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Political Theology in Nineteenth-Century West Africa: Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar, the Bayān mā waqaʿa, and the Conquest of the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2021

Amir Syed Open the ORCID record for Amir Syed [Opens in a new window]
Amir Syed*
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University of Pittsburgh
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Abstract

In 1862, al-Ḥājj ʿUmar Fūtī Tall (d. 1864) conquered a prominent Muslim polity of the Middle Niger valley, the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi. Several months earlier, he had penned a long polemical work, Bayān mā waqaʿa, where he outlined his conflict with Ḥamdallāhi's ruler, Aḥmad III (d. 1862), and presented a legal justification for his eventual conquest. Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar was one of several West African Muslim intellectuals who articulated a new vision of power in the region. These intellectuals linked legitimate political rule with mastery over Islamic knowledge that they claimed only they had. Yet these linkages between religious authority and political power remain understudied. Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar's Bayān offers one example of political theology in nineteenth-century West Africa. In this article, I trace his arguments and explain how he constructs his authority and claims to sovereignty in this work. In the process, I conceptualize two theoretical frameworks — the ‘political geography of belief’ and the ‘political theology of knowledge’ — to demonstrate how a careful engagement with Arabic sources can help develop new approaches to the study of Muslim communities in African history and beyond.

Keywords

SenegalMaliWest Africakingdoms and statesIslampolitical cultureprecolonialintellectual
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , November 2021 , pp. 358 - 376
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The original published version of this article did not include the author's affiliation. A notice detailing this has been published and the error rectified in the online PDF and HTML copies.

References

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2 On the origins of al-Ḥājj ʿUmar's war, see Syed, ‘Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar Tall’, 159–65.

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9 I use ‘Bambara’ as an external classification to define the ‘ethnic’ groups of Kaarta and Segu based on its internal usage in the Bayān as ‘banbara’ (pl. banābir), as well as on established secondary scholarship in English on these polities. See Roberts, R., Warriors, Merchants, and Slaves: The State and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700–1914 (Stanford, 1987)Google Scholar. The term ‘Bambara’ has a complex historical origin and consists of overlapping, and sometimes pejorative, meanings. Further, the groups of people it is meant to define often use other designations, such as ‘Banmana’, rather than ‘Bambara’; see Bazin, J., ‘A chacun son Bambara’, in Amselle, J. L. and M'Bokolo, E. (eds.), Au cœur de l'ethnie: Ethnies, tribalisme et Éetat en Afrique (Paris, 1985), 87–127Google Scholar; and Amselle, J. L., Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere, trans. Royal, C. (Stanford, 1998), 49–57Google Scholar.

10 I use ‘Western Sahel’ to mark the region east of the Upper Senegal River valley and to designate the territories of Kaarta and Bakhunu. I use ‘Middle Niger valley’ for the region between Timbuktu and Masina and include the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi and Segu and its client states.

11 Kane, O., Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge, MA, 2016), 25, 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nobili, Sultan, 25–31.

12 For some examples on West Africa, see Lydon, G., On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth Century Africa (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, B., A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1900 (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jeppie, S., ‘History for Timbuktu: Aḥmad Bulʿarāf, archives, and the place of the past’, History in Africa, 38 (2011), 401–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dalen, D. van, Doubt, Scholarship and Society in 17th-Century Central Sudanic Africa (Leiden, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. S. Mathee, ‘Probing the theological resources of a seventeenth-century tārīkh: the Tārīkh al-Sūdān and Ashʿarī kalam’, Islamic Africa, 7:2 (2016), 159–184; and Nobili, Sultan. For a discussion and examples of new methodologies to analyze Arabic source material, see A. Syed and C. Stewart (eds.), special issue ‘From texts to meanings: close reading of the textual cultures of Islamic Africa’, Islamic Africa, 9:1 (2018), 1–132.

13 See the seminal work, Reese, S. S. (ed.), The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa (Leiden, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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15 For a list of secondary works al-Ḥājj ʿUmar cites, see Mahibou and Triaud, Voilà, 199–213.

16 O. O. Kane, Non-Europhone Intellecuals, trans. V. Bawtree, (Dakar, 2012), 5.

17 Batrān, ʿA., ‘A contribution to the biography of Shaikh Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd-al-Karīm ibn Muḥammad Al-Maghīlī, Al-Tilimsānī’, The Journal of African History, 14:3 (1973), 381–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hunwick, J., ‘Al Maghîlî and the Jews of Tuwât: the demise of a community’, Studia Islamica, 16 (1985), 155–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Often transliterated as ‘muwālāt’, I discuss the relationship between this concept and apostasy in greater detail in the final section of this article.

19 Last, M. D., The Sokoto Caliphate (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Hiskett, M., The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman Dan Fodio (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar; and Moumouni, S., Vie et œuvre du Cheikh Uthman Dan Fodio (1754–1817) (Paris, 2008)Google Scholar.

20 R. Loimeier, Muslim Societies, 129; R.Willis, J., ‘Jihād fī Sabīl Allāh—its doctrinal basis in Islam and some aspects of its evolution in nineteenth-century West Africa’, The Journal of African History, 8:3 (1967), 395–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nobili, M., Catalogue des Manuscripts Arabes du Fonds de Gironcourt (Afrique de l'Ouest) de l'Institut de France (Roma, 2013), 27Google Scholar.

21 BnF Arabe 5605, 2a.

22 Hirschler, K., The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (Edinburgh, 2012)Google Scholar. An anagolous work for Islamic West Africa remains to be written.

23 BnF Arabe 5684, 138b–142a.

24 Robinson, Holy War, 294.

25 B. Diarrah-Sanankoua, ‘Un chapitre controversé de l'histoire du Maasina: le duel Aamadu Aamadu (et) Alhajji Umar Tal’, in C.-H. Perrot (ed.), Sources orales de l'histoire de l'Afrique (Paris, 1989), 215–25.

26 The most well-known work is Mā Jāra baina Amīr al-Mu'minīn Aḥmad wa baina al-Ḥājj ʿUmar, by Muḥammad bin Aḥmad. For an annotated French translation of this work, see S. Boubacar, ‘Bayân ma jara: édition, traduction et commentaire’ (unpublished MA thesis, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 2013–4).

27 Robinson, Holy War, 303–10. On al-Bakkāy, see A. Zabadia, ‘The career and correspondence of Aḥmad al-Bekkāy Timbuctu from 1847 to 1866’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1974).

28 M. Kamara, Akthar al-rāghibīn fī al-jihād baʿd al-nabīʾīn man yakhtāru al-ẓuhūr wa-malaka al- bilād wa-lā yubālī bi-man halaka fī jihādihi min al-ʿibād (Rabat, 2003). On how Kamara represents al-Ḥājj ʿUmar in a different work, including aspects of his conquest over the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi, see W. H. Marsh, ‘Compositions of sainthood: the biography of Ḥājj ʿUmar Tāl by Shaykh Mūsū Kamara’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2018).

29 Robinson, Holy War, 186–9.

30 Ly-Tall, Islam militant, 268–74.

31 Robinson, Holy War, 189. Also Bagkhunu, Bagunu and Bakunu. This territory was east of Kaarta, see Mahibou and Triaud, Voilà, 43, 215.

32 Mahibou and Triaud, Voilà, 43, 215; Ba and Daget, L'empire peul, 173.

33 BnF Arabe 5605, 2b.

34 Robinson, Holy War, 189.

35 Also Kasakayri or Kasakaré, see Mahibou and Triaud, Voilà, 223.

36 On interactions between the French and al-Ḥājj ʿUmar, see Ly-Tall, Islam militant, 215–55.

37 Robinson, Holy War, 233.

38 Ibid. 249.

39 On the relationship between the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi and Segu, see Mahibou and Triaud, Voilà, 47–9.

40 Y. Saint-Martin, ‘L'artillerie d'El Hadj Omar et d'Ahmadou’, BIFAN, sér. B, 3–4 (1965), 560–72.

41 Robinson, Holy War, 240; Ly-Tall, Islam militant, 370–1.

42 BnF Arabe 5605, 4b. A client state of Segu, Sinsani was a significant commercial center in the Middle Niger valley, see Roberts, R. ‘Long distance trade and production: Sinsani in the nineteenth century’, The Journal of African History, 21:2 (1980), 169–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Robinson, Holy War, 292–3.

44 BnF Arabe 5605, 4b. The amount he notes using the Arabic measurement for coinage is ‘one thousand mithqāl’.

45 BnF Arabe 5605, 4a.

46 BnF Arabe 5605, 2b. While al-Ḥājj ʿUmar uses the generic term ‘al-biḍān’ to refer to this Saharan political group, I maintain that this group is Awlād Mubārak given its proximity to Kaarta.

47 BnF Arabe 5605, 2b.

48 BnF Arabe 5605, 5a.

49 BnF Arabe 5605, 12a.

50 Ibid.

51 BnF Arabe 5605, 12b.

52 Though it is possible for Muslims to enter pacts of nonaggression with non-Muslim rulers, al-Ḥājj ʿUmar does not address this possibility in the Bayān. On ‘ṣulḥ’ or reconciliation and treaties of peace, see M. Khadduri, ‘Ṣulḥ’, in P. Bearman et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam, (http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_7175), 2nd edn, 2012, accessed 27 Aug. 2020.

53 Hunwick, J. O., Sharīʿa in Songhay: The Replies of al-Maghīlī to the Questions of Askia al-Ḥājj Muḥammad (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

54 Hunwick, Sharīʿa in Songhay, 131.

55 Hiskett, M., ‘An Islamic tradition of reform in the Western Sudan from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 25:1 (1962), 577–96Google Scholar.

56 On the relationship between Sokoto and the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi, see Stewart, C., ‘Frontier disputes and problems of legitimation: Sokoto-Masina relations, 1817–1837’, The Journal of African History, 17:4 (1976), 497–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nobili, Sultan, 182–201.

57 BnF Arabe 5605, 12b.

58 Ibid.

59 Qur'an 9:36, quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 12b.

60 For a discussion on the Qur'anic verses related to jihad, see Abdel Haleem, M. A. S, ‘Qurʾanic “jihad”: a linguistic and contextual analysis’, Journal of Qurʾanic Studies, 12:1–2 (2010), 161–6Google Scholar.

61 I use ‘state of war’ from Jackson's analysis of religious freedom as the basis of conflict and hostility between the earliest Muslim community and polytheists in seventh-century Arabia. See Jackson, S., ‘Jihad between law, fact and orientalism’, Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph, Beyrouth, 62:1 (2009), 313–6Google Scholar. On the changing meanings of jihad in Islamic history, see Afsaruddin, A., Striving in the Path of God: Jihād and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 BnF Arabe 5605, 12b.

63 Ibid.

64 Hunwick, Sharīʿa in Songhay, 127–31.

65 Quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 12b. For more on al-Ajhūrī, see Mahibou and Triaud, Voilà, 196.

66 BnF Arabe 5605, 12b.

67 Quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 15a. The elites of Segu may have intentionally misled Aḥmad III about their conversion, see Roberts, Warriors, 82.

68 Quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 13b. This statement must be understood in the context of ‘state of war’ that I discuss above.

69 BnF Arabe 5605, 15a.

70 Ibid.

71 Robinson, Holy War, 287; Ly-Tall, Islam militant, 128–31. The issue of the Tijānī Sufi brotherhood is beyond the scope of this article. It is worth mentioning, however, one of the grievances that al-Ḥājj ʿUmar levels against Aḥmad III is how the latter confiscated goods and imprisoned members of this brotherhood. Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar uses this example as evidence to show that Aḥmad III favored polytheists over other Muslims; see BnF Arabe 5605, 26b. For more on this Sufi brotherhood, see Triaud, J. L. and Robinson, D. (eds.), La Tijâniyya: Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l'Afrique (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar; and Wright, Z., Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth Century World (Chapel Hill, NC, 2020)Google Scholar.

72 Robinson, Holy War, 285; Sanankoua, Empire peul, 120–4.

73 Bnf Arabe 5605, 13b.

74 Robinson, Holy War, 108–9.

75 Qur'an 6:153, quoted in Bnf Arabe 5605, 6a.

76 BnF Arabe 5605, 6a.

77 Ibid.

78 On the relationship between the Kunta of Timbuktu and the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi, see Sankare, A., ‘Rapports entre les Peul du Macina et les Kounta (1818–1864)’, Sankore, 3 (1986), 1–58Google Scholar; and Nobili, Sultan, 154–81.

79 Quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 14b.

80 BnF Arabe 5605, 15b.

81 Qur'an 49:10, quoted in BnFArabe 5605, 17a.

82 Quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 16b.

83 BnF Arabe 5605, 17b

84 BnF Arabe 5605, 19a–21b.

85 Martin, B. G., ‘Unbelief in the Western Sudan: ʿUthmān dan Fodio's “Taʿlīm al-ikhwān”’, Middle Eastern Studies, 4:1 (1967), 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 For more on Borno, see Dewière, R., Du lac Tchad à La Mecque: Le sultanat du Borno et son monde (XVIe-XVIIe siècle) (Paris, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hiribarren, V., A History of Borno: Trans-Saharan African Empire to Failing Nigerian State (London, 2017)Google Scholar.

87 Kariya, K., ‘Muwālāt and apostasy in the early Sokoto Caliphate’, Islamic Africa, 9:2 (2018), 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Kariya, Muwālāt, 194–95.

89 L. Brenner, ‘The jihad debate between Sokoto and Borno: an historical analysis of Islamic political discourse in Nigeria’, in J. F. Ade Ajayi and J. D. Y. Peel (eds.), People and Empires in African History: Essays in Memory of Michael Crowder (New York, 1992), 21–43.

90 For a selective translation of Misbāḥ al-arwāḥ and an analysis of the effects that al-Maghīlī's preaching and ideas had on the Jewish communities in the Sahara, see Hunwick, J., Jews of a Saharan Oasis: Elimination of the Tamantit Community (Princeton, 2006)Google Scholar.

91 Hunwick, Jews, 14–24.

92 On Muḥammad al-Kānemī, see L. Brenner, ‘Muḥammad al-Amīn al-Kānimī and religion and politics in Bornu’, in J. R. Willis (ed.), The Cultivators of Islam (London, 1979), 160–76.

93 Quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 22a. The verse in question is Qur'an 4:138: ‘Give glad tidings to the hypocrites that for them awaits a painful punishment.’

94 Abd Allāh on the contrary argued that interpreting al-Maghīlī's opinion on muwālā as apostasy would be contrary to established legal doctrine in Sunni Islam. Abd Allāh's full argument is quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, fol. 22a.

95 In Sirāj al-ikhwān, ʿUthmān dan Fodio defines muwālā according to three categories: 1) muwālā with nonbelievers is permissible when believers fear aggression from nonbelievers; 2) muwālā with nonbelievers is a sin when believers show affection to nonbelievers with the intention of acquiring their wealth; 3) muwālā with nonbelievers comprises nonbelief when believers support or protect nonbelievers in something that is contrary to Islamic law. The relevant section of this work is quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 21a–22b.

96 In Najm al-Ikhwān, ʿUthmān dan Fodio replies to his brother, Abd Allāh, and expands the categories of muwālā. In addition to the three previous categories he outlined in Sirāj al-ikhwān, he also includes muwālā with nonbelievers out of natural inclination that is involuntary, as well as muwālā with nonbelievers in support of a good cause. He does not consider these forms of muwālā as sins. The full discussion of all five categories is quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 24a–25b.

97 Quoted in BnF Arabe 5605, 25a.

98 Kariya, Muwālāt, 7.

99 On ijmaʾ, see Hallaq, W., ‘On the authoritativeness of Sunni consensus’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 18:4 (1986), 427–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Hunwick, Jews, 71–3. While Muḥammad Bello cites these figures as agreeing with al-Maghīlī, their legal opinions clearly suggest otherwise.

101 The full title of the work is Tadhkirat al-ghāfilīn ‘an qubḥ ikhtilāf al-muʾminīn (A reminder for the negligent on the ugliness of dispute among believers). For a critical annotated French translation, see Gerresch-Dekkais, C., ‘Taḏkirat al-Ġâfilîn, ou un aspect pacifique peu connu de la vie d'Al-Ḥajj ʿUmar Tâl: introduction historique, edition critique du texte arabe et traduction annotée’, in BIFAN, sér. B, 39:4 (1977), 891–946Google Scholar.

102 Gerresch-Dekkais, ‘Taḏkirat al-Ġâfilîn’, 945, verses 179–81.

103 Syed, ‘Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar Tall’, 144–78.

104 BnF Arabe 5605, 17b.

105 BnF Arabe 5605, 17b.