the official representation of Tijan Islam, while its overtly Almohad-
inspired architecture creates a tangible link with King Hassan’s patronage of mosques 
in his preferred style and the correlated movement to revive Morocco’s traditional 
crafts.14 Indeed, the choice of the so-called Hassanian style aims to “represent the 
rebirth of the soul of the country and to be a spectacular affirmation of national 
identity”15 and has consequentially been exported to other West African capitals, as 
Paccard explains: “The sovereign is also extremely anxious that Moroccan arts express 
this new vitality throughout the world. Mauritania, Senegal and the Ivory Coast all 
boast of refined and beautiful monuments which are the recent works of craftsmen 
from Fes, Rabat, Marrakesh and Casablanca.”16
In this context it is not surprising that the Murids have now received funding and 
craftsmanship from the Kingdom of Morocco to build their own grand mosque in the 
capital. The significance of this mosque is that its magnificence cannot rival that of 
the Great Mosque of Touba, nor can its style be too easily confused with its de facto 
rival, the Great Mosque of Dakar. Therefore, the move appears to be more political, 
because a Murid Moroccan mosque is making an important statement about its own 
relationship with the seat of Maliki authority—a relationship that was traditionally 
maintained between Morocco and the Tijan tariqa, whose founder is buried in Fez.
Following on from Ross’s notion of spiritual topography, I would like to further 
analyze two mosques in Dakar in their topographic context: the University of Dakar 
Mosque and the Mosque of Soprim. The Great Mosque features on most maps of 
the capital, but it is difficult to find a topographic reference to the city’s burgeoning 
population of prayer places. Built in the midst of the university campus in 1986, the 
university mosque serves most Muslim students. The community mosque in Soprim 
mainly caters to the youth from the local area in a residential suburb of the capital; and 
as far as I am aware, it does not feature on any map.
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Photo 2.3 Grande Mosquée de Dakar.
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 57
The location of each mosque is a determining factor in how it is used and by whom 
it is frequented. For example, situated on the border between the Plateau and the 
Medina on the avenue Al-Hajj Malick Sy, the location of the Great Mosque requires 
visitors to take some form of transport. Because its main raison d’être is to cater for 
official state visits or the main festivals, the rest of the time this monumental complex 
remains fairly deserted. Its majestic square minaret harbors seven floors of classrooms, 
and from one of the gates it is possible to see the equally imposing sight of the unfin-
ished mosque of the Omarian Tijans with twin minarets capped by gargantuan bul-
bous domes towering majestically over the Corniche. Acting like the two custodians 
of the capital, these are the largest mosques in central Dakar in spite of their consider-
able distance from the main political and economic hub of the Plateau.
Thus, the Great Mosque of Dakar’s location is marginal in relation to the city’s 
central Sandaga market and the financial quarters around the Place de l’Indépendance, 
whereas in a sense the Ibadu mosques of Soprim and La Mosquée de l’Université de 
Dakar (MUD) needed to be accommodated in their topographical surroundings: At 
MUD the qibla (the direction of Mecca) is not aligned to the street, so the courtyard 
preceding the mosque is decidedly askew to compensate. Similarly, Soprim is designed 
to fit the incongruous plot of allocated land. In Dakar’s suburbs a parcel of land is 
usually reserved for a public building such as a medical dispensary, school, or mosque; 
hence the plot of land is not always ideally disposed with correct orientation toward 
qibla.
In this respect, the Great Mosque of Touba is exceptional. As Ross argues in his 
recent book on Touba, the foundation of the Great Mosque on the site where Cheikh 
Amadou Bamba had his mystic revelation constitutes a unique spatial arrangement, 
“Touba is a Sufi city for two reasons. First, it was founded by a Sufi sheikh and has 
been entirely built up and managed by a Sufi order. Second, the design of the city is 
the product of the application of Sufi principles and concepts.”17
Discourse, Gender, and Identity
Up until the formation of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman in 1979, the prayer hall in most 
Senegalese mosques was out of bounds to women. Only women past menopause were 
allowed to frequent the mosque, and even then they were obliged to perform their 
prayer in a separate building. Paul Marty’s colorful description in the early twentieth 
century remains accurate:
As for women, the reason given is that they are unclean adding that “They should pray at 
home if they want”. Men generally believe that women do not need to pray not because 
their piety exonerates them but because they are inferior beings and such humble beings 
are not required to pray. Nevertheless one sees a few old ladies in certain mosques attend 
Friday prayers. Elsewhere, when there is a substantial and persevering group of devotees, 
a small wooden or grass hut is built in a corner of the courtyard and there, alone amongst 
themselves, they can follow the service of the mosque.18
Most mosques that are not affiliated with a tariqa have a mosque committee where 
matters such as fundraising and any other practical matters are discussed. Member-
ship to such committees is also open to women; and in exceptional cases, such as the 
Mosquée Ngalèle in Saint Louis, women can be quite influential. Imam Boubacar 
Diakhaté informed me that one local woman paid for the architect of the mosque 
herself; and the Association des Femmes de la Cité de Ngalèle collected 200,000 CFA 
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Cleo C antone58
(roughly the equivalent of $400) toward the construction of the mosque, and they 
also contributed toward helping fill the foundations with sand.19
The new mosque of Ngalèle is in the midst of a recent district of Saint Louis called, 
appropriately, Cité Universitaire, because it is within easy reach of Gaston Berger 
University and many of its residents are employees at the university. On the other side 
of the main road, an older part of Ngalèle has its own Friday mosque. Here the old 
Imam delivers the khutba in Arabic while Imam Diakhaté makes a sermon in Wolof. 
Talking about his sermons, Diakhaté explained that his aim was to deliver them de 
manière scientifique and deal with contemporary affairs to complement the tradi-
tional sermons of his colleague. I also encountered this practice of the double Imam 
in Jenne in neighboring Mali. Imam Elfadi Nalia gives sermons in the Great Mosque 
of Jenne in Bambara while an older Imam preaches in Arabic.
In Senegal and Mali, sermons in local languages are a relatively new phenomenon 
as Imam Diallo in Bamako explained. According to him, this is because Imam Malik 
banned sermons from being translated from Arabic; so it follows that the tradition-
alists (the turuq generally follow the Maliki madhhab) have stuck to this principle. 
Contrarily to hisfather before him, Imam Diallo believes that the khutba should be 
understood by the congregation; and if it is not translated into a local language, “the 
message does not get through.”20
The question of the language used in sermons reflects the wider debate about 
access to knowledge via the gate of the mosque. Indeed, by preaching sermons in 
languages that are widely understood, mosques and their Imams attract greater audi-
ences, not least from a traditionally underrepresented group: women. Interestingly, it 
was Imam Elfadi who stressed that he encouraged women to frequent the mosque in 
his sermons for the past twenty years, but this had little effect on local women. Mostly, 
it is still the older women who frequent the mosque, especially for Friday prayers. He 
added that perhaps it would be more effective if this message came from a foreigner’s 
mouth. This prompted him to invite me to give a talk to the female worshippers after 
the Friday prayer, which he translated into Bambara.21 The main point I made was 
that apart from the baraka (blessing) of praying in congregation, jum’a prayers were 
a precious opportunity to gain knowledge and strengthen sisterhood. When the talk 
was over, each woman shook my hand and we exchanged blessings. The Imam made 
a point that men should be prevented from entering from the bab al-nisa, or women’s 
entrance, to safeguard their privacy.
In Jenne the problem was to attract more women to frequent the mosque, whereas 
the Wahhabiyya22 mosque in San had a canopied zulla at the back of the courtyard 
designated for women. Here, rather than the colorful boubou-clad elder women there 
were younger women covered in black abayas from the Gulf or Saudi Arabia. These 
women were accompanied by their children, which is discouraged in traditional tariqa 
mosques on the grounds that they may potentially soil the mosque. Denying women 
access to sacred space equates them to the status of children, because both have the 
capacity to “pollute” the premises and distract men from prayer.23
At Ihsan Mosque (Photo 2.4, the name means beneficence, charity, performance of 
good deeds) the emphasis is on the design as well as on the maintenance of the mosque. 
Imam Cissé insists on keeping the mosque immaculately clean; and to this effect, he 
invoked the hadith of the prophet Mohammad: “Purity is half the faith.” Cissé believes 
that by maintaining the mosque accordingly, more people will want to frequent it. 
Similarly, by creating a dignified place for women in the mosque, they too will want 
to attend more regularly. Judging by the large numbers of women coming to pray in 
this mosque on a regular basis, it appears that the Imam’s philosophy works.
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 59
The dynamic Imam who is also a professor at the University of Gaston Berger, 
Abdoullah Cissé has revolutionized not only the spatial configuration of the tradi-
tional tariqa mosque by incorporating the women’s section within the mosque; but 
in so doing, he has managed to subvert entrenched ideas about women’s impurity and 
their inaccessibility to places of prayer.
Cissé, a committed Tijan, conceded that women’s space in the mosque has been 
neglected because it is considered secondary and therefore not important; and 
although it is not obligatory for women to attend prayers in a mosque, “it is not 
forbidden.”24 Imam Cissé is of the opinion that women must feel welcome in a place 
of worship and above all that their dignity should remain intact. In accordance with 
this perception, the women’s prayer place in Ihsan mosque is situated in a gallery 
overlooking the men in the prayer hall below. Indeed, according to Cissé, the fact 
that women are above the men in the mosque confers a sense of pride; and, in turn, 
this foments their desire to frequent the mosque. In contrast to the disparaging view 
Photo 2.4 Mosquée Ihsan, Saint Louis.
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Cleo C antone60
of women cited by Marty, the Imam of Ihsan mosque maintains that older women are 
considered the same as men and they “do not pose a problem.”25
Thus, the inclusion of women in Ihsan mosque proves an ingenious spatial solu-
tion that is at once Islamic (i.e., avoiding promiscuity) and acceptable to women. In 
other words, the function of the building (as a place of prayer for men and women) is 
as important as its aesthetic value.
Design and Style
Ihsan’s clean, modernist, and Middle Eastern-inspired architecture makes a consider-
able statement among the surrounding colonial architecture. Similarly, the contrast 
between the traditionalist great mosque of Jenne and the Wahhabi mosque in San is 
their architecture. Unlike Jenne’s imposing mud monument dating back more than 
a century when it replaced a much earlier structure, the Wahhabi mosque in San 
was recently built, and its soulless design paid greater tribute to the convenience of 
cement than to the millenary tradition in mosque-building that survives to this day in 
many parts of contemporary Mali.
Without trying to embark on an antimodern crusade about the disadvantages of 
using an alien material in West African architecture, the question about the transfor-
mation of mosque architecture in the region must be addressed, because it touches 
at once on broader issues about patronage and religious identity. To illustrate this, I 
need to dwell on a region that lies at the crossroads between the Niger valley and the 
valley of the River Senegal.
Futa Toro is a transitional zone bordering Mali in northeastern Senegal. Dotted 
along the banks of the river are a series of villages founded by various jihadists in 
the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In the spirit of 
purifying the faith through political jihad, successive leaders built mosques, basing 
their design on the Sudanese mosques they encountered in the Niger bend and using 
the widely available clay or banco. Several of these small, cuboid mosques still survive 
today in spite of heavy restorations carried out in cement. Were it not for their his-
torical significance, they would probably have been abandoned and replaced by new 
mosques built entirely in cement, thus radically altering the distinctive curvaceous 
lines of their mud predecessors.
The material used for mosque construction in many ways embodies the relation-
ship that people have with the land and this in turn “confers identity.”26 Formerly, 
the process of building a mosque involved the whole community—women generally 
prepared the meals and carried the water used to mix the mud and men did the build-
ing work—whereas cement constructions take a fraction of time and labor. In addi-
tion, the space surrounding the mosque was as important as that contained within its 
walls. Rather like the pénc or public square used by elders to palaver, the hangar or 
shaded area outside small mud mosques is used by the Imam along with his family 
and community.
Modern mosques with their Middle East–inspired designs tend to exclude the 
exterior space by creating a multifunctional space inside the mosque. In other words 
libraries, the Imam’s room, a separate women’s section, and teaching rooms com-
bine to form a religious complex catering to all the community’s spiritual needs, 
hence the redundancy of the hangar. Formerly, the exterior space surrounding the 
mosque—sometimes shaded by a zinc or reed roof—was used for teaching the Quran 
to children or as a place to sit in the shade.
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 61
In a district of Podor such a project is underway, and a small mosque in a bad 
state of repair is to be knocked down and rebuilt following the design of a pro-
fessional architect. The signature of the new structure will be itsminaret, which is 
discussed later in the chapter. However, the most notable transformation is the inclu-
sion of the Imam’s room, library, and women’s section into the main building with 
teaching rooms adjacent to the mosque. Interestingly, this same design is found in 
Ibadu mosques including MUD, Soprim, Al-Falah (Colobane, Dakar), Abou Ubay-
data (Unité 26, Parcelles Assainies), Bilal (Thiès), and so forth. With the exception 
of Soprim, however, most Ibadu mosques receive funding from Saudi Arabia or the 
Gulf, and they make clear their anti-maraboutic or anti-tariqa stance to discourage 
tariqa members to frequent their mosques.
Ideology by Design?
Ironically, one of the greatest exponents of material wellbeing in West Africa is cement. 
Whether place of abode or prayer, once wealth has made its appearance, buildings are 
knocked down or abandoned and new ones erected in this relatively costly material. 
Yet somehow the initial enthusiasm for the new construction in this semieternal mate-
rial quickly withers when what was planned to look like a great mosque or a fabulous 
villa remains a grey skeleton whose only esthetic credential is to scar the horizon. 
Unfinished mosques in Senegal abound like case abusive (houses with no planning 
permission) in Sicily and the cause for this is often the same: not enough money to 
complete building work.
Local communities may have painstakingly contributed to building or rebuilding 
a mosque in durable materials; but when funds run out, financial aid is often sought 
from abroad. In some cases the money was enough to cover the cost of the architect’s 
fee, let alone purchasing the necessary materials to build the new mosque. According 
to Boubacar Sow from the Service d’Urbanisme in Thiès, there has been an increase 
in mosque-building in the last five years, most projects funded by Saudi Arabia.27 
Records at the Service d’Urbanisme showed that various Muslim communities put 
in requests for permission to build a mosque, which Sow maintains are pro forma to 
obtain funding and send proof to their sponsors that their mosque has been approved 
rather than to obtain building permission. A rather different story emerged from the 
Muslim World League (MWL) headquarters in Dakar.
The MWL in Dakar mediates the acceptance of applications from Senegalese com-
munities wishing to build a mosque and sends these to the MWL headquarters in 
Saudi Arabia. If the application is accepted, the funds are given in three stages; and 
on completion of each stage, proof of work progress must be sent. This is done in the 
form of an engineer’s report and a set of photographs as well as copies of all expenses 
incurred in the project. The keys are handed over to the community once they have 
received the final amount. Upon completion of the mosque, the community is asked 
to compile a report stating whether they are satisfied with the work. A Friday is cho-
sen to perform the jum’a prayers in the presence of a member of the MWL, who 
makes a speech stating that the mosque no longer belongs to them and hands over 
the key to the community.28
Funding from Saudi Arabia or the Gulf used to be administered by individuals or 
Islamic associations. However, in more recent years Arab funders no longer follow 
this procedure and require a given community to form an organization and provide 
evidence that they are building the mosque for their community and that there is a 
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Cleo C antone62
genuine need for a place of worship in a given area. In other words, following a num-
ber of frauds, funding bodies have laid down a series of criteria to be met before they 
approve of the project and issue the required funds.
The mosque of Soprim (Photo 2.5) is located in one of Dakar’s recent suburbs 
called Patte d’Oie Nord on the Route des Niayes and borders on Unité 14 of Parcelles 
Assainies. Soprim was created from 1987 to 1988 and the foundation of its mosque 
dates to 1994. Although self-funded, like most revivalist-inspired mosques, Soprim 
was conceived as a complexe d’éducation islamique where the place for worship is part 
of a complex comprising teaching rooms, morgue, library, Quranic school, health cen-
ter, and guest house.29 Aside from the formal disposition of the site, Soprim’s complex 
sets out to fulfill its religious and social functions toward the community by offering 
crèche facilities, a youth program, as well as a committee for women. Under the aus-
pices of the COPEMS (Comité Permanent pour l’Edification du Complexe Islamique 
de la grande Mosquée de Soprim et environs), a report was compiled on October 24, 
1999, outlining the objectives of the committee and delineating the work accom-
plished on the building work. As well as involving the youth and volunteers to do the 
paintwork, an environmental cachet included a plan to plant trees, which was initiated 
by the local council but failed because of lack of upkeep (entretien).
Two questions were emphasized as needing greater attention: first, the inclusion of 
women in the work of the bureau and in all activities; second, regarding the turuq the 
committee urged those members not to use the microphone to perform the wazifa 
(repetition of sacred phrases) as a result of a vote. As reflected in the committee’s 
membership, roles are differentiated along the lines of organizational, social, financial, 
and religious affairs. The main Imam is at once president of this section and replaced 
by a rotation of Imams. Thus Imam Ndiaye’s main assistant Imam is Imam Kanté, 
who is the Imam ratib (principal) at the University Mosque of Dakar, discussed in the 
following text. This means the congregation is exposed to different styles of delivery 
as well as divergent discourses within a spectrum of predefined topics.30 Sermons in 
Soprim are delivered in Wolof—catering to most of its worshippers.
With its youthful population, the mosque of Soprim caters to the needs of its 
community, taking into account both the Ibadu persuasion of some and the adher-
ence to the turuq of others. Thus although the ideology, style of discourse, and social 
organization conform to the Ibadu ilk of a proportion of contemporary Senegalese 
mosques, Soprim functions mainly as what I call a community mosque, emphasizing 
the religious aspect while promoting community cohesion. Furthermore, the build-
ing is integrated into the urban and primarily residential zone, making no bold struc-
tural statement (unlike Dakar’s Grande Mosquée par excellence).
In a neighboring suburb, adjacent to Soprim, the so-called mosque Impôts et 
Domaines (after the name of its location) remains in its undecorated cement shell but 
has recently been provided with a second story.31 The original mosque consisted of a 
square plan flanked by a veranda on the southern façade terminating with an imposing 
square minaret tower that overshadows a small spherical dome encased by leaf-shaped 
crenellations. Presumably, the upper story was added to the rear of the mosque. This 
is an unusual accretion in a non-Friday prayer mosque; but according to Imam Kanté, 
it may soon become a jum’a mosque. It will be interesting to see whether this does 
come about and what effect it will have on the congregation of Soprim. Although the 
architecture of the mosque clearly advertises its tariqa orientation—notably in the use 
of the tall square minaret, dome, and crenellations—local Ibadus pray there. In 2001 
when I had the occasion to be there for timiss (the Wolof term for maghrib or sunset 
prayer), as soon as the Ibadus completed their salat, the lights were switched off and 
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 63
the white sheet laid out under the dome to perform the wazifa. Because the Tijan 
litany is particular to this tariqa, and because only men can perform it, I tried to leave 
the mosqueas discreetly as possible.
Senegal’s religious history is replete with such foundation myths, and it would be 
a phenomenal task for an oral historian to collect them and put them in writing. The 
strange thing is that in cases where there is no foundation myth, information on the 
background to the mosque’s construction is obtained with difficulty, and informants 
are often reticent to provide pertinent documents. The University Mosque of Dakar 
is a case in point. But it is precisely the mosque’s location in a strictly secular zone 
that provides the clue to the avoidance of any reference to a mystical experience tied 
to its founders. In its architectural austerity and unpretentiousness, this mosque defies 
the secular ethos of the campus by its very presence, and the crowds that flock to 
worship within its confines attest to the relentless drive to religion of the population. 
Furthermore, the founders of the mosque pride themselves at having obtained first 
Photo 2.5 Soprim.
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Cleo C antone64
the permission to build the mosque and second to advertise both architecturally and 
theologically the detachment from any tariqa.
As I uncovered in the mosque’s archives, the original plan for the mosque resem-
bled the present building in all but a few details. The two towering square minarets 
that would have flanked the main entrance were replaced by a single octagonal stub of 
a tower whose uppermost tier barely rises above the height of the roof, which inciden-
tally was supposed to include an upper story. Even more symbolically, the large spheri-
cal dome that would have preceded the mihrab was omitted altogether—allegedly to 
accommodate the upper story, but in keeping with anti-Sufi practices, its presence 
is often associated with the practice of wazifa described earlier. I endorse this thesis 
because cost is sometimes the cause behind architectural modesty rather than ideol-
ogy, as discussed in the following text. But in the case of MUD, its principal Imam 
and founding member assured me that funds for carrying out any remedial work on 
the mosque as well as the envisaged extensions were not an obstacle. He said that it 
was principally out of diplomacy that the building had to keep a fairly low profile: 
to avoid upsetting the secular state on one hand and the members of other religious 
groups—notably the turuq—on the other.
At the Cité Universitaire mosque of Ngalèle, modernity and tradition are subtly 
blended. The plan of the mosque conforms to the traditional veranda-enclosed prayer 
hall with protruding semicircular mihrab in keeping with many mosques in the Saint 
Louis area. The exterior walls, however, have been covered with a rendering whose 
hue and texture are distinctly mudlike contrasting with the bright white interior. The 
flat roof is designed (once again) to accommodate a second story, and a minaret 
is planned to be built adjacent to the northeastern corner of the mosque. In all its 
aspects (decorative and ideological) Ngalèle has much in common with MUD. Yet the 
overall design of the former eloquently expresses the dialogue that exists between the 
old and the new (also the traditional versus the modern, etc.), thus soliciting greater 
acceptance in the community. In contrast, built twenty years earlier, the Mosquée 
de l’Université de Dakar reflects the tensions that surrounded its construction by 
incorporating some design elements alien to West African Islam such as in the use of 
triangular-shaped arches and the hexagonal minaret.
The issues surrounding the inclusion or omission of certain architectural ele-
ments are the objects of discussion and indeed of dialogue between Imams and their 
congregations in several mosques I researched in my fieldwork. My initial impres-
sion was that although tariqa mosques adopted their style from Maghrebi mosques, 
Ibadu mosques purposely distinguished themselves by omitting overtly decorative 
elements to signify greater adherence to the Sunna. However, upon subsequent visits 
I found that those apparent omissions were included at a later date—in particular the 
minaret.
Soprim and two other distinctly Ibadu mosques had no minaret up until my stay 
from 2000 to 2001. But by 2005 both Ibadu mosques in Parcelles Assainies in Dakar 
boasted two impressively high towers; and as for Soprim, one has recently been added.32 
The reason, quite blatantly, was that more funds became available to build a minaret, 
which, after all, has come to be the most ostensible and visible symbol of Islamic reli-
gious architecture in spite of its roots springing from a Christian tradition.33 In the case 
of Soprim, the intention to build a minaret was clearly set out in the 1999 minutes but 
when I last spoke to the principal Imam in 2005, he conceded that this was an unnec-
essary provision because the prophet’s mosque did not possess one. Owing to public 
pressure it was decided a minaret was needed to clearly earmark the building, while 
allegedly making the adhan (call to prayer) audible from further afield.
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 65
Beyond the issue of whether it is appropriate to have a minaret to make the call 
to prayer, the question of style needs addressing. Much to my surprise, these recent 
Ibadu minarets owe much to local stylistic traditions—a tall square tower for the 
mosque in Unité 26 and a stepped square minaret in Unité 21—and furthermore, 
their sheer height makes no bones about ostentatious display. I have not yet seen the 
minaret at Soprim, but it is located in the northwestern corner of the roof where a 
staircase has been ready to lead to the tower for eight years. This begs the question: 
How much do Imams know about Islamic architecture? Or what does Islamic archi-
tecture conjure up in their imagination? Both Ibadus and Arabisants34 conceived of 
the tower to perform the adhan as an innovation (bid’a), nevertheless they had to 
give in either to public pressure or the functional justification whereby the higher 
the microphone (from where the adhan is actually produced) the further the sound 
would be heard. In the end what is most enduring is the symbolic attachment of the 
minaret and its semiotic power in attracting worshippers to its fold.
The dome simply cannot compete with the minaret on this score: Its primary func-
tion is to encapsulate the heavenly vault and accentuate the mihrab: the visual focus 
of the worshipper guiding his prayer toward the qibla. Furthermore, the introduc-
tion of the dome in Senegal is of a much later date most probably not preceding the 
appearance of cement. Although I have no evidence proving that the omission of the 
dome is a deliberate choice based on a Salafi-Wahhabi strand of Islam, Ibadu mosques 
are for the most part domeless. Both the Imams at MUD and Ngalèle justify that a 
second story was envisaged so both mosques have flat roofs. Noted that Soprim’s 
mosque possesses two stories as well as a dome; and as I pointed out earlier, Impôts et 
Domaines has been able to include another floor regardless of an existing dome.
Herein lies the contradiction: According to the Salafist perspective, both minaret 
and dome are bid’a; nevertheless, their architectural and symbolic value outweighs 
their lack of precedent in the time of the prophet. There is another possible explana-
tion for the choice of suppressing the dome and minaret, which can be found in local, 
precolonial mosques. As Marty ventures, mosques built in durable materials, and there-
fore during the time of French occupation, either did or did not possess a minaret. In 
mosques built of banco, for example, the muezzin would climb up onto the roof to 
make the adhan by means of narrow and proverbially precarious stairwells at the rear 
of the mosque. Examples of these can be found in the surviving Futa Toro mosques35;but since the advent of the loudspeaker, the stairwells have fallen into disuse.
The design of Ihsan is anything but conventional in the lexicon of Senegalese 
mosque architecture. The two towering minarets, for example, are cylindrical; and 
the main entrance is preceded by a false gate, adding a modern touch to the build-
ing while the veranda on the northern façade slopes asymmetrically to one side. The 
exterior of the mosque is painted in white with dark green details like the bulbous 
domes surmounting the minarets. A large dome decorated with Quranic inscriptions 
dominates the male prayer hall. However, when the time for the wazifa arrives, just 
after the maghrib prayer, women do not have to hurtle out in the dark but can remain 
in their gallery listening to the proceedings or continuing with other acts of devotion. 
As evidenced from this architectural innovation, the effect on gender relations is con-
siderable, because the women’s gallery facilitates active or at any rate visual participa-
tion to an unprecedented degree.
I am only aware of one other example of this organization of space: The Cen-
ter Bilal mosque in Thiès was founded in around 1979 and currently serves as the 
headquarters of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman. The use of galleries or mezzanines by 
women in mosques is prevalent in the Middle East but can be found in early Ottoman 
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Cleo C antone66
mosques as far West as Tunisia. Since the Ottoman presence did not penetrate as far 
as Morocco, inspiration in Senegal has Middle Eastern origins. Cissé in fact suggested 
that it was during one of his father’s trips to the Gulf that the idea of the gallery first 
occurred to him.
The widespread phenomenon in West Africa and in particular in Senegal of the 
jakka jigeen or women’s mosque consists of a small, separate building where women (or 
more specifically older women) pray. These so-called women’s mosques are extremely 
common in small Tijani mosques and are often located within the courtyard. That 
said, in some instances, the women’s mosque is a former men’s mosque that became 
too small for the growing congregation, which subsequently prays in a new adjacent 
building. This is the case at the old mosque in Ngalèle previously mentioned and was 
the case with the contemporary mosque of Soprim. But this is where theological ori-
entation makes its mark on the building: In the former example, the women’s build-
ing is left in its primitive state with no embellishments or refurbishments, whereas in 
the second example the women’s mosque takes on a status of its own.
The architect of Soprim’s newly built women’s mosque is a woman, Ndey Khady 
Diop. Although female architects are not unknown in Senegal,36 Diop’s design departs 
from the conventional jakka jigeen in one main respect: She chose to go against the 
conventional mode of suppressing fenestration or using claustrawork to enclose the 
women in a fairly dark space from where they may see out but not be seen. Indeed, 
Diop’s original design for Soprim’s women’s prayer space was to open three large 
windows onto the courtyard, giving visual access to the main prayer hall. In the words 
of Diop, “for visibility and in order to follow the Imam correctly.”37
The new building encompasses both the closed prayer room and the porch and is 
now a wider open-plan space that can be used in a variety of ways: The whole room 
can be used for prayer or one-half, which is separated by pillars, can be used for teach-
ing, while the other half can still be used for prayer. During the week a simple white 
curtain separates the men from the women, and only on Fridays and for the main reli-
gious festivals do women move to their own quarters to leave men more space. Talk-
ing about women’s spaces in mosques, Soprim architect Diop commented, “Women’s 
space in the mosque is not even taken into consideration—it is small and badly built 
. . . but we have our place in the mosque.”38
Diop’s comment is all the more poignant in view of the male-dominated fields of 
architecture and religion. Indeed, the mosque of Soprim and especially the vision of 
the principal Imam constitute an exception regarding the issue of the participation 
of women in the mosque’s physical space as well as its organization.
Like numerous other jakka jigeen, there were no windows, and the only way for 
them to follow the service was by means of a crackling loudspeaker. Going back to the 
quote from Marty (“from there, alone amongst themselves, they can follow the ser-
vice in the mosque”), it is unclear by what means they could follow, particularly in the 
absence of loudspeakers. This is all changing now because of more women attending 
public prayers as well as the diffusion of information regarding how their attendance 
should be organized. In a fascinating paper by Saudi student Tarim, the question of 
visibility is addressed and evidence to back up the necessity of women’s visual partici-
pation in the prayer is quoted directly from hadith literature. Tarim points out that in 
the shari’a and in particular in Hanbali fiqh, nothing should prevent the Imam from 
being seen by the congregation; and a further condition is that the congregation 
stands in tightly knit rows.39
Therefore, it is not surprising that in Ibadu mosques women are accommodated 
behind the men; and if the space proves to be too small, it is common to find women 
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 67
praying on mats outside facing an open door (usually the one diametrically opposite 
the mihrab) from which they can visually follow the service (or class). Yet in the uni-
versity mosque of Dakar, this aspect of worship has received scant attention, if any. 
Women pray in the left-hand corner of the mosque in a section that is partitioned 
by an opaque dark cloth preventing women from seeing (or being seen by) the rest 
of the congregation. Moreover, on Fridays this partition is removed and women are 
relegated to the library from which they can hear the sermon and follow the prayer 
by means of loudspeakers.
Between 2000 and 2001, I conducted fieldwork including questionnaires regard-
ing women’s space in the mosque; and although many women responded that they 
wished for more space to pray, none explicitly mentioned the lack of visibility as a 
problem. Speaking to Alioune Seck, the secretary of the university mosque, it trans-
pired that a transparent curtain was supposed to replace the opaque one.40 This issue 
was raised by the men in the Commission pour l’organisation de la mosquée and was 
approved by the women’s commission, but a solution also had to be found for screen-
ing off women who use the space to rest.
To my surprise when I returned in 2004, the partition curtain was pierced by a 
round hole covered with netting and screened by a lap of the dark material. In other 
words, women were now able to peep onto the male prayer hall and establish whether 
the prayer had begun or at what stage it was. In actual fact, however, the hole does not 
do much for active visual participation. Nevertheless, the issue of visibility had obvi-
ously undergone some consideration. I also noticed the increased presence of grand 
voiles or full-length hijab among the female worshippers, indicating a further shift in 
ideology toward what is locally known as Salafi or Wahhabi-inspired Islam.
Conclusion
It is difficult to keep pace with the rapid evolution of mosques in Senegal. What is 
clear, however, is that the growth of mosques (both in terms of their numbers as well 
as extensions and additions) reflects Islam’s metamorphosis and expansion. Conver-
sions from Christian minorities and local religions are one factor; urbanization also 
plays an important part in attracting people to the fold; and in this context Ibadu 
mosques provide not only the prayer facilitiesbut the educational programs, which 
may prove to be viable competitors to the traditional daara for learning the Quran as 
well as to the secular system. It is in this sense that space is shifting in mosques: Their 
function is no longer restricted to the spiritual aspect (adoration), it is also expanded 
to the religious education of the community of the faithful (ummah).
The inclusion and greater integration of women in these new spaces is fundamen-
tal in the transformation of the tariqa-orientation of Senegalese mosques. As the 
example of the mosque of Ihsan demonstrates, women’s place in the mosque is tan-
tamount to granting female worshippers a greater sense of dignity. Conversely, in the 
heart of the secular university campus in Dakar, women’s segregation reflects the rigid 
interpretation of religious texts propounded by Saudi Arabia, which is ironically closer 
to the tariqa code than to the textual references to which they claim to adhere.
The other issue I raised was the mosque from the point of view of built form and its 
affect on the natural and social environment—in other words the sustainability of the 
mosque. As the case study of Podor demonstrates, the transition from mud to cement 
takes little account of the environmental or social effect of the planned mosque; 
rather, the Imam emphasized the greater comfort of a larger and air-conditioned 
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Cleo C antone68
space. Granted, the new building will accommodate women (although how this space 
is configured was the subject of discussion between me—a tubab (foreigner)—and the 
Imam). Yet until funding for the new mosque project is found, it remains an enchant-
ing vision on paper.
By contrast, the builders of Mali’s mud mosques remain in constant demand for 
their craft because the buildings require regular maintenance. But why are young 
women keeping away from these architectural delights, preferring the accommoda-
tion in more modern mosques? Perhaps the small and badly constructed prayer places 
mentioned by Diop hold the answer, and more female architects should be encour-
aged and commissioned to redesign the spaces allocated for women in mosques. If 
both Ibadu and tariqa mosques embark on the same route of incorporating and 
redesigning women’s spaces as well as increasingly adopting extralocal architectural 
styles, there may well be a further shift toward an international style mosque made 
of reinforced concrete with no longer identifiable markers of specific cultural and 
religious identity.
Notes
 1. Villalón, “Islamism in West Africa,” 62.
 2. Founded in 1979, its followers became known as Ibadus. Throughout the 1990s, they 
grew in popularity, particularly on university campuses. They became one of the most 
prominent Islamist groups, and female members became noted for their donning of the 
hijab.
 3. See Abu-Lughod, “The Islamic City.”
 4. Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, “al-Madina.”
 5. The market is usually situated in close proximity to the mosque and the palace. See map of 
old Ryadh in Palgrave, Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey.
 6. Diop, L’Afrique Noire Pré-Coloniale, 69.
 7. Ross, “Touba, A Spiritual Metropolis,” 231.
 8. The French term is misleading in the sense that the village may in fact be a much larger 
urban complex, such as Jenne.
 9. Ross, “Touba: A Spiritual Metropolis,” 227.
 10. Ibid.
 11. Imam Barro, interview with the author, March 3, 2005.
 12. Holod and Khan, The Mosque and the Modern World, 51.
 13. Gouilly, “Les mosquées du Sénégal,” 534.
 14. Ibid.
 15. Paccard, Traditional Islamic Craft, 21. See also page 328 depicting a Moroccan craftsman 
chipping zilij on the site of the Great Mosque of Dakar.
 16. Ibid., 21.
 17. Ross, Sufi City: Urban Design, 2.
 18. Marty, Etudes sur l’Islam au Sénégal, 38.
 19. Imam Diakhaté, personal communication with author, Saint Louis, March 18, 2005.
 20. Imam Diallo, personal communication with author, Bamako, March 30, 2001.
 21. This took place on April 6, 2001.
 22. Despite its name, the Wahhabiyya movement in Mali is not directly related to the original 
movement in Saudi Arabia. In terms of practice, however, external manifestations such as 
veiling and praying in separate mosques are comparable to the Ibadu movement in Senegal. 
See Kaba The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform.
 23. See Cantone “Mosques: West Africa,” 19–21.
 24. Abdoullah Cissé, interview with author, Saint Louis, January 26, 2001.
 25. Women past menopause are no longer considered to be able to attract (or distract) men.
 26. Greer, “Worlds Apart: White Australia’s Crusade.”
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The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques 69
 27. Boubacar Sow, interview with author, Thiès, March 25, 2005.
 28. Momodou Diallo, Ligue Islamique Mondiale, Dakar, interview with author, Thiès, March 
30, 2005.
 29. Projet de Construction d’un Complexe d’éducation islamique.
 30. These topics are based on a list compiled by the committee including the signs of the end 
of times, tawhid, Islam and secular systems, the youth, women in Islam, Muslim unity, and 
so forth.
 31. Imam Kanté, personal communication with author, July 13, 2007.
 32. Ibid.
 33. The square minaret derives from the church towers adopted by the Umayyads who trans-
ferred their capital from Medina to Damascus and thence to Andalusia in Spain.
 34. Term used to describe those who undertook their studies in Arabic but not necessarily in 
Arab-speaking countries; it is not uncommon to come across locally trained Arabisants.
 35. See Bourdier “The Rural Mosques of Futa Toro,” and Boulège, “Mosquées de Style 
Soudanais.”
 36. A more monumental mosque built by a woman is the one in the wealthy Dakar suburb 
called Point E.
 37. Interview in Soprim, January 1, 2005.
 38. N. K. Diop, interview with author in her home, Dakar, September 1, 2004.
 39. Tarim, “Women’s Prayer Areas,” 180. The closer the worshippers stand, the less likely it is 
for shaytan (the devil) to come between them.
 40. Alioune Seck, interview with author, Kissane, March 6, 2001.
Bibliography
Abu-Lughod, Janet. “The Islamic City: Historic Myth, Islamic Essence.” Journal of Middle 
Eastern Studies 19 (1987): 155–76.
Boulège, Jean. “Mosquées de Style Soudanais au Fouta Tooro.” Notes Africaines 136 (1972): 
117–19.
Bourdier, Jean-Paul. “The Rural Mosques of Futa Toro.” African Arts 26 (1993): 32–45.
Cantone, Cleo. Making and Re-Making Mosques in Senegal, Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.
———. “Mosques: West Africa.” In Encyclopaedia of Women in Islamic Cultures, edited by Suad 
Joseph, Vol. 4, 19–21. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Diop, Cheikh. Anta. L’Afrique Noire Pré-Coloniale. Dakar: Présence Africaine, 1987.
Gouilly, Alphonse. “Les mosquées du Sénégal.” Revue Juridique et Politique 1 (1965): 
531–36.
Greer, Germaine. “Worlds Apart: White Australia’s Crusade Against the Aborigines.” The 
Guardian, July 3, 2007, 9.
Holod, Renata., and Hassan Uddin. Khan. The Mosque and the Modern World: Architects, Patrons 
and Designs Since the 1950s. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.
Kaba, Lansiné. The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa. 1974.
Marty, Paul. Etudes sur l’Islam au Sénégal. Vol. 2, Les Doctrines et les Institutions, 1917.
Paccard, André. Traditional Islamic Craft in Moroccan Architecture. English translation, 1980.
Palgrave, William Gifford. Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern 
Arabia (1862–3). London: Macmillan, 1883, 226–27.
 Projet de Construction d’un Complexe d’éducation islamique, Initiateur du projet: les Habitants 
de la Cité Soprim et environs, Dakar, 1993.
Ross, Eric. Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba. Rochester University Press, 2006.
———. “Touba, A Spiritual Metropolis in the Modern World.” Canadian Journal of African 
Studies 29 (1995) 2: 222–59.
Tarim, Jahed “Women’s Prayer Areas in Mosques.” Proceedingsof the Symposium on Mosque 
Architecture, Rhyadh, 1999.
Villalón, Leonardo. “Islamism in West Africa: Senegal.” African Studies Review 47 (2004) 2: 
61–71.
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C h a p t e r 3
4
Murid Modernity
Historical Perceptions of Isl amic Reform, 
Sufism, and Colonization
John Glover (University of Redlands)
Summary
The Murid Sufi order emerged in Senegal in the latter decades of the nineteenth 
century. Although recent historiography has succeeded in producing a more com-
prehensive historical context for the development of the order at large, the present 
study represents a more detailed and focused approach to Murid history that revolves 
around Murid perceptions of history and identity. This approach was made possible 
by examining how an important branch of the Murid order, founded by Sheikh Ibra-
hima Faty Mbacke (Mame Thierno) and based in the town of Darou Mousty, has 
created a distinct Murid historical identity that reflects the interactions between local 
and global historical forces of the preceding centuries from the era of the Atlantic 
slave trade to French colonization. Through oral and written sources, Murid notables 
and commoners have produced a historical text that positions the order within a com-
plex narrative of Islamic reform, Sufism, and European colonization that constitutes 
a viable Murid version of modernity as an understanding of historical change and 
meaning.
Symbols and Historical Perspective
On January 1, 1950, High Commissioner of French West Africa Paul Béchard arrived 
in Darou Mousty accompanied by a number of other colonial officials and administra-
tors to inaugurate a new mechanized well and pumping station for the Murid town. 
The inauguration was presided over by the sons of Mame Thierno, led by Serign 
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John Glover72
Modou Awa Balla, who became Khalife, the spiritual head of the community, after the 
death of his father in 1943. The second Khalife General of the Murid order, Serign 
Falilou Mbacke, and his brother, Serign Bassirou Mbacke, also traveled from Touba 
to attend the celebration. The inauguration was immortalized in a photograph that 
shows a smiling Béchard standing next to the Murid notables and waving as the first 
stream of water flowed down a sluice.1
Almost simultaneous with the mechanized well construction, the Murids were 
building a grand mosque in the town. A photograph taken in 1948 during the con-
struction is of poor quality, but one of the workers can be seen sitting on the roof with 
both arms upraised.2 The completed structure is impressive with pale green domes; 
the minarets of the mosque dominate the skyline of the town and can be seen from 
a great distance, marking out the location of Darou Mousty. The grand mosque is 
located in the center of the town and is surrounded by a park complete with benches 
under the trees.
Such architecture can be considered a form of communication, and monuments 
such as the mechanized well and the grand mosque convey a sense of meaning on 
behalf of both the authors and the audience.3 For example, the inauguration of the 
mechanized well was hailed by the French administration as an example of the mate-
rial benefits of colonization and a validation of the civilizing mission that been used 
to legitimize the expansion of French control in Africa. The structure itself was a 
potent symbol of the French version of modernity, emphasizing positive advancement 
through the use of technology under the aegis of Western control and patronage. 
Although the colonial historical record dwelled at length on the construction of the 
well, there is no mention of the building of the mosque. Yet, in the Murid histori-
cal record, the grand mosque takes its place alongside Mame Thierno’s tomb as two 
material representations of the Murid mission and its successes. In local Murid per-
ceptions, the grand mosque symbolizes the religious orientation of the settlement in 
which Islamic reform and Sufi mysticism were combined with education and work as 
promoted by Amadou Bamba and his younger brother and adjunct, Mame Thierno.
This chapter seeks to delve into the subject of historical perspectives, particularly 
Murid historical perspectives. Rather than focusing on the construction of material 
monuments, the chapter considers the construction of Murid historical narratives as 
a more fluid but equally expressive form of architecture that also reflects and con-
tributes to collective and individual Murid identities. This examination is not meant 
to place monuments and historical narratives in front of the reader only to point out 
their opposing natures and meanings. It would be possible, for example, to say that 
the mechanized well of Darou Mousty stands as a monument to the collective will 
behind European colonization in Senegal. It would also be possible to see the grand 
mosque in an oppositional sense as an expression of an African, or more precisely, a 
Murid, collective will. However, through an examination of the written and oral his-
torical narratives of Darou Mousty, these monuments take on a hybrid meaning that 
emphasizes complementarity and adoption rather than opposition. The mechanized 
well, for example, came to be as much a Murid symbol of modernity as a French, or 
colonial, symbol of modernity. This notion of a more comprehensive collective will is 
illustrated in this chapter through an examination of the collective memory of Darou 
Mousty, or more precisely the production, transmission, and interpretation of Murid 
sources concerning the past. The result is the creation of a Murid modernity that is at 
once local and global, West African and French, and Islamic and secular.
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Photo 3.2 The grand mosque of Darou Mousty.
Photo 3.1 The original mechanized well of Darou Mousty inaugurated January 1, 1950.
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John Glover74
Western Historiography of the Murids
For decades Western historiography attributed the establishment and growth of the 
Murid Sufi order of Senegal to the imposition of French colonial rule, which cre-
ated a political vacuum in which the new order developed and promoted a cash crop 
economy based on peanut production used by the order as an economic means to 
expand.4 The year 1886 was of particular importance to this interpretation. The last 
two claimants to the throne of the precolonial state of Kajoor (Map 1: The precolonial 
kingdoms and the future sites of Darou Mousty and Touba are indicated) were killed 
by colonial forces and the kingdom was transformed into the French protectorate of 
Cayor in that year. Kajoor’s neighbor to the south, the kingdom of Bawol, fell under 
French control four years later. Both regions would compose the heartland of the 
Murid order that by 1912 numbered almost seventy thousand followers.5 Fortunately, 
the emphasis on the French conquest as the starting point for an understanding of 
the Murids has come into question recently in works that seek to blur the boundary 
Map 2. Precolonial Senegambia
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Murid Modernity 75
between the precolonial and the colonial, or modern, periods in Senegambian history. 
Authors such as David Robinson, James Searing, and Cheikh Babou posit the colonial 
conquest and the beginning of French rule as an important and contested stage in the 
region’s historical continuity.6 From this perspective, the precolonial historical forces 
within Senegambia exerted a tremendous amount of influence on the development 
and functioning of the French colonial state. The result of these recent works for 
the study of the Muridshas been to reconsider the establishment and growth of the 
order from being a phenomenon of colonization to being the outgrowth of at least a 
century, if not more, of precolonial African historical developments. Central to these 
developments was the long-running conflict between Islamic reformists who based 
their authority on a revivalist interpretation of Islam and secular, but at least nominally 
Muslim, aristocrats who were supported by their clients and slave soldiers and relied 
on their ancestries and military forces for their authority.
Murid Sufi Modernity
The present chapter seeks to build on the recent scholarship surrounding the Murids 
by recasting the debate using a form of discursive analysis that has been adapted 
from arguments over the issue of modernity primarily in disciplines other than history. 
The most intriguing of these arguments reject the idea of modernity existing in the 
singular and instead adopt the possibility of alternative modernities coexisting simul-
taneously.7 The prospect of alternative modernities challenges the narrow Eurocentric 
attitude that modernity only comes about because of contact with the societies of 
Europe that possessed the so-called hallmarks of the modern such as a liberal form 
of government and an industrial and capitalist economy, among other attributes.8 In 
the African historical context, European colonization was commonly assumed to be 
the continent’s first contact with this parochial form of modernity. In more recent 
terminology, the best of these newer arguments consider the interaction between 
global forces of modernity and local influences on the production of modernity in 
which international political and economic conditions are affected by local cultures 
and history and vice versa. For example, Charles Piot has successfully analyzed how a 
small village in northern Togo has been continuously developing its own “vernacular 
modernity” that reflects the interaction between the global and the local.9 Piot’s study 
presents an African society characterized by fluidity and an ability to appropriate the 
material cultures of others and imbue these appropriations with their own meanings 
in an overall expression of agency, rather than resignation. Piot’s conclusions about 
Kabre modernity in Togo can largely be supported in the present examination of 
Murid modernity in Senegal with an important addition. Although most studies of 
modernity rightly focus on material goods and exchanges, this chapter also considers 
how the production and employment of historical narratives also shed light on the 
composition and meanings of alternative modernities.
In a consideration of Murid perceptions of history and the production of an alter-
native Murid modernity, Michel Foucault’s questioning of the applicability of moder-
nity is most useful. Foucault once surmised that modernity, rather than being defined 
as an historical era, could better be understood as an attitude or awareness voluntarily 
assumed by people to relate to contemporary events and historical changes. This defi-
nition of modernity was marked by a consciousness on the part of individuals of the 
discontinuity of time, or a break with the past. Referring to Baudelaire, Foucault held 
that being modern did not mean that one has simply recognized and accepted the 
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John Glover76
perpetual movement of time. Instead, being modern also meant adopting a certain 
nostalgic attitude toward recapturing that which is eternal, or continuous, within 
the perpetual movement of history. An important corollary to this understanding of 
modernity was the desire of those involved or affected to grasp the heroic aspect of 
the contemporary moment of change and to therefore heroize the actors and actions 
that made up that moment.10 This chapter proposes a liberal application of Foucault’s 
interpretation of modernity and being modern to the experiences of a group of Murid 
Sufi disciples in Senegal in the early twentieth century and explores Murid historical 
perception at the individual and collective level.
The particular branch of the Murid order in question was founded by Sheikh Ibra 
Faty Mbacke, more popularly known as Mame Thierno, a younger brother and chief 
adjunct of the founding saint of the Murids, Sheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacke. Mame 
Thierno’s followers are centered in the town of Darou Mousty whose founding in 
1912 constitutes a major event in local Murid historiography. Darou Mousty would 
become a regional religious and economic center for the Murid order and a pilgrim-
age site after Mame Thierno’s tomb was constructed. Individuals interviewed for this 
study represent a cross-section of the Murids of Darou Mousty including members 
of Mame Thierno’s family, local historians and archivists, and the descendents of the 
original settlers who made up the majority within the pool of informants. Murid 
written sources in the form of biographies and poems were also consulted, yet there 
was no clear divide in this Murid community between the oral and written sources, 
because each has informed the other in their common development as a public dis-
course. These historical sources form an underlying narrative on which Murid iden-
tity is built and legitimized in addition to projecting Murid perceptions of history.11 
The research methodology of this study trends away from a general treatment of the 
Murid order and its central, or elite, leadership in the religious capital of Touba in 
favor of a more localized and individualized examination of how members of one 
branch of the Murids have perceived their history and presented themselves and their 
order within the larger context of the Muridiyya and Islam. They have, in essence, 
created their own comprehensive conception of modernity.
Modernization and the Murid Order
If modernity is an awareness of historical change, modernization for the purposes of 
this argument is defined as the identifiable social, cultural, economic, and political 
components of that change. For the Murid order at large, the historical discontinuity, 
or change, that formed the basis for an alternative Murid modernity was twofold. The 
first and foremost change was the emergence of the Murid order as the culmination 
of a long history of Islamic reform movements. An important aspect of this change 
was Amadou Bamba’s distinctive interpretation of Islamic reform and Sufi beliefs and 
practices in relation to the historical context of Islam and Sufism in Senegambia as 
well as the practical application of his ideals in new settlements such as Darou Mousty. 
The promotion of Amadou Bamba’s ideology in the Murid communities resulted in 
cultural, social, economic, and political developments within those settlements that, 
although not entirely divorced from the larger Senegambian milieu, were yet distinct. 
The second change was the onset of French colonial rule, the full effect of which took 
some time to develop in the case of Darou Mousty. Within the context of coloniza-
tion, the Murids of Darou Mousty accommodated the new sociopolitical and socio-
economic environments to preserve as much autonomy as possible for themselves. 
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Murid Modernity 77
Understandably, when the Murids had to adapt to the colonial environment—be it 
through taxation, cash crop production, military or labor recruitment, or immigra-
tion—these events were recast or translated to fit a Murid historical understanding of 
these changes. Within the Murid narratives, the transformation of the original settlers 
of Darou Mousty into cultural and religious heroes signifies the great importance 
that the Murids of the region attached to that era (late nineteenth to early twentieth 
centuries) in which a new brand of Islamic reform and Sufism took root and grew and 
then faced the challenges thataccompanied French colonization.
The First Thread of Modernization: Murid 
Perceptions of the Order in Senegambian Isl am
Previously, before the coming of Serign Touba [Amadou Bamba], there was only anarchy 
because each village had its little king, and they did what they wanted and only force 
counted, but it was at the appearance of the Sheikh that a lot of things changed. This is 
because the Sheikh put the people on the right path that leads to Allah by establishing 
the jihad, that is to say, to master this earthly world and to think of the other because 
the other world is eternal. Thus, one can say that the change came from the jihad that 
the marabout imposed on the people. The jihad that he had established was the jihad 
of the soul; to conform oneself to the recommendations of Allah and to leave all that is 
forbidden.12
This statement was made by an archivist in Darou Mousty in response to a ques-
tion about the role that Amadou Bamba and the advent of the Murid order played 
in Senegambian history. The sentiments conveyed in this Murid analysis display a 
definite sense of historical change and the Murid role within that change. Yet, there is 
also a hint at the continuity that exists between the Murid order and the larger history 
of Islam in the region. Senegambian Islam has frequently been referred to as mar-
aboutic Islam in reference to the prominent religious, social, economic, and some-
times political roles that the marabouts, or Islamic clerics, have played in the region. 
In contravention of Humphrey Fisher’s theory about the progression of Islam in West 
Africa, the Quarantine Stage in the advance of Islam was for the most part absent in 
Senegambia. This stage, according to Fisher, was marked by mutual toleration and 
accommodation between the Muslims, who were a minority, and non-Muslims, who 
were in the majority, and the existence of separate communities for each.13
The early and devout adherence to Islam in the Senegambian states of Takrur and 
Silla indicate a more intense process of Islamization. According to Arabic sources 
of the eleventh century CE, the rulers of both states applied the Islamic holy law, 
or shari’a, and waged armed jihad against non-Muslims in addition to supporting 
the Almoravid reform movement that swept across the Sahara and into Spain.14 The 
result for peoples of the Senegal River valley and the Wolof to the south would be an 
earlier exposure to Islam, relative to other areas of West Africa, and in the long run a 
more complete conversion that conveyed a sense of closure with the pre-Islamic past 
in the creation of a new Islamic identity. Another result of the greater prominence of 
Islam in Senegambia was the early appearance of Islamic reform as a force for social 
and political change and the consequent revolutions, legitimized by the participants 
as acts of jihad. The Islamic revolutions beginning in the late seventeenth century and 
continuing into the late nineteenth century were primarily directed at the aristocratic 
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John Glover78
warrior regimes of the region actively engaged in the violence connected to the Atlan-
tic slave trade and its aftermath.15
The belief that the Murid mission was one of reform and jihad ideologically linked 
the order to this long-running history of Islamic reform movements, in Senegambia 
as well as across much of West Africa. Yet, as the archivist previously indicated, Ama-
dou Bamba’s interpretation of jihad represented a departure from the norm of the 
preceding two centuries and inaugurated a new era of Islamic reform that rejected the 
validity of armed jihad and the authority of secular powers, be they Wolof or French.16 
Amadou Bamba’s renunciation of armed jihad as a tactic of reform was simultaneously 
a powerful criticism of prior reform movements and a renewal of what he believed was 
the proper form of jihad. In addition to Amadou Bamba’s reinterpretation of reform 
and jihad, a new variation of Sufism in the form of the Muridiyya would also help to 
distinguish the movement historically from earlier Sufi orders in the region. In effect, 
Murid ideology, steeped in reform and the mystical path of Islam and cognizant of 
its place in history, provided its disciples with a new moral order that served as a 
foundation for what Charles Taylor has termed a “social imaginary” or the ways by 
which people imagine their social existence marked by commonality and a sense of 
legitimacy.17 Of course, there is no single year or event that can be identified as the 
definitive beginning of Amadou Bamba’s distinctive mission of reform and Sufism. 
Rather, we are presented with a gradual development that, according to many Murid 
sources, begins with the birth of the founding saint in 1852.
The Murid disciples who broke ground for the settlement of Darou Mousty in 
1912 were by and large admitted into the relatively new order by Mame Thierno. 
Most were already Muslim when they made the decision to follow the Murid path, so 
joining the Murid order was not so much an act of conversion as it was a declaration 
of allegiance to the Murids or a change in Sufi affiliation from either of the preex-
isting Sufi orders, Qadriyya, or Tijaniyya.18 The main force involved in this shift of 
allegiance was the person of Amadou Bamba with, in the words of David Robinson, 
his accumulated “symbolic capital.”19 Murid sources consulted for this study com-
mented on the symbolic capital and encompassed Amadou Bamba’s claim of seeing 
the prophet Mohammad in a vision during which he was informed of his status as the 
qutb al-zaman in Arabic, or “the pole of the age.” Most of my informants referred to 
this title in Wolof as boroom jamano, or “the master of the age,” and several cited an 
episode in Sheikh Musa Ka’s biographical poem about Mame Thierno that legitimizes 
Amadou Bamba’s possession of the title. In this episode, following the funeral of 
their father in 1881, Amadou Bamba and Mame Thierno journeyed to Saint-Louis to 
visit the renowned scholar, As Kamara, who informed Amadou Bamba that he would 
become the “savior of the creatures of his era.”20 Because this prediction was made by 
a respected Islamic scholar outside of the Murid community, the prophetic episode 
involving As Kamara lends an important air of objective confirmation of Amadou 
Bamba as the boroom jamano, thus amplifying Bamba’s symbolic capital in the eyes 
of his followers and prospective disciples. The accounts of his numerous miracles, 
many of which have been immortalized in reverse-glass paintings, and his share in 
the baraka, or spiritual blessing, of his religious and scholarly predecessors were also 
important components of Amadou Bamba’s mystical resume.
Yet, it was most likely Amadou Bamba’s local Senegambian pedigree that, when 
combined with his status as the “master of the age” and his reputation for miracles, 
set him apart from the other notable Sufi sheikhs of his time. A prominent Murid 
informant articulated a popular perspective on the Senegambian heritage of the 
Murid order by stating at one point, “Amadou Bamba created a place for the blacks 
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Murid Modernity 79
within Islam.”21 The poet Ibrahima Joob Massar expressed a similar sentiment with 
the lines, “I no longer need either Baghdad or Fez, On seeing Jolof, I submitted 
entirely.”22 In this short poem, Baghdad represents the Qadriyya, the first Sufi order 
to arrive in West Africa in approximately 1500 CE; but it did not emerge as a large-
scale organized order in the region until the late eighteenth century. Fez represents 
the Tijaniyya order that originated in Morocco in the eighteenth century and rose to 
prominence in Senegal in the nineteenth century in the wake of notable jihads led by 
Tijani Sufis such as Umar Tal. In some instances, the Tijanis criticized the Qadriyyafor its close connections to aristocratic regimes and toleration of mixed Islam. The 
Tijaniyya remains the largest Sufi order in Senegal today. In the Murid sense, the 
two cities symbolize the foreign or Arab origins of the Qadriyya and the Tijaniyya 
versus the indigenous Muridiyya signified by Jolof, a precolonial state of Senegambia. 
Although these statements may be an expression of a sort of religious nationalism, 
the importance of such attitudes cannot be ignored. On the one hand, this sentiment 
in favor of an indigenous Sufi order could be a reaction against what was popularly 
and officially (in a French colonial sense) perceived as the elevated and purer status 
of the bidan or white Islam of the Arabs.23 On the other hand, the shift in allegiance 
to the Murid order can also be understood as a critique of the older orders in terms 
of their perceived historical associations with precolonial secular authorities or their 
involvement in the politics of armed jihad.24 Of course, the manner in which Murid 
beliefs and practices reflected to an extent the local social milieu and provided a new 
legitimacy to some Wolof cultural practices also accounted for the emphasis on a local 
identity for the order among Murids.
The Murid Order in Wolof Society
The new Murid identity had to contend with two seemingly opposing views: the 
egalitarian aspects of Amadou Bamba’s ideology and the preexisting divisions within a 
hierarchical society. The Wolof distinguished between the free (gor), those defined by 
their occupations (ñeeño), and slaves (jaam). In particular, the question of the status 
of the ñeeño, or occupationally specialized groups, sometimes referred to as castes was 
an important challenge to the egalitarian notions of Islam as preached by Amadou 
Bamba and Mame Thierno. In Wolof society, the ñeeño are endogamous, occupy 
separate living quarters, and are regarded with a mixture of fear and respect by those 
outside the castes. A descendent of one of the original settlers responded to a ques-
tion regarding the social status of the ñeeño during the early years of Darou Mousty 
by stating, “At the time of Mame Thierno, one could not distinguish the griots, the 
blacksmiths, or the slaves from the others because each worked for Allah, and on the 
path which goes toward Allah there are no differences of ethnicity or origins, only 
the recommendations of Allah counted.”25 Another informant also stressed the role 
that Islam played in the early years of the community in suppressing the hierarchical 
aspects of Wolof society by stating, “Mame Thierno did not see a lot of importance 
in the backgrounds of the talibe [students/disciples]. For him, what counted was the 
love of Allah, his master, on the right road conforming to the recommendations of 
the shari’a. On the contrary, he did not associate himself with people who did not 
practice the shari’a.”26 However, there is contrary evidence that the Islamic ideal 
expressed by these sources still had to contend with the realities of life in a Murid 
town populated primarily by the Wolof. One Murid intellectual responded to this 
issue by stating, “In the time of Mame Thierno, there were some problems with 
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John Glover80
discrimination in the hearts of some talibe, but each group of disciples, in accor-
dance with their backgrounds [or occupational specialization] had its proper job. For 
example, the blacksmiths occupied themselves with iron working and the farmers with 
farming, etc.”27 Another descendent of an original settler noted that, “Mame Thierno 
had talibe with different strengths in different trades or crafts. There were woodwork-
ers and carvers, blacksmiths, and shoemakers.”28 These last two oral sources represent 
Murid recontextualization of the identity and role of the ñeeño in society. Consider-
ing the Murid emphasis on labor as a form of devotion integral to the Murid mission, 
the work that Murid ñeeño performed on behalf of Mame Thierno (and by extension 
Amadou Bamba) now found a new legitimacy based on Islam and the Murid brand 
of Sufism that accommodated Wolof social divisions, while maintaining an egalitarian 
sentiment by which Murid blacksmiths and farmers (and former slaves) were working 
in unity toward the same goal as members of a new collectivity bound together by 
their oaths to their Murid sheikh and their adherence to the shari’a.
The Murid Mission in Action
The major activities and works undertaken by the Murids of Darou Mousty in the 
earlier half of the twentieth century have been interpreted as a historical watershed 
and promoted to almost legendary status by the survivors of that generation and their 
descendents. The standard literature concerning the Murids usually examines Murid 
expansion in economic terms that focus on the opening up of the terres neuves, or new 
lands, to peanut production and settlement. French colonial sources saw the earliest 
patterns of expansion in political terms as efforts to avoid contact with the French 
administration by undertaking a conscious act of hijra, or immigration, in emula-
tion of the prophet Mohammad and many Islamic reformists in West Africa in the 
nineteenth century. The Murid point of view presents the establishment of the early 
settlements such as Darou Mousty as inherently being a religious undertaking based 
on the concept of the ndiggel, or religious obligation. The letter that Amadou Bamba 
sent to Mame Thierno in 1911 requesting the establishment of a new settlement has 
been preserved in an archive in the town. The letter is quite short; and aside from the 
customary greetings, it only contains the ndiggel to break ground and dig wells for a 
village to be named Dar al-Mouhty (Abode of the Giver).29
The lack of a suitable water supply at the site was one of the most pressing prob-
lems encountered by the Murid pioneers, and the accounts of thirst, hauling water 
over great distances, and digging the wells persist in the historical memory of the 
participants and their descendents who have elevated these accounts to a legendary 
status. One of the surviving original settlers vividly described how he and his fellow 
talibe survived on half a liter of water a day and hauled water a distance of thirty 
kilometers from Mbacke-Cayor to the new village. His description of this process 
was corroborated by several descendents of the original settlers who recounted their 
fathers’ experiences.30 After an unsuccessful initial attempt at a well, the second effort 
hit the water table at a depth of eighty-four meters.
Water was not the only challenge faced by the fledgling settlement. Although 
several popularized accounts of the process by which the site for the town had been 
determined stress that the area had been uninhabited, in fact local Fulbe cattle herd-
ers claimed the region as pasture and conflict soon broke out. A series of range battles 
began after the Murids began to cut down trees and clear the land around the site. 
My informants claimed that both sides suffered casualties, and in one of the most 
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Murid Modernity 81
interesting portraits of Mame Thierno, the Murids of Darou Mousty described the 
sheikh as carrying a pistol in each pocket when out in the fields.
Within this historical narrative, the pervasive sense of a religious mission serves to 
legitimize all the hard work and suffering that was entailed in the creation of a new 
Murid settlement. This sense pervaded the accounts of my informants and provides a 
glimpse into what the Murids perceived to be the eternal aspect of their movement. 
According to a notable of Darou Mousty, a mosque was the first structure built at 
the site reflecting what he claimed was Mame Thierno’s preoccupation with religious 
and educational obligations.31 The religious mission is constantly reinforcedwithin 
the oral tradition of the town through the maintenance and transmission of scenes 
in which Mame Thierno addressed his talibe about this mission. One recurring story 
focused on frequent statements made by Mame Thierno to his disciples that their 
work was of a divine nature because they were fulfilling a ndiggel of Amadou Bamba. 
Another scene places Mame Thierno sitting on a rug surrounded by his disciples 
informing them that to love Allah and work were the two most important qualities 
of a good talibe.32
In spite of the overall religious sense of purpose to these early labors that is con-
veyed via the oral traditions, there is also a definite impression that the original settlers 
and their descendents came to consider that the actions surrounding the founding 
and early years of Darou Mousty contributed to the personal growth and social stat-
ure of those involved as individuals. On this level, the establishment of the town was 
the first and most important step in the elevation of the original talibe to an exalted 
position. Their histories have been passed down to preserve their memory and serve 
as models for their descendents and other Murids to follow in the present. In the 
case of the two surviving original settlers, they were revered and respected because of 
their role in the history of Darou Mousty and the order at large. Furthermore, when 
interviewed they were perfectly aware of their status as heroes and as participants in 
the great events surrounding the founding of the community. One man finished the 
resume of his life by stating, “All that I have told you, I lived it” with the emphasis 
on himself as the subject.33 There is also evidence that the original settlers created 
a distinct Murid bond among themselves based upon their experiences together, as 
demonstrated in a remark by one man: “We [the original talibe of Darou Mousty] 
were once very numerous but now there remains only two.”34 The other survivor, in 
the course of his interview, constantly referred to his departed peers as his “brother 
talibe” and expressed his belief that after his own death he would be reunited with 
Mame Thierno and his brother talibe.35
Many informants who were speaking as descendents of the original settlers stressed 
the harsh conditions during Darou Mousty’s early years and frequently referred to 
their fathers as being “brave,” “courageous,” and “exemplary” Murid talibe. One 
boasted that his father was among the bravest of the original talibe, because he 
endured the lack of shelter, food, and water.36 In spite of the difficulties of those early 
years, Darou Mousty soon became a thriving agricultural settlement, and this success 
in the fields was also attributed to the courage of the early Murid farmers of the town. 
The descendents’ sense of appreciation for the original settlers was apparent when one 
informant began his interview by thanking Allah and the prophet Mohammad and 
then his own father to whom he gave credit for obtaining for him “the hope of the 
two worlds, heaven and earth.”37
The preservation and transmission of both the oral and written historical records 
concerning the founding of Darou Mousty has served different functions within the 
community. On one level the memory of Mame Thierno’s leadership in a pioneer 
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John Glover82
settlement further defines his career in the eyes of his followers. The two most popular 
achievements of Mame Thierno, as presented by Murid sources, were his guardian-
ship of the order during Amadou Bamba’s exiles and the founding of Darou Mousty. 
The personal hardships that he underwent during the settlement process are viewed as 
further testimony to his loyalty to Amadou Bamba and the Murid mission and a valida-
tion of the work of the original settlers. Although his leadership in the establishment 
of Darou Mousty magnified his image within the order, all my informants emphatically 
stressed that all of Mame Thierno’s labors were on behalf of Amadou Bamba. One even 
went so far as to remark, “Mame Thierno did nothing without the order and permis-
sion of his brother, Serign Touba.”38 Popular expressions such as this one of the devo-
tion and obedience displayed on the part of Mame Thierno toward Amadou Bamba 
reflect the desire on the part of Murids to valorize their former sheikh and his times as 
well as legitimize the maintenance of the bonds that link talibe and sheikh today.
The Second Thread of Modernization: 
Murid Perceptions of Colonization
In discussing Murid attitudes toward the imposition of French colonial rule, it is 
necessary to distinguish between Amadou Bamba’s early ambivalence to the Euro-
peans—on an ideological level—and the actions taken by his lieutenants, including 
Mame Thierno, to accommodate the new political reality. From an early point, Mame 
Thierno had taken on the role of a diplomat or envoy to the French on his brother’s 
behalf. The Murids of Darou Mousty explained Mame Thierno’s different approach 
to the French by comparing Amadou Bamba to Musa (Moses) and Mame Thierno to 
Harun (Aaron). In this allegory, as the recipient of a divine mission, Amadou Bamba 
confined himself to esoteric matters, but he assigned to Mame Thierno a necessary 
exoteric function as a representative to the secular and temporal powers. Thus, Mame 
Thierno’s branch of the order was already predisposed to accommodating French rule 
even before Darou Mousty was established in 1912 and incorporated its developing 
relationship with the colonial power into the Murid mission.
World War I was a crucial turning point in the relations between the Murid order 
at large and the colonial administration. It is notable that among the litany of accom-
plishments and works within the oral record of Darou Mousty for this period of time, 
military service figures prominently. The recruitment of Murid soldiers from Darou 
Mousty into the French colonial army represented two important developments: the 
practical incorporation of Darou Mousty into the colonial administrative apparatus 
and the active participation of Murids from the town in a global event with all of its 
incumbent effects.39 At least one veteran, for example, returned with the ability to read 
and write in French, and all who returned brought back with them a new outlook on 
the French and the world at large.40 Most applicable within the context of this study 
was the notion among my informants that Murids from Darou Mousty who fought 
in the war were not actually engaged in this effort on behalf of the French, rather 
their service was conceptualized as yet another labor on behalf of Mame Thierno and 
Amadou Bamba in fulfillment of a ndiggel. One informant related that Mame Thierno 
had informed the departing recruits that, “Those who are going to leave for the war 
as talibe of Boroom Touba [Amadou Bamba] will find success in the two worlds: here 
and in the eternal.”41 Thus, this global event was transformed within the historical 
imagination of the Murids to fit the local context of labor as devotion within Murid 
ideology. For those veterans that returned, the greatest honor bestowed on them was 
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Murid Modernity 83
not a French medal but the thanks that they received from Mame Thierno and, in 
some cases, Amadou Bamba himself.42
In other instances of contact with the French administration, the Murids of Darou 
Mousty followed a similar practice of assimilating these events into their own percep-
tions of history and Murid identity. My informants described the relations between 
the town’s inhabitants and the local colonial provincial chief, Macadou Sall, as cordial 
and marked by respect on the part of the chief for Mame Thierno, who was character-
ized as the fatherly figure in the relationship. The analysis of the colonial chief as a 
subordinate in the relationshipmay be because of the Murid belief in the supremacy 
of religious over secular authority, or it may have been a diplomatic ploy of the chief. 
Either way, because of the prolonged famine in the region during the war, Darou 
Mousty’s full granaries transformed the village into a major town when numerous 
immigrants were attracted to the Murids’ agricultural success. The phenomenal har-
vests of millet were attributed to the hard work of the Murid farmers. However, 
they were also presented by the Murids of Darou Mousty as evidence of divine favor 
along with the cash that flowed into the town via the production of peanuts for the 
colonial export market. Initially, the movement of large numbers of people to Darou 
Mousty attracted the ire of the French, who saw the development of the town as a 
threat to their own authority and unsuccessfully attempted to prevent immigrants 
from reaching Darou Mousty. However, by the end of the war, the combination of 
Murid support for French recruitment efforts and a tour of Darou Mousty conducted 
by a French official changed the French administration’s attitude toward the Murid 
order and Darou Mousty. After the war Darou Mousty was considered an important 
asset to the region because of the significant influence of Mame Thierno over most of 
the population and the ability of the Murids to provide food for the people in times of 
famine, which the French administration largely could not do. In recognition of this 
ability, the administration dubbed the town “The Breadbasket of Cayor.”43
Although it may appear that the accommodation within the relationship between 
the colonial administration and the Murids was largely on the part of the French, 
Darou Mousty was obviously affected by the more intense and sustained contact that 
followed the war. Yet, whether it was social, economic, or political, this effect was 
constantly negotiated to preserve as much autonomy as possible on the part of the 
Murids of Darou Mousty and to translate the effect into Murid terms. For example, 
according to my informants, Mame Thierno paid the taxes his disciples owed the 
administration. The tax payment was made from the customary shares of the har-
vest that disciples rendered to their sheikh and gifts from talibe. Both practices were 
modeled after Mame Thierno’s own behavior toward his sheikh, Amadou Bamba, to 
whom he sent an annual share of the harvest along with gifts in recognition of his 
brother’s spiritual authority. Requisitions for labor by the colonial authorities also 
passed through Mame Thierno and his subordinate sheikh who issued a ndiggel to 
their disciples and thus transformed a secular colonial obligation into a religious duty 
with its incumbent gravity and sense of reward.
The issue of cultural influence was perhaps the most contested aspect of the inte-
gration of Darou Mousty into the administration. Although Darou Mousty even-
tually requested that colonial medical personnel be stationed in the town, Mame 
Thierno resisted the establishment of a French language school in Darou Mousty. 
Even after repeated visits and entreaties by French colonial officers, Mame Thierno 
would not budge on this issue.44 It was not until 1952, nine years after the death 
of Mame Thierno, that his successor agreed to the construction of a French school 
in the town. Most likely, Mame Thierno’s opposition was an effort to preserve the 
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John Glover84
monopoly and status that Islamic education enjoyed in the community. It is crucial to 
note, however, that the resistance to the school was not caused by any general Murid 
rejection of French or outside influences. In addition to the medical personnel, Darou 
Mousty welcomed and even celebrated the construction of roads and mechanized 
wells, and many of my informants stated that such civil improvements as electricity 
and telephone service in Murid towns were manifestations of divine approval of the 
continuing Murid mission.45 These material improvements trumpeted by the French 
as justifying the colonial enterprise were absorbed into the Murid historical narrative 
through a distinctly Murid discourse that served to strengthen the order and enabled 
the Murids to adapt to these changes. The inauguration of the mechanized well in 
1950 thus fit into a preexisting pattern in which seemingly disparate subjects such 
as jihad, the harvesting of millet and peanuts, World War I, and colonial building 
projects were incorporated and redefined by the inhabitants of Darou Mosuty into a 
developing Murid sense of history that included their individual and collective places 
within that history.
Conclusion
In the midst of the changes that contributed to the creation of a Murid modernity, one 
must address what was considered the eternal in Baudelaire’s sense of the word. What 
was the continuity that formed a base for the Murid sense of their historical place? The 
fact that the Murids were an Islamic reform movement as well as a Sufi order provides 
clues as to what was eternal about Murid modernity. From the perspective of reform, 
the Murid order was an integral part of the long history of Islamic reform in the 
region and shared the basic ideology of reform with the previous movements. How-
ever, Murid reform strategically and tactically differed from those movements. The 
rejection of armed jihad and its corollary, the establishment of a formal Islamic state, 
conveniently distinguished the Murids from the earlier movements and their associ-
ated Sufi orders in the eyes of their followers; this also contributed to their adaptabil-
ity to the new colonial environment and their expansion in that environment, which 
the French could not prevent. Although an Islamic state such as Umarian Segu could 
be conquered with force of arms, the shadow state established by Amadou Bamba and 
his lieutenants proved much more difficult to engage with on the part of the French. 
Thus, the internal jihad proclaimed by Amadou Bamba could continue unabated in 
Murid communities; and rather than falling victim to the colonizing modernity of 
the French in the form of the colonial administration and the cash crop economy, 
the Murids exploited and absorbed this alternate Western modernity into their own 
understanding of Murid modernity as a process of historical change.
The Murid interpretation of Sufism also provided its disciples with a sense of con-
tinuity and an awareness of the eternal. It is important to distinguish that Murid 
conceptions of the eternal cannot be solely understood as historically conservative or 
reactionary. At first glance, the twin notions of scholarly genealogies, or silsila in the 
singular in Arabic, and the attendant transmission of baraka from previous genera-
tions of clerics to contemporary Murids are obvious connections to a historical past 
that stretches back to southwestern Asia to the prophet Mohammad and the seventh 
century CE; yet both concepts also look to the future for their continued importance 
and relevance. The historical fluidity of a Sufi order such as the Murids is further 
exemplified by the concept of the regular appearance at the turn of the Islamic cen-
turies of a pole of the age. The routine appearance of such figures in locales across the 
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Murid Modernity 85
Islamic world has allowed Sufis the opportunities to adapt to and affect changing his-
torical circumstances. In an organizational sense, the segmentary nature of Sufi orders 
also provides for a virtually unlimited amount of adaptability through the creation of 
different branches and suborders, such as Mame Thierno’s branch of the Murids or 
the notable Baye Fall branch, reflecting different aspects of the ideology of the order 
at large. Yet, the branches of the Murids have preserved their links to the founder of 
the order, and the past, throughthe maintenance of the silsila and the popular pil-
grimage sites for the order.
Thus, as demonstrated by Mame Thierno’s branch of the order at Darou Mousty, 
the Murids of this community have constructed a sense of historical identity on the 
collective and individual levels and in turn produced a distinct Murid modernity. This 
is not said lightly in view of previous and long-standing notions—among both Ori-
entalists (and their counterparts in Africa) and Islamic fundamentalists and modern-
ists—that Sufism, especially in the form of the popular orders, represented much of 
the decline within Islamic mysticism and Islamic civilization in general.46 Rather than 
being considered part of the modern world, the Sufi order has usually been relegated 
to the position of a historical anachronism incapable of change and inherently an 
antimodern other. In contrast, Murid modernity inherently looks to both the past 
and the future in its perceptions of how global and local historical forces have com-
bined to help shape the contemporary understanding of the order in history among 
its notables and common disciples. Understandably, many forces or events have been 
recast by Murid participants and their descendents to compliment the overall sense 
of mission found within their conception of modernity. Most often, the Murids con-
sulted for this study referred to this mission as it existed simultaneously in its exoteric 
and esoteric sense as the hope in this world and the next.
Notes
 1. Unfortunately, the poor quality of this photograph could not be reproduced in print by the 
publishers. Please contact the author to view an electronic version.
 2. Unfortunately, the poor quality of this photograph could not be reproduced in print by the 
publishers. Please contact the author to view an electronic version.
 3. See Harvey (The Condition of Postmodernity, 66–98) for an excellent overview of architec-
ture as it relates to notions of modernity and postmodernity.
 4. The pioneering study in English that encapsulates this interpretation is Cruise O’Brien, The 
Mouride Order of Senegal. His book reflected the work of French colonial authors, most 
notably Paul Marty, and influenced many succeeding examinations of the Murids. For the 
classic interpretations of Murid involvement in peanut production, see Copans, Les Mar-
abouts de l’Arachide, and Pélissier, Les Paysans du Senegal.
 5. Marty, Les Mourides d’Amadou Bamba, 144–60.
 6. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation; Searing, “God Alone is King”; Babou, Fighting the 
Greater Jihad.
 7. See Knauft, Critically Modern, for an overview of the debates within anthropology over the 
meanings and uses of modernity.
 8. Marshall Hodgson questioned the relative uses of the term “modern” by historians (The 
Venture of Islam, Vol. III, 201). For similar criticism of the employment of the term, see 
Comaroff and Comaroff, Modernity and Its Malcontents, x–xii.
 9. Piot, Remotely Global: Village Modernity.
 10. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, 39–42, and Baudelaire, The Mirror of Art, 126–30.
 11. In his latest work, Kwame Anthony Appiah, discusses the processes behind the formation 
of individual and collective identities and rightly stresses the role that narratives, both on 
pal-diouf-03.indd 85pal-diouf-03.indd 85 08/10/09 10:23:57 pm08/10/09 10:23:57 pm
John Glover86
the personal and collective levels, play in the formation of identities (The Ethics of Identity, 
17–21, 65–68).
 12. Serign M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 27, 1997.
 13. See Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered.” Fisher’s model is probably best demonstrated by 
the accommodation of Muslims within the royal court of Ghana, as described by Al-Bakri 
in the eleventh century CE, and the existence of a Muslim quarter of the capital. For an 
English translation of Al-Bakri’s account, see Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Ara-
bic Sources, 79–80.
 14. Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 77, 144.
 15. See Colvin (“Islam and the State of Kajoor”) for an influential reinterpretation of the 
Islamic sources concerning the jihad and Boulègue (“La Participation Possible des Cen-
tres”) for a study of the early involvement of scholarly communities in the Wolof king-
doms of Kajoor and Bawol in the first attempt at Islamic revolution in Senegambia. Barry 
emphasizes the links between the Atlantic slave trade and the violent clashes between the 
aristocrats and Islamic reformers (Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 46–125). For 
an earlier approach that also emphasizes the effects of violence on the social and political 
struggles between the two camps, see Klein, “Social and Economic Factors.” Klein focuses 
on the reactions of the peasantry and their support for Islamic reform and revolution.
 16. Amadou Bamba’s attitude in this respect is comparable to that of the marabouts known 
as sëriñ fakk taal who, as opposed to the sëriñu lamb (marabouts of the drum), refused or 
were unable to be co-opted into the state by accepting titles, positions, or land from the 
ruler (see Diop, La société Wolof, 236–45). It is also comparable to the normally pacific 
Jakhanke scholars (see Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics.)
 17. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 3–23. In this section Taylor defines moral order in a 
Western sense and explains the basic principle behind social imaginaries.
 18. See Glover, Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal, 107, 166–68.
 19. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, 5–6.
 20. Interview with Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, January 26, 1997, who often referred to the 
text of the biographical poem about Mame Thierno composed by the celebrated Murid 
poet Sheikh Musa Kâ. The title of the poem translated into English is “An Account of the 
Testimony of Mame Thierno Birahim.” In his study of the Murids, Sy also mentioned the 
meeting between Amadou Bamba and As Kamara but he maintained that Amadou Bamba 
was only seeking the Qadri wird from the scholar (La confrérie sénégalaise de Mourides, 
107).
 21. Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, January 27, 1997.
 22. As cited in Khadim M’backe, Etudes Islamiques Vol.4, pp. 57.
 23. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, 5.
 24. Searing, “God Alone is King,” 46–48. In this passage, Searing recounts a discussion on 
Amadou Bamba’s attitudes toward the jihad of Maba Jaxu, a Tijani Sufi, with a Murid 
historian and son of Mame Thierno.
 25. Baay Cerno Joob, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 22, 1997.
 26. Sëriñ Modou M’Backé Barry, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 23, 
1997.
 27. Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, January 28, 1997.
 28. Baay Abdu Mawade Wade, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 24, 1997.
 29. A copy of this letter and many others from Amadou Bamba to Mame Thierno have been 
preserved in the archives in Darou Mousty.
 30. Baay Mor, interview with the author, February 24, 1997; Baay Abdu Mawade Wade, inter-
view with the author, February 24, 1997; and Baay Cerno Gaye, interview with the author, 
Darou Mousty, February 17, 1997.
 31. Shaykh Astou Faye M’Backé, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 20, 
1997.
 32. These episodes occurred throughout most of the interviews, and a photograph of Mame 
Thierno addressing a gathering of his disciples has been preserved in the town’s archives.
 33. Malik Cisse, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 20, 1997.
pal-diouf-03.indd 86pal-diouf-03.indd 86 08/10/09 10:23:58 pm08/10/09 10:23:58 pm
Murid Modernity 87
 34. Baay Mor, interview with the author, February 24, 1997.
 35. Malik Cisse, interview with the author, February 20, 1997.
 36. Baay Abdu Joob Samba, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 19, 1997.
 37. Sëriñ Mactar Balla Fall of Kosso, interview with the author, February 25, 1997.
 38. Baay Abdu Joob Samba, interview with the author, February 19, 1997.
 39. See Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom, and Echenberg,Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs.
 40. Sëriñ Barra Joob, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 16, 1997.
 41. Baay Kabou Gaye, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 24, 1997.
 42. Baay Abdu Mawade Wade, interview with the author, February 24, 1997.
 43. Archives Nationales du Sénégal.
 44. Ibid.
 45. Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, January 28, 1997.
 46. See Said’s groundbreaking work, Orientalism, and the major studies of Sufism such as 
Arberry, Sufism, and Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam. For a concise appraisal of the 
historiography of Sufism, see Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, 1–31, 120–46. The 
work of Marty (Études sur l’Islam au Sénégal) is emblematic of the scholarship undertaken 
by French colonial officials to categorize and thus hope to control Muslim and Sufi subjects 
of the administration, thus supporting Said’s conception of Orientalism, but in this case its 
variant in Africa, Islam noir.
Bibliography
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 
2005.
Arberry, A. J. Sufism. London: Allen and Unwin, 1968.
Archives nationales du Sénégal (A.N.S.). 11D1/0955 Corresspondance relatif à l’affaire Brahim 
Khalil et au rattachement de Darou-Mousty au Baol, Dakar, 1930–1933.
Babou, Cheikh Anta M’Backé. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of 
the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007.
Barry, Boubacar. Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Translated by Ayi Kwei Armah. New 
York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Baudelaire, Charles. The Mirror of Art. New York: Doubleday, 1956.
Boulègue, Jean. “La Participation Possible des Centres de Pir et de Ndogal à la Révolution 
Islamique Sénégambienne de 1673.” In Contributions a l’Histoire du Sénégal. Cahiers du 
C.R.A. No. 5, 119–25. Paris: Karthala, 1987.
Colvin, Lucie G. “Islam and the State of Kajoor: A Case of Successful Resistance to Jihad.” 
Journal of African History 15, no. 4 (1974): 587–606.
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. Modernity and Its Malcontents. Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 1993.
Copans, Jean. Les Marabouts de l’Arachide: La Confrérie Mouride et les Paysans du Sénégal. Paris: 
Le Sycomore, 1980.
Cruise O’Brien, Donal. The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an 
Islamic Brotherhood. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Diop, Abdoulaye-Bara. La société Wolof: Tradition et changement; les systèmes d’inégalité et de 
domination. Paris: Karthala, 1981.
Echenberg, Myron. Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–
1960. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991.
Ernst, Carl. The Shambhala Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambhala, 1997.
Fisher, Humphrey J. “Conversion Reconsidered.” Africa 43 (1973): 27–40.
Glover, John. Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal: The Murid Order. Rochester, NY: University 
of Rochester Press, 2007.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Hodgson, Marshall. The Venture of Islam, vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
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John Glover88
Kâ, Shaykh Moussa. An Account of the Testimony of Maam Cerno Birahim. Unpublished (Copies 
can be found in the archives of Darou Mousty).
Klein, Martin. “Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution of Senegambia.” Jour-
nal of African History 13, no. 3 (1972): 419–41.
Knauft, Bruce, ed. Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies. Bloomington: 
Indiana University Press, 2002.
Levtzion, Nehemia, and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African 
History. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2000.
Lunn, Joe Harris. Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. 
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.
Marty, Paul. Études sur l’Islam au Sénégal. Paris: n.p., 1917.
———. Les Mourides d’Amadou Bamba. Paris: n.p., 1913.
M’backe, Khadim. Etudes Islamiques Vol.4: Soufisme et les Confréries Religieuse au Sénégal. 
Dakar: I.F.A.N., 1995.
Pélissier, Paul. Les paysans du Sénégal: Les civilisations agraires du Cayor à la Casamance. St. 
Yrieix: Imprimerie Fabrègue, 1966.
Piot, Charles. Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. Chicago: Chicago University 
Press, 1999.
Rabinow, Paul, ed. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
Robinson, David. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in 
Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1929. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Sanneh, Lamin. The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Sen-
egambia. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989.
Searing, James. “God Alone is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal, 1860–1928. Ports-
mouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002.
Sy, Cheikh Tidiane. La confrérie Sénégalaise des mourides. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1969.
Taylor, Charles. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Trimingham, J. S. The Sufi Orders in Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
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P a r t 2
4
Conversion and Spiritual 
Transl ations
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C h a p t e r 4
4
The Greater Jihad and Conversion
Sereer Interpretations of 
Sufi Isl am in Senegal
James Searing (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Modernist interpretations of Islam often depict West Africa’s Sufi orders as rem-
nants of a bygone era, with Senegal seen as a stronghold of this quaint and non-
threatening maraboutic Islam. Although nineteenth-century jihad leaders are seen 
as bearers of orthodox Islam (despite the fact that they led Sufi orders), most Sufis 
emerge tainted with the brush of heterodoxy and saint worship or are praised for their 
pragmatic accommodation with colonial rule and their economic dynamism rather 
than their orthodoxy. Whatever the merits of modernism for understanding contem-
porary developments in parts of West Africa, it fails as a historical approach to conver-
sion as it introduces anachronistic debates and misleading conclusions about jihad.
Sereer converts to Islam present a different perspective on jihad and the mys-
tical path (Sufism). Sereer from Siin criticize Maba and other jihad leaders of the 
nineteenth century for acting like kings and waging war on Sereer pagans, acts that 
differed little from the pillage of aristocratic slave raiders in the region’s history. By 
contrast, Sufi leaders like Amadou Bamba and Al-Hajj Malick Sy are men of God. 
Sereer Safen, who preserved their independence into the 1890s, stress the voluntary 
and peaceful nature of their conversion. They resisted Islam as long as they identified 
it with the Wolof social order. They did not know true Islam until they learned of the 
Tijan order of Al-Hajj Malick Sy around 1914, well after Malick Sy distanced his order 
from jihad and accommodated to the realities and opportunities of colonial rule. 
Sereer interpretations of conversion allow accommodation with Sereer history and 
reduce the difference between new and old converts (Sereer and Wolof) by insisting 
that true Islam only arrived with the failure of jihad and the emergence of new Sufi 
orders at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Studies of Islam in Africa still invoke the interplay between the Islamization of 
Africa and the Africanizaton of Islam, which echoes colonial era discussions of black 
pal-diouf-04.indd 91pal-diouf-04.indd 91 08/10/09 10:07:41 pm08/10/09 10:07:41 pm
James Searing92
Islam (Islam noir). An influential paradigm of conversion, Quarantine, Mixing, and 
Reform, predicts the slow but ineluctable triumph of an Islamic juggernaut that 
sweeps everything beforeit. In either case Islam appears monolithic, even if local 
variations persist for long periods of time. A study of modern conversions to Islam 
points the way to rethinking these binary oppositions.
Sufi Islam had two distinct advantages from the point of view of the Sereer. First, 
it did not have the negative political baggage associated with jihad and militant Islam. 
The Sereer were scornful about kings, even in Siin, where the expression, the “king 
has come, everything is ruined” echoes the Safen notion that a king ruins the rainy 
season. Conversely, “God rained” is the common way to end a description of suc-
cessful rainmaking ceremonies. Expressed in judgments that praised the French for 
getting rid of pillaging kings and bringing peace, the hostility of Amadou Bamba and 
Al-Hajj Malick Sy to the Wolof old regime played well in Sereer regions. Second, Sufi 
Islam provided a mystical path and forms of knowledge that were perceived as similar 
to the mystical powers of Sereer diviners, shrine keepers, healers, and other ritual 
specialists. The esoteric knowledge of Sufi Islam (batin) paralleled these powers and 
eased the inculturation of Islam in Sereer society.
Sereer Safen
The Safen as a group converted between 1914 and the 1950s, with different villages 
converting at different times.1 Prior to conversion the Safen rejected monarchy, Islam, 
caste, and slavery, all features of the surrounding Wolof culture.2 They lived in vil-
lage communities governed by the elders of maternal clans and ritual specialists who 
controlled spirit shrines. Conversion followed Wolof conquest, military recruitment 
during World War I, outbreaks of bubonic plague, and cash crop production for the 
world market; but it is difficult to link to any one of these events. Socially, conversion 
was a rebellion led by young men from 1914 onward against their elders. The young 
men triumphed, overturning the system of matrilineal inheritance in one generation. 
Most of my informants came from this group of first converts and those immediately 
following them. They grew up under cosaan (tradition) and converted to Islam.
The Safen can be described in different ways: as a subgroup of Sereer with a dis-
tinct language (Saafi-Saafi) and territory (which they call Safen); a stateless, acepha-
lous, or decentralized society that resisted incorporation into the surrounding Wolof 
kingdoms until they were conquered by Wolof chiefs working for the French in 1895; 
or non-Muslims following a pattern of matrilineal descent until they began convert-
ing to Islam between the 1920s and 1950s. Thus the French in the colonial period 
characterized of them as paleo-nigritic primitives with a penchant for drunkenness 
and anarchy. They seemed in every way inferior to their neighbors; however, the 
French admired their skill as farmers. They were often conceived of by the French as 
remnant populations, reflecting a more archaic and primitive social organization that 
existed before the coming of monarchy and Islam. Apart from the veneer of evolu-
tionary theory, French attitudes closely mirrored those of the Wolof, who regarded 
the Safen as savages without religion or law or government, but also as embodiments 
of tradition or cosaan, a system of values and beliefs left behind by the Wolof after 
conversion to Islam.
With due allowance for being inexact, the relation of the Safen and other inde-
pendent Sereer groups to the Wolof and Sereer kingdoms that dominated the region 
resembled relations in other frontier zones: the Welsh to the English, the highland 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 93
Scots to the lowland Scots, the Basques to the kingdom of Spain, or independent 
Indians under Spanish rule in the Americas.3 What I mean to suggest by this rough 
comparison is that statelessness was not the norm but the exception and could only 
be maintained by retreat from and resistance to the dominant social order in the 
region.
The boundary between Sereer and Wolof was cultural or ethnic in Barth’s sense 
of an ethnic boundary.4 This boundary foreclosed the possibility of conversion until 
well into the colonial period. The Safen defined their difference from their more pow-
erful Wolof neighbors in terms that placed nearly insurmountable barriers between 
themselves and Islam. As long as the Wolof were identified with Islam, conversion 
was extremely unlikely. The Safen also self-identified as Sereer, even though they 
distinguish four other Sereer groups, who speak different languages that are partly 
or completely different from Saafi-Saafi, the language of the Safen. Some of the most 
revealing statements about how they define themselves and distinguish between 
groups were in response to questions about what the Sereer had in common, if their 
languages differed. Al-Hajj Abdou Faye replied, “They [the Sereer] were all what the 
Arabs call jahil. The Safen were jahil. They didn’t know Islam. They didn’t refuse 
[Islam], they didn’t know it. In the Quran they call it jahil, which is different from 
kafir or yeefeer. They didn’t refuse . . . There were no jihads here.”5 Among other 
points, he insists that all the Sereer were non-Muslims.
When other Safen elders were also asked why the Safen were Sereer, despite the 
differences, they responded with a different but equally revealing reply. What the 
Sereer had in common was their matrilineal clans. These were originally all the same. 
This response then led to a discussion of how some Sereer changed, particularly the 
Siin-Siin, by far the largest group. Originally, the Siin-Siin were like the Safen, but 
they changed when they adopted monarchy. The Gelwaar aristocracy colonized them 
and brought change. With aristocratic rule came caste and slavery, the cult of the war-
rior, and many other changes. This response, which moves from a common matrilin-
eal descent to how the Siin-Siin changed, underscores a key theme in how the Safen 
view their history. They see themselves as the true or original Sereer in the sense that 
they remained loyal to Sereer cosaan longer than most other groups. They were non-
Muslims; they were ruled over by the heads of the ten matriclans; and they rejected 
monarchy (centralized government of any kind) and the social distinctions that went 
along with it, specifically caste and slavery. Together, these things defined the ethnic 
boundary (in Barth’s terminology) that separated them from the Wolof and the Sereer 
Siin-Siin.
Finally, they maintained their independence by migrating into a defendable refuge 
zone at least five hundred years ago. Although the Safen describe themselves as the 
original Sereer, they candidly state that they are also migrants, or better yet, refugees, 
who maintained their independence by fleeing the advance of monarchy and Islam. 
This appears clearly in traditions about the founding of villages and the etymology 
of village names. Ibrahima Cisse argued that Bandia, originally know as Bandialuff, 
was founded by refugees from the Jolof empire, whose ancestors were on the losing 
side of a power struggle in their homeland. He offered an etymology that defined the 
meaning of the village name as “those who refused Jolof.”6 Two other informants 
stated the basic law of Bandia as, “If we don’t agree, you can’t come here.”7 Mbaye 
Dali Cisse, from the village of Kirene, said that the village’s name came from a phrase 
that meant “Don’t come here.”8 The Safen were extremely suspicious of strangers, 
closed off their district to outsiders, and rejected intermarriage with outsiders.
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James Searing94
Other sources amply confirm these attitudes. Abbe Boilat, a métis Catholic, noted 
that the Safen reserved the right to assassinate strangers entering their territory with-
out warning, based on their assumption that such persons were probablyslave raid-
ers. The Wolof described the Safen as a Godless people without religion or laws and 
treated them as bandits and enemies. The French largely adopted Wolof attitudes after 
their encounters with the independent Sereer in the Thiès region (Palor and Noon or 
Jangin), whom they described as inveterate thieves, based on the repeated attacks on 
trading caravans on the road from Pout to Thiès.
Self-sufficiency and independence of this kind had its drawbacks. At least two 
informants began their discussion of cosaan by describing how the Safen survived 
famines and hard times in the past.9 Hunting and gathering famine foods from the 
bush is an integral part of memories of cosaan. In this case it is not Muslims who quar-
antine themselves off from the non-Muslims, as Fisher predicts, but the non-Muslims 
who quarantine themselves to preserve their independence. As a result of this attitude, 
there was little religious mixing in the period before conversion. For example, the 
Safen did not borrow Muslim charms and divination.10
The Safen maintained their independence from the Wolof (and French colonial 
rule) until 1895. The success of a small group (current census figures suggest eighty 
thousand Safen proper out of one hundred thousand Saafi speakers) in maintaining its 
independence for so long requires some brief analysis before looking at Safen reflec-
tions on the same set of issues. However, there is one key, crucial factor: geography. 
For defense the Safen relied on their location at the center of a cluster of similar Sereer 
groups. They were neighbors of the Njegem, to the south, who resisted incorpora-
tion into the monarchies of Bawol and Siin and served as a buffer group. The same 
role was played to the north and east by the Joobas, Noon (Jangin), and Palor. The 
Safen were far removed from any important centers of Wolof or Sereer state power. All 
these groups were clustered around a series of escarpments that made them frontier 
zones and peripheries to neighboring states. The Safen are in the inner pocket of this 
group.
The Safen inhabit a fertile, well-watered region on the downward slope and val-
leys of an escarpment with underground streams feeding into the Somone River. 
Fertility permits relatively intense farming combined with herding cattle and goats, 
a combination crucial to Safen identity and social institutions. Fertility is accompa-
nied by disease, which also thrives in this moist region. The French reported a high 
incidence of sleeping sickness in the nineteenth century, and bubonic plague broke 
out more than once between 1919 and 1924.11 The oral traditions of Kirene note 
that the population was “destroyed” and evacuated twice, once through a combina-
tion of “mystical powers” and disease and once by an epidemic.12 These were events 
in the fairly distant past. Dobour, a village between Bandia and Kirene, was reduced 
to a population of two during the bubonic plague, when everyone fled except for a 
mother and her son.13 In Bandia a new quarter of the village called Bandia-Bambara, 
which developed around the Wolof chiefs (with their Bambara slaves and retainers), 
was abandoned when the Bambara fled the bubonic plague epidemics. The Safen say 
they convinced the Bambara that the plague was a judgment from Bandia’s shrine 
against which they were powerless to defend themselves. The Safen occupied the vil-
lage quarter after they fled.14 The same landscape permits the Safen to intensively herd 
and farm a limited territory.
The male life cycle is particularly tied to the combination of farming and herding, 
bey ak samm. Boys herd from approximately eight or ten years old until the age of 
initiation, which occurs between fifteen and twenty years of age. After being called by 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 95
the father (in consultation with the maternal uncle) to circumcision, the boys enter 
an age class of initiates made up of forty to sixty young men. After a celebration the 
boys are circumcised in a special enclosure where they spend three months study-
ing cosaan by learning songs and their meaning. By the end of the period, sustained 
by meat feasts supplied by fathers and uncles, the initiates emerge as an age class of 
waxambaane (bachelors) with their own secret song. The waxambaane receive the 
weapons and tools of men as gifts from the father, but from this point on they farm for 
themselves and their uncles. The age class is bound together for the rest of their lives, 
helping each other to farm, fight, raid, and marry. Married men continue farming but 
leave the bachelor class. The age classes gathered together males from all clans, and 
they were the main potential counterweight to the power of the clan leaders.
While the waxambaane formed a military class, Safen informants placed greater 
stress on the protecting power of village shrines.15 The Koffki in Bandia was one of 
many shrines in the Safen district. Although the characteristics of each shrine are dif-
ferent, there is a general discourse about the protecting power of the shrines and the 
spirits that inhabit them echoing the main themes of the ethnic boundary described 
earlier. Each Safen village had at least one shrine; and the shrines, each of which had 
a name and specific characteristics, defined a public sphere of religious ritual that was 
common to the village.16 Bandia had the Koffki, Guinabour had Graam and a sacred 
well, Tchiki had Carit and Enge (an ancestral shrine), Kirene had Jayña, Dias had 
Sahee, Dobour a spring with healing waters. Each shrine was controlled or adminis-
tered by a particular matrilineal clan, and one clan, the Leemu, controlled most of 
the shrines. All the shrines served as focal points for the divination ceremonies held 
before the beginning of the rainy season. Most were sites of periodic sacrifice to 
the indwelling spirits, but the shrines had their own unique characteristics. In addi-
tion to possessing the one judging shrine that could kill, Bandia played a key role in 
the prayers to the supreme God (Kiim Koox), associated with the heavens and rain, 
that occurred only in serious times of drought that threatened the entire district.17 
One such ceremony occurred in the period in question, almost certainly during the 
drought of 1913 to 1914.
Protecting spirits and their dislike of monarchy and government appeared in 
interviews with informants from several villages. An informant in Dias simply said 
that Sahee, the shrine, “did not like monarchy [Wolof, nguur, monarchy, or govern-
ment].”18 The shrines at Guinabour (Graam) and Dias (Sahee) could be described as 
wind spirits. They protected the villages by raising a wind that made them invisible to 
their enemies, particularly the Wolof.19 In more general terms, informants described 
past migrations into the region and the founding of village shrines as essential features 
of Safen identity and the system of defense that protected the independence of the 
region.20
Models of Conversion
Past studies of conversion have taken radically different positions on how conversion 
to Islam should be understood. It is useful to begin with the debate between Robin 
Horton and Humphrey Fisher to explore these dichotomies at the outset.21 Hor-
ton understands conversion as a transformation of a preexisting African cosmology 
from within, because identifications are made between the teachings of Islam and 
existing beliefs. Horton therefore predicts that converting Africans will identify their 
prior conception of a high or supreme deity with the God of Islam; and conversion 
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James Searing96
will reorient their cosmology toward God alone, leading to a gradual demotion or 
even demonization of lesser spirits. At the same time the preexisting cosmology will 
inflect Islam in the direction of explanation,prediction, and control of this-worldly 
issues and problems, the central concerns of ritual practice before conversion. Finally, 
Horton argues that for this process to begin, some prior crisis must exist, disturbing 
the equilibrium that existed before conversion. Horton’s model offers a theoretical 
explanation for the phenomenon of syncretism or mixing, which is inevitable if “con-
version” (placed in quotation marks by Horton) is an adjustment within an existing 
cosmology.
Fisher objected to this because it downplayed the agency of religion as a force for 
change and the missionaries who spread belief in Islam or Christianity. Fisher por-
trayed Islam as a juggernaut that eventually would sweep all other beliefs aside, even 
if in practice this might take centuries. He proposed a series of stages in the process 
of conversion: quarantine, mixing, and reform. In this model Islam is first observed, 
usually with the arrival of a foreign minority community of Muslims, who quarantine 
themselves off from unbelievers to preserve the purity of their religion. Gradually, the 
observers begin borrowing specific practices, turning to Islamic medicine or divina-
tion, purchasing talismans from their Muslim neighbors, with this process leading to 
the emergence of a mixed form of Islam.22 The final stage is reform or jihad, when the 
growing strength and self-confidence of educated Muslims, who have fully internal-
ized the message of Islam through education, launch a movement or reform or jihad 
to purge their society of the corruption of mixed Islam.
Both Horton and Fisher focus on conversion as a long-term process, as exempli-
fied in the history of a people like the Hausa over many centuries. My case study 
focuses on the moment of conversion in the recent past, opening up possibilities of 
analysis missing from their models. Nevertheless, both authors have proved useful in 
thinking about conversion. Horton, for example, correctly predicts the identification 
between Kiim Koox (Safen term for God of the heavens and especially rain) and the 
God of Islam. When speaking in Wolof, which they were forced to do because of my 
linguistic incompetence in Safen, informants simply used the term Yalla to refer to 
their notion of God before conversion. Conversely, Horton occults the agency of 
converts by his tendency to reify the basic cosmology and give it agency in his dis-
cussions of conversion. I don’t believe that the Safen cosmology existed outside of 
the heads of individual Safen, so my focus is on the agency of converts, who decide 
which aspects of tradition must be discarded or may be preserved and which need to 
be reformed.
Fisher’s model of conversion is useful for the way he poses the issue of reform, 
even if his formulation is unsatisfactory. My case study suggests that in this modern 
example reform was central to the conversion process. The Safen quickly took steps 
to abandon matrilineal inheritance, traditional funerals, and initiation ceremonies for 
men and women. Converts gave up alcohol and tobacco. However, they did not do so 
in response to an Islamic juggernaut presented by learned outsiders or educated Mus-
lims. Fisher tends to attribute all agency to Islam and the bearers of Islam, reifying 
Islam in much the same way that Horton reifies the basic cosmology. His model does 
not predict some of my findings. In the generation of first converts, experts on tradi-
tion or cosaan are often also committed Muslims, marked by unusual achievements 
in both domains. One of my informants had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and had 
memorized more than one hundred Safen songs. He did not condemn “tradition” 
as a whole or emphasize the false nature of past belief.23 In fact, only one informant 
baldly stated that cosaan was “bad.”24 The reasons for these attitudes are complex, 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 97
but they don’t support Fisher’s model. Looked at from a different angle, it is striking 
that Safen Muslims set out much more directly to reform the social order than they 
did to impose uniform beliefs or eradicate all ritual practices that might seem to be in 
conflict with Islam.
J. D. Y. Peel’s recent study of conversion by the Yoruba suggests ways of over-
coming the dichotomies in the Horton–Fisher debate. Peel argues that conversion 
must be studied as a dialectical process that leads to both the Christianization of 
the Yoruba and the inculturation of Christianity. Key to this ongoing process is the 
emergence of identifications or translations that mark this process. For the Yoruba the 
key was the identification of prayer with sacrifice. For Yoruba Christians prayer was a 
means for accessing spiritual power in a way that made prayer analogous to sacrifice 
as practiced in Yoruba religion. Although this identification was made most explicit in 
the Aladura churches that emerged after 1920, Peel argues that it was already implicit 
in earlier Christian practices.25
Sufi Islam was important to the process of the inculturation of Islam into Sereer 
society, not because of an inherent tendency for Sufi Islam to encourage syncretism, 
mixing, or the personalization of Islam in a charismatic saint; but because it facilitated 
the identification between secret, mystical powers attributed to elders, diviners, and 
shrines with the new forms of secret knowledge (batin) brought by Sufi Islam. At the 
same time the ethical teachings and peaceful methods propagated by Sufi orders after 
the abandonment of jihad were perceived as being in harmony with Sereer values, 
whereas memories of militant Islam (the jihad of Maba) invoked hostile reactions as 
episodes of violent attempted conquest by foreign Muslims.
Before examining the importance of the Sufi path to Sereer conversion, it is impor-
tant to consider why Sufism has been neglected in discussions of Muslim conversion. 
The hostility of modernist interpretations of Islam to Sufism goes a long way toward 
explaining why Sufi Islam is often considered a stalking horse for Islam noir or mix-
ing rather than the historical form of Islam encountered by the Sereer in the colonial 
period.
Modernist Orthodoxies
Humphrey Fisher’s model of conversion, which has been adopted by many other 
scholars, posits a teleological model of conversion that progresses from Quarantine 
to Mixing to Reform, which Fisher identifies with jihad. The genealogy of this model 
is clearly modernist in its construction of Islamic orthodoxy. Modernist readings of 
Islam exist in different forms, but they agree in defining Islam by looking back to the 
founding period of the prophet and his immediate successors.26 Such interpretations 
are ahistorical in their focus on the beginnings of Islam, which has a glorious past but 
an unusable recent history. This modernist focus is shared by Orientalist and Islamist 
alike, who also share a vision of Islam as a civilization that atrophied and stagnated 
after its glorious beginnings.27 Modernist interpretations also agree on the importance 
of the Caliphate and the unity of religion and politics in Islam. It is this last issue that 
is most important for this paper.
Modernist interpretations of Islam are generally hostile to Sufism, which is seen as 
a symptom of Islam’s decline. Radical Muslim reformers of all kinds saw a return to 
the golden age of Islam (the era of the prophet and the four rightly guided Caliphs, 
ending in 661) as a way of jettisoning traditions of interpretation that they blamed 
for the stagnation of the Islamic world, especially the consensus in the four Sunni 
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James Searing98
schools of law that crystallized in the thirteenth century. In an effort to preserve the 
integrity of the law, jurists at that time allegedly declared that the gates of indepen-
dent interpretation were closed.28 This was aneffort to preserve established traditions 
of interpretation at a time when the Muslim world was threatened by conquest and 
political decline. When the Caliphate disappeared from the world of history, it could 
be enshrined in the canons of law. The theory of the Caliphate was enshrined in legal 
texts even as Muslim jurists adapted to a plurality of new situations where there was 
nothing resembling a Caliphate. The period of polycentric political organization that 
followed was also a period when Sufi Islam became an important force of cohesion in 
the Muslim world.
Muslim reformers later made Sufis and jurists prime targets in their explanations 
of decline.29 They argued that any educated layperson could interpret Islam, cast-
ing aside the authority of Muslim scholars. The widespread adoption of modernist 
assumptions in the contemporary Muslim world has inhibited historical analysis of 
discourse and argument in historical Muslim texts and discourses. Ironically, mod-
ernist interpretations have also given credibility to the tradition of scholarship that is 
most often labeled Orientalist. In this chapter the term Orientalist refers to a tradition 
of scholarship that focuses on establishing a normative or orthodox Islam based on 
texts and doctrines. Influenced by modernists like Mohammad Abduh and Rashid 
Rida, Orientalist scholars adopted the notion that Islam had stagnated after a glori-
ous beginning and appropriated a canon of orthodoxy that defined Islam through its 
earliest and most authoritative texts. Knowing Islam through its oldest founding texts 
has been a central focus of Orientalist reconstructions of Islam and other once great 
non-Western civilizations, such as the Hindu in India.30
The alterative is to see Islam as a discursive tradition (following Talal Asad) that 
relates to the founding texts of the Quran and the hadith (traditions about the prophet 
Mohammad) but where orthodoxy can only refer to correct practice as understood by 
Muslims.31 This allows recognition that there may be many orthodoxies within Islam, 
over time and space. This model fits in with the existence of four orthodox schools of 
law within Sunni Islam. It also challenges the distinctions between orthodox and het-
erodox Islam, scriptural and popular Islam, or the great and little traditions that appear 
in scholarship affected by the modernist and Orientalist searches for orthodoxy.32
Recent studies of jihad show the enduring influence of this modernist view of 
orthodoxy, with the paradoxical result that non-Muslim scholars adopt a neofunda-
mentalist position and continue the modernist attack on Sufi Islam. A good example is 
David Cook’s study of jihad, which is scholarly and well argued within the Orientalist 
tradition. However, Cook is so committed to constructing Islam from orthodox texts 
that his chapter, “The ‘Greater Jihad’ and the ‘Lesser Jihad,’” turns into a polemic 
against scholars who lack the “courage” to go where the evidence leads, culminating 
in attacks on “Muslim apologists” and non-Muslim scholars who try to present Islam 
“in the most innocuous terms possible.”33 The cause for his furor: the traditions on 
which the greater, internal jihad are based are “late” and do not appear in the most 
canonical collections of hadith or traditions about the prophet. Cook is not the only 
scholar who has attacked Muslim traditions about the greater, mystical jihad as spuri-
ous or suspect (even while conceding they are often quoted) for this reason.34 Cook 
attributes the influence of this interpretation to the “great theologian and Sufi al-
Ghazali (d. 1111),” but al-Ghazali and other Sufis (mystics) are said to be attempting 
“to radically reinterpret the originally aggressive intent of the Qur’an and the hadith 
literature in order to focus on the waging of spiritual warfare.”35 Like Islamists, Cook 
casts doubts on the legitimacy of Sufi interpretations of Islam by citing an orthodox 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 99
canon of texts that is divorced from the historical reality of Islam as a discursive tradi-
tion in which many Muslims accepted al-Ghazali and the Sufi tradition as orthodox.
Modernist interpretations of Islam cast Sufism as a primary suspect in their narra-
tive of stagnation and decline, because Sufis are portrayed as allowing the infiltration 
of heresies such as saint worship and neopagan survivals into Islam. At the same time 
modernist interpretations normalize jihad by focusing on the beginnings of Islam and 
ignoring the debates about jihad among Muslim jurists.
Colonial interpretations of Islam, written by scholars like Paul Marty, are also 
strongly influenced by modernist interpretations of Islam. The most obvious reflec-
tion of this was the hysteria of the French (and the British for that matter) during 
World War I about the potential influence of the Ottoman caliphate on the loyalty 
of their Muslim subjects.36 Their fears had no real substance, but they made sense if 
Muslims were viewed through the lens of fundamentalist and Orientalist readings of 
shari’a law. Marty, who was born in “French” Algeria in 1882 and served in North 
Africa until 1911, brought fear and admiration for reformist Islam with him to West 
Africa.37 Marty’s racism should not blind us to his admiration for modernist Islam, his 
lesser respect for North African “Arab” Sufism (which he viewed as “real”), and his 
contempt for what he took to be the worship of African living saints.38 His hierarchy 
was shaped by his understanding of orthodoxy.
Senegalese Sufism and the Greater Jihad
Historians have interpreted the turning away from jihad in the colonial period as a 
pragmatic adjustment to European power that allowed Muslims to accommodate to 
colonial rule. The implication of this kind of analysis is that if Muslims had been stron-
ger, they would have supported jihad against Europeans. Similarly, interpretations of 
Islam that rule out jihad, such as the Suwarian tradition, are seen as accommodations 
to the minority status of Muslims in certain regions of West Africa. Again the subtext 
is that jihad (identified with orthodoxy) would have triumphed if Muslims had been 
in the majority.39 Although there is evidence to support these interpretations in some 
cases, they downplay arguments against jihad that go beyond pragmatic accommoda-
tion and assume that the creation of a Muslim state was central to understandings of 
Islam in West Africa.
In Senegal the Murid Sufi order founded by Amadou Bamba provides good evi-
dence against this political understanding of Islam, which is presented as orthodoxy. 
Amadou Bamba drew on two distinct traditions to criticize proponents of jihad. One 
is a tradition of legal argument that distinguished between the time of the prophet 
and the founding of Islam and the contemporary period, when Islam was established 
as a religion, even if Muslims were in a weakened position in the world. The remedy 
was the Sufi path.
The shorthand for this view was Amadou Bamba’s dictum that “the time of 
jihad was over and only the greater jihad remained.”40 Muslims who advocated jihad 
adopted a revolutionary stance that equated the historic present with the time of the 
prophet. The revolutionary invoked the prophet and the founding of Islam, implying 
that the very existence of Islam was at stake, to justify jihad and condemn the oppo-
nents of jihad as nonbelievers, who could then be killed or enslaved in the name of 
religion. The Sufi acting as a jurist invokes a different history and the role of Muslim 
scholars as advisors and checks on state power (the Sultan) in a world where Islam is 
established. Islamic governments (meaning monarchies where the ruler is Muslim) 
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James Searing100
are imperfect, but they deserve obedience as long as they don’t threatenthe practice 
of Islam; and imperfect government is preferable to sectarian strife. In practice this 
meant that Muslim scholars become the protectors of the Muslim community and 
wield substantial influence over something very much like civil society through their 
role as interpreters of Islamic law as long as they don’t directly challenge the dynas-
ties in power. The goal is the autonomy of Islam and Muslim communities under the 
guidance of religious scholars, not political power. This, in different variations, was 
a key paradigm governing the relations of rulers and Muslim scholars in West Africa. 
The separation of temporal power and religious authority is taken for granted.
Amadou Bamba’s father became a judge at the court of the kingdom of Kajoor, 
taking on the role of the jurist or advisor to power. One of his father’s most contro-
versial legal opinions was a judgment (fatwa) ruling that a recent war in 1875 was a 
simple conflict among Muslims and that therefore none of the combatants could be 
enslaved. His ruling was ignored in favor of another opinion by the scholar Majaxate 
Kala (also playing the role of the jurist) that legitimated the enslavement of prison-
ers and pleased the king. Kala’s ruling was not based on the legitimacy of jihad. As 
a moderate he opposed jihad in the 1860s by questioning the motives of those who 
undertook holy war in the name of Islam. His legal opinion declared that those who 
declared jihad against the king were following a false prophet and thus apostates 
against Islam who could be enslaved.41
Without directly challenging the king, Amadou Bamba used his authority as a 
spiritual guide to subvert this legal ruling. When one of the king’s close relatives 
became Amadou Bamba’s spiritual disciple, he was ordered to free the slaves taken 
in 1875 and he obeyed. This, in effect, transformed his father’s legal opinion into a 
binding judgment for disciples of Amadou Bamba.42 This incident received a lot of 
attention because it displeased the king and his most prominent Muslim advisors. 
According to Amadou Bamba’s son, many Muslim scholars recognized the justice of 
Bamba’s opinion, but they feared to speak out against the king and the court. But 
Amadou Bamba was comforted by the idea that his action saved some from slavery 
and others from hellfire.43
Amadou Bamba’s attitude toward political power was based on his understanding 
of the Sufi tradition, which he saw as advocating withdrawal from worldly, temporal 
power and a critical stance toward established Muslim or non-Muslim governments. 
The model for this was al-Ghazali (1058–1111), a scholar who reached the highest 
position as a scholar under the Abbasid Caliphate by the age of thirty-three and then 
left all these honors behind four years later to adopt the life of an itinerant mystic or 
Sufi in pursuit of religious enlightenment and salvation. He was inspired by the hadith 
of the prophet that said, “The true flight or hijrah is the flight from evil, and the real 
Holy War or Jihad is the warfare against one’s passions.”44
In Murid texts and traditions, such as the biography of Amadou Bamba written 
by his son Bachir, citations of al-Ghazali and other Sufi scholars create a discourse 
in which the actions of Amadou Bamba and his disciples are compared to past prec-
edents from Islamic history that compare Bamba to Malik ibn Anas at the court of 
Harun al-Rashid or al-Ghazali at the Abbasid court. These narratives draw parallels 
between Bamba’s actions in dealing with Wolof kings and narratives of Sufis and jurists 
from Islamic history. They do not, however, invoke the precedent of the prophet and 
the age of jihad. Amadou Bamba compared Wolof kings to the pharaoh, but never 
declared them to be apostates.45 He denounced French colonizers as slaves of Satan 
and their passions but argued that military resistance against them was futile.46 As a 
mystic, he was consistently disdainful of “temporal” authority, but dedicated to the 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 101
creation of a Muslim community at the grassroots. The rejection of jihad included, 
but went well beyond, a pragmatic recognition of European power. French colonial-
ism could be interpreted as a positive force for Islam insofar as it removed corrupt 
kings from power and allowed Muslims to practice their religion. For the Sereer the 
scathing attitude of Murids to Wolof kings and the Murid rejection of military jihad 
were both positive, in that they seemed to echo Sereer hostility to monarchy and the 
Wolof social order.
For the Tijan order, the adjustment to colonialism was more difficult, because they 
had to lay to rest the association between their order and the Umarian jihad. For the 
Sereer the jihad that mattered was the one led by a discipline of Umar Tal, Maba. 
Dennis Galvan’s recent study of Sereer attitudes toward the state and land reform, 
The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, eloquently captures that attitude of the Sereer-
Siin. Popular memory celebrates the victory of Siin over Maba as a defining moment 
of Sereer history. Popular histories depict Maba as a Wolof or Tukulor outsider who 
wanted to destroy the shrines of the Sereer and forbid the consumption of alcohol. 
However, the spirits who dwelled in Sereer shrines (the pangool) and Sereer diviners 
were too strong. A Sereer diviner helped the King of Siin call down a fog that disori-
ented his Muslim enemies and allowed a devastating surprise attack on the forces of 
the jihad.47 In a key passage Galvan describes how the Sereer reconcile this attitude 
with their subsequent conversion to Islam and their veneration of Amadou Bamba, 
whose father advised Maba,
Informants generally agree that this is in no way a contradiction because Ma Ba [sic] 
was “like a ceddo,” whereas Amadou Bamba was o kiin Roog, a person of God. Assign-
ing Ma Ba to the reviled warrior-slave caste makes sense because he wanted to conquer 
Siin and impose Islam by force, whereas Bamba was a person understood to follow the 
ways of God because he sought to convert the Serer more peacefully, slowly, and without 
violence. Of course, the term used here is Roog, the Serer designation for the creator and 
overarching deity, not Allah. It is not simply that Islamization became acceptable when 
it abandoned the sword. Islam became acceptable in the Siin when it was propagated by 
o kiin Roog, a person who conducted himself in accordance with the ways of the Serer 
God.48
Al-Hajj Malick Sy had to overcome the legacy of jihad by affiliating his branch of the 
Tijan order with centers in Mauritania and Morocco that rejected the path of jihad. 
From that point he could reaffirm the Tijan path as a Sufi order that drew its strength 
from a visionary founder and powerful ritual prayers (dhikr) that contained the secret 
names of God. By rejecting the old Wolof order and endorsing the peace created by 
French rule, as he did publicly in 1910, Malick Sy became a man of God preaching a 
path of reform that could be accepted by the Sereer.
For the Safen Sufi Islam provided a means for distinguishing between Islam and 
the Wolof social order. Babacar Ndione, the Imam of Bandia and a Tijan, tried to 
express what changed in 1938 when the village of Bandia sought out its first mission-
ary, Amadou Gning, a Tijan Wolof from Waalo. Two other villages already had teach-
ers and Bandia recruited its teacher through them, by visiting Kirene, whose Imam 
traveled to Dias: “We saw a pure Islam for the first time then. We began to study, to 
understand the difference between Islam and the Wolof.”49 This recognition of true 
Islam affiliated the region with the Sufi order in Tivaouane. Two years later Babacar 
Ndione walked to a Tijan lodge in Yoff and began the studies that would take him to 
Tivaouane, where he became a disciple of Babacar Sy.
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James Searing102
Secret Knowledge and Mystical Power
The harmony between Sufi views of the old regime and Sereer attitudes was impor-
tant for conversion, but so too was the realization that Sufi Islam offered access to 
secret knowledge that paralleled the powers attributed to Sereer diviners and shrines. 
The secrets of tradition played an important role in defining the roles of Sereer elders, 
matrilineal clans, and ethnic identity. The mystical powers of shrines and elders came 
up frequently in discussions of the past and played an important role right up until the 
time of conversion. Informants talked about the power of elders in driving back Wolof 
incursions in the 1890s, in successful rainmaking ceremonies in 1913 and 1914, in 
summoning hyenas to Bandia to scare off a Wolof chief who intended to spend the 
night in the village, or in the use of the shrines to communicate with Safen soldiers 
in France during World War I. These extraordinary events were coupled with routine 
ritual events, such as the divination of the rainy season by village elders and the activi-
ties of healer-diviners who cured possession by spirits and other afflictions.
Compared with the secrets of Sereer tradition, Islamic knowledge had two opposed 
characteristics. A revelation passed on through literacy made the knowledge of Islam 
more open to everyone who studied, as opposed to the secret knowledge possessed 
by matriclans and families. This was recognized by converts, as was the certainty of 
the book as a means of transmitting the word, themes noted in studies of literacy 
by Louis Brenner and Jack Goody among others.50 Conversely, Islam concentrated 
mystic power in the hands of a few as well. The prime example was Babacar Ndione in 
Bandia: He was the Imam of the village mosque, the first Safen in Bandia to memorize 
and bring down the Quran, and the leading Tijan in the region. He was a disciple of 
Babacar Sy, the first successor of Al-Hajj Malick Sy in Tivaouane, and received visits 
from Tijans from many Safen villages on religious holidays. No single elder in the past 
had accumulated such influence.
The esoteric knowledge of the Sufi path was important for conversion, because 
it encouraged the perception that the powers wielded by elders in the past that had 
protected the region were now superseded by Islam’s holy book and the esoteric 
teachings of the Tijan order.
Sereer mystical knowledge began with the matriclans, which had specific charac-
teristics, including aptitudes for mystical power. In interviews, when talking about 
the differences between the xeet or matriclans, informants sometimes tapped their 
foreheads deliberately or started gesturing by rolling their eyes while spinning their 
fingers beside their heads to indicate mystical power. In one example Mbaye Cisse in 
Kirene paused in his discussion of military recruitment during World War I. He began 
by discussing efforts to flee recruitment by hiding in the bush. Then he said, “Some 
soldiers came back to the village in the heat of battle, wearing their uniforms. They 
had secrets. God [Yalla] made it so that human beings are not the same. You know, 
not all people are the same in here [tapping his forehead], in here. During the war 
some of the soldiers in France were seen here, just like that, face to face.” I then asked 
him if they were in France. “They were in France. You saw them just like that. They 
came back . . . without an airplane. They left the battle and came here . . . Secrets. 
That happened in 1914–1918.”51
Two matriclans, the Leemu and the Yookam, were said to be particularly gifted 
in this way. The Leemu clan officiated at most of the village shrines because Leemu 
elders founded them or refounded them in the past by establishing contact with the 
spiritual powers at the shrine through divination and sacrifice. But there were histori-
cal examples of shrines controlled in the past by the Saafi (Kirene), Daya (Dias), and 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 103
Yookam (Kirene) clans; and there was a Yookam ancestral shrine in Tchiki and a Daya 
shrine in Dobour.
In addition to shrine leaders there were occupational categories, such as divin-
ers who healed, called nax in Safen and nak in Siin-Siin. The first association of the 
nax was as a counterforce to witchcraft, run in Safen (ndëm in Wolof). But in fact a 
healer-diviner was first charged with determining the cause of an affliction or illness, 
and this began with divination to determine whether it was witchcraft or possession 
by one of several kinds of spirits. One informant, Al-Hajj Abdou Faye, described three 
categories of spirits (jindi, rap, and a bush spirit), plus sorcery (involving human 
action against someone else, described as ligeey or work), and witchcraft. He made 
the pilgrimage to Mecca and enjoyed quoting the Quran and making learned com-
parisons between what he learned about Arabs before Islam and the Safen. He was 
also an expert on tradition, who knew one hundred Safen songs. He described with 
apparent respect the healing techniques used by Safen diviners to address spirit posses-
sion.52 These included sacrificing a goat and preparing a sacrificial meal, hanging the 
heart of the goat in a tree, and singing and chanting over the patient, who had been 
washed in the blood of the goat, until dawn. He described the use of sand divination 
for diagnosis. When he came to sorcery, which he defined as “work” (when a diviner 
accepted payment in exchange for working to control someone for a client), he sud-
denly shifted from exposition to condemnation. At that point he expressed reproba-
tion as a Muslim, quoted the Quran and stated that the money that exchanged hands 
here was “Satan’s silver.”
In addition to diviners, there were healers who worked primarily with roots of 
trees, bark, and herbs; and practiced massage; gave healing baths; and acted as chi-
ropractors. Women played this role more frequently than men, but a few women 
worked as diviners as well. It is unclear how distinct these practices were. No one clan 
owned these occupations, which seemed to be passed down in multiple ways. The 
Saafi clan was mentioned once specifically as having had many diviners, a comment 
intended specifically to place Babacar Ndione, a Saafi, in a “traditional” context that 
was connected with his role as Imam and Sufi. He came from a family of well-known 
diviners.53
In public rituals all clan leaders and elders participated in rituals of divination and 
sacrifice. The most common example of this was the public divinations of the rainy 
season, which were organized by each village and differed from one village to the 
next. For the most part these sacrifices involved libations of millet paste and milk or 
millet beer, in keeping with the character of the white spirits that protected villages 
and assured fertility. In these ceremonies all elders participated, but this did not pre-
clude some clan leaders officiating and playing a leading role. Typically, these were the 
same clan leaders who officiated at village shrines. For the most part village shrines 
were associated with protection and healing for a single village.
Two shrines, Jayña in Kirene and the Koffki in Bandia, were described as having a 
broader, regional significance. They were also described as having different characters. 
In Kirene, the sacrifices and divination of the rainy season were preceded by a ritual 
hunt that drew participants from surrounding villages. Up to one hundred hunters 
might participate. During the hunt the first hunter to see a specific kind of guinea 
fowl was blessed with bountiful harvests that year. The hunt was then followed by a 
collective divination of the rainy season. The divination occurred under a tree sacred 
to Jayña, the spirit associated with Kirene’s shrine. Jayña was a spirit that was said to 
be differentfrom the Koffki, the shrine in Bandia, which accepted blood sacrifice and 
was associated with a divination ordeal that settled important disputes. The shrine at 
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James Searing104
Bandia was famed in the region for the divination with stones that was used to settle 
important disputes over inheritance rights. The party that lost a dispute by offering 
false testimony before the spirit of the shrine faced dire consequences, including the 
death of cattle and children in the offending segment of the matriclan.
Muslim converts who spoke about the powers of shrines and diviners rarely con-
demned past beliefs, even when the spirits were demoted to the status of demons. In 
some cases the pre-Islamic spiritual landscape was invoked as a prefiguration of the 
Islamic present. Kirene and Bandia, which possessed the most powerful shrines, claim 
a preeminent role in contemporary Islam, based on a pioneering role in conversion 
(Kirene) or contemporary prominence (Bandia). The most striking example was how 
the Imam of Bandia described the powers of the shrine (compared to a supreme court 
for the Safen) and the prominent role of Bandia elders in rainmaking ceremonies as 
gifts from God that made his contemporary role as the preeminent Muslim scholar in 
the region seem to be an extension of Sereer history:
In the time of cosaan, Bandia was a leader of the villages. According to custom [adat] 
at that time, Bandia led. If there was a meeting of the villages, the people of each village 
would have their say, but then Bandia would have its say and its say would be final. . . . That 
was in cosaan, before Islam [din]. People then valued knowledge [xam-xam], memory/
intelligence [xel], and courage [ñeme]; that was what they worked with. So if people gath-
ered together, the people of Kirene would speak, the people of Dias, then Tchiki, Sindia, 
Guinabour, then Bandia. They [Bandia elders] would say, ah, we hear what you said; then 
they would speak. You see in those days God gave Bandia this role [of leadership].54
When asked to explain this preeminence he invoked first Bandia’s elders, then its 
shrine, then its role in rainmaking. Throughout he invoked truth and God, with the 
past prefiguring the present: “There were many elders in Bandia at that time, many 
elders. That is what they say about that time. They say, ‘No one educated Bandia. 
Bandia is a village of truth [or an upright village] [jubb]. Bandia is a village of char-
acter [faida].’”55
Diviners, Rain Makers, and God
Peel discusses a number of different ways in which Yoruba Christians came to under-
stand the historical relationship between Yoruba paganism and Christianity. These 
include degeneration, evolution, anticipation, and prophecy.56 For the Sereer these 
approaches work best when applied to the identification between Allah and Koox, 
typically expressed in interviews by translating both as Yalla. These identifications 
are expressed in the framework of anticipation, where Safen religion prefigures Islam, 
or as evolution, in which Islam is portrayed as a perfection of what already existed, 
albeit in a lesser form. The rare rainmaking ceremonies that occurred during times of 
serious drought and potential famine, after previous divinations and sacrifices failed, 
were the single instance when Safen religion focused on Koox, the God of heavens 
and especially rain. In the rainmaking ceremonies addressed to God, Safen informants 
found anticipation of Islam.
Babacar Ndione, the Tijan Imam of Bandia, argues for anticipation when he links 
the powerful speech of Sereer divination with God. In this passage he expresses a kind 
of local patriotism as well, with Bandia being the village most powerful in speech: 
“God gave them the word/speech [bat]; what they said counted. God helped them 
and that is why. You know there were secrets. Each village had its secrets. But the 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 105
most important secrets were here.”57 This knowledge was independent of any outside 
influence. In relating what he learned from the elders who had spoken about the his-
tory of the village, he reiterated, “They say no one educated Bandia. Bandia is a village 
of truth/upright [jubb] village; Bandia is a village of character [faida].”58
The most striking example of anticipation is Babacar Ndione’s account of a rain-
making divination that occurred most probably in the drought of 1913 and 1914. It 
is dated through the mention of Moussa Cisse, whose original name was Ndick Cisse. 
He was one of the few elders to convert after his sons converted and was mentioned 
in lists of the first converts. What follows is an account of a collective gathering during 
a period of serious drought, the last one to occur before conversion. Babacar Ndione 
makes this Safen prayer to Koox for rain an anticipation of Islam:
In that case the people, waKirene [people of Kirene], waDias, waTchiki, waGuinabour, 
waSindia, waCampement, they headed from Jooben, they arrived from Joobas. All the 
vegetation would be dead. Then they met in the bush in a place called Baasan. When they 
arrived the people of Bandia would sit here [gesturing], the people of Tchiki over there. 
They would all sit down by village. When they were all there, when they had all arrived, 
then they would start to speak; first the people of Kirene and they would make their 
prediction, so they would say after divining that it will rain in two days, and then they 
would shoot their guns. Then Dias, they would speak and do the same thing, and say it 
will rain in three days, and they would shoot their guns. Then Tchiki, they would say it 
will rain in five days and shoot their guns. They would do this until all the villages had 
spoken and only Bandia was left. Then the Bandia elders would consult and speak. Now 
at that time there was Moussa Cisse, you know he was his uncle [gesturing to someone 
in the room]. Then they would say, well you know all of you spoke the truth, but it is 
not that way, it will rain today. God will rain today [Yalla dey taw tey]. You will see. Then 
the people of Bandia would shoot their guns. Bandia would give the signal. They would 
say, you will see it now. God will rain. And God helped them at that time. They hadn’t 
converted yet. But God helped them. What Bandia said happened. If they said it would 
rain today, it rained.59
Babacar Ndione’s account of rainmaking differs strikingly from another descrip-
tion of the same basic ritual, but both identify Koox (the divinity of the heavens and 
rain) with Allah. The other account is set in the distant past, during the lifetime of 
Yagup Ciaw, the most famous rainmaker and diviner in the region.
The portrait of Yagup Ciaw, a diviner and rainmaker of the Leemu clan, makes him 
appear to be a kind of prophet figure. His life is set in the earliest period of Safen his-
tory, when migrations that were also a flight from monarchy brought the Safen to the 
region they currently inhabit, five hundred to six hundred years ago. Two informants 
spoke at considerable length about Yagup Ciaw, but he was mentioned as a founder 
in numerous interviews. One informant stressed his role as the founder of the first 
house in Bandia and his teachings about funerals and sacred sites in the region. When 
rains failed after the death of Diiw, Yagup taught the Safen that an elder who was not 
properly buried could hold back the rains. A second funeral had to be organized to 
end the drought. He also taught the people of Bandia and Guinabour not to disturb 
the “beautiful stones” at the shrine of Maam Cupaam, near Popenguine. Stealing the 
stones would bring disaster on the region.60
Ibrahima Cisse gave the most detailed portrait of Yagup. In reply to a question 
about how the Koofki was founded, Ibrahima Cisse replied with a remarkable nar-rative about Yagup, the most important founder remembered in Bandia’s oral tradi-
tions. He was a member of the Leemu clan, now known for their mystical powers. 
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James Searing106
The story began with the premise that the founding elders were looking, seeking 
through divination. They met and sat in a circle with their loincloths tied together:
Yagup was there. They created it [the shrine] for protection. The Europeans were coming 
with the Wolof. They came here [to the shrine]. You know, the shrine could kill, could 
overcome, could protect. They drew in the sand. They divined. Yagup saw bees. He 
called out and said to get a male red goat. They sacrificed it right away. Yagup said they 
should make a cous-cous right now and they did. They filled a huge pot up to the brim 
and set it aside. They divined. A huge cloud of dust rose up and was transformed into a 
whirlwind. The whirlwind was transformed into a cloud of bees. The cloud descended 
into the pot and devoured everything, just like that. They knew it was good.61
After this narration, Ibrahima Cisse made sure that I understood who the maternal 
clans were. Then he added, “Yagup was Leemu.” Only the Leemu can lead the Koofki. 
This last statement gives the shrine a clan identity, as did interviews in other villages. 
Mbaye Daali Cisse explained that the shrine in Kirene was Saafi, as was its founder.
Later in the same interview, in response to a question about what the Safen did 
when the rains failed and famine threatened, another story about Yagup illustrated his 
role as a great rainmaker. Ibrahima Cisse asked me if I remembered what he said about 
the clothes worn for divination and tying the loincloths together. Then he explained 
that there was a place up on the escarpment, in the bush, where they went on those 
occasions. The elders divined and then they began striking on stones, sending clouds 
of dust up into the air: “You know Yagup. He removed himself from the group and 
went to one side. He struck the stones and said, ‘I am going to God to get the rain.’ 
He struck the earth and disappeared into the sky. No one spoke, no one looked up. 
Each one looked down at what he was doing. They waited and waited. Then they 
heard a hissing sound and Yagup reappeared. His clothes were soaking wet. A heavy 
rain broke out all over the district.”62
Yagup was the founder of the shrine, but in this story he is also linked to Kiim 
Koox, to the God of rain and the heavens. Ibrahima Cisse said nothing about the God 
beyond the identification between Kiim Koox and Allah assumed in his translation.
The Inculturation of Sufi Isl am
This chapter emphasizes the process Peel called inculturation. This by no means 
implies the absence of reform or the process making the Safen Muslim. Elsewhere 
I discuss Safen decisions to ban traditional funerals, abandon the public divinations 
that marked the beginning of the rainy season, and fight against witchcraft accusa-
tions. The process of reform went hand in hand with the process of inculturation. For 
the Safen and other Sereer groups, Sufi Islam had two distinct appeals. The political 
stance of Senegal’s Sufi orders, particularly their criticisms of the monarchies and old 
regimes of Senegal, resonated with the attitudes of Sereer. For the Tijan order, this 
was true only after Al-Hajj Malick Sy and other Tijans distanced themselves from the 
legacy of jihad. The jihads of the nineteenth century invoke bitter memories in Siin.
The second appeal was to the mystical path or esoteric knowledge of Sufi Islam, 
sometimes referred to in shorthand as the greater jihad. Sereer converts saw knowl-
edge of this kind, batin, as comparable to the secret knowledge of Sereer diviners and 
shrines. The identification of Allah with Koox or Roog and batin with Sereer secrets 
eased the process of translation and transformation set in motion by conversion. 
When Sereer Imams recited the Quran from memory, Islam’s holy book descended 
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 107
into the Sereer world, offering knowledge and protection previously provided by nax 
(diviners) and shrines.
Notes
 1. This chapter draws from a larger project about the history of the Safen. The material from 
interviews draws on fieldwork carried out in 2002. The fieldwork was made possible by a 
Fulbright Lecture/Research Grant to Senegal in 2002. I would like to thank Babacar Faye, 
who helped arrange interviews and worked as my assistant, and my wife, Patricia Hickling-
Searing, who accompanied me on many of the interviews and contributed questions and 
queries that enriched the discussions.
 2. For a more detailed discussion, see Searing, “‘No kings, no lords, no slaves.’”
 3. For examples of historical frontier regions, see Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic 
Fringe, Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain.
 4. I have taken the concept of ethnic boundaries from Barth, “Introduction.”
 5. El Hadji Abdou Faye (born c. 1916–1919), interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 
2002.
 6. Ibrahima Cisse (born 1921), interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, July 10, 2002.
 7. Saliou Seck, interview with the author, Bandia, July 16, 2002; and Ngër Loem (born c. 
1919), interview with the author, Bandia, July 9, 2002.
 8. Mbaye “Dali” Cisse (born 1924), interview with the author, Kirene, July 30, 2002.
 9. Toutane Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia, June 27, 2002; and Ousmane N’Dione, 
interview with the author, Bandia, May 29, 2002.
 10. This applies to the recent rather than the distant past. The Safen were never isolated from 
contact with other groups, but after the ethnic boundary was established in its historical 
form (during the era of the slave trade), contacts diminished and were regulated. This does 
not mean Sereer sand divination was not influenced by Islamic practice, but that borrow-
ings of this kind happened early.
 11. See Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine.
 12. Mbaye “Dali” Cisse (born 1924), interview with the author, Kirene, July 30, 2002.
 13. Dong Dione (born 1906), Doudou Faye, Pape Faye, and Ibrahima Dione, interview with 
the author, Dobour, July 29, 2002.
 14. Ibrahima Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, August 18, 2002.
 15. For a more detailed discussion of Safen shrines, see Searing, “The Time of Conversion.”
 16. The shrine names appear to be proper names, naming the spirit or its avatar. No etymolo-
gies were given for these names (unlike village names). My informants’ responses suggested 
the question was misguided because the shrines obviously revealed their own names.
 17. Rainmaking ceremonies are discussed in detail in the following text.
 18. Dong Cisse (born 1918), interview with the author, Diass, July 31, 2002.
 19. Assan Seck N’Gueye (born 1920), El Hadji Youssou Mage Seck (born 1921), El Hadj 
Thiour Seck (born 1924), Assan Seck (village chief, born 1940), and Mamadou Lamine 
Seck (born 1942), interview with the author, Guiniabour, July 22, 2002. For similar pro-
tecting powers from a different region, see Rosalind Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade.
 20. Ibrahima Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, August 18, 2002; Mbaye “Dali” 
Cisse (born 1924), interview with the author, Kirene, July 30, 2002.
 21. The first publication was Horton, “African Conversion,” which provoked a response. See 
Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects.” Horton’s two-part article 
was a rejoinder (“On the Rationality of Conversion, Part I,” and “On the Rationality of 
Conversion, Part II”). Fisher restated his own position in “The Juggernaut’s Apologia.”
 22. Fisher’s model has influenced other scholars, such as Nehemia Levtzion, who uses the 
term “Islamization.” For a general presentation of the Islamization model, see Levtzion, 
“Toward a ComparativeStudy of Islamization,” and “Patterns of Islamization in West 
Africa.”
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James Searing108
 23. El Hadji Abdou Faye (born c. 1916–1919), interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 
2002 and July 15, 2002.
 24. Dong Cisse (born 1918), interview with the author, Diass, July 31, 2002. Dong Cisse 
was a prisoner of war during World War II, which may be a factor in his alienation from 
“tradition.”
 25. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, 265.
 26. This section is based on the more detailed discussion in Searing, “Islam, Slavery and 
Jihad.”
 27. On this convergence see Gesink, “‘Chaos on the Earth.’”
 28. See the discussion in Gesink, “Chaos on the Earth,” 713–22.
 29. Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, analyzes why so-called fundamentalists, whether 
conservative Muslim Wahhabis or the followers of Pat Robertson in the United States, 
must be considered modernists.
 30. See Said’s classic work, Orientalism. For a good study of how this worked itself out histori-
cally in British India see Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj.
 31. Asad, Genealogies of Religion.
 32. For a good critique of Orientalist scholarship and of the need to recognize diverse tradi-
tions within Islam, see Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy.
 33. Cook, Understanding Jihad, 40.
 34. See also Peters (Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam, 116) who quotes the tradition about 
the greater jihad and comments: “Although this Tradition is quite famous and frequently 
quoted, it is not included in one of the authoritative compilations.”
 35. Cook, Understanding Jihad, 35.
 36. The best discussion of this, from the French perspective, is in Harrison, France and Islam 
in West Africa.
 37. Reformist Islam emerged as a concern in French North Africa, in eastern Algeria and 
Tunisia, as early as 1894. On these concerns see Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim 
Notables, 223.
 38. The model for Islam noir in North Africa was French stereotypes about Berber or Kabyle 
Islam. Although Arabs were regarded as natural Muslims, inclined to fanaticism, the Ber-
bers were said to be only superficially Muslim, with marabouts playing a key social role 
that had little to do with orthodox Islam. On these myths in Algeria see Lorcin, Imperial 
Identities: Stereotyping.
 39. Good examples of this interpretation are Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History, 
and Paths of Accommodation.
 40. For references see Searing,“God Alone is King,” 46, 99.
 41. For these debates see Searing, ‘God Alone is King’, 52–55, 98.
 42. On this distinction see Gesink, “Chaos on the Earth,” 714.
 43. Mbacké, Les Bienfaits de l’Eternel 55–56, 344.
 44. Watt, The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali, 131.
 45. This is based on the biography written by one of his sons: Mbacké, Les Bienfaits de l’Eternel, 
275.
 46. Mbacké, Les Bienfaits de l’Eternel, 204.
 47. Galvan, The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, 65.
 48. Galvan, The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, 69.
 49. Babacar Ndione, interview with the author, May 31, 2002.
 50. Brenner, West African Sufi, and Goody, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral.
 51. Mbaye Daali Cisse, interview with the author, July 30, 2002.
 52. El Hadji Abdou Faye (born c. 1916–1919), interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 
2002.
 53. Ibrahima Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, August 18, 2002.
 54. Babacar Ndione, interview with the author, May 31, 2002.
 55. Ibid.
 56. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, 295–304.
 57. Babacar Ndione, interview with the author, May 31, 2002.
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The Greater Jihad and Conversion 109
 58. Ibid.
 59. Ibid.
 60. Saliou Seck, interview with the author, Bandia, July 16, 2002.
 61. Ibrahima Cisse, born 1921, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, July 10, 2002.
 62. Ibid.
Interviews, Sereer Safen, 2002
Cisse, Diar (born 1910), Cisse, Ablaye (born 1917), Dione, Mamadou (born 1924), and Diouf, 
Sabou. Interview with the author, Diass, August 1, 2002.
Cisse, Dong (born 1918). Interview with the author, Diass, July 31, 2002.
Cisse, Ibrahima (born 1921). Interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, July 10, 2002; 
August 18, 2002.
Cisse, Mbaye Dali (born 1924). Interview with the author, Kirène, July 30, 2002; August 17, 
2002.
Cisse, Toutane. Interview with the author, Bandia, June 27, 2002.
Dione, Dong (born 1906), Faye, Doudou, Faye, Pape and Dione, Ibrahima. Interview with the 
author, Dobour, July 29, 2002.
Faye, El Hadji Abdou (born c. 1916–1919). Interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 2002; 
July 15, 2002.
Faye, Latir Dong (born 1903). Interview with the author, Bandia, June 1, 2002; August 2, 
2002.
Faye, Yakha. Interview with the author, Bandia, June 26, 2002.
Loem, Ngër (born c. 1919). Interview with the author, Bandia, July 9, 2002.
N’Dione, Babacar (born c. 1920–21). Interview with the author, Bandia, May 31, 2002.
N’Dione, Ousmane. Interview with the author, Bandia, May 29, 2002.
Ndour, Modou. Interview with the author, Bandia, July 11, 2002.
N’Doye, Guillaume (born 1914). Interview with the author, Popenguine, July 24, 2002.
Seck, Assan N’Gueye (born 1920), Seck, El Hadji Youssou Mage (born 1921), Seck, El Hadj 
Thiour (born 1924), Seck, Assan (village chief, born 1940), and Seck, Mamadou Lamine 
(born 1942). Interview with the author, Guiniabour, July 22, 2002.
Seck, Biran (born 1927) and Seck, Assan (village chief, born 1940). Interview with the author, 
Guiniabour, July 25, 2002.
Seck, Saliou. Interview with the author, Bandia, July 16, 2002.
Sène, Awa, Diouf, Mariata Faye, Rokhaya. Interview with the author, Tchiki, July 18, 2002.
Sène, Lemou, Faye, Amy and Diouf, Salimata Diouf. Interview with the author, Bandia, June 
28, 2002.
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