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‘TO NEVER SHED BLOOD’: YACOUBA SYLLA, FÉLIX HOUPHOUËT-BOIGNY AND ISLAMIC MODERNIZATION IN CÔTE D'IVOIRE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2008

SEAN HANRETTA
SEAN HANRETTA
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Abstract

After an ill-fated religious revival, the Sufi teacher Yacouba Sylla and his followers became wealthy and politically influential in post-Second World War Côte d'Ivoire. They argued for an understanding of democratization and development that defined both ideas in terms of their community's own mystical experiences and world-historical significance, rather than in terms of modernity. As a way of making sense of their own past and defending their place in an increasingly tense political environment, these efforts achieved their most explicit articulation in a powerful story about Yacouba Sylla's refusal of a gift from Ivoirian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

Keywords

Côte d'IvoireAfrican modernitiesdecolonizationdevelopmentIslampolitical culturereligion
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , July 2008 , pp. 281 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

1 For the history of Yacouba Sylla and his followers, see Sean Hanretta, ‘Constructing a religious community in French West Africa: the Hamawi Sufis of Yacouba Sylla’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 2003).

2 Yacouba's followers disagree over whether the community constitutes a coherent spiritual entity or is rather a subset of the larger Hamawiyya-Tijaniyya Sufi order. I use the term ‘Yacoubist’ only as a short-hand for ‘the community of followers of Yacouba Sylla’, and do not intend to imply the existence of a distinct ‘Yacoubist’ order or a philosophy of ‘Yacoubism’. See also the discussion of the politics of the ‘Yacoubist’ name in Boukary Savadogo, ‘La communauté “Yacouba Sylla” et ses rapports avec la Tijâniyya hamawiyya’, in Jean-Louis Triaud and David Robinson (eds.), La Tijâniyya: une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l'Afrique (Paris: 2000), 269–87.

3 For the ‘new colonial’ approach to development, see Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton, 1994); Cooper, Frederick, ‘Conflict and connection: rethinking colonial African history’, American Historical Review, 99 (1994), 1516–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996); and Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005). On anti-Sufism and Islamic modernism in Francophone Africa, see Jean-Loup Amselle, Négociants de la savanne (Paris, 1979); Amselle, , ‘Le Wahabisme à Bamako (1945–1985)’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 19 (1985), 345–57Google Scholar; Warms, Richard, ‘Merchants, Muslims and Wahhâbiyya: the elaboration of Islamic identity in Sikasso, Mali’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 26 (1992), 485–507Google Scholar; Réné Otayek (ed.), Le radicalisme islamique au sud du Sahara (Paris, 1993). See also Louis Brenner's thesis associating Sufism with an ‘esoteric episteme’ that gave way to the rationalism of European and Islamic reformist conceptions of knowledge. Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society (Bloomington IN, 2001). On intermediaries, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison, 2006).

4 As a starting point, see Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (eds.), Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa (Chicago, 1993); Jan-Georg Deutsch, Peter Probst and Heike Schmidt (eds.), African Modernities: Entangled Meanings in Current Debate (Portsmouth NH, 2002); Charles Piot, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (Chicago, 1999); and James Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copper Belt (Berkeley, 1999).

5 The details of Yacoubist theology are far beyond the scope of the present essay, but see Hanretta, ‘Constructing a community’, chs. 4–8.

6 See the important documents reproduced in Boukary Savadogo, ‘Confréries et pouvoirs. La Tijaniyya Hamawiyya en Afrique occidentale (Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger): 1909–1965’ (thèse de doctorat, Université de Provence, 1998), 538–81. See also Benjamin F. Soares, ‘The spiritual economy of Nioro du Sahel: Islamic discourses and practices in a Malian religious center’ (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1997), 147; Colonel Joseph Rocaboy, ‘Le cas hamalliste: les événements de Nioro-Assaba (aoÛt 1940)’, in Edmond Bernus et al. (eds.), Nomades et commandants: administration et sociétés nomades dans l'ancienne AOF (Paris, 1993), 41–8; Vincent Joly, ‘L'administration du Soudan français et les événements de “Nioro-Assaba” (aoÛt 1940)’, in Bernus et al. (eds.), Nomades et commandants, 49–60; Rapport politique mensuel, Côte d'Ivoire, March 1943 (Archives Nationales du Sénégal [hereafter ANS] 2G-43 v. 99) and Archives Nationales de la France: Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer (hereafter CAOM) 1Affpol 2258/3 dossier 10 and dossier 16.

7 ‘Bulletins de renseignements, cercles du sud, Mauritania’, July, Aug., Sept. 1941 (ANS 9G-31 v. 17).

8 Rapport politique annuel, Côte d'Ivoire, 1939, 149–50 (ANS 2G-39 v. 3). Cmdt. Cer. Sassandra (Colombani), 10 Feb. 1940; Chef Subdiv. Gagnoa (Teyrical), 10 Feb. 1940 (ANS 19G-43 v. 108). On the Yacoubists during the war: ‘Bulletins de renseignements, cercles du sud, Mauritania’, Nov. 1942 (ANS 9G-31 v. 17); teleg., M. Beaumont, Chef (Sassandra-Soubré) de la Légion française des combattants de la Côte d' lvoire to Lieut. Gov. Côte d'Ivoire, n.d.; La Côte d'Ivoire française, no. 651 (20 Apr. 1942), 2 (Archives Nationales de la République de la Côte d'Ivoire, XV-4-6 [5355]).

9 Yacouba Sylla to Gov. Gén. AOF, 14 June 1943, and Rapport Commiss. de Police Rortais, 18 June 1943, both reprinted in ‘Annexe no. 18’ of Savadogo, ‘Confréries et pouvoirs’, 604–17. Yacouba operated two butchers' shops in Sassandra and Gagnoa at a loss in order to provide the administrative and colonial communities with beef. For the supply of cattle, Yacouba relied on his contacts with the north, with Fulbe and Soninke cattle herders in Soudan and Upper Volta.

10 Rapport Rortais; see also Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘L'impact des intérêts coloniaux: SCOA et CFAO dans l'Ouest Africain, 1910–1965’, Journal of African History (hereafter JAH) 16 (1975), 595–621.

11 Journal Officiel de la Côte d'Ivoire (hereafter JOCI), 31 Jan. 1947, Avis de demandes de concessions, no. 3188 and no. 3206, 36; JOCI, 1 Sept. 1947, no. 3991 TPM, 284. Bureau Technique de Liaison et de Coordination (BTLC), ‘Note de renseignements: le Yacoubisme’, Dakar, Oct. 1949 (CAOM 1Affpol 2259/3). Yacouba Sylla, Sassandra, to Cmdt. de cercle Kaédi (sic), 1 July 1939 (Archives Nationales de la République Islamique de la Mauritanie E2-34); I am grateful to Professor Adama Gnokane of the Université de Nouakchott for providing me with copies of these and other documents. See also Ruth Schachter Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Oxford, 1964), 174.

12 One of West Africa's most important intellectuals, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, left a detailed examination of Yacouba's relationship with Houphouët, emphasizing the respect Houphouët had for Yacouba's spiritual power and for his ability to simultaneously use and transcend materialism. Louis Brenner, ‘Amadou Hampâté Bâ: Tijânî francophone’, in Triaud and Robinson (eds.), La Tijâniyya, 289–326.

13 Rapport Rortais.

14 The RDA, founded in Bamako in October 1946, was officially a union of regional parties; but in terms of its organization and basic principles, it was ‘an extension of [Houphouët-Boigny's] PDCI to the superterritorial level’. See Aristide R. Zolberg, One-Party Government in the Ivory Coast (rev. edn., Princeton NJ, 1969), 108–12; Tony Chafer, The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's Successful Decolonization? (Oxford, 2002), 16, 63–4, 76.

15 Houphouët-Boigny's SAA had its origins in the efforts of post-war administrators to undermine the political position of the largely pro-Vichy French planters. Zolberg, One-Party Government, 66–77; Chafer, End of Empire, 44–63.

16 Hamawi support for the RDA seems to have been the result of concerted efforts by the zawiyas led by Imam Muhammad Djibrila Maiga. But the party's efforts to attract Muslim supporters seem to have been fairly ecumenical, for at the same time the RDA tried to ally itself with anti-Sufi ahl al-Sunna movements in Soudan and Guinée. Rapports trimestriels sur l'Islam en AOF, 1948, 1949 and 1950 (CAOM 1Affpol 2259/1). The report for the second and third trimesters of 1948 gives the following summary of the administration's theories on Hamawi–RDA connections: ‘One notes a tendency among the Hamallists to turn towards the leaders of the RDA from whom they await help and protection from the attacks of the Administration’, 5. See also Chafer, End of Empire, 105; Lansine Kaba, The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa (Evanston IL, 1974), 169–252; and Morgenthau, Political Parties, 174.

17 Memos, Service de la SÛreté, 19, 24 and 28 Jan., 2 and 7 Feb. 1950 (ANS 5G-63 v. 144). BTLC, ‘Le Yacoubisme’; Rapports trimestriels sur l'Islam en AOF, 1948, 1949 and 1950 (CAOM 1Affpol 2259/1). The details describing Yacouba's efforts on behalf of the RDA are excised from the version of the document that is held at CAOM (3e tri. 1949). One of Savadogo's interviewees reported even closer cooperation between Yacouba and the PDCI; Savadogo, ‘La communauté “Yacouba Sylla”’, 282.

18 Houphouët-Boigny also involved himself directly in local Muslim politics, famously supporting local bras-croisés in Bouake against criticisms by traditionalists, an action widely perceived as an attempt to solicit reformist voters (and Soninke/Dioula voters more generally) for the RDA. Rapports trimestriels sur l'Islam en AOF, 1950, 1951, 4e trim. 1954 and 1e trim. 1955 (CAOM 1Affpol 2259/1). On Shaykh Fanta Mady, see Lansiné Kaba, ‘Cheikh Mouhammad Chérif de Kankan: le devoir d'obéissance et la colonisation (1923–1955)’, in Robinson and Triaud (eds.), Le temps des marabouts, 277–97; and Kaba, Cheikh Mouhammad Chérif et son temps, ou, Islam et sociéte à Kankan, Guinée, 1874–1955 (Paris, 2004).

19 Rapports trimestriels sur l'Islam en AOF, 1950 (CAOM 1Affpol 2259/1); Memo, Service de la SÛreté, 2 Feb. 1950 (ANS 5G-63 v. 144); Administrateur Mangin, Chef du Bureau des Affaires Musulmanes, ‘Rapport de mission en Côte d'Ivoire, 10–18 février 1952’, (CAOM 14Miom 2126 [5G-47]). Chafer, End of Empire, 106–7, 118; Zolberg, One-Party Government, 134–9. Sowing the seeds for later conflict, French agents targeted Mossi migrant workers as potential dissidents from the PDCI and encouraged their affiliation with other parties.

20 Barbara Caroline Lewis, ‘The Transporters’ Association of the Ivory Coast: ethnicity, occupational specialization, and national integration' (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1970), 289–90.

21 Benjamin F. Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town (Ann Arbor, 2005).

22 Though the distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ is not particularly useful, John Hunwick's essay ‘Secular power and religious authority in Muslim society: the case of Songhay’, JAH, 37 (1996), 175–94, also emphasizes the power of this normative difference. For an overview of the period, see John Ralph Willis, ‘The Western Sudan from the Moroccan invasion (1591) to the death of al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1811)’, in J. F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder (eds.), History of West Africa, vol. I (3rd edn., New York, 1985), 560–5. For a more theologically sophisticated approach to the problem, see Brenner, Controlling Knowledge.

23 This is the main thesis of David Robinson's Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880 to 1920 (Athens OH, 2000), though Robinson places less emphasis on the ways accommodationist elites used the colonial system to enforce a particular version of Islamic orthodoxy.

24 On the evidence of Paul Marty's famous description of Hamallah published in 1920. Marty, Etudes sur l'Islam et les tribus du Soudan, vol. IV, La région de Kayes – le pays Bambara – le Sahel de Nioro (Paris, 1920), 218.

25 The standard reference on Hamallah, relying largely on archival materials from Mauritania and France, is Alioune Traoré, Islam et colonisation en Afrique: Cheikh Hamahoullah, homme de foi et résistant (Paris, 1983). Three more recent studies draw instead on oral history collected in and around Nioro and on the archival documents available in Senegal, Mali and France: Seïdina Oumar Dicko, Hamallah: le protégé de Dieu (Bamako, 1999), Soares, Prayer Economy; and Amadou Ba, Histoire du Sahel occidental malien: des origines à nos jours (Bamako, 1989).

26 E.g. Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd edn., Leiden, 1960–2002), ‘hiba’, ii:343 (F. Rosenthal); Encyclopaedia of Islam, ‘sadaqa’, viii:715 (T. H. Weir and A. Zysow); and Soares, Prayer Economy, 165–7.

27 See, for example, the opening of the Jawâhir al-macânî, where the awliyâ' are described as those who ‘min fayd bahrihi yaghtarifÛn’, those who ‘ladle out from the overflowing of his [Muhammad's] sea’. cAlî Harâzim ibn al-cArabi Barâdah, Jawâhir al-macânî wa bulÛgh al-amânî fi fayd sîdî Abi cAbbâs al-Tijânî (Beirut, 1997), 5. See also William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn ‘al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany, 1989), 287.

28 Compare Paul Dresch, ‘Mutual deception: totality, exchange, and Islam in the Middle East’, in Wendy James and N. J. Allen (eds.), Marcel Mauss: A Centenary Tribute (New York, 1998), 120.

29 Eric Pollet and Grace Winter, Société Soninké (Dyahunu, Mali) (Brussels, 1971), 472–8, 490–3; Aliou Kissima Tandia, Poésie orale Soninké et éducation traditionnelle (Dakar, 1999), 212.

30 Asymmetrical giving was central to maintaining distinctions among Muslim specialist, rulers and warriors, and among free, casted and slave households. Pollet and Winter, Société Soninké, 208–10; J.-H. Saint-Père, Les Sarakollé du Guidimakha (Paris, 1925), 19–25; Mamadou Diawara, La graine de la parole: dimension sociale et politique des traditions orales du royaume de Jaara (Mali) du XVème au milieu du XIXème siècle (Stuttgart, 1990), 33–9; Boubakar Ly, ‘L'honneur et les valeurs morales dans les sociétés ouolof et toucouleur du Sénégal’ (thèse, Paris i, 1996), cited in Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, 1998). Diawara particularly stresses the obligatory, excessive aspect of the generosity attached to social hierarchy: ‘Le patron subvient à tous les besoins matériels de son protégé même s'il doit se ruiner. Le bienfaiteur doit se surpasser et offrir à son client plus de cadeaux qu'il n'en reçoit de lui, car l'aisance du second reflète la prodigalité et la fortune du premier’ (39).

31 See Tandia's discussion of the murder believed to be at the heart of the obligation to feed students; Poésie orale, 235. Brenner notes the connections in the Fulbe societies of the Futa Toro among receiving gifts, Islamic piety and low political status vis-à-vis the warrior ceddo lineages. Controlling Knowledge, 26.

32 This kind of debunking is distinct from the critiques certain reformists make of the giving of gifts to religious persons in general. See, for example, Soares, Prayer Economy, 175–7.

33 For recent restatements of the reasons why rumor is not just a useful historical source but an indispensable one, see Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley, 2000), and Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa (New York, 2004), esp. 7 and chs. 1 and 2.

34 This is a composite version based on Ahmadou Sylla, Treichville, 12 Apr. 2001 and 7 June 2001; Maître Cheickna Sylla, Deux Plateaux, 21 May 2001; and the historical committee of the Fondation Cheikh Yacouba Sylla (FOCYS), Deux Plateaux, 24 May 2001. The version of the story published in the FOCYS's history of the community states merely that Yacouba refused to take the wird from an unnamed muqaddam and that he ‘insisted that his direct initiator be the Sharif [Hamallah], who, faced with such a demonstration of faith and love, became filled with a sense of love and great admiration for him; they had many lengthy discussions together, meditating on many subjects’. Privately circulated draft of FOCYS, ‘Cheikh Yacouba Sylla ou le sens d'un combat (1906–1988)’ (Abidjan, 1999), 24.

35 FOCYS, ‘Sens d'un combat’, 54. There is some evidence that the tensions that currently surround the precise definition of the relationship between Yacouba and Hamallah are reflected in these stories. At stake was the debate between Ahmadou Sylla and Maître Cheickna Sylla as to whether Yacouba should be seen as a shaykh in his own right, the founder of his own tarîqa, or rather as simply a prominent disciple of Hamallah. The most extravagant tales of generosity to Hamallah, which appear in Cheickna's hagiography, come close to implying that the gifts between Nioro and Gagnoa were given among equals. Ahmadou, by contrast, made it clear that Nioro, as the ‘pole’, had greater obligations towards Gagnoa than Gagnoa did towards Nioro. But he too stressed the return gifts given to Hamallah's sons. Ahmadou Sylla, Treichville, 3 May 2001.

36 Aliou ‘Mama’ Sylla and Fodie Doukoure, Gagnoa, 28 Apr. 2001; Cheickna Sylla, 21 May 2001; Ahmadou Sylla, Treichville, 6 July 2001.

37 In fact, the story collapses a complex series of events, including two separate ballots, in which Houphouët was forced to defeat Tenga Ouedraogo, the ‘Mossi’ candidate with strong support in the Haute-Côte districts. See Zolberg, One-Party Government, 69–71.

38 Siradiou Diallo, Houphouët-Boigny: le médecin, le planteur et le ministre (1900(?)-1960) (Paris, 1993), 92–3.

39 Ibid. 93. The most detailed version of this story that I heard from a member of the community came in an interview with Cheickna Sylla, Abidjan, 12 Mar. 2001.

40 See McCaskie, T. C., ‘Accumulation: wealth and belief in Asante history: I: To the close of the nineteenth century’, Africa, 53 (1983), 23–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Accumulation: wealth and belief in Asante history: II: The twentieth century’, Africa, 56 (1986), 3–24. The quotation is from ‘Nineteenth century’, 28.

41 Marie-Thérèse Abela de la Rivière, ‘Les Sarakolé et leur emigration vers la France’, (thèse de troisième cycle, Paris, 1977), 118–35.

42 It was of course gold's similar position as the general equivalent value form that intrigued Marx. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1: The Process of Capitalist Production, ed. Frederick Engles, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York, 1967).

43 Most Asante did not conceptualize ritual or judicial killings as ‘sacrifices’, with all the connotations of such a term in Judeo-Christian-Muslim contexts. It is not clear that this held for Asante's Muslim communities. The apparent lack of open criticism of the practice could indicate that Kumasi's malams found a more accommodationist solution to the relationship between religious authority and state power. See Clifford Williams, ‘Asante: human sacrifice or capital punishment? An assessment of the period 1807–1874’, International Journal of African Historical Studies (hereafter IJAHS), 21 (1988), 433–41, and Wilks, Ivor, ‘Asante: human sacrifice or capital punishment? A rejoinder’, IJAHS, 21 (1988), 443–52Google Scholar.

44 Transcript in André Boyer, ‘L'exposé complet du Président’, Abidjan-Matin, 16 Apr. 1964, 3, 2. See also Samba Diarra, Les faux complots d'Houphouët-Boigny (Paris, 1997); Zolberg, One-Party Government, 352–5.

45 FOCYS, Cheikh Yacouba Sylla ou le sens d'un combat (Abidjan, 2002), 97.

46 Boyer, ‘Exposé du Président’, 2–3.

47 Zolberg, One-Party Government, 366.

48 Ellis and ter Haar, Worlds of Power, 90–1.

49 Which themselves typically sought to subvert the sharîca from the opposite direction by finding ways to arrange for effective male primogeniture or gerontocratic inheritance.

50 Fraternité Matin (Abidjan), 7 Aug. 1970, vii. It is not clear whether these quotes came directly from Yacouba or from his son Ahmadou Sylla, who was already acting as his father's porte-parole. The interviewer noted that Ahmadou had been his interlocutor, but he presents the quoted material as coming from Yacouba himself.

51 Ibid. 7 Aug. 1970, viii. There is an explicit echo here of Houphouët's policy of ‘African Unity’.

52 FOCYS, Sens d'un combat, 67, 90–5. Aliou ‘Mama’ Sylla, Fodie Doukoure and Tijane Sylla, Gagnoa, 28 Apr. 2001. Cheickna Sylla, 12 Mar. 2001, 19 May 2001 and 21 May 2001. This was also the way in which Yacouba viewed his locally infamous 1966 price war with the Ivoirian Transporters' Association: by undercutting the Association's prices and even operating at a loss, he provided a ‘public service’ for the local community. For the quite different interpretation that was given to this conflict by the Transporters' Association, see Lewis, ‘Transporters’ Association', 415–21.

53 See, among others, Diarra, Les faux complots.

54 See Pierre Kipré, ‘Les discours politiques de décembre 1999 à l'élection présidentielle d'octobre 2000: thèmes, enjeux et confrontations', in Marc Le Pape and Claudine Vidal (eds.), Côte d'Ivoire, l'année terrible: 1999–2000 (Paris, 2002), 81–121.

55 Cheick Ahmadou Yacouba Sylla, ‘L'Islam n'a pas de candidat’, Le Jour (Abidjan), 22 Aug. 2000.

56 FOCYS to author, 3 June 2001. In my interview with the historical committee of FOCYS on 24 May 2001 the committee made an even greater attempt to minimize the importance of Houphouët-Boigny in Yacouba's work.

57 Fraternité Matin, 7 August 1970, vii.

58 FOCYS, ‘Sens d'un combat’, 35–6; Cheickna Sylla, 21 May 2001. In this Cheickna's rhetoric also parallels the ‘nationalist’ historiography of Alioune Traoré and others who present the history of the Hamawiyya in general as an example of French ‘divide-and-rule’ machinations.

59 Marie Miran, ‘La Tijâniyya à Abidjan, entre désuétude et renaissance? L'oeuvre moderniste d'El Hâjj Ahmed Tijânî Bâ, cheikh tijânî réformiste en Côte d'Ivoire contemporaine’, in Triaud and Robinson (eds.), La Tijâniyya, 439–67.

60 T. C. McCaskie, Asante Identities: History and Modernity in an African Village, 1850–1950 (London, 2000), 116.