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Islam and the state of Kajoor: A case of successful resistance to Jihad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Lucie Gallistel Colvin
Lucie Gallistel Colvin
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

The three unsuccessful jihāds against the Wolof state of Kajoor are described as revival and reform movements among a people nearly universally professing Islam, but practising a syncretistic form. The traditional view that these were wars between ‘Pagans’ and ‘Muslims’ is seen as a reflection of the social and political isolation of the clerics as a community, an understandable but on closer examination misleading interpretation based on uncritical reading of clerical sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1974 , pp. 587 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 The research on which this article is based was conducted in France, and Senegal, in 1968-1970Google Scholar, in connexion with related dissertation research on ‘Kajoor and its Diplomatic Relations with Saint-Louis du Sénégal, 1763–1861’ (Columbia University, 1972. Revised version to be published by Nouvelles Editions Africaines, Dakar.) The main sources were correspondence and memoranda from the Archives Nationales de France in Paris (especially Colonies and Section-Outre-Mer) and the Archives de l'ancienne A.O.F., Dakar; published travelogues, memoirs, and studies; and taped oral interviews conducted in Kajoor in 1969.Google Scholar

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4 See Ousmane, Sylla, ‘Les castes dans la société ouolof: Aspects traditionnels, persistances actuelles’ (unpubl. thesis, diplôme d l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1965).Google Scholar

5 Pathe, Diagne, Pouvoir politique traditionel en Afrique occidentale: Essais sur les institutions politiques précoloniales (Paris: Présence africaine, 1967), 22 et passim.Google Scholar

6 Interviews with Oumar Guéye, research assistant at IFAN, July through Sept. 1969. See also the example of Sakhewar Fatma Diop, ancestor of Lat Dior, who abandoned the office of Bur Get in order to become a marabout and disciple of Seriñ Kokki Matar Ndumbe. Amadou, Bamba Diop, ‘Lat Dior et le probléme musulman’, Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire (henceforth BIFAN). XXVIII, ser. B, nos. 1–2 (1966), 506.Google Scholar

7 Although Orthodox Islamic law makes no mention of castes, Wolof Islamic law came to recognize them and enforce the rules of endogamy. This effectively precluded casted persons or slaves becoming clerics, except in rare instances where a marabout chose to attack the caste system by taking casted persons as his disciples. In modern Senegal caste discrimination in many areas is illegal and many persons of caste origin become clerics. They tend, however, to continue to attract some scorn based on their origins, and to attract a clientele of casted origin. See Ousmane, Silla, ‘Persistance des castes dans la société wolof contemporaine’, BIFAN, XXVIII, ser. B, nos. 3–4 (1966), 731–70;Google Scholar and Boubacar, Barry, Le Royaume du Waalo, 1659–1859 (Dakar: IFAN, 1970), 264–72.Google Scholar

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10 Quoted in Baron, Roger, Kélédor: histoire africaine (Paris: Moreau, 1829), 54.Google Scholar

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12 Diagne, , 36–55.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 50–1.

14 Ibid., 46, 50–1.

15 Amadou, Bamba Diop, 494.Google Scholar

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21 Boilat, a Senegalese Christian missionary sent to the court of Kajoor, was lodged while there with ‘a famous Tukuloor marabout, whom Fara Kaba [a very powerful crown slave military general who administered the kingdom of Bàwàl in the King of Kajoor's name] had called into his service to write precious talismans for him and teach his son all the precepts of the religion of Mohamed’. (Abbé, P.-D. Boilat, Esquisses sénégalaises (Paris: Bertrand, 1853), 170. See also Ça da Mosto, 223.)Google Scholar

22 Jean, Dard, Dictionnaire français-wolof et français-bambara, suivi du dictionnaire wolof-français ([Paris]: Imprim. royale, 1825).Google Scholar

23 Majid, Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), 96–8.Google Scholar

24 Chambonneau, , 338–9.Google Scholar

25 Abderrahman ben Abdallah ben ‘Imran ben ‘Amir es-Sa'di Tarikh es-Soudan, tr. Houdas, O. (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1964), 127–8.Google Scholar

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27 Kany, Samb, Cadior ack Damel Amary Ngone Sobel (Dakar: Impr. Nouvelle, 1968), 33;Google ScholarMonteil, , ‘Lat Dior…’, 75.Google Scholar

28 Interviews with Kurnba Mbayaar Faal, daughter of the last king of Kajoor, at Louga, , 9–10 10 1969Google Scholar, and with Cerno Diop, also a royal descendant, at Sagata, , 8 10 1969.Google Scholar

29 Evidence of marriages between royalty and clerical women abound in the genealogies kept by Cerno Diop of Sagata (unpublished), and some are cited in Amadu, Bamba Diop, ‘Lat Dior et le problème musulman’, 508–9.Google Scholar

30 See Colvin, , ‘Kajoor and its Diplomatic Relations with Saint Louis du Senegal, 1763–1861’, 46–56.Google Scholar

31 Dominique, Lamiral, L'Affrique et le peuple affricaine considérés sous tous leurs rapports avec notre commerce et nos colonies (Paris: Dessenne, 1789), 173–4.Google Scholar

32 Amadou, Bamba Diop, ‘Lat Dior et le problème musulman’, 506, 508.Google Scholar

33 This incident is well known in oral tradition, but not usually very logically connected with the revolutionary movement in neighbouring Fuuta Tooro. The chronological sequence and details in this version are mainly those of Abdulahi Diop, a marabout residing at Ndaam Lo and related to the family of the Serñs of Pir Sañoxoor (Interviews at Ndaam, Lo, 21 07 1969, and 8 09 1969);Google Scholar see also Amadou, Bamba Diop, 504Google Scholar, and Mollien, G., Voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Afrique (Paris: Courcier, 1820), 92.Google Scholar

34 The greatest detail is in Baron, Roger'sKélédor: histoire africaine (Paris: Moreau, 1829), 32–55;Google Scholar see also Mungo, Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1971), 341–4.Google Scholar

35 Roger, , Kélédor, 54.Google Scholar

36 Gaspard, Théodore Mollien, Travels in the Interior of Africa, ed. Bowdich, T. E. (London: Cass, 1967), 83et passim.Google Scholar Slightly earlier the Scotch explorer Mungo Park described the same clerical-secular split among the Mandingos as one of Muslims and pagans, no doubt due to the same increase in hostility and intolerance among them. (Mungo, Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa [New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1971], 34et passim.)Google Scholar

37 As a theme in most recent scholarly works it seems to derive mainly from the article by Vincent, Monteil, ‘Lat Dior, Damel du Cayor, et l'islamisation des Wolofs au XIXe siècle’. (First published in Archives de Sociologie des Religions), no. 16 (1963);Google Scholar republished as ch. 2 in Esquisses sénégalaises (Dakar: IFAN, 1966)Google Scholar and in summary form in Islam, in Tropical Africa, ed. Lewis, I. M. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar It is also available in English as ‘The Wolof Kingdom of Kayor’, in West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, Daryll, Forde and Kaberry, P. M., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 260–81.Google Scholar The main theme of the article, that the Wolof nobility were animists until the early colonial period, is basically the same opinion expressed by Trimingham in 1962 in A History of Islam in West Africa, 174–7 et passim. More recently some Senegalese and American scholars have stressed the depth of the Islamic tradition among the Wolof, which begins to call this interpretation into question. Amadou-Bamba Diop, grandson of Damel Lat Dior, was among the first to explore this idea. He generally follows the accepted theory but doubts whether particular rulers were really non-Muslims (‘Lat Dior et le problème musulman’, Bulletin de l'IFAN, xxvii, ser. B, nos. 3–2 (1966), 493–539.)Google ScholarAmar, Samb, a prominent Senegalese scholar, has recently suggested that Islam is so old in Senegal it ought to be considered a traditional African religion. (‘L'Islam et l'histoire du Sénégal’, Bulletin de l'IFAN, XXXIII, ser. B, no. 3 (1971), 461–507).Google Scholar Similarly, Americans Martin Klein and Lucy Behrman have noted the long history of Islam in the Senegambia and the fragmentary nature of apparent surviving pre-Islarnic beliefs and practices. (Klein, , ‘The Moslem Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Senegambia’, ch. 4 in Daniel, McCall, Norman, Bennett, and Jeffrey, Butler eds., Western African History, vol. IV of Boston University Papers in African History (New York: Praeger, 1969) and Behrman, ‘The Islamization of the Wolof by the End of the Nineteenth Century’, ch. 5Google Scholar in Ibid.) Both authors nevertheless refer to the party of clerics in religious wars as ‘the Muslims’ and the noble party as ‘the pagans’.

38 Carrère, and Holle, , 59, 63.Google Scholar

39 Boilat, , 74.Google Scholar

40 See Boubacar, Barry, ‘Mémoire inédit de Monsérat sur l'histoire du Sénégal de 1818 à 1839’, BIFAN, XXXIII, ser. B., no. 1 (1970), 1–43;Google Scholar(by the same author) ‘Le royaume du Waalo du traité de Ngio en 1819 à la conquête en 1855’, BIFAN, XXXI, ser. B., no. 2 (1969), 396–401;Google Scholar and Colvin, , ‘Kajoor …’, 229–36.Google Scholar

41 See Gov. Faidherbe to Massamba-Kokki and all the chiefs of Njambuur, , 23 01 1857;Google Scholar the Same to Seriñ Ngik, 19 02 1857;Google Scholar the Same to Seriñ Louga and all Seriñs of Njambuur, 23 04 1857;Google Scholar the Same to all the chiefs of Njambuur, , 04 1857;Google Scholar the Same to Seriñ Louga, 11 01 1858, and 28 03 1858;Google Scholar the Same to the Damel, 14 02 1858, and 22 06 1858;M all in AOF 3B9IGoogle Scholar. See also Faidherbe, ‘Notice historique sur le Cayor’, in Bull. Soc. Geog. Paris, IV (1883), 552.Google Scholar

42 This process is analysed in Donal, Brian Cruise O'Brien, The Mourides of Senegal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 31–5.Google Scholar

43 See Pathe, Diagne, Pouvoir politique, 134 ff.;Google ScholarBoubacar, Barry, Le royaume du waalo: e sénégal avant la conquête (Paris: Maspero, 1972), 109 ff.;Google ScholarColvin, , ‘Kajoor…’, ch. VII, ‘The Development of the Peanut Trade, 1840–1855’, 253–300;Google ScholarMartin, Klein, ‘Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia’, J. Afr. Hist. XIII, 3 (1972), 419–42;Google ScholarPhilip, D. Curtin, Senegambia: An African Economy in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar