In the eighteenth century and even earlier, many Muslims in West Africa lived peacefully among non-Muslims. The followers of al-Ḥājj Sālim Suwari from Ja in Masina, in the middle Niger delta, who had settled at Jahaba in the gold fields of Bambuhu in the late fifteenth century, were also associated with advocacy of nonconfrontation. On similar lines, Suwari’s disciples, namely, Muhammad al-Būnī and Yūsuf Kasama, spread his ideas among the Juula and Jakhanke merchant communities, respectively, while another follower, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Zaghaite, did the same in the Hausa cities. As Ivor Wilks has argued, this Suwarian tradition openly rejected the idea of jihād: “The principal dicta of al-Ḥājj Sālim had to do with relations with unbelievers,” and jihād was “permissible only in self-defense should the very existence of the community be threatened by unbelievers.”6 Adherents of the Qādiriyya brotherhood, especially the Kunta clerics under al-Mukhtār, were particularly noted for their advocacy of peaceful integration and toleration and respect for multicultural settings, which was the basic premise for commercial interaction across West Africa. In the second half of the eighteenth century the clerics in the caravan towns (qṣar) of Walāta, Tichitt, Timbuktu, Wadan, Asawan, and Shinqīt, which were located in the Sahel and the southern Sahara, concentrated on teaching jurisprudence and syntax, not the promotion of jihād.7 Timbuktu stands out in the popular imagination as both a mysterious and distant place and a great center of learning with its Sankore mosque (plate 5), but it was only one of many such centers.
Over time, however, many Muslims came to believe that their community was being threatened and began to advocate jihād, the implications of which started to become apparent in West Africa in the form of opposition to the transatlantic slave trade. In general, Muslim principles condemned the enslavement of freeborn Muslims and the sale of slaves to non-Muslims; however, this prohibition failed to address slavery as an institution. For instance, there were no attempts to prevent domestic slavery; quite the contrary, the appeal to jihād transformed the appeal to Islam, as Barry has argued, “from the religion of a minority caste of merchants and courtiers in the royal courts [to] . . . a popular resistance movement against the arbitrary power of the ruling aristocracies and against the noxious effects of the Atlantic trade.”8 This popular resistance led to the call for jihād in Senegambia, which was a reaction to the consolidation of military regimes in the various states of the region that were considered oppressive because they were supplying slaves as part of the transatlantic slave trade. The military elite, ceddo, were preoccupied with slave raiding and expressed disdain for Muslim scholarship and the status of freeborn Muslims. The memory of Nāṣir al-Dīn’s movement and the survival of the idea of jihād in Fuuta Bundu presaged a far more significant movement.
In 1727–28 jihād spread to the highlands of Fuuta Jalon, from where the Senegal and Gambia Rivers flowed, and where Karamokho Alfa established an imamate that was also connected with Fulbe pastoralists and Muslim clerics (see Map 2.1).9 As the head of the Sediyanke lineage of the Barry family of Timbo, Karamokho Alfa formed a confederation that initiated jihād, earning the title almami. The confederation was divided into nine provinces or diwal (sing. dime), whose chiefs bore the title of alfa and were appointed from among the leaders of the jihād. From the beginning, the power of the almami, with his seat at Timbo, was limited by the wide autonomy assumed by the chiefs of the provinces of Labe, Buriya, Timbi, Kebaali, Kollade, Koyin, Fugumba, and Fode Haaji. The almami governed through a council of elders acting as a legislature at Fugumba, the religious capital. With the death of Karamokho Alfa about 1751, jihād entered a new phase that affected trade along the coast. Ibrahima Sori became almami and subsequently instituted an aggressive policy against neighboring countries under the pretext of waging jihād. According to Barry, Ibrahim Sori, in alliance with the Jalonke kingdom of Solimana, engaged in a series of wars to procure slaves and booty. The jihād was far from secure, however. In 1762 Konde Burama, king of Sankaran, was able to occupy Timbo after the defection of Solimana. Only in 1776 was Ibrahima Sori finally able to eliminate the threat, consolidate Fuuta Jalon domination of Solimana to the east of Timbo, and end the threat of Sankaran.10 Even then, a slave uprising challenged the jihād state in 1785. The enslaved populations of a number of plantations (rimaibé) took advantage of war between Fuuta Jalon and the Susu to the south of Fuuta Jalon to revolt. The leaders (alfa) of the various diwal that constituted Fuuta Jalon combined to crush the uprising; three thousand were reported killed, and many refugees fled to Susu territory. The refugees, particularly those at Yangueakori, remained defiant. Eventually, however, the Susu came to terms with Fuuta Jalon, and a combined expedition destroyed Yangueakori in 1796.11 Thus what can be considered as opposition to jihād was crushed.
The appeal to jihād as a means of political change attracted adherents other than the Fulbe clerics and scholarly Muslims of Fuuta Jalon. To the south, a Muslim holy man from the interior named Fatta declared himself Mahdī and, as the messianic redeemer who according to prophecy was destined to make the entire world Muslim, led a jihād in 1789 to achieve that result. With fifteen thousand followers, mostly recruited among Susu and the enslaved population of the area, he invaded Moria, a Muslim state on the coast that was already weakened by war and a succession crisis. Local rulers and elders prostrated themselves before Mahdī Fatta, and massive numbers of fugitive slaves joined his army. Among his targets were the British and mixed-race traders along the coast. He required his followers to wear yellow garments, and even some of the European and mixed-race traders did so to try to save themselves. The traders on the Rio Pongo felt the threat, as did the Muslim elites of Moria and neighboring Sambuyo, who temporarily put their differences aside to deal with the jihād in their midst and crush the slave uprising that the jihād sanctioned.12 Fatta was executed in the early 1790s, and the jihād and slave revolt came to an end. The Fuuta Jalon military that was concentrated in the various diwal asserted its authority in Fuuta Jalon, but Almami Sori’s death in 1791 prompted a succession crisis when Sori’s son, Sadu, attempted to claim the position of almami. Bademba, son of Almami Karamokho Alfa, challenged Sadu, who was assassinated in 1797/98.13 Thereafter the two factions agreed to alternate the succession, thereby institutionalizing the internal rivalry within Fuuta Jalon.
The jihād in Fuuta Toro evolved during the disorder along the middle Senegal River valley after the great drought that hit most of West Africa in the middle of the eighteenth century.14 The ruling Denyanke dynasty was subjected to internal strife and open harassment from the Maure of the Brakna region north of the Senegal River, who dominated the central and western parts of Fuuta Toro, while the Denyanke were confined largely to the eastern parts of the Senegal flood plain. This situation made it possible for the Torodbe to stage an organized offensive that eventually resulted in the establishment of a new government that became committed to jihād. First under Sulaymān Baal, the Torodbe consolidated their position in central Fuuta Toro, where the fords crossing the Senegal River could be defended against raids by the Maures, and by the early 1770s they had stopped paying the annual tribute that had been collected. Together with clerics from Pire in Kajoor, Sulaymān was able to forge an alliance with other Torodbe in western Fuuta Toro, where the Denyanke rulers held sway, in an attempt to stop the Denyanke from pillaging the central valley. Unfortunately, in 1776 Sulaymān Baal and several key Pire clerics were killed in battle, which marked a turning point in the reform movement. Through the intervention of Fuuta Jalon, a successor to Sulaymān was selected in Abdul Kader Kan, who had not previously been involved in the struggle in Fuuta Toro but who became the first almami of a new regime that became committed to jihād.
MAP 2.1. Fuuta Jalon and Fuuta Toro, 1795.
Source: Henry B. Lovejoy, African Diaspora Maps
Abdul Kader had been educated at Pire and Koki, as well as at centers in Mauretania. Sharing Sulaymān’s commitment to education, he had been teaching in a small village in Fuuta Bundu because the almami of
