Foundation of the Jihad

In the previous article we followed al-Hajj Umar Tall ﵀ through his West African years of return, through his stay in Sokoto under Sultan Muhammad Bello ﵀, through his working years in Fouta Djallon where he built up his military power and his Tijani network, and through the gradual development of the political blueprint that he gave theoretical form in the Rimah. We saw how in 1849 or early 1850 the tension with the Almami of Fouta Djallon led him to prepare a relocation to the settlement of Dinguiraye in the northeastern part of present-day Guinea, and how in these months he completed the logistical and spiritual preparation for this move. This article follows him on his arrival in Dinguiraye in 1850 or 1851, on the organization of his new settlement into a first working base for the coming jihad state, and on the proclamation of the jihad in 1852 that would carry the West African Muslim world into a new phase of spiritual and political movement.

The choice of Dinguiraye in historical perspective

The place Dinguiraye, in its local form an unremarkable Mandinka village of a few hundred inhabitants, was elevated by Umar Tall’s ﵀ choice to a central place in West African history in a manner its local chiefs in 1850 had not foreseen. In the decades that followed, the name Dinguiraye became synonymous throughout West Africa with the Umarian jihad enterprise, and even after the eventual fall of the jihad state it remained a point of reference for the Muslim communities standing in the Umarian tradition. Today, in the twenty-first century, Dinguiraye is still an important Muslim town in northern Guinea, with a large Tijaniyya zawiya that goes back directly to the original mosque founded by Umar Tall ﵀, and with an annual mawlid celebration that preserves, in contemporary elaboration, the Tooroodo-Tijani tradition of the nineteenth century.

For an understanding of the choice in its original form, it is important to bear in mind that a scholar such as Umar Tall ﵀ could not know in 1850 what shape his settlement would take in history, and that in his own perspective the choice was first and foremost a practical strategic decision whose historical significance unfolded only gradually in its working out. It is an observation that is sometimes underestimated in West African historiography, for the tendency exists to view events retrospectively in their historical outcome, as though the protagonist’s choice had been foreseen in its final form, whereas the actual shape of his decision was taken within a much more limited perspective.

The arrival in Dinguiraye

In the second half of 1850, or possibly in the early spring of 1851, the relocation of Umar Tall ﵀ and his community took place from their settlement near Timbo in Fouta Djallon to Dinguiraye, in an exodus that comprised roughly two thousand persons, including families, students, military followers, servants, and the extensive stock of weapons, manuscripts, and household equipment that accompanied the move. The exodus led through a region of mountainous forests between Timbo and Dinguiraye, and according to tradition it took about three weeks in its full execution, with interruptions for periods of rest and for the obligatory five daily prayers.

In Dinguiraye, which in 1850 was a small Mandinka village of a few hundred inhabitants under a local Sarakole chief, Umar Tall ﵀ was received on the basis of the prior negotiations that Abu Bakr Diouri ﵀ had conducted in the preceding months. The local chief, who in his own position had been dependent on the patronage of the neighboring Bambara states, agreed to the settlement of the Tooroodo community in exchange for the spiritual status that the presence of an international Tijani khalifa would confer on his village, and for the practical advantages that the defense of the local community by the Tooroodo military power would bring. The relationship was, in practice, mixed, but it was sufficient in its form to make the first phase of settlement possible.

The establishment of the new center

In the first months after their arrival, Umar Tall ﵀ and his immediate associates carried out the establishment of the new center in a form that encompassed, in its elaboration, the physical and spiritual preparations for the coming jihad state. A new mosque was built on a scale that considerably surpassed the local Sarakole mosque, and it was arranged as the central prayer hall and as the zawiya for the Tijani community. A settlement for the Tooroodo families was laid out as an extension of the original village, following the usual Tooroodo street-plan arrangement in which the scholarly families were housed in a central position relative to the mosque. A workshop for weapons production and for the smithy was established, marking in its form the gradual growth of a military-industrial complex on a scale that was unusual in nineteenth-century West Africa. A series of storehouses for the storage of food, ammunition, and trade goods was laid out, and they were managed in an organized fashion under the direction of Abu Bakr Diouri ﵀ as general quartermaster.

At the center of the settlement a separate residence was also arranged for Umar Tall ﵀ himself, not in a palatial form but as a simple scholar’s residence in which he could carry out his work, his lessons to his closest students, and his audiences with visitors. It was, in its working, a kind of Umarian Aïn Madhi in which he could continue the spiritual example of his former teacher Muhammad al-Habib al-Tijani ﵀ in a West African adaptation.

The growth of the community

In the year that followed the settlement, that is to say in 1851 and the first months of 1852, a remarkable growth of the Umarian community in Dinguiraye took place. Reports of the settlement of a Tooroodo community under an international Tijani khalifa spread throughout West Africa via the usual caravan routes and via the pilgrim-traders who traveled through the region in these years, and from Fouta Toro, from Fouta Djallon, from Karta, from Bondou, and from distant Tooroodo and Fulbe communities, smaller and larger groups of emigrants began to move to Dinguiraye in answer to Umar Tall’s ﵀ repeated call to the hijra. In the course of 1851 the community grew from its original two thousand to about five thousand persons, and by the end of 1852 it would, according to the estimate of French colonial reporting from Saint-Louis, have grown to roughly ten thousand persons.

This growth demanded of Umar Tall ﵀ and his closest associates a considerable administrative expansion, with the construction of new settlements around Dinguiraye for the arriving emigrants, with a more extensive organization of Shariʿa justice, and with the building up of a more professionalized administration for the collection of zakat and for the distribution of landholdings to the new families. The work was carried out under Umar Tall’s ﵀ general direction, with the practical execution divided among his immediate associates and with the spiritual guidance kept in his own hands.

The administrative structure in Dinguiraye

The administrative structure that was built up in Dinguiraye in the first years displayed a combination of elements that reflected, in its form, the elaboration of Umar Tall’s ﵀ years of preparation. Shariʿa justice was organized under a chief qadi who was appointed personally by Umar Tall ﵀ and who referred appeal cases back to him, with under him a corps of local qadis for the original Dinguiraye population and for the emigrated Tooroodo and Fulbe communities. The collection of zakat was carried out in an organized fashion, with designated officials who registered the annual zakat amounts in each settlement and forwarded the proceeds to the central treasury in Dinguiraye. The general administrative coordination was carried out by a council of Umar Tall’s ﵀ closest associates, which met every two weeks in the central mosque to discuss the general affairs of state.

The administrative structure was, in its working, not merely a military power under a spiritual leader, but a genuine form of state that, in its internal coherence and its effective execution, offered its inhabitants an ordered and spiritually oriented community. For the emigrants from Fouta Toro and Fouta Djallon, who in their parental communities had lived under a mixture of Shariʿa and customary law, the pure Shariʿa legal order in Dinguiraye was initially an adjustment that required some acclimatization, but in its spiritual effect it was accepted by the majority of the emigrants as an improvement on the old order.

The military expansion

Alongside the administrative expansion, Umar Tall ﵀ in these months also undertook a considerable military expansion of his power. He continued the supply of firearms via Mauritanian and Senegambian traders at an increased pace, he built up a more extensive weapons production in his smithy, and he organized his military power in a more structured form in which a standing corps of several thousand professional fighters was distinguished from a larger contingent of militias that could be raised in case of general mobilization. The corps of professional fighters, commonly called talibé in a local Tooroodo-Mandinka usage, was trained in a combination of scholarly formation and military training, and they formed in their character a kind of scholarly-military elite corps that would be the bearing force in the jihad operations of the following years.

The armament of this corps comprised by the end of 1852, according to the estimate of French colonial observers, about two thousand European firearms of varying provenance, a considerable number of locally produced forged muskets of lesser quality, and an extensive stock of ammunition and gunpowder that was sufficient in its extent for a campaign of several years. It was, in its scale, a military power that existed nowhere else in nineteenth-century West Africa, and which, in its combination with the spiritual discipline of the Tijani tarīqa, formed a formidable threat to the neighboring non-Muslim states and to the emerging French colonial presence in Saint-Louis.

The difficulties of the first phase

The first months in Dinguiraye did not pass without the usual difficulties that a large group of emigrants encounters in a new environment. The local food supply was not equipped for the sudden population increase, and in the first months provisions had to be brought in from Fouta Djallon and from neighboring Mandinka villages to cover the needs. The climate of Dinguiraye, whose annual rainy season led to pronounced malaria periods, demanded of the emigrants a period of acclimatization in which a number of them succumbed to the common tropical diseases. The local Mandinka population, although its chiefly leadership had given consent, displayed in practice a mixed attitude toward the influx of Tooroodo emigrants, and in a number of cases small frictions arose that had to be handled by Umar Tall ﵀ personally in a diplomatic manner.

For Umar Tall ﵀ personally these first months demanded considerable administrative attention, and he repeatedly undertook personal visits to the neighboring Mandinka villages to address the chiefs directly and to allay their concerns about the Umarian presence in both spiritual and political terms. His visits were received in the local communities with considerable regard, and they enabled the Umarian presence in the region to be gradually consolidated in a way that in the following years would grow into general acceptance within the Mandinka community.

The geographic strategic position

Dinguiraye lay, in its geographic position, at a junction whose strategic character conferred on Umar Tall ﵀ a considerable advantage for the coming operations. To the north of the settlement stretched the Sahelian plains in which the Bambara kingdoms of Segu and Kaarta maintained their political grip, and which would form the main targets in the coming jihad. To the west stretched the mountainous Fouta Djallon territories, which he had come to know thoroughly in his preceding years and which, in case of a retreat, could offer a natural refuge. To the south stretched the Mandinka territories where his first expansion campaigns would take place and where the local Muslim minorities were spiritually bound to his movement. To the east, finally, stretched the upper reaches of the Niger, where the future phase of the jihad state would find its expansion after the capture of Kaarta.

The position thus gave him simultaneously access to his main targets, a secure route of retreat, room for expansion to the south, and a future zone of expansion to the east. For a strategic thinker of his caliber this geographic configuration was an unmistakable advantage, and he exploited it in the following years with the deliberateness that characterized him in all his work. The choice of Dinguiraye over other possible settlement sites was one of the most well-considered strategic decisions he took in the course of his life, and it gave his work the geographic bedding within which it could gradually come to full development.

The proclamation of the jihad

In the late spring or early summer of 1852, on a date not unambiguously established by the sources and which David Robinson, after careful reconstruction, places in the summer of that year, Umar Tall ﵀ proclaimed in the central mosque of Dinguiraye, in a formal Friday sermon, the general jihad against the non-Muslim states of the upper reaches of the Senegal and the Niger, in an announcement that would form the bedding for the eleven years of military campaigns that would find their tragic outcome in 1862 in the misfortune of the Massina fitna and in 1864 in his death near Bandiagara.

The proclamation itself, insofar as it has been preserved in later copies by his closest associates, comprised a number of central elements. First, the confirmation of Umar Tall’s ﵀ status as imam and as leader of the community under the spiritual authority of the Tijaniyya, with the specific reference to his Aïn Madhi ijaza as the ground of legitimacy. Second, the identification of the Bambara kingdoms of Segu and Kaarta and of the neighboring non-Muslim states as the direct targets of the coming jihad, with the legal argumentation that their continuing slave trade against Muslim populations justified beyond doubt the Shariʿa grounds for an armed jihad. Third, the call to all Muslims in the territories between the Atlantic coast and the Niger to join the jihad state or, if for whatever reason they could not join, to carry the cause of the jihad spiritually in their own communities.

The form of the proclamation assembly

The assembly in which the proclamation was pronounced took place in the central mosque of Dinguiraye on a Friday in July or August 1852, and it was conducted in the presence of several thousand Muslims who had gathered from Dinguiraye itself and from the neighboring settlements. After the usual Friday prayer Umar Tall ﵀ ascended the minbar, and he opened his address with the customary Quran citations with which a Friday sermon was begun, followed by an extensive discussion of the prophetic example in the transition from Mecca to Medina and in the Medinan phase of open armed struggle. He then announced in formal terms the state of jihad for the community under his leadership, and he called on every person present to renew his bayʿa to the cause to which he was already bound by his adherence to the Umarian community.

The assembled crowd answered the call with a communal affirmation that sounded rhythmically from thousands of throats at once, and the customary Tooroodo takbir was pronounced in a communal form that in its full force made the whole mosque resound. It was not only a political but also a spiritual act in which the community affirmed its loyalty to the cause in a communal deed.

The legal argumentation

The legal argumentation with which Umar Tall ﵀ supported his proclamation was underpinned, in its elaboration, by extensive passages from his work Rimah, and it followed the Maliki fiqh tradition as it was generally applied in West Africa in the works of Khalil ibn Ishaq ﵀ and in the commentaries of Imam al-Dasuqi ﵀. The argumentation rested on three principal conditions. First, that a Muslim state that could bring its territory under the Shariʿa had the duty to challenge its neighboring states, where it was required to do so, to the choice between Islam, submission under jizya, or jihad. Second, that a prospective jihad had to possess sufficient military strength and sufficient spiritual discipline to bring the coming campaign to a reasonable outcome, a condition that in his own judgment was fulfilled by Umar Tall’s ﵀ extensive preparation in Fouta Djallon. Third, that the jihad leader had to possess the specific spiritual authority on which he could ground his proclamation, a condition that in his own judgment was fulfilled by his Tijani ijaza.

This argumentation was spread by his closest associates in a series of Friday sermons in the neighboring Tooroodo and Fulbe communities, and it was accepted in its full legal form by most local scholars. To the sceptics who in a number of Fouta Toro and Fouta Djallon villages objected to the proclamation that the Bambara states had already been considerably Islamized in the preceding generation and could no longer be unambiguously designated as non-Muslim, Umar Tall ﵀ and his associates answered with the legal distinction between formal and genuine acceptance of Islam, in an elaboration that would return in repeated discussion in the following years.

The effect on West Africa

The proclamation of the jihad in Dinguiraye in 1852 had an effect that brought the whole Senegambia region and the upper reaches of the Niger into a new tension, and in the following months it was discussed with extensive deliberation in all the governing circles of West Africa. In Sokoto, in the capitals of the Bambara kingdoms, in the Almami halls of Fouta Djallon and Fouta Toro, in Hamdullahi of the Massina Imamate, and in Saint-Louis where the French colonial authorities received the reports with considerable concern, the proclamation and its possible consequences were intensively deliberated in these months. For the Bambara states it meant a direct threat of war; for the imamates of Fouta Djallon and Fouta Toro a mixed outcome of spiritual approval and military concern; for the Massina Imamate an uncertain situation in which the spiritual differences between the Tijani and Qadiri presence became a possible source of future conflict; and for the French a new geopolitical factor that placed the coming colonial expansion along the Senegal River in an unexpectedly more complex configuration.

In Saint-Louis, Governor Faidherbe, who would assume his office shortly after the proclamation, received detailed reports on the Umarian movement via an extensive network of local informants, and he understood immediately that the coming Umarian jihad would touch, in a far-reaching way, on the French colonial aims in the Senegal valley. He ordered an increased military preparation on the upper reaches of the river, and in the following years he planned an expansion of the French forts that would find its culmination in 1857 in the Fort de Médine.

The first military operations

In the second half of 1852 and the beginning of 1853, Umar Tall ﵀ undertook the first military operations of his proclaimed jihad, and in their choice of targets these were not immediately the great Bambara kingdoms of Segu and Kaarta but the smaller Mandinka states to the west of Dinguiraye, which first had to be brought under his power before he could confront the principal enemies. The states of Tamba, Bantu, and the neighboring Mandinka village confederations were subdued in the winter of 1852–1853 in a series of relatively small campaigns, with considerable success for the Umarian fighters and with losses that remained limited in their extent.

The military tactics applied in these campaigns, and which would remain the usual pattern in Umar Tall’s ﵀ jihad state in the following years, comprised a combination of mobile rapid attacks by the professionalized corps of talibé fighters with rifles, together with the broader support of Tooroodo and Fulbe militias who possessed superiority in numbers but were of lesser quality in their armament. The combination was effective in its working against the local Mandinka and Bambara troops, who fought mainly with edged weapons and could not develop comparable firepower, and it gave the Umarian jihad in its first years a succession of victories that kept the general morale of his followers at a high level.

The integration of subjected communities

At each subjection of a Mandinka or other local community, Umar Tall ﵀ carried out a standardized incorporation process in which the local population was absorbed into the Umarian state in both spiritual and administrative terms. The first step was a communal assembly in the local mosque, if such a mosque existed, or in a temporarily arranged prayer house, in which Umar Tall ﵀ or one of his closest associates addressed the local Muslims with an explanation of the Umarian cause and a call to a formal bayʿa. The second step was the appointment of a local qadi from the Umarian talibé corps, who in the following months would introduce Shariʿa justice into the local community in a fixed form. The third step was the assignment of a local garrison unit of a few dozen talibé fighters, who would remain in the community for the maintenance of order and for protection against possible hostile neighboring troops.

This standardized approach gave the Umarian expansion a character of administrative uniformity that was not common in the West African military enterprise of his time, and it enabled the jihad state to consolidate its grip on the conquered territories rapidly. In the following years, as the jihad state expanded further, this approach was refined in its form, but the basic structure that was developed in Dinguiraye remained recognizable in its working.

Spiritual discipline in wartime

A remarkable aspect of the Umarian jihad in its execution was the strict maintenance of spiritual discipline in wartime that Umar Tall ﵀ demanded of his fighters and which, in its character, conferred on his power a distinguishing quality compared with the ordinary West African military operations of his time. The five daily prayers were performed in the Umarian troops under all circumstances, with designated students who acted in each division as imams for the communal prayer. The Tijani dhikr was performed communally in the evening hours, with the Wazifa and the Hailala in their full form. The Friday prayer was celebrated in an assembly specially arranged for that purpose, with extensive Friday sermons that were given by Umar Tall ﵀ himself when he was present in the camp.

For the prisoners who fell into Umarian hands in these campaigns, a Shariʿa-based treatment applied in which Muslim prisoners were released immediately, non-Muslim prisoners were treated according to the conventions of Maliki fiqh, and the treatment of women and children was regulated separately, with the local mosque leaders fulfilling a supervisory role. The enforcement of these rules, although in the chaos of wartime conditions it did not always fully succeed, was remarkable in its consistency, and it conferred on the Umarian jihad, in West African estimation, a moral authority that the ordinary Bambara or Mandinka campaigns of his time did not possess.

The influx of emigrants

The reports of the successful first campaigns and of the character of the Umarian state spread throughout West Africa in 1853 and 1854, and they brought forth in the Tooroodo and Fulbe communities of Fouta Toro and Fouta Djallon a gradually growing movement of emigration. Whole villages or substantial parts of villages decided in these years to move their families, their herds, and their craftsmen to Dinguiraye, and the population of the Umarian state grew in these months from a few tens of thousands to about fifty thousand persons by the end of 1854. The emigrants were received in an organized manner by the Umarian administrative organization, and they were placed in new settlements around Dinguiraye in which they were allotted landholdings, incorporated into the communal prayers, and initiated into the Tijani discipline.

For the original Mandinka inhabitants of Dinguiraye and the neighboring villages this influx meant a far-reaching change in their community. They were absorbed into a Tooroodo-Fulbe majority in which their own cultural customs were transformed within a Tijani context, and they underwent a spiritual transformation that in most cases was accepted by their chiefs but that in a number of cases led to quiet tensions. Umar Tall ﵀ undertook in these months extensive Tijani initiations among the Mandinka population in order to bring the spiritual character of the community into a cohesive form, and he largely succeeded in accomplishing the transition peacefully.

Toward the campaigns of 1855

By the spring of 1855 the Umarian jihad had acquired a consolidated form in its first phase, with a geographic base of its own in Dinguiraye and in the neighboring Mandinka territories, with a military power of several tens of thousands of men of whom a large part was armed with firearms, with an administrative organization that in its working effectively managed the revenues from the conquered territories and from the zakat of the mother community, and with a spiritual discipline that in its consistency kept the morale of the followers at a high level. Umar Tall ﵀ stood ready for the next phase of his work, namely the direct confrontation with the Bambara kingdoms of Segu and Kaarta and with the gradually expanding French colonial presence in Saint-Louis.

To this second phase, and to the campaigns that followed in 1855 and thereafter against Bambara Karta and against the French Fort de Médine in the extended year 1857, the next article devotes its attention. In this article we have seen how in Dinguiraye in 1850 or 1851 the foundation for the jihad state was laid, how the community grew to a considerable size in its first two years, how in 1852 the proclamation of the general jihad was pronounced, and how in the following winter the first military operations against the smaller Mandinka states were carried out with success. The Umarian jihad had been laid in its bedding, and its working out in the following years would rearrange the West African Muslim world into a new form.

Sources

• David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal, Clarendon Press (1985), pp. 214–252.
• John Ralph Willis, In the Path of Allah: The Passion of Al-Hajj 'Umar, Frank Cass (1989), pp. 212–254.
• Madina Ly-Tall, Un Islam militant en Afrique de l’Ouest au XIXe siècle, L’Harmattan (1991), pp. 248–294.
• John Hanson, Migration, Jihad, and Muslim Authority in West Africa, Indiana University Press (1996), pp. 86–124.
• Yves Person, Samori: une révolution dyula, tome I, IFAN-Dakar (1968), pp. 124–168.
• Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Cambridge University Press (1998), pp. 208–256.
• Sean Hanretta, Islam and Social Change in French West Africa, Cambridge University Press (2009), pp. 134–168.
• al-Hajj Umar Tall ﵀, Kitab Rimah Hizb al-Rahim, critical edition Madina Ly-Tall, Dakar (1985), pp. 48–96.