West African Sahelian Societies and Islam Muslim communities have existed in the Senegambia, Mauritania and Mali regions for at least 1000 years. Some lived in isolation, while others were prominent at the courts of the kings.Occasionally something resembling an Islamic state emerged - such as the one called Tekrur, set in Futa Toro or the middle valley of the Senegal River, about 1000 AD, but Islam was present mainly in two less ambitious forms: autonomous communities, scattered across the landscape but often connected to major trade arteries, and at the courts of kings, where learned Muslims often served as advisors to rulers who claimed to belong to the faith. We have included here a map presenting a typical representation of the ways that Islam probably spread from North Africa to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Islam spread mainly through two means: Sufi or mystical movements, usually in the form of orders or tariqa such as the Qadiriyya and the Tijaniyya, and reform movements, which often took the form of "jihads of the sword" that sought to create Islamic states. While Islam became the majority religious practice in Mauritania several hundred years ago, but it probably did not in Senegambia and Mali until the early 20th century. This gallery contends that most Islamic states failed to spread the faith, and that this failure opened the way for a range of Sufi movements and leaders who spurred the pace of islamisation, just at the time that the French established their colonial authority in this part of West Africa.
1. Class, Slavery and Warfare
The societies of Senegambia, Mauritania and Mali, where our movements of reform and militancy take place, were very stratified across the pre-colonial centuries, and these distinctions persisted into the colonial period and beyond. Whether Muslim or not, or to whatever degree Muslim, one could find three basic classes across the whole region: 1, an aristocracy and usually a royal family, who dominated the political and often the economic scene; 2, commoners who formed the majority of the society, and were the main producers of agriculture and animal husbandry, and 3, slaves and servants, ranging in task from domestic to agricultural to sailor, who supplied much of the labor. Alongside this hierarchy one found traders who moved across the boundaries of states and ethnic groups, and marabouts or Muslim leaders, who often stood out from this hierarchy of classes and lived in autonomous villages.
In an effort to give some visual impression of these societies, we use images drawn from a French traveler named J.B.L. Durand, who visited the region in the early 19th century. In this first image we see a stylized drawing portraying much of the class structure of these societies in the 19th century. On the right he shows a woman slave attached to a signare, who was a businesswoman and entrepreneur based in Saint-Louis, the dominant town and French center at the mouth of the Senegal River. In the middle is a "marabou" or "priest" who was teacher, leader of a community and general moral authority. On the far left is a soldier, equipped with firearm and sword; most of the military was infantry in the confrontations of the 19th century. Next to him is another slave woman, carrying her infant on her back while head loading some goods.
The next image shows some of the very hard work performed by slaves and servants. In this case, it is the harvest of gum balls from the acacia trees which lined the banks of certain parts of the Senegal River, the region where Futa Toro and other societies were located. Gum was a major product of the region throughout the 19th century, and most of it was exported to France for use in pharmaceutical and textile firms.
The slave labor force was often acquired by very forcible means. The next drawing shows a slave raid, in this case conducted by Moorish gangs on horseback, against virtually defenseless villages. Huts were torched, women and children captured, and many of the men killed. The women and children were taken back to the raiding society for domestic service, including producing offspring for the labor force - as in the previous illustration of collecting gum. This image comes in part from the oral tradition and the Slave Raiding imagination of the French artist, but the threat of brutal raids and kidnapping was real, well into the 20th century. The militant Islamic movements examined in this gallery opposed slave raiding and slavery, but only against fellow Muslims. Otherwise they accepted the slave-raiding traditions of the societies and the institution of slavery - which by definition was supposed to be limited to non-Muslims.
Many slaves were also captured in warfare, usually conducted between the states of the region. These states rarely had much of a standing army, but instead would mobilize the men in the different villages. Those with mounts would form the cavalry, those without formed in the infantry. Warfare and its technology did not change with the emergence of reform movements with recourse to jihad.
Beginning in the late 17th century, several Muslim communities sought to reform their societies and create something approximating an Islamic state - using the traditional formulas of preaching, hijra or emigration, followed by jihad and the choice of a leader of an Islamic state, often called an imam. The first effort, going by the name Sharr Bubba, occurred in southwestern Mauritania (Trarza) and spread briefly to northwestern Senegal, and specifically the areas of Cayor, Jolof and Futa Toro. These efforts were very short lived, but they created strong, committed reform communities that kept alive the vision of an Islamic state. A more sustained effort occurred in Futa Jalon (in today's Guinea) some 50 years later, and another in Futa Toro (the middle valley of the Senegal River) some 100 years later. Both resulted in regimes we call Almamates (from al-imam, "the one who stands in front of"), and both survived until the French conquest of the late 19th century and the onset of colonial rule.
3. The Almamate of Futa Toro
In Futa Toro Abdul Qader Kane ( reigned from c 1780-1807) established networks of mosques, schools and garrison villages in much of the middle valley. Almamy Abdul, as he was called, also tried to extend the state and Futanke domination in neighboring areas: upriver to Gadiaga and Kaarta, and down river into Jolof and Cayor. These efforts were conspicuously unsuccessful, and led to the defeat of Futanke armies and Almamy Abdul's death in 1807.
While the Almamate survived across the 19th century under weak central leadership and fluctuating coalitions of regional leaders, the Islamic infrastructure of mosques, schools and courts remained in place, as well as the strong Islamic consciousness of Futanke citizens. They regarded themselves as the premier Muslim society of Senegambia, and were often so regarded by Wolof and other peoples in the region. In fact, the Wolof and French of Saint-Louis, the emerging colonial capital, called these Futanke "Tokolor," a name derived from Tekrur, and considered them to be "fanatic" - or at least learned - Muslims intent on imposing the Sharia and Islamic government.
All the 19th Senegambian leaders of Islamic reform and state formation had their origins in the Muslim identity of the Almamate of Futa Toro. They were of Tokolor origins, even if not Haal-Pulaar or "Pulaar speakers," and they played key roles in spreading Islam in Senegambia, or at least trying to, and in destroying many of the traditional structures that had dominated in the region for some time. They ultimately failed in their goals of reform, islamization and imposing "Islamic" states, and in so doing they paved the way for a different texture of Islamic practice, dominated by Sufi orders and maraboutic families. The Sufi leaders who emerge at the end of the 19th century also had and claimed Tokolor origin, a badge of Islamic distinction.
At the same time, these maraboutic families were located in and around the peanut basin, the emerging growth area of French colonial Senegal, and were much less attached to the Almamate and the Islamic state tradition. They were pragmatic if not always welcoming of French domination and the presence of significant Christian minorities.
4. This Gallery
In this gallery we feature the leaders of reform movements in the 19th century, after the founding of the Almamate of Futa Toro. They made a big impact on Senegalese societies in the mid-19th century, but their efforts to establish Islamic states had failed by the latter part of the century. That failure helped to usher in the more pragmatic practice of Islam under Sufi leaders, and it is this practice which has been dominant to this day.
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