JHill Dissertation PDF

Abstract
Divine Knowledge and Islamic Authority: Religious Specialization among

Disciples of Baay Ñas
Joseph Hill
2007
“Taalibe Baay,” or Disciples of the Senegalese Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m (Baay) Ñas, form a trans-
national network throughout and beyond West Africa defined primarily by relations of
religious apprenticeship and co-discipleship. Whereas several major Islamic adherences
in Senegal arose as quasi-political intermediaries between state actors and the popula-
tion during a crisis of moral authority, Baay Ñas’s followers emerged later and have re-
mained somewhat more disengaged from national religio-political culture. Taalibe Baay
have extended diffuse networks of religious authority and community across cultural and
national boundaries through cultivating several fields of religious knowledge among dis-
ciples. They define themselves primarily by their pursuit of Islamic knowledge, especially
their unique access to ecstatic, mystical knowledge of God.
Mystical education (tarbiyyah) aims to cultivate direct experience of the unity of all
things in God, revealing the hidden truth that distinctions are illusory. Hidden (bāt.in)
truths coexist with the apparent (z.āhir ) truths of textual education and everyday expe-
rience. A tendency to juxtapose two apparently contradictory truths through paradox
pervades many Taalibe Baay’s daily speech. Paradoxes are not simply linguistic word
games but are part of practical repertoires of negotiating multiple imperatives, interests,
and points of view.
One particularly productive paradox is the simultaneously equalizing and hierarchiz-
ing nature of Taalibe Baay knowledge-authority. Mystical education distributes charis-

Joseph Hill
matic experience and knowledge among lay disciples, awakening them to the unity of
all beings. Yet religious knowledge comes through a soveriegn node of authority—Baay
Ñas—and depends on transmission and validation through authorized channels. Taalibe
Baay imaginations and practices of community simultaneously emphasize the unity of
common religious experience and the concentration of authority in Baay’s official repre-
sentatives.
This ethnography examines the role of informal spaces of Islamic education in extend-
ing transnational networks of religious authority and community, challenging widespread
assumptions about modernity and globalization. Situating epistemic orientations in learned
practical repertoires, it undermines modernist teleologies of religious “rationalization”
and “secularization,” showing how practitioners cultivate multiple simultaneous approaches
to rationality. Disciples engage with and disengage from the secular through cultivating
spaces of religious knowledge and authority. This project globalizes religious knowledge
through cultivating embodied dispositions through religious apprenticeship.
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Divine Knowledge and Islamic Authority:
Religious Specialization among Disciples of
Baay Ñas
A dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of
Yale University
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
By
Joseph Hill
Dissertation Director: Kamari M. Clarke
May, 2007
c 2007 by Joseph Hill
°
All rights reserved.

Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Maps xv
Preface: A Narrative Mosaic and Collaborative Historical Ethnography xix
Introduction 1
The Disciples of Baay Ñas and the Flood (Fayd.ah) of Divine Knowledge . . . . . 1
Religion and modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Islam and secularism in Senegal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Charisma, rationalization, and temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Overview of the dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1 A Note on Paradox and Simultaneous Truths 29
1.1 Serious joking and true incongruities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.2 The inside and outside of paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1.3 Paradox and pluralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
1.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
I History and Culture 44
2 The Njolofeen and Saalum: Distinction beyond Caste 45
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2.1 A Landscape: From Jolof to Saalum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.2 Njolofeen and other groups in Saalum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.3 Njolofeen distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.4 Endogamy and the question of caste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3 The Njolofeen in the Shadow of Revolution 82
3.1 Islamic revolution and S.ūfı̄ authority in Saalum and Western Sudan . . . . 82
3.2 Disengagement and Islamic spheres of authority: Njolofeen migration and
villages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4 Man and Metonym: Baay Ñas and his New Revolution 112
4.1 Narrating Baay Ñas and his disciples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.2 A tour of Medina Baay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.3 Baay Ñas’s early years (1900–1922) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.4 After Allaaji Abdulaay and the beginning of the Fayd.ah . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.5 Founding Medina Baay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
4.6 The Fayd.ah’s spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
4.7 Dakar: The frontier at home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
4.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
II Knowledge 169
5 Textual Knowledge: QurO ānic Schools (Daara) and Informal Arabic Education 170
5.1 Introduction: Z
. āhir and bāt.in in textual education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
5.2 The field of textual knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
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5.3 An overview of Islamic schools: formal and informal, QurO ānic and Arabic 192
5.4 Informal schools (daara and majlis), texts, and orality . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
5.5 Formal schools and the rationalization of religious knowledge? . . . . . . . 230
5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
6 Divine Knowledge: S.ūfı̄ Specialists, Disciples, and Tarbiyyah 241
6.1 Tarbiyyah: The muqaddam as educator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
6.2 Rethinking Islamic Specialists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
6.3 Becoming a S.ūfı̄ specialist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
6.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
III Authority and Community 286
7 Webs of Authority: The Shaykh, Muqaddams, and Disciples 287
7.1 Introduction: Authority, knowledge, and barakah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
7.2 Absolute authority versus specific authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
7.3 Khalı̄fahs, Descendants, and other authorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
7.4 Contested successorship: Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima and Sëriñ Alliw Siise . 318
7.5 Conclusion: Mystical presence and routinized succession . . . . . . . . . . . 331
8 Community, Divine Knowledge, and Mystical Presence 335
8.1 Mystical unity and centrifugal tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
8.2 Daayiras: Communities of divine knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
8.3 Divine Knowledge and cultural difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
8.4 Mystical presence through dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
8.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
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9 “Baay is International”: Cosmopolitan Networks of Knowledge and Charisma 388
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
9.2 Global Taalibe Baay Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
9.3 Roots of Taalibe Baay cosmopolitanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
9.4 Cosmopolitanisms and multiple imaginations of community . . . . . . . . . 405
9.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Conclusion 438
Appendices 448
A The Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee 449
B Wolof and Arabic Transliteration and Pronunciation 455
B.1 Wolof Transliteration and Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
B.2 Arabic Transliteration and Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
C Glossary 462
C.1 Wolof terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
C.2 Arabic terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
C.3 French terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
Bibliography 484
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List of Figures
1 Senegal, Mauritania, and Gambia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
2 Saalum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
3 Kaolack. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii
4.1 Baay Ñas’s house in Medina Baay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.2 The Medina Baay Mosque and disciples before Friday prayer, photographed
in 2001. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
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List of Tables
1.1 Connotations and uses of z.āhir and bāt.in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.1 Ethnic makeup of Siin and Saalum according to Lefilliâtre (1904). . . . . . . 61
5.1 Types of informal schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
5.2 Types of formal schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
A.1 Sites of Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee research . 453
B.1 Twin consonants in Wolof. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
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Acknowledgements
This dissertation reflects not a single ethnographer’s research but numerous collabora-
tions and dialogues. The project began in 2001 as I discussed with Ousmane Kane, then
a visiting fellow at Yale, the need to pay more attention to Islamic scholarship and edu-
cation. Ousmane’s encouragement to study Arabic and help in making my first contacts
in Kaolack have profoundly shaped my subsequent research. He introduced me to El-
Hadji Ibrahima Thiam (Baay Caam), then a student at the University of Saint-Louis Gas-
ton Berger, who introduced me to key informants and helped me conduct and transcribe
interviews. Even more importantly, Baay vouched for me and integrated me into his
family, risking his own reputation at a time when many questioned my motives.
A project such as this would be impossible without the support and trust of many
religious leaders, to whom many disciples look when deciding how to interact with out-
siders. I am especially indebted to the children of Baay Ñas and Sëriñ Alliw Siise, who
were extremely welcoming and helpful despite widespread misgivings about a foreigner
digging up information to publish about them. The current Khalı̄fah of the Ñas family,
Ah.mad Ñas (often called “Pàppa Daam”) is the closest friend of my Medina Baay father,
Barham Caam, and treated me like a son. I had many frank and intellectually stimulating
conversations with Sëriñ Maahi Ñas, whose honesty, generosity, and personal friendship
have been very valuable to me. Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n (Baaba Lamin) Ñas has been wel-
coming and gracious and has shown the example of a scholar, leader, and ambassador.
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Joseph Hill Acknowledgements
Shaykh Tijāniyy O Ibrāhı̄m Ñas welcomed me and provided invaluable documents and
information. Màkki Ñas has shown impressive personal warmth and candor and gener-
ously provided me with valuable information. I had many interesting conversations with
the sons of Sëriñ Alliw Siise, Shaykh Hasan, Shaykh Tijāniyy, and Maahi, each of whom
supported the project in many crucial ways. The support of Shaykh Hasan, to whom dis-
ciples of many backgrounds look for moral guidance, has been especially crucial. Sheex
Tiijaan Sëriñ Mbay Ñas, a scholar and deep thinker, shared many thoughts and clarified
many of my questions.
Among those who shaped this project most actively and concretely are members of
the Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee (MBHSRC), a group that I
founded with several Medina Baay residents to facilitate collaborative research. In ad-
dition to myself, the Committee is composed of the following members, all residing at
the time in and around Medina Baay (names are written phonetically in Wolof):1 Wo-
lof specialist Aadi Faal; QurO ān and Arabic teachers Ndaara Sekk, Allaaji Caam, and
Baay Sàmb; archivist and independent researcher Séydinaa Baabakar Caam (Haraka);
agronomist Aamadu Njaay; So.Na.C.O.S employee Baay Sekk; French teacher Ndey Xadi
Bittéy; students Sheex Baay Caam, Baay Laay ÑaN, Alliw Sekk, Abdu Salaam Caam, Aas
Bittéy, and Yuunus Caam; and independent researcher Mamadu Lasxar Ba. Committee
members played a key role in conducting and transcribing interviews referenced in this
dissertation. Although I cannot guarantee that committee members would agree with
my interpretations, the data used here is to a large extent the result of this collabora-
tive endeavor and bears the stamp of each of these researchers. In addition to Commit-
tee members, Hasan Muhammad Siise, probably Medina Baay’s most active book and
1 Tofacilitate consistent and clear pronunciation this project uses consistent Wolof and Arabic transliter-
ation conventions, even for names whose French spelling has become widely used. See Appendix B for an
explanation of these conventions.
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manuscript dealer, provided thousands of pages of texts, which will be indispensable to
future studies of Taalibe Baay scholarship.
The muqaddams who welcomed me and other Committee members and took an in-
terest in our projects are far too numerous to list here. A few of the most helpful are
Allaaji Baay Cubb, Jeynaba Gëy, Ajaa Musaakoro Mbay, Baabakar Njaay, Baabakar Caam,
Duudu Bittéy, and Baay Juuf. I am especially grateful to Shaykh Ibrayima Sàll, who ac-
complished enormous feats during a short lifetime and generous and honest to me as he
was to others, and I was deeply saddened to hear of his death in 2006.
I conducted research in a number of towns and villages in Senegal and benefited
from the hospitality and friendship of many people. In Dakar, my first hosts were the
Saars and the Saaxos. The Gises of Dakar and Daara Jolof gave me my Senegalese name,
Abdulaay. These families generously took me in and familiarized me with life in Senegal.
In Parcelles Assainies, Jay, Maam Faatu, and Aas Bittéy saw to my every need. The family
of Mustafaa Caam and Faatu Njaay Bittéy in Kaolack and Parcelles took me in as one of
their own. The family of Mbay Jée Bittéy in Mbittéyeen Waalo taught me a lot about
farming and Njolofeen history and were incomparable hosts. Friends in Daara Jolof,
Mbittéyeen Waalo, Mbittéyeen Abdu, Tayba Ñaseen, Caameen Sanc, Kër Yoro Xoja, and
other villages took an interest in our research and gave me unforgettable hospitality.
In Mauritania, many people assisted me very generously, especially in Mac t.a Mulāna,
the village where I studied Arabic. Words cannot express my gratitude to Al-H
. ājj wuld
Mishri for his hospitality, candor, and sincere friendship. Even more impressive than his
openness and welcome to people of all backgrounds is his ability to teach a whole village
and many others the difficult balancing act of standing by one’s beliefs while accepting
others. I am also indebted to Mulāy wuld Khūna for his hospitality and friendship. c Abd
Allāh al-c Atı̄q taught me Arabic in Mac t.a Mulāna and is not only an accomplished Arabic
xiii
scholar but an exemplary model of honesty and generosity.
Many professors provided intellectual inspiration and methodological advice. While
I was an undergraduate, G. Wesley Johnson and Michael Phillips encouraged me to go
to Senegal in the first place and to carve out an original research project. My disser-
tation advisor at Yale, Kamari Clarke, provided much of the inspiration for this project
through her own work on Yoruba transnational religious communities and her more re-
cent work on Islamic and international law. She has provided invaluable feedback and
encouragement. Other professors at Yale, including Eric Worby, Barny Bate, David Grae-
ber, Joe Errington, and Jim Scott, Helen Siu, and Bill Kelly, have also deeply influenced
this dissertation through their conversations and guidance. I am especially grateful to
Kamari Clarke, Leonardo Villalón, Mike McGovern, and Joe Errington for their feedback
as dissertation readers.
Several fellow graduate students have closely read drafts of this dissertation and pa-
pers that led to it. Csilla Kalocsai, Colin Smith, Elizabeth Busbee, Gavin Whitelaw, Molly
Margaretten, Seth Curley, Richard Payne, and Nana Okura provided feedback on drafts
at various stages.
I can hardly imagine doing this project without the emotional and logistical support
of my parents, Ned and Claralyn Hill. Their visit to Senegal and Mauritania during my
research helped me solidify my relations with Taalibe Baay in both countries.
Research for this project was made possible by several generous sources of doctoral
dissertation research funding, including a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research
Abroad fellowship; a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research
Fellowship; funding from the Yale Center for International and Area Studies; the Yale
Program in Agrarian Studies; and the Yale Department of Anthropology.
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Maps
Joseph Hill Maps
Figure 1: Senegal, Mauritania, and Gambia. This study concentrated on the rectangle
south and east of Kawlax (see following page), in Dakar, and in Mac t.a Mulāna, Mauri-
tania. Sources: Google Earth (http://earth.google.com), National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency (http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/namefiles.htm, and my own fieldnotes and
photographs. Wolof place names are written phonemically (see Appendix B).
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xvii
Maps
Figure 2: Saalum, including administrative towns and villages with significant Taalibe Baay activity.
Joseph Hill Maps
Figure 3: Kaolack.
xviii
Preface: A Narrative Mosaic and
Collaborative Historical Ethnography
My first research experience in Senegal was a supremely individualistic one. As an under-
graduate and a musician in 1998, I had become interested in the musical art of Senegal’s
géwals (griots), a professional caste of praise singers and musicians. I determined that
I would not be able to do the kind of study I envisioned through any organized study
abroad program, so I followed the advice of a professor and scholar of Senegal (G. Wesley
Johnson) and arrived in Dakar without having made any prior arrangements. Although
I made many enduring contacts during these six months, the overwhelming pattern of
my research was to approach various individuals in various parts of Dakar and to deal
directly with them. Sometimes one of these individuals would invite me to participate in
some event in his or her social world, but I nearly always remained a guest and an out-
sider and never participated in any sustained or significant way in any given community.
The closest I came to being integrated into a family was when friends in Dakar invited
me to stay for several weeks with their family in the arid town of Daara Jolof in the north,
where for the first time I was given a Senegalese name, Abdulaay, and called a member
of the family.
Between 1998 and my return to Senegal in 2001, my research interest changed from
music to Islam. Although many Taalibe Baay, or disciples of the Baay Ñas,1 a Shaykh
1I transliterate Wolof and Arabic phonetically according to rules described in Appendix B.
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of the Tijāniyy S.ūfı̄ order, would assume I had decided to study them because of their
international renown, the truth was quite the opposite. I chose to study them partly
because I had heard so little about them during my previous stay in Senegal and from the
numerous books about Islam in Senegal and West Africa I had read. They seemed to be an
important Islamic group that, probably because they are less politically and economically
powerful than other Islamic groups in Senegal, previous scholars had largely passed over.
I hoped that studying them might therefore make an original contribution to the study of
Islam in Senegal. As I looked into studying the Taalibe Baay (whom I knew as “Niassène”
at the time) during the first year of my doctoral program, I realized that a visiting fellow
at Yale with whom I was acquainted, Ousmane Kane, was a grandson of Baay Ñas. Kane
put me in contact with his student from the University of Saint-Louis Gaston Berger,
Baay Caam (El-Hadji Ibrahima Thiam), who agreed to collaborate with me during my
first summer in Medina Baay. Baay Caam invited me to join him and his family for the
festivities of the Medina Baay Gàmmu in June, 2001.
I arrived in Medina Baay on the day of the Gàmmu, when this small neighborhood
on the outskirts of the city of Kaolack was filling far beyond capacity with hundreds of
thousands of pilgrims from Senegambia and around the world. The Gàmmu (Mawlid) is
the celebration of the birth of the Prophet and is the largest annual gathering for many
S.ūfı̄ groups. Disciples of Baay Ñas gather for an all-night meeting of chants and speeches
about Muh.ammad, crowding the streets such that walking from one side of the mosque
square to the other took us over an hour of pushing through the crowd. Extended families
and childhood friends who have since scattered around the globe converge in Medina
Baay and make their rounds visiting acquaintances. Baay Caam’s family was hosting
not only relatives visiting from the countryside, Dakar, America, and Guinea Bissau but a
group of thirty pilgrims from Nigeria, and they had slaughtered a bull to feed their guests.
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Traders from Senegambia and Mauritania had set up make-shift tent-shops extending
Medina Baay’s small market to fill the half kilometer between the market and the mosque.
During that first day, members of my host family in Medina Baay immediately re-
vealed that they did not intend to allow me to define myself as an individual foreigner.
When Baay Caam introduced me as Joseph, members of his family immediately asked if
I had a Senegalese name. I answered that my friends in Jolof had named me Abdulaay,
and they concluded that I would be known as Abdulaay Caam. Some took immense
pleasure in describing me as the son of my host’s mother and father. Only later did I re-
alize that, for better or for worse, allowing myself to become defined as a member of this
family would have profound, long-term personal and professional consequences. Many
family members played up my membership in their family, especially those who assumed
I could provide for their needs. My second day in Medina Baay, the day following the
Gàmmu, a series of women presented themselves as my jaam (slaves). Each explained the
custom of calling one’s maternal cross cousin (mother’s brother’s son) one’s sàng (master)
and one’s paternal cross-cousins one’s jaam (slaves), and that sàng are obligated to give
gifts to their jaam. I soon learned that most people I met in Medina Baay were related to
my host family in some way (and a surprising number of them were my jaams).
Thus, from my first day as a guest in Medina Baay, I was no longer the individual
researcher I had been in Dakar but became an active participant in a family and a com-
munity, and my affiliation with this family would survive subsequent years of doing
research there, long after Baay Caam had moved to France to work on a doctorate in
political science. Baay Caam and I lived in the house where we had spent the Gàmmu,
sharing it with several relatives, most of them high school students. The house was still
under construction and its owner, Baay’s older brother, worked and lived in Dakar. The
house was quiet enough for me to do my work but lively enough that I could interact
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Joseph Hill Preface
with people and discuss issues I encountered with them.
During my first week, I visited some of the key leaders and to receive their permission
to conduct research in Medina Baay. All welcomed me and offered prayers that I would
receive what I had come to seek. Baay Caam took me to attend the weekly meeting of a
youth daayira, a local religious association led by a muqaddam. Although the usual way
to join this kind of daayira is to receive tarbiyyah (mystical education) from the muqaddam,
they invited me to become a member and to attend their meetings several times a week,
which I did faithfully for the remainder of the summer. I paid my membership dues,
received a member card, and even chanted with them regularly during their weekly chant
meetings.
After a month, I felt that Medina Baay had embraced me as one of its own. I could
confidently say that I had the blessing of Medina’s leaders; I was universally referred to as
a member of a prominent Medina Baay family; and I had become a regularly participating
member of a local religious association. No one had expressed any objections to my
research—on the contrary, everyone I spoke with seemed honored that a non-Muslim
researcher had decided to dedicate a research project to Baay Ñas and his disciples. But
after my first month, a lay leader of the daayira I had joined told me that some of Medina’s
leaders (he did not name which ones) had discussed with the muqaddam and had raised
the question of whether my intentions and my presence were good. He told me that they
had concluded that I had played a positive role in the community and that they saw no
reason to doubt my intentions.
Although relieved that they had decided to let me continue my research, I suddenly
became aware that my presence was not unproblematic and that I could not take the trust
of all Medina Baay residents for granted. During my first week, I had been received like
an inquisitive guest who had come to spend the holidays with them or perhaps write
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a journalistic sketch. But after I milled around and asked questions for a month, some
began to wonder what I was really after. People began to ask me: why had I not become
a disciple after so much exposure to this center of spirituality? Most visitors to Medina
Baay, they told me, convert almost immediately, and the rest leave before long. And if
the motive of such a long stay was not to convert, what was my motive? Contrary to my
expectations, I encountered the most suspicion and reticence among those most familiar
with America and the West, such as Medina Baay’s Imam, Shaykh Hasan Siise, and some
of the young Americans who had come to study with him.2 Siise told me that past
researchers who had written on Baay Ñas had published negative lies about him, and I
attempted to reassure him that I sincerely hoped to portray them fairly and honestly.
Only later did I learn of the most well known researcher to conduct research in Medina
Baay in the past. A Nigerian named T.āhir Maygariyy had presented himself as a disciple
but had then published his thesis, a scathing biography of Baay Ñas, with the support
of the anti-S.ūfı̄ movement in Nigeria.3 Nigeria, where Baay Ñas’s disciples are most
numerous, has produced a whole body of anti-S.ūfı̄ literature primarily targeting disciples
of Baay Ñas, and his disciples have responded with their own apologetic literature. The
thought of an enemy penetrating the group was not as fantastic as I had imagined.
I returned to Medina Baay in 2004 for the principal phase of my dissertation research,
after six months in a Mauritanian Taalibe Baay community in 2003.4 Now more aware of
the complexities I faced, I began this phase seriously considering how I could fashion my
research to benefit and earn the trust of the community. My first attempt to carve out a
daily role involved attempting to create a publicly available archive of Arabic documents
2 See Chapter 9.
3 Maygariyy 1979.
4 I lived in Mac ta Mulāna, Mauritania, from June to December, 2003, conducting ethnographic research
.
and studying Arabic texts with a teacher from the informal school, or mah.z.ara.
xxiii
Joseph Hill Preface
from numerous private collections in Medina Baay. I met with several residents who
had extensive collections of documents, and they agreed to participate. I compensated
them for their time and documents and discussed with leaders to determine the best way
to make the resulting archive available to the public. I was not sure exactly how these
documents would fit into my own research, but I imagined that this would give me a
daily activity whose benefit to the community I could easily explain.
One of the most famous archives in Medina Baay is that of Medina’s self-appointed
archivist, Seydinaa Baabakar Caam, better known as H

. arakah (“Movement”) both because
of the educational movement he founded (H O

. arakatu ’n-Nujūmi ’l- Islāmiyyah —“Movement
of Islamic Stars”)5 and because of his animated mannerisms. His archives were in dis-
array, and even to begin working with them would require significant work organizing
them. H
. arakah was grateful for my support for his project and in return spread my name
all over Medina Baay, giving me more publicity than I could have hoped for. The initial
reaction to this publicity was positive, yet as our collaboration continued, many began
to think I had come to work exclusively with H

. arakah, and my interactions with more
discreet people went unnoticed. Being closely associated to a somewhat eccentric and
controversial character did not unambiguously raise my standing in the community.
After working part-time with H

. arakah for a little over two months, I reduced my work
with him and to returned to working more independently on ethnographic interviews
and observation. Meanwhile, I sought out people to help me part-time in transcribing in-
terviews and recordings of meetings and to accompany me occasionally to visit leaders in
nearby towns. I soon found myself hiring several local people for various kinds of piece-
5 Harakatu ’n-Nujūmi ’l-O Islāmiyyah officially began in 1974 as a movement to build formal schools in
.
rural villages. At the same time, H . arakah also began authoring a newsletter, called “Al-H
. arakatu,” which he
attempted to publish or photocopy but, for lack of means, would usually circulate with personally. Although
the movement founded over fifty rural schools, only one of these is still in existence. H . arakah says they
closed due to the inability of farmers to pay.
xxiv
Joseph Hill Preface
work assistance. Several high school students who shared a house with me unofficially
participated in my research in various capacities and became familiar with my questions
and methods. For a number of reasons, I determined that it would be advantageous to
form an organization with my collaborators, developing clear methods and procedures
and putting a public face on a research project whose obscurity had invited considerable
suspicion.
I formed a group that included fifteen residents of Medina Baay and nearby neigh-
borhoods. Among them were high school and university students, QurO ān teachers, the
archivist H
. arakah, a Wolof expert, and an agronomist. (See Appendix A for more de-
tails.) Members of the MBHSRC conducted dozens of interviews and surveys, beginning
in Medina Baay and then moving on to numerous Saalum villages, Dakar, Gambia, Mau-
ritania, Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria.6 The purpose of this group was not only to increase
the quantity of interviewees and data points but to incorporate multiple points of view
into the project and to create dialogical relationships between my own project and the
Taalibe Baay community.
This is an ongoing project, and the stories told here do not represent the Taalibe Baay
as a whole but represent dialogues my collaborators and I have had with a number of
interlocutors in our own peregrinations through navigating vast Taalibe Baay networks.
The goal is not to come up with a definitive statement of Taalibe Baay beliefs and prac-
tices but to show how multiple perspectives, experiences, and trajectories are intertwined
in a network that is not a homogeneous movement or group and whose horizon shifts
depending on where one stands in it. I have attempted to make explicit the multivocality
and multilinguality that is perhaps characteristic of all ethnography through including
not only different informants’ narratives but also through including people of different
6 For reasons of space and time, this dissertation focuses mostly on data from Senegal and to a lesser
extent from Mauritania and Gambia.
xxv
Joseph Hill Preface
backgrounds as researchers on the project.
Local researchers of varied social and educational backgrounds actively led the project
in directions I could neither anticipate nor control. Prior to my work with MBHSRC
members, I had been aware that this movement is present in thousands of local commu-
nities, yet I had never envisioned including more than a handful of places in the core of
my research. Acting entirely on their implicit understanding of this religious network,
MBHSRC members from the beginning defined the project as translocal and even trans-
national, seeing Medina Baay as integrally connected to dozens of other areas both within
and beyond Senegal.
However, the project’s results were limited not only by the quantity of people and
interviews but also by the kinds of relationships we were able to cultivate. Interviewers
from different cultural backgrounds (Njolofeen, Saalum-Saalum, and Séeréer) gravitated
toward interviewees of their own cultural groups. Many cultural groups of Taalibe Baay
have been largely left out of the study either because our contacts led us elsewhere or
because we were unable to earn their trust. Although I was on good terms with several
Americans in Medina Baay, throughout most of my research I had not succeeded in de-
veloping a reputation among Americans in Medina Baay that would allow me to conduct
significant participant observation and interviews among them. Also, certain muqaddams
refused to speak with me and members of the MBHSRC, sometimes explicitly explaining
that they could not trust foreign researchers due to previous outsiders’ hostilities. They
sometimes cited the T.āhir Maygariyy and sometimes George W. Bush, Freemasons, the
C.I.A., or other potential enemies they thought I might be affiliated with. Our approach
in such cases was simply to move on and find others who were willing to talk to us,
leaving open the possibility that these people might some day change their assessment.
Thus, although I am responsible for the synthetic theoretical conclusions of this dis-
xxvi
Joseph Hill Preface
sertation, much of the data results from this collaboration, and the work of MBHSRC
members is cited throughout. One aim of this dissertation—although I cannot claim to
have succeeded consistently—is to allow each interviewer’s and interviewee’s to convey
some of the complexity and richness of knowledge transmission, religious practice, and
life trajectories of religious specialists and disciples. A friend who commented on a draft
of an article I had written on this material told me it was not easy to distinguish my own
analysis from the beliefs of my informants, leading to confusion over whether this was an
anthropological or a religious treatise. As I reread the article and thought seriously about
how to clarify the boundaries between my own voice and that of my informants and col-
laborators, I realized that this task would be exceedingly difficult. The issue was not that
I had come to accept their metaphysical assumptions as my own but that through my
own participation in their networks and my collaborators’ participation in my research,
our voices and experiences had become inextricable. As Susan Harding (2000) says of
working with “fundamentalist” Christians in the United States, their texts had become
my texts, and their discourses my discourses. I try to attribute ideas and narratives that
come from specific informants or collaborators, but many of the broad interpretations
are the result of a dialogue and shared experiences (Georg Gadamer 1960) and are not
attributable to any single person.
I intend this dissertation to be read less like a unified and coherent picture born out
of a single researcher’s synthetic faculties than like a photo mosaic whose larger coher-
ence comes from the individual who has arranged the photos but which includes myriad
smaller images, each of which has its own coherence and interest. The overall coherence
comes not from the agreement of all parts with the whole but from their practical and
conjunctural juxtaposition in the present context. The multiple, sometimes contradictory
methodological and narrative strategies I employ in this project aim to mirror the the-
xxvii
Joseph Hill Preface
oretical orientation towards complexity, paradox, and networks described above and in
my opening chapter. Like the multi-vocal and multi-epistemic methodology employed,
this theoretical orientation aims not to smooth over contradictions or harmonize them in
a single symbolic field but to show how multiple and apparently contradictory perspec-
tives of truth not only coexist but are mutually dependent, their coherence arising from
practical interrelations and not their transcendent logical or symbolic harmony.
Although this dissertation is the fruit of many conversations and collaborations with
Taalibe Baay, I have no doubt that many Taalibe Baay will take issue with some of my
conclusions. After building such deep personal relationships with Taalibe Baay in Medina
Baay and many other places, I submit this dissertation with significant unease about how
my conclusions might be received and might color my relationships with the Taalibe Baay
whose welcome and friendship I have enjoyed over the past six years. I am unaware of any
non-Taalibe Baay researcher who has written on Baay Ñas and his followers and escaped
criticisms from Taalibe Baay leaders and accusations of being against Baay. I have no
illusions that my own observations, however carefully considered and well intentioned,
will be accepted without reservation. My hope is that those who read this dissertation
will see it as part of an ongoing dialogue and an incipient attempt to develop a scholarly
approach to Taalibe Baay religious knowledge.
xxviii
Introduction
The Disciples of Baay Ñas and the Flood (Fayd.ah) of Divine Knowledge
This dissertation discusses several kinds of religious knowledge and their relationship to
authority and community in a transnational Islamic movement, the disciples of Shaykh

O Ibrāhı̄m (Baay) Ñas, who call themselves “Taalibe Baay” in Wolof.1 Taalibe Baay define
their movement largely in terms of religious knowledge and the institutions and relations
through which this knowledge is cultivated and transmitted. A central characteristic of
Taalibe Baay religious knowledge, this dissertation shows, is the explicit acknowledge-
ment of simultaneous yet apparently irreconcilable truth claims. These claims coexist
not through reconciliation to a single symbolic field but through recognizing multiple,
mutually irreducible rational principles. Taalibe Baay typically describe these contrasting
principles in terms of apparent (z.āhir) and hidden (bāt.in) realities, which coexist but often
appear contradictory. The paradoxes, which appear when contrasting truth claims are
explicitly acknowledged, play central roles both in the aesthetics of Taalibe Baay religious
discourse and in practical processes of negotiating multiple imperatives, points of view,
truth claims, and political and religious engagements and disengagements.
Indeed, the extension of Taalibe Baay networks rests on actively promoting numerous
paradoxical oppositions:2 between the necessity of law and its dissolution in underlying
reality; between the hierarchy inherent in S.ūfı̄ and textual apprenticeship and the unity
1 Wolof is the lingua franca of Senegal and is the first language of most Senegambian Taalibe Baay.
2 These resemble what the Comaroffs have called “binary complementarities” (2000) although these oppo-
sitions are explicitly accommodated in Taalibe Baay contexts.
1
Joseph Hill Introduction
and equality of all in God; between a concern with worldly pursuits such as politics and
money and the recognition that these things are nothing. The acceptance of multiple
truth claims and the paradoxes that make explicit their simultaneity underlies strategies
of negotiating multiple and often conflicting socio-cultural groups, principles, strategies,
and pursuits among Taalibe Baay. These paradoxes and multiple truths must not be
understood as linguistic tricks or as conundrums to be solved but rather as approaches
to facilitating multiple imperatives and mutually irreducible repertoires of epistemic and
practical principles. As Lambek has said of body and mind (Lambek and Strathern 1998),
the discursive dualism of z.āhir and bāt.in does not reflect two coherent realms, forces,
or principles but instead promotes a kind of pragmatic and spiritual pluralism. These
terms are invoked in particular circumstances when truth claims collide. Which truth is
accepted as z.āhir and which as bāt.in may be contested depending on what is at stake in a
particular context.
This accommodation of multiple principles among Taalibe Baay is rooted in several
forms of religious apprenticeship at the heart of this dissertation. These apprenticeship
practices’ effectiveness stems from the embodiment of several related and yet contrasting
forms of religious knowledge. Although Taalibe Baay are part of the larger Tijāniyy S.ūfı̄
order, they distinguish themselves from other Tijāniyys and neighboring S.ūfı̄ orders by
a unique practice of mystical education (tarbiyyah) introduced by Baay Ñas, which they
believe offers any disciple direct experiential knowledge of God not available to any-
one else. This knowledge was made available when Baay Ñas announced himself as the
long-awaited bringer of the Fayd.ah Tijāniyyah, or “Tijāniyy Flood” (sometimes translated
“effusion”—see Seesemann 2000b). Taalibe Baay often describe Divine Knowledge as an
ecstatic mystical experience in which everything disappears, including one’s own iden-
tity, leaving awareness only of God, who not only created but is everything. Thus, Divine
2
Knowledge erases all distinctions and allows disciples to imagine complete unity, har-
mony, and equality. At the same time, this spiritual education orients disciples toward
relations of authority that make religious knowledge possible and that place some people
closer to the source of knowledge than others. Disciples also study Islamic prescriptions
(fiqh) that are all about making distinctions. Disciples come to appreciate multiple, mu-
tually irreducible principles not only through learning these principles intellectually but
through learning through disciplinary practices to perform contrasting truth principles.
The embodiment of principles of religious knowledge, I argue, is a central cause and ef-
fect of the transnational extension of Taalibe Baay networks and the production of Taalibe
Baay cosmopolitanisms.
Religion and modernity
Numerous scholars have heralded a worldwide “resurgence of religion” in the contem-
porary age (see Falk 2004; Kepel 1994; Sahliyeh 1990; Berger 1999; Martin 1990; Wester-
lund 1996; Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; and Antoun and Heglund 1987), challenging
the long-dominant assumptions of “secularization” (Berger 1969) and “disenchantment”
(Weber 1958; Gauchet 1997) equating modernity with rationalization and the inexorable
displacement of religion’s social and epistemological relevance (Davie 2003; Finke and
Stark 2003; and Bruce 1992).. According to Berger, once an avid proponent of the “secu-
larization thesis” (see Berger 1969 and 1967), “the assumption that we live in a secularized
world is false” (1999:2). He describes both marginally successful attempts to “modern-
ize” and “secularize” religion and far more “powerful movements of counter-seculariza-
tion” (1999:3).3 His division reflects a widespread approach dividing resurgent religious
3 Max Weber developed the idea of “rationalization” throughout his opus, most systematically in Economy
and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology . The phrase “disenchantment of the world” appears in a speech
by Weber, “Science as Vocation” (Weber 1958) and is based on a phrase from Schiller (see Greisman 1976.
Weber did not describe disenchantment and rationalization as unique to the modern era, but he described
their unprecedented prevalence as a hallmark of modernity.
3
movements into two camps: those that answer modernity with the charisma, millenari-
anism, and mysticism that it excludes; and those that modernize and secularize, taking
on institutional forms, rationalities, and discourses analogous to those of modern secular
institutions, for example orthodox and reformed religious movements. In short, either
way the resurgence of religion appears to be a response, either by acceptance or refusal,
to modernization and secularization.
Thus, while the “secularization thesis,” which predicted a gradual displacement of
religion by modern institutions and ideologies, has fallen out of favor, a similar dual logic
of “rationalization” and “reaction” in response to modernity’s secularizing tendencies
pervades studies of religion in a global age. An example of the “rationalization” thesis
is Olivier Roy (2004), whose broad survey of myriad Islamic tendencies in a global age
characterizes “global Islam” as a “secularized” Islam largely emptied of spiritual and
charismatic content. The paradigmatic form of globalized Islam for Roy is “neo-ortho-
doxy,” the most disenchanted and de-spiritualized kind of religion, which he describes
not as an anti-modern assertion of tradition but as a highly rationalized form of religious
modernism. The handful of global S.ūfı̄ movements he describes apparently devote them-
selves to circulating pamphlets with new-age-style messages and bear little resemblance
to classical forms of mysticism. Global Islam, according to Roy, consists of modern-style
institutions, discourses, and external practices that are easily expressed, packaged, and
transmitted, while anything resembling charisma is rapidly routinized into forms easily
reproduced temporally and spatially.
Meanwhile, many anthropologists studying daily life and popular discourses have
emphasized the persistence, resurgence, and periodic outbursts of the occult and the
mystical, usually in response to the irrational effects of such processes as neo-liberal “ra-
tionalization.” Comaroff and Comaroff (2000; 1999), for example, describe a “global pro-
4
liferation of occult economies.” Peter Geschiere (1997) describes witchcraft accusations as
common both in village life and in national politics in Cameroon. Misty Bastian (1993) has
discussed the prevalence of witchcraft in popular press in Nigeria. Michael Watts (1996)
has analyzed Islamic reform movements as “Islamic modernities” responding to social
and economic alienation. What these approaches share is a view of religious and occult
practices not as pre-modern survivals but as (usually dispossessed) people’s vernacular
engagements with and responses to larger modern institutions and transformations that
exclude them. These ethnographic accounts describe charismatic and occult activities as
inherent to modernity and capitalism and yet existing at the margins, a vantage point
from which global capital’s power to conjure and destroy life and livelihood appears at
least as mysterious and unpredictable as the spiritual agents and occult forces that these
movements address.
I argue that, to unsettle “modernity” and “capital” and their (ir)rationality from their
status as prime movers of the contemporary world, we must not only disturb the appar-
ent primordiality of hegemonic forms of rationality (Chakrabarty 2000) but problematize
deeply rooted and widespread assumptions that these rationalities are historically in-
evitable and occupy a privileged spatial, temporal, and causal place in the modern world.
Historical and geographical imaginations of modernity show a tendency to see compet-
ing truth principles as spatially peripheral, temporally anterior, causally acted upon, and
thus “marked” in relation to a “disenchanted” and “rationalized” modernity. We need to
rethink our strategies for speaking about multiple forms of knowledge, experience, and
power in a global and modern age without treating modernity and capital as active and
everything “else” as passive or reactive, even if creatively so. This requires going beyond
depicting what does not match prevalent notions of “modern” as most fundamentally
responses to it, whether positive or negative, and instead seeing the ways in which reli-
5
gious and other practices disengage from hegemonic institutions and norms—even while
accommodating or refuting them—and cultivating knowledge and authority irreducible
to these institutions and norms.
A root of this problem is a strong tendency to spatialize and temporalize rationalities,
thinking in terms of broad epistemic shifts over space and/or time from one rationality
to another. This tendency takes a part for the whole and precludes appreciating multiple,
coexisting principles and the ways in which one can productively mobilize the disjunc-
tures between them as Taalibe Baay do through paradox. It is not useful to associate a
single scheme of rationality to a region or group of people—a tendency famously exem-
plified by Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis (1996)—or to an age—whether the
Hegelian Zeitgeist (Hegel 1977), Weberian rationalization (Weber 1978), or the Foucaultian
episteme (Foucault 1966, 1972). To see the intersections, disjunctures, and paradoxical si-
multaneities of mutually reinforcing and yet mutually irreducible forms of knowledge
and practice requires un-mapping epistemological and metaphysical frameworks from
time and space.
Donald Moore calls for dismantling “spatial metaphors” that eclipse “the multiple
mappings of lived landscapes traversed by historical agents” (Moore 1998:347). He crit-
icizes spatial metaphors that “perpetuate a Manichean metaphysics of separate sites for
power and resistance,” arguing instead that power and resistance do not have spaces
proper to them but can coexist in the same places (346). I believe this critique of spatial
mappings of “power” and “resistance” (along with “worldviews,” “systems,” and so on)
applies equally well to temporal mappings. Indeed, spatial and temporal mappings of
modern rationality are inseparable, as “modern” rationality is both spatially and tempo-
rally situated, its outside being all that is anterior and exterior to it.
If we associate rationalities instead with disciplinary practices (as Foucault suggests
6
in his later work on institutional rationalities and disciplinary techniques4 ), we can see
how different kinds of disciplinary practices, and hence the rationalities associated with
them, might coexist and even mutually reinforce one another. This dissertation shows
how religious apprenticeship is used to cultivate ways of experiencing, speaking, and
acting through which disciples engage with the secular on its own terms while partici-
pating in spheres of religious authority and truth irreducible to and disengaged from the
secular. Before further discussing this paradoxical simultaneity of the charismatic and the
rationalized, the spiritual and the secular among Taalibe Baay, it is necessary to mention
the particular role S.ūfı̄ Islamic orders play in post-colonial Senegalese political and social
life.
Islam and secularism in Senegal
Senegal has been a particularly compelling example for scholars interested in the ambi-
guities of a secular state where moral authority and legitimacy are heavily concentrated
in religious leaders, who profoundly shape the political and economic scene. At least
ninety-four percent of Senegal’s population is Muslim,5 and all but a handful of these
adhere to a S.ūfı̄ order and profess loyalty to one of several “religious houses” (këru diine).
Academic and political actors have long recognized major S.ūfı̄ leaders as the most influ-
ential political, economic, and social brokers since the sweeping Islamic social revolution
during the nineteenth century.6 French colonial administrators recognized Muslim holy
men, due to their immense popular legitimacy, as simultaneously their greatest potential
4 For example, 1979; 1979; 1997c; 1997b.

5 The 1988 Senegalese census (République du Sénégal 1993) counted 94% of the population as Muslim,
of which 51% (47.4% of the total population) were Tijāniyy; 32% (30% of the total population) were Murid;
12% were Qādiriyy; and less than one percent were Laayeen. Around 5% were listed as “other Muslims,”
generally implying no .tarı̄qah affiliation. Because of conversion since then, the percentage of Muslims is
likely higher today, and the number of Qādiriyy has probably decreased as many have joined the Murids
and Tijāniyy, and the number of unaffiliated Muslims has probably not changed significantly.
6 For accounts of these transformations, see Klein (1968); Hiskett (1984, 1994); Gellar (1995); Villalon (1995);
and Robinson (2000b).
7
threat and ally. An important strategy of administrative discourse and policy was to treat
Islam as empty of religious belief and knowledge and as entirely reducible to political
alliances around “marabout” big men (Hill 2001).7
Religious leaders themselves came to see benefits to engaging with secular power
largely on its own terms. Religious and secular actors developed points of engagement in
mutually intelligible political and economic matters, negotiating a form of covert indirect
rule. Robinson (1991; 2000a; 2000b) describes Islamic leaders’ (especially the Murid S.ūfı̄
order’s) relationship to secular authority during the first quarter of the twentieth cen-
tury as one of complex “accommodation” as opposed to simple “collaboration” or “resis-
tance.” Secular authority and Islamic authority both rivaled and mutually reinforced one
another, as Islamic leaders mediated between political actors and their disciples, deliv-
ering political cooperation and votes to political leaders in exchange for material favors
(Villalon 1995). At the popular level, Islamic leaders continue to act as moral authori-
ties with significant popular legitimacy, and politicians are compelled to display public
fealty to religious leaders and to seek their permission for any undertaking much as their
disciples do.8
Some scholars, inspired by a combination of Marxist class critiques and colonial de-
pictions of disciples as blind followers of charlatans, have described religious leaders
(“marabouts”) as a ruling class exploiting a docile discipleship through promises of sal-
vation.9 Others have more subtly depicted what could be described as a “moral economy”
7 For example, colonial official and field researcher Paul Marty’s studies on Islam in French West Africa
(1917, 1920, 1916) barely mention religious belief and practice and instead enumerate Islamic leaders co-
operative with the French (described as “intelligent,” “worthy,” and “devoted”) and those less cooperative
(described as “bad marabouts” and “fanatics” with “mean spirits”).
8 In2005, after Sidi Lamin Ñas, the founder of the Wal Fadjri media group, published an article that
sought to demonstrate that President Abdoulaye Wade was not a true disciple and had only pretended
to be a disciple for political reasons, an unknown man set fire to the Wal Fadjri headquarters in Dakar.
Although Wal Fadjri journalists told me they noted the license plate of the taxi that brought the arsonist, no
investigation was made.
9 See, for example, Behrman 1970 and Creevey 1996.
8
(Scott 1976) in which disciples’ allegiance to religious leaders clearly benefit both parties
materially (Copans 1980; Coulon 1981; Cruise O’Brien 1971; and especially Villalon 1995).
It would seem that the initially charismatic S.ūfı̄ movements of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries have settled into a routine10 in which the boundaries between
state bureaucracy and Islamic authority are ambiguous.11 Islamic leaders in Senegal ap-
pear in these studies as a distinct social class of hereditary functionaries managing an
increasingly rationalized authority structure parallel to the secular state. Parallel to ra-
tionalization of religious authority, nineteenth-century disengagement has given way to
twentieth-century engagement with the colonial and post-colonial state. Villalon (1995)
has shown a mutually constitutive relation between “citizenship” and “discipleship,” call-
ing into question the very concepts of the secular Senegalese state, abstract individual
citizenship, and privatized religion.
Highlighting Islamic engagements with the state in this way has foregrounded forms
of knowledge and discourse that are intelligible to state and academic actors while ob-
scuring politically disengaged knowledge and practices that are irreducible to logics of
the religio-political negotiations. Many Islamic leaders consciously describe their engage-
ment with the state as a deliberate strategy to advance their own disengaged spaces of
religious knowledge and authority irreducible to the rationalities of the secular state and
public discourse. A closely monitored Shaykh Ahmadu Bàmba Mbàkke attained a de-
gree of autonomy from the French through helping them enlist soldiers for World War
I. Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas ended his exile in Gambia and Morocco in 1910 (see Chapter 3),
returning to the administrative city of Kaolack where French administrators could super-
10 See Weber (1978) on the routinization of charisma.

11 Ousmane Kane explicitly developed this ambiguity in a talk entitled “Sufi Orders and the State in West
Africa and its Diaspora,” Program in Agrarian Studies Colloquium Series, Yale University, New Haven, CT,
March 23, 2001.
9
vise him and might therefore leave him in peace. Today, directors of Islamic institutes
meet state standards and secure state funding to provide an alternative to secular public
schools. Muqaddams associated with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seek fund-
ing from national and international aid organizations to establish Islamic healthcare and
educational centers. Lay religious associations (daayiras) and federations take on modern
institutional forms and establish regular relationships with the press, state patrons, and
sometimes even political parties to further their religious projects. Some Taalibe Baay are
delegated to secure state sponsorship of large religious gatherings (see Chapter 4). Much
of the time, engagement with state and other secular institutions has required the medi-
ation of specialists familiar with the institutions with which they were engaging. New
possibilities of engagement have become possible as more Taalibe Baay have received a
Francophone university education and work in government and business.
One might conclude that such institutions and engagements signal a disenchantment
(Weber 1958), secularization (Berger 1969), and rationalization (Weber 1978) of religious
organization, a process Marcel Gauchet (1997) has outlined in Europe and that Roy (2004)
has outlined in the context of Islam in a global age. Yet such a conclusion would privilege
public discourses and hegemonic institutional logics while leaving the major part of disci-
ples’ religious practices and experiences unaccounted for. While these processes of insti-
tutionalization are indisputable, they primarily concern—and even then only partially—
a small proportion of elites who specialize in organizing religious activities and in en-
gaging with secular institutions. Even these elites do not necessarily experience their
religion as a rationalized phenomenon. A religious institution represents not a religious
community or network as a whole but a mechanism for organization and engagement
that relies on mobilizing particular kinds of institutional knowledge to pragmatic ends,
which themselves may follow altogether different principles.
10
Throughout this dissertation are examples of how Taalibe Baay cultivate multiple
practical rationalities simultaneously through apprenticeship in, for example, mystical
personal experience, textual study of Islamic legal prescriptions and orthodoxy, and sec-
ular and technical forms of knowledge. Taalibe Baay knowledge and authority networks
have extended into hegemonic fields not through an overall process of institutionaliza-
tion but through delegating a relatively small number of specialists to engage with state
and other secular actors. Meanwhile, daily discourses and practices and transnational
networks of religious apprenticeship remain focused primarily on cultivating and prac-
ticing various forms of religious knowledge that few social scientists of West Africa have
discussed. Teleologies such as those progressing from magic to Christianity to secularism
(Gauchet 1997), from private disengagement to engagement, from charisma to rational-
ization and institutionalization, and from private to public presupposes a single mode of
rationality for each time-space, person, or movement.
Treating rationalities as embodied repertoires of speech and practice rather than as
self-contained systems of logical principles and axioms, this dissertation shows how mul-
tiple rationalities can coexist even synergistically through practice and can be discursively
juxtaposed through paradox. Taalibe Baay demonstrate mutually reinforcing tendencies
of engagement and disengagement, hierarchy and equality, mystical unity and social dis-
tinction, the rationalization of certain relations of religious authority and the perpetuation
of charisma through mystical education. Taalibe Baay mystical education (tarbiyyah), of-
ten described as what distinguishes and unites Taalibe Baay, simultaneously ties disciples
into a centralized and significantly routinized hierarchy officially representing Baay while
teaching disciples that all distinctions are illusory and that all have access to Baay’s mys-
tical presence. The wide distribution of the means of attaining mystical experiences leads
to multiple, unpredictable centers of charisma throughout this transnational network that
11
both undermine and undergird central authority. Some specialists’ fluency in discourses
and performances of the “secular” (Asad 2003) nation-state and institutions confers on the
Taalibe Baay community the status of a national, public institution, yet this engagement
with the secular ultimately aims to facilitate mutually irreducible principles of religious
rationality deployed in spaces under the state’s and national media’s radar.
I approach both Taalibe Baay religious practices and rationalized rationalities of mo-
dernity not as distinct, self-contained rational frameworks associated with a particular
time, place, or group, but as embodied repertoires of perception, belief, and performance.
The techniques that make up a repertoire are often interrelated but they do not exclude
learning other repertoires associated with other rationalities. I pay particular attention to
how people come to embody, perform, and speak these rationalities through numerous
educational and social practices. A person can acquire fluency in multiple principles and
performances of rationality, responding to different imperatives with different practical
and rational repertoires. This claim owes something to Bourdieu, who has described ratio-
nalities not as abstract logical principles but as embodied dispositions learned and applid
in fields of practice (1984, 1993, 1991). Yet for Bourdieu, the multiple fields in which
a person might participate are structurally analogous and follow the same logic, condi-
tioned primarily by class. Focusing most of his analyses on France and North African
communities as self-contained socio-cultural units, Bourdieu does not discuss the possi-
bility of multiple, overlapping fields of rationality and practice that do not conform to the
same logic. My discussion of embodying religious knowledge in relation to networks and
fields of religious practice recalls Bourdieu’s use of the term habitus. However, the idea
of a unitary habitus harmonized to several separate but structurally analogous fields is
not helpful in discussing multiple networks of knowledge/authority. Therefore, I instead
approach embodied knowledge in terms of multiple repertoires of practical dispositions,
12
and strategies.
Charisma, rationalization, and temporality
Weber (1978) describes rationalization as a tendency present in many or all societies,
although it dominates modern society to an unprecedented extent. Rationalization en-
tails the gradual replacement of personalized decision-making with impersonal rules ap-
plied by functionaries. In religion it entails the “routinization” of the founding prophet’s
charisma, the elimination of magic, and the creation of an executive religious bureaucracy
who codifies and interprets the charismatic founder’s sayings into immutable law. In legal
matters it means replacing personalized wise men’s “kadi justice”12 with judges who act
as functionaries interpreting and applying a standardized and increasingly voluminous
legal code. Weber depicts modernity’s unprecedented rationalization as an “iron cage”
that threatens gradually to regiment the creativity out of life. Technologies of surveying,
regimenting, governing, and disciplining time, space, bodies, and knowledge have been
a principal concern of anthropology and social theory (see especially Foucault 1979, 2000;
Agamben 1998, Scott 1998).
The opposite of rationalization for Weber is charisma, which interrupts the routine
when an established order breaks down but inevitably resolves into a more or less ratio-
nalized social order that presents the moment of charisma as its founding moment. An
evanescent, florescent state of creation, it is from charisma’s dead wood that a new and
rigid order is constructed after the death of a charismatic leader or the growth of a charis-
matic movement beyond a small community. Emerging out of a more or less ordered state
and resolving into another, charisma can be structurally equated to the “liminal” state of
an initiate during a rite of passage as described by Turner (1969), following Van Gen-
12 This term derives from the Islamic judge, qādı̄, who is supposed to apply Islamic law to the letter but
tends to rely on a great deal of personal interpretation and analogy (qiyās.) for cases not explicitly mentioned
in Islamic law texts.
13
nep (1960). Both Weber’s “charisma” and Turner’s “liminality” describe the successive
negation and reassertion of a structural configuration, the assertion and then dissolution
of agency, the simultaneous severing and joining of what preceded and what follows,
whether an individual’s place within a constant social order or a reconfiguration of that
order altogether. Both frameworks involve an inexorable process of increasing rational-
ization and assertion of structure. The spread of capitalism and modernity often appear
to be engines for the spatial and temporal spread of a rationalized order at the expense
of time-spaces of charisma and liminality.
Turner elaborates “liminality” as a temporal moment, yet its origin is a spatial me-
taphor. In Latin, “limen” means “threshold,” a place that is neither inside nor outside
a house and is therefore “betwixt-and-between,” as Turner described it. Of course, the
space of the threshold is experienced temporally as a transition from outside to inside
or vice versa. Yet the threshold and what is beyond continue to exist while one is not
inside it, and it is possible to remain in or be conditioned by a threshold indefinitely.
Thus, Turner extends the “liminal” to include groups (oracles, hippies, migrants) that are
indefinitely “betwixt-and-between,” who occupy not a time but a space of transition and
marginality. Renato Rosaldo uses a similar spatial metaphor of “borderlands” to discuss
marginal identities, social spaces, and social boundaries (Rosaldo 1996; Weber 1995). In
any case, the liminal exists at either the temporal or spatial edge of structure.
Weber’s “charisma” and Turner’s “liminality” are useful concepts that I will employ
throughout this dissertation. Yet I unmoor them from these authors’ spatio-temporal
framework, which I believe continues to inform many social scientific approaches to re-
ligion, ritual, and social movements. Namely, this framework assumes a single set of
rational principles prevailing in any given spatio-temporal context and implicitly sees al-
14
ternative sets of principles as either anterior to or outside of the dominant principles.13
The existence of one set of principles alongside the dominant one may be explained in
several ways: as a survival from a previous time; as a peripheral reaction to the core
principles; as a temporary rupture where the liminal and charismatic is set loose; or as
an engagement with the dominant principles from an alternative (usually marginalized)
subject position. If modernity is an ever-spreading time-space of rationalization or capital,
then charisma must exist on its spatial or temporal periphery or interrupt it temporarily
from within. The association of a single epistemic or institutional rationality (whether
expressed as an “episteme,” “Zeitgeist,” “worldview,” “lifeworld,” or “structure”) to a
spatio-temporal context leaves little room to theorize the existence of multiple, simulta-
neous principles of rationality that might come into play not only within a single society
but within a single utterance of a single speaker.
Similar oppositions seeing Sufism and scripturalism as competing systems, outlooks,
or trends occupying separate time-spaces are common in the academic literature on Su-
fism and Islam. The main premise of Geertz’s Islam Observed (1968) is the opposition
between mystical and scripturalist strands of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia, while Gell-
ner’s Muslim Society (1981) associates urban Islam with rationalization and scripturalism
and rural Islam with the veneration of saints and mysticism. In a study of the Tijāniyyah,
Abun-Nasr recognizes that the parallel “systems” of Sufism and orthodoxy have often co-
existed throughout the Islamic world, yet when the Tijāniyyah was founded, “the major-
ity of Muslims . . . were oblivious of the discordant elements in the two systems” (Abun-
Nasr 1965:2). Sufis (whom Abun-Nasr calls “dervishes”), he continues, maintained close
relations with Islamic officials in Morocco until Salafism in the early twentieth century re-
vealed the incompatibility of the two systems. Mysticism and orthodoxy can only coexist,
13 See Fabian and Bunzi (2002).
15
Abun-Nasr implies, where people are misled and unaware of their incongruity.
My use of “charisma”/“liminality,” and “order”/“structure,” and “mysticism”/“scripturalism”
undermines this tendency to see them as opposed and as occupying spaces or times
proper to one or the other. I understand these principles to be practically deployed, even
simultaneously, in ways that can both challenge and reinforce one another without one
resolving into the other. An analog to the simultaneity of these opposing terms is the ap-
proach that some scholars have taken to “sovereignty” and the “juridical order” (Schmitt
2006; Agamben 1998; Agamben 2005).14 Although sovereignty, according to Schmitt, re-
sembles charisma in existing above and apart from the rationalized juridical order, it is
never rationalized out of existence but always has the potential to assert itself. I argue that
charisma, like sovereignty, can pervade everyday life more or less constantly. The applica-
tion of multiple, mutually irreducible principles of rationality becomes especially salient
in religious contexts where ancient texts, personal mystical experiences, and discourses
of human rights and democracy intermingle.
The logical contrast between the assumption of a self-consistent rationality and the
accommodation of multiple rationalities embedded in practical situations can be summa-
rized as the contrast emerging from a straightforward reading of the early and the late
Wittgenstein. The Wittgenstein of the Tractatus (1922) describes the “world” as the world
of all atomic facts and non-contradictory propositions that can be said about these atomic
facts.15 To speak of the world is to invoke a self-consistent universe of true statements.
14 Numerous earlier writers provide similar analogs to this structural opposition, for example, Kant’s (1793)
“genius” (a faculty beyond rules but that creates a model for later rules) as opposed to imitative rule-
governed creation. The formlessness and greatness that Kant ascribes to the “sublime” also has echoes in
Weber’s notion of charisma and the ecstatic nature of liminality.
15 He begins: “The world is everything that is the case. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic
facts. . . . The world is the totality of facts, not of things.” Thus, Wittgenstein’s “world” is not the “world out
there” but its logical representation. Whatever the ontological nature of the world he spoke of, it represents
a theoretical elaboration of pervasive ways of seeing the lifeworlds and systems as self-consistent worlds
following some consistent underlying logic.
16
According to this view, in any given logical universe there is a single system of ratio-
nality by which the truth of all statements can be evaluated. Of any two contradictory
statements, at most one can be true. Anthropologists have often attempted to trans-
late apparently contradictory statements into statements that make sense in the world of
meaning in which they occur. The classic example is Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) explanation
of the logic behind the apparently self-contradictory statement “twins are birds.”
The Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations (1953) radically dismisses this earlier
view. For the later Wittgenstein, there is no logical universe of facts but instead numer-
ous practical situations defined by competing imperatives, possibilities, and rationalities.
Instead of the linguistic “system” of Saussure, we have “language games” where each
statement tactically intervenes into a situation by deploying symbolic resources. There is
no single rationality or universe of facts against which all statements can be evaluated.
Wittgenstein’s move from self-consistent frameworks of rationality to practically situ-
ated repertoires of resources and imperatives informs numerous theoretical frameworks.
For example, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (1993) describes how modernist sys-
tematic rationalities attempt to “purify” the world of its “hybridity,” in which multiple
mutually irreducible principles (biological, symbolic, social, technological) impinge on
each other and on any given single situation. Latour opposes both monistic (“materi-
alism,” “psychologism”) and dualistic (“mystical/rational,” “mental/material”) frame-
works, instead understanding situations as hybrid “networks” of phenomena irreducible
to any single system of principles.16 Bourdieu’s practice theory sows the seeds of an ap-
proach shifting explanations from system to practical situation, yet his internally consis-
16 Searle similarly (1992) dismisses monism and dualism not for settling on the wrong number or wrong
set of irreducible entities but for counting them at all. Searle argues that consciousness arises from but is
irreducible to its physical substrate. He differs from Latour, however, in treating these “strata” of phenomena
(“consciousness,” “physics,” “society,” etc.) as distinct systems rather than accommodating them in the same,
hybrid view.
17
tent habitus reproduces the systematic approach that Wittgenstein attempted to disman-
tle, assuming that practice is systematically related to a fixed, objective social structure.
Theorizing the creativity and indeterminacy of daily practices, Michel de Certeau
(1984; 1998) more clearly develops the Wittgensteinian insistence on unmooring practice
from an encompassing system of meaning and constraints. De Certeau argues for a simul-
taneity of practices and meanings, criticizing both Foucault and Bourdieu for privileging
an overarching apparatus of power (in Foucault’s case) or social structure (in Bourdieu’s
case) to which the multiple tactics and techniques that have no institutional “place” must
necessarily be “subject.” Through emphasizing the myriad tactical ways in which daily
practice “poaches” and transforms realities that appear to be imposed from the outside,
De Certeau attempts to dismantle Weber’s iron cage of rationalization, which Bourdieu’s
framework seems to have galvanized.
Echoing de Certeau’s call to appreciate everyday histories whose logics are irreducible
to hegemonic histories, Chakrabarty (2000) points out simultaneous, mutually irreducible
historical narratives (“hetero-temporalities”). He advocates combining a Marxian-in-
spired, critical history of capital (“History A”) with a Heideggerian-inspired, phenomeno-
logical approach to the many histories irreducible to capital (“History B”). These multiple
histories simultaneously resist reduction to the logic of capital yet shape the history of
capital and therefore complement a critical history of capital. Chakrabarty’s crucial inter-
vention for Anthropology of religion is to recognize that multiple truth perspectives—in-
cluding those in which gods and spirits play a role—mutually shape one another despite
their mutual irreducibility. Yet Chakrabarty’s concept of hetero-temporality is different
from my own in that it associates each temporality with its own “lifeworld” in its own
phenomenological spatiality. The imperative of a multi-temporal historical approach, I ar-
gue, is not only for the scholar to recognize multiple histories but to recognize that actors
18
themselves simultaneously inhabit multiple and irreducible histories, geographies, lan-
guages, and principles. Everyone selectively and synergistically engages and disengages
with time-spaces of capital, modernity, religious authority, and so on.
I aim to extend to practical rationalities and embodied knowledge the multi-vocality
and hybridity that Bakhtin (1935; Vološinov 1929) attributes to language and discourse.
Taalibe Baay educational activities cultivate practical repertoires that juxtapose tendencies
we might call “charismatic” or “liminal” along with those we might call “rationalized”
or “structured.” Religious specialists and disciples move through multiple kinds of ed-
ucational spaces and study contrasting forms of religious knowledge even within the
same spaces. Beyond sites of religious education, Taalibe Baay cultivate competing and
complementary kinds of practical rationality through which they engage with state and
institutional actors. Charismatic, rationalized, and secular forms of knowledge sometimes
appear to undermine one another, yet their simultaneity and productive tension attract
many disciples, fulfilling their desire for personal mystical experience while accommo-
dating many practical situations.
Taalibe Baay increasingly participate in state politics and public culture, yet they
maintain practices rooted in a long history of mystical and textual knowledge produc-
tion, charismatic leadership, and the cultivation of personal mystical experience. Rather
than argue that a particular rationality fundamentally defines this movement, I argue that
members of this movement explicitly and intentionally cultivate and accommodate multi-
ple rationalities. They present themselves to outside actors using practices and discourses
facilitating alliances while at the same time cultivating religious knowledge through net-
works of apprenticeship and religious authority. This dissertation focuses primarily on
informal religious educational practices and discourses surrounding religious knowledge,
as these form the basis for concerted action and transnational imaginations of community
19
among Taalibe Baay. Many Taalibe Baay have additionally pursued secular knowledge as-
sociated with the state and modern institutions, yet I argue that they often understand
their own fluent use of secular knowledge as a pragmatic accommodation, not as an
expression of their own deeply held views.
Overview of the dissertation
Throughout this dissertation runs the thread of multiple truths that are expressed through
the language of z.āhir (apparent) and bāt.in (hidden) and juxtaposed in paradox. Chapter 1,
“A Note on Paradox and Simultaneous Truths,” briefly discusses paradox and the simul-
taneity of truths. Although the practical logic (Bourdieu 1998) of paradox is not unique
to Taalibe Baay, their educational and discursive practices explicitly emphasize it, and
the simultaneity of z.āhir and bāt.in plays an important role in Taalibe Baay political en-
gagements and disengagements and in their attempts to accommodate multiple interests,
points of view, and cultural backgrounds.
Following this discussion of paradox is a three-chapter historical ethnography out-
lining multiple socio-historical processes contributing to the emergence of Taalibe Baay
networks (Part I). The five chapters that make up Parts II and III discuss three mutually
constitutive dimensions of Taalibe Baay religious practice and discourse—knowledge, au-
thority, and community—showing how Taalibe Baay imaginations of global community
depend on the cultivation of religious knowledge through networks of religious authority.
Part I: History and Culture
Part I discusses the historical and cultural circumstances that led to the emergence of
Taalibe Baay as a network and community of religious apprenticeship in Senegambia that
has engaged and disengaged with the state and national culture in particular ways. Taal-
ibe Baay disengagement from secular political authority has roots in the Njolofeen group,
who emigrated from the north and participated in the nineteenth-century Islamic revolu-
20
tion only to disengage once more to focus on Islamic education. Taalibe Baay remained
aloof from the national politics of “Islamic Brotherhoods” until the 1980s, when Taalibe
Baay familiar with the stakes of recognition attempted to reinvent themselves as a national
Islamic group and participated more actively in state politics. Throughout Njolofeen and
Taalibe Baay history runs the paradoxical practical logic of engaging secular regimes of
authority as part of an efforts to shape their own disengaged spheres of moral authority.
Chapter 2, “The Njolofeen and Saalum: Distinction beyond Caste,” introduces the
Njolofeen, a socio-cultural group at the center of the Fayd.ah’s emergence and expansion.
The Njolofeen are an alliance of families who migrated to Saalum during the nineteenth-
century Islamic revolution from Jolof and who tend to identify themselves in terms of
their communal orientation to Islam, with religious specialists as their chiefs. Their dis-
puted caste status has heightened their social distinction: many outsiders claim them to be
blacksmiths (tëgg) while Njolofeen themselves insist that they are nobles (géer). Both their
religious orientation and their disputed status have contributed to their distinct identity
and relative endogamy. Njolofeen’s ambiguous social distinction has influenced positive
and negative perceptions of the Taalibe Baay movement as a whole. Many Njolofeen si-
multaneously affirm the caste regime by claiming géer status and deny it by disengaging
from situations where caste distinctions become salient and by invoking equality under
Islam.
Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 discuss two revolutions that have shaped Taalibe Baay mem-
ories: the nineteenth-century Islamic revolution that profoundly reoriented Senegambian
life around Islamic practice and Islamic leaders, and the spiritual revolution of Baay Ñas
that promised to make Divine Knowledge accessible to all. Chapter 3, “The Njolofeen in
the Shadow of Revolution,” narrates the immigration of Njolofeen families from Jolof to
Saalum during a time of Islamic revolution. During this period, Islamic leaders displaced
21
secular chiefs in the Senegambian interior as the central moral and social authorities. Af-
ter the French established political control, they established heirs of the Islamic revolution
as indirect chiefs in many areas. Yet broad moral legitimacy lay not in Islamic chiefs but
in scholar-saints who established spaces of religious knowledge and authority outside
state power through Islamic education and ritual practices. Njolofeen leaders such as
Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas disengaged from colonial as well as theocratic political authority as
much as possible, showing obeisance when doing so furthered their autonomy.
Chapter 4, “Man and Metonym: Baay Ñas and his New Revolution,” begins with a de-
scription of Medina Baay, the holy site founded by Baay Ñas and the main ethnographic
site of my research. It then discusses the emergence of the Fayd.ah as a multi-cultural
and transnational network. Despite wide perceptions that Baay Ñas’s movement failed to
become a national “Senegalese brotherhood” due to its founder’s disputed caste status, I
argue that this movement arose at a historical moment when the opportunity to found a
quasi-political religious order had passed. Instead of consolidating a large geographical
area of disciples and gaining de facto state recognition as a quasi-polity as other religious
groups had done, the Fayd.ah spread through diffuse networks of religious apprenticeship
throughout Senegal and abroad, attracting individuals and small groups of disciples in
their personal quest for knowledge and barakah. Their disengagement from national cul-
ture and state politics meant that Taalibe Baay remained largely invisible to the Senegalese
state yet more flexible and less constrained by cultural and national divides. Only since
the 1980s has a new kind of specialist, Francophone-educated functionaries delegated to
represent the Fayd.ah in official contexts, begun to redefine the Taalibe Baay as an “Islamic
brotherhood” with institutional structures and active in state politics and national media
and culture. Nonetheless, leaders and disciples continue to understand their histories as
bound up in a spiritual history far surpassing the history of any nation-state or cultural
22
group. Dreams, mystical experiences, and supernatural beings such as jinns play central
roles not only in imaginations and narrations of community but also in affecting migra-
tions and alliances. Although Taalibe Baay sometimes present themselves and act as a
“movement” or a “group,” analytically it is more useful to treat them as a network of
people, practices, and sites of religious practice and education who do not neatly fall un-
der an institutional structure or definition. What ties this network together is Baay Ñas,
both as a historical figure (his z.āhir nature) and as a sustained mystical presence (his bāt.in
nature).
Part II: Knowledge
Taalibe Baay discourses and religious activities focus above all on cultivating and mobiliz-
ing various forms of religious knowledge through networks of authority. “Knowledge” in
this context entails not merely information stored in the mind but a complex of embod-
ied dispositions, experiences, and discursive and spiritual abilities that are inseparable
from authority and community. I discuss specialization in three overlapping fields of reli-
gious knowledge: textual, mystical, and occult. Textual knowledge concerns memorizing,
interpreting, and producing religious texts both in formally organized schools and insti-
tutes and in informal schools that take place within private homes. Mystical knowledge
concerns learning the secrets of Divine Knowledge and cultivating ecstatic experiences
through individual and group practice with the guidance of a shaykh. Occult knowledge
involves a broad category of techniques of spiritual intervention using combinations of
written verses from the QurO ān, spoken prayers, and floral and faunal ingredients. I dedi-
cate chapters specifically to textual and mystical knowledge, discussing occult knowledge
primarily as it overlaps and interacts with these two fields.
Disciples cultivate religious knowledge through relations of apprenticeship, often in-
formal and private, with a specialist teacher, who among Taalibe Baay can be a man or
23
a woman. They continue pursuing religious knowledge through attending several kinds
of meetings throughout their lives. The fields of textual, mystical, and occult knowl-
edge overlap significantly in their methods, spaces, and modes of transmission and ap-
prenticeship, yet they have become increasingly distinct fields of specialization in recent
years, especially as Taalibe Baay have extended rapidly into urban areas, making mystical
knowledge available to a broad public that has little access to first-hand textual education.
Chapter 5, “Textual Knowledge: QurO ānic Schools (Daara) and Informal Arabic Educa-
tion,” discusses the transmission of Islamic textual knowledge among Taalibe Baay largely
through informal spaces and techniques resembling those of mystical education. Nearly
all Muslims in Senegal undergo QurO ānic education, while a minority pursue more spe-
cialized textual studies in informal and formal schools. The increase in private and public
formal schools offering Islamic education has contributed to the differentiation of textual
study as a specialization. Yet informal schools remain widespread, and many students
enroll concurrently in both informal and formal schools. This chapter shows the constant
migrations of several students and teachers through diverse kinds of schools over the
course of their studies and teaching. Whereas some scholars describe a shift from infor-
mal to formal schools as indicating a shift from an esoteric to a rationalistic episteme, I
contend that formal schools among Taalibe Baay have not detracted from mystical forms
of knowledge. Indeed, Taalibe Baay S.ūfı̄ leaders are among the most prominent advo-
cates of formal education and see it as a tool for advocating mystical knowledge. These
two poles of knowledge are not mutually exclusive but, in certain cases, can be mutually
reinforcing.
Chapter 6, “Divine Knowledge: S.ūfı̄ Specialists, Disciples, and Tarbiyyah,” discusses
the field of mystical knowledge of God, which many Taalibe Baay believe is only fully
available to those in Baay Ñas’s spiritual genealogy. One acquires Divine Knowledge
24
through mystical education, or tarbiyyah (education), which relies both on the cultivation
of physical and spiritual dispositions through disciplinary practices and on the transmis-
sion of spiritual authority. Many describe tarbiyyah as a diacritic of Taalibe Baay identity,
and most Senegambians who consider themselves Taalibe Baay undergo this process. This
chapter problematizes several assumptions about Islamic leaders that have gone largely
unchallenged in the literature on Sufism in West Africa. I disaggregate the category of
religious specialists, usually called “marabouts,” generally understood as a stable and
hereditary class of elites. There are multiple kinds of religious specialists who follow
diverse trajectories in becoming specialists. Many come from non-specialist or even non-
Muslim families and do not rely on religious work for their livelihood. The distinction
between leaders and disciples is often hazy and ambiguous, and some move into and
out of religious work throughout their lives. This chapter locates the principal basis of
leadership and discipleship among Taalibe Baay not in a vague attraction to charisma and
its inheritance but in the cultivation of religious knowledge. Through mystical education,
disciples embody what it means to be a disciple and come to recognize their leaders
and co-disciples as such. Mystical education is the basis of solidarities and negotiations
between people of contrasting social and cultural backgrounds.
Part III: Authority and Community
Taalibe Baay religious knowledge in all three fields depends on networks of teacher/
student relationships in which the authority to practice knowledge can be traced to a
source of knowledge and authority. These networks are both the medium of transmission
and the condition of efficacy of religious knowledge. Some leaders compare the transmis-
sion of knowledge to electricity flow, as the efficacy of knowledge depends on a sustained
connection to the source. Although the many bits of knowledge may actually originate in
numerous sources and therefore have multiple paths of transmission, Baay Ñas and those
25
who now represent him might be described as a sovereign node that can validate even
knowledge originating elsewhere.
In Chapter 7, “Webs of Authority: The Shaykh, Muqaddams, and Disciples,” I differen-
tiate between approaching the efficacy of religious authority in terms of symbolic capital
(Bourdieu 1991) or performative speech acts (Austin 1962) and participants’ own explana-
tions that authority is a matter of Divine blessing (barakah) emanating from God through
a saint. Approaching religious authority in terms of Divine blessing has the paradoxical
consequence of concentrating authority in a single pole (in this case Baay Ñas and his
official representatives) while opening up multiple avenues to this pole through mysti-
cal presence, undermining the monopoly on barakah that some observers have assumed.
Although central leaders sometimes act as the apex of a vast hierarchy, religious educa-
tion aims to cultivate a direct knowledge of God and the unity of Creator and creation.
Religious knowledge is thus invoked as the basis of a global community of disciples,
and the wide distribution of mystical experience leads to multiple centers of charismatic
authority. This chapter discusses Baay Ñas’s paradoxical succession, which continues to
be disputed covertly through disagreements about which truths are z.āhir and which are
bāt.in.
Chapter 8, “Community, Divine Knowledge, and Mystical Presence,” shows how dis-
courses and practices of mystical unity serve to counteract, negotiate, and perpetuate
important socio-cultural distinctions in socially and culturally diverse Taalibe Baay con-
texts. The Taalibe Baay movement has incorporated people of contrasting socio-cultural
backgrounds, at times highlighting their differences and at times subsuming them in a
paradoxical unity. At an immediate level, “daayiras,” or local religious associations, are a
primary means of organizing various religious and non-religious activities and of cultivat-
ing a sense of community. A daayira’s organizational momentum comes largely from the
26
sense of community cultivated through group chant meetings and speeches about mys-
tical unity. Yet daayiras’ organization is in some ways strongly hierarchical, depending
on the moral guidance of the muqaddam and leading members. This chapter discusses
cases in which Divine Knowledge is invoked to address cultural and political disjunc-
tures and how the distribution of charisma both disrupts and reinforces the centralized
and hierarchical aspects of religious authority.
The final chapter, Chapter 9 examines the possibility of the globalization of charisma
and embodied practices. Globalization theories have located globalization primarily in
the spread of transnational institutions and in the circulation of discourses and objects
that can be packaged and transported relatively easily. I discuss the body and techniques
of cultivating it as primary sites of globalizing processes. More particularly, I discuss the
globalization of religious experience and bodily dispositions through disciplinary tech-
niques and networks of apprenticeship. The global extension of Taalibe Baay networks
has been predicated on spreading micro-practices of religious discipline and networks
of authority, not simply discourses. Yet what it means to be a disciple of Baay Ñas is
defined differently in different contexts, and “Taalibe Baay” (and its equivalents) is not
a clear identity category for many non-Senegambian disciples. Nonetheless, drawing
on examples of Senegalese, Mauritanian, Nigerian, and American disciples, I show that
many Taalibe Baay have developed cosmopolitan modes of identity and community based
on embodied religious dispositions and experiences and on their common attachment to
Baay. Taalibe Baay as a global phenomenon are better understood not as a movement or
identity group but as a network of people, practices, and spaces connected to Baay and
to each other yet defining their boundaries and identities in multiple ways.
This dissertation is not about an “alternative” (Gaonkar 2001; Ong 1999) way of being
modern or global but rather about multiple, simultaneous ways of being local, global,
27
religious, and secular. To study religion in modernity, I argue, it is imperative to dismantle
frameworks mapping rationalities and outlooks to time and space, thereby treating them
as contiguous and mutually exclusive. Religious engagements and disengagements with
the state, media, international organizations, and other secular fields represent not a
general assimilation into a rationalized, modernized, or globalized time-space but rather
strategies and alliances relying on multiple forms of specialized, embodied knowledge.
I approach globalizing networks of religious leadership and discipleship not simply as
a charismatic response to modernization or as the extension of a rationalized religious
institution but as a deliberate project to cultivate textual and mystical knowledge under
Divine authority.
Multiple practical and rational repertoires and multiple imperatives are associated with
multiple truths, which in Taalibe Baay contexts are mediated through the terms of z.āhir,
bāt.in, and paradox. An appreciation of the simultaneity of the charismatic and the rou-
tinized, the mystical and the scriptural, and communitas and structure is essential to un-
derstanding how Taalibe Baay religious communities have maintained spaces of religious
knowledge, authority, and community while investing themselves extensively in non-re-
ligious engagements. It is also essential to understanding how Taalibe Baay networks
have globalized their charismatic practices on a large scale without a unified bureaucratic
structure and without even a clear conception of group identity. Transnational solidari-
ties can emerge not from a cohesive identity or institutional structure but from cultivating
shared experiences and dispositions through networks of apprenticeship.
28
Chapter 1
A Note on Paradox and Simultaneous

Truths
1.1 Serious joking and true incongruities
“Are there jinnes in America?” Sheex asked me, seated beside his brother in their habitual
Friday afternoon place, under a niim tree next to the Medina Baay mosque.
Just the day before, a son of Baay Ñas had asked me precisely the same question,
as had others before. Yet having stumbled over this question before had made me no
wiser to answer it. “Are you asking whether people believe in jinnes, or whether they are
actually there?”
“I’m asking: are there jinnes in America?”
The question was unambiguous, provided that one took for granted the existence of
these invisible creatures. I equivocated. “I’ve never heard anyone talk about them,” I
answered, “and I’ve never known of any myself, so I can’t say for sure that there are.” I
explained that I had heard talk of ghosts and other kinds of beings, but that I had never
heard anyone speak of jinnes as such. Sheex nodded thoughtfully.
Sheex’s younger brother, a well known Arabic teacher like Sheex, jumped in: “In my
opinion, jinnes don’t exist.”
My surprise seemed no less than that of Sheex, who raised his eyebrows and an-
swered: “No jinnes? But the QurO ān mentions them.”
29
Joseph Hill Chapter 1. A Note on Paradox and Simultaneous Truths
“Yes,” his brother said, “but those jinnes are not the same as the what people call jinnes
today.” The problems attributed to jinnes, he explained, are probably caused by rab—bush
spirits—or by natural causes.
“Jinnes do exist,” Sheex retorted, pausing and looking at us emphatically. “They’re
tubaabs” (Westerners). I waited in vain for Sheex to laugh.
“So, I’m not a person?” I asked tentatively, unsure how to take such a wild idea from
a respected Arabic teacher who had told me of his plans to publish a book correcting pop-
ular, unorthodox beliefs. Could he actually believe that I was the kind of being commonly
called a “devil” and whose interactions with humans are generally disastrous?
“Look at all the ingenious (c abqariyy ) things Westerners have done, while after all
these years we Africans haven’t gone anywhere. You’re jinnes, I’m telling you.”
I said he surely was joking and did not actually believe that they and I were essentially
different. No, he insisted, he was not joking. His brother disagreed: “He is joking,
that’s for certain.” Sheex again insisted that he was not joking—normal humans couldn’t
possibly do all these things. Throughout the conversation he maintained his line and
never relented.
For some time after this conversation I could not explain why such an educated man
would make such a seemingly absurd claim. Yet I had become accustomed to hearing
Taalibe Baay religious specialists utter statements that seemed to challenge reason and
coherence, and I had learned that in most cases the speaker intends the cognitive disso-
nance to highlight a discrepancy between apparent (z.āhir) logic and some deeper (bāt.in),
often mystical truth, although I had become equally accustomed to failing to grasp what-
ever truth they meant to highlight. For many Taalibe Baay, one might say that Sufism
is largely about dealing with contradictions and paradoxes. Yet their approach is not
to minimize or to reconcile paradoxes but to insist upon them, driving home the point
30
that nothing truly makes sense or is reconcilable without Divine Knowledge, which alone
can harmonize people, things, and truths. Divine knowledge does not harmonize these
contradictions through explaining them away through some higher logic but through
making possible an experience of the unity of all things in which multiple truths cease to
contradict one another.
The immediate effect of Sheex’s claim was to remind me of the Nation of Islam’s claim
that white people are the creation of an evil scientist. After some reflection, however, I
thought how tubaabs and jinnes likely appear similar to many Senegalese. Both jinnes and
tubaabs live in a world that is unseen, strange, and beyond reach to most Senegalese. Any
impact tubaabs have on Senegalese life tends to be unpredictable, mysterious, and often
catastrophic. On the other hand, both jinnes and tubaabs are stewards of magical knowl-
edge and initiate only an elite handful of the most talented and fortunate humans into
their secrets. Whereas many eminent spiritual authorities gain much of their knowledge
and authority through visiting and studying in the world of jinnes, eminent worldly au-
thorities have a similar relationship to the world of the tubaabs. Both worlds are sources of
rare, promethean knowledge of great power and danger. Do the statements in the QurO ān
on jinn literally refer to tubaabs? Sheex declined to clarify this ambiguity. In addition to
popular beliefs on the nature of jinnes, some have attempted to reexamine what QurO ānic
references to jinn really mean in a modern, scientific context,1 and it is not unheard of to
say that the QurO ān actually refers to entities known to science.
On the surface, Sheex’s brother was perhaps correct that Sheex was not serious: the
implication that their interlocutor was not human was humorously incongruous. Yet
Sheex’s aim apparently was not to make us laugh but to highlight a deep sameness
1 Forexample, the official O Ah.madiyyah web site uses scientific data to explain that the “jinn” of the
QurO ān
are actually bacteria. Despite QurO ānic mention of these creatures, Muslims by no means agree on
what they are and their relation to human life.
31
beyond apparent distinction. Sheex did not attempt to express his insight using literal
language, for the unity he spoke of depended not on language but on an experience
of the invisible and the inexpressible, on the uncanny consubstantiality of two different
worlds.
This common tendency among Taalibe Baay religious specialists and lay disciples to
hold two opposing claims explicitly as simultaneously true often takes the form of the
contrast between two truths, one apparent (z.āhir) and one hidden or internal (bāt.in).2 The
z.āhir is often characterized as lower, more superficial, and more material than the bāt.in,
which is higher, more profound, and more spiritual. There are no z.āhir or bāt.in things;
rather everything has z.āhir and bāt.in aspects or meanings (note that I speak in the plural).
That is, everything can be known and approached in more ways than one. For example, a
sacred text has both z.āhir meanings—its literal, straightforward interpretation—and bāt.in
meanings—including both its deeper, figurative meanings and its occult powers and uses.
Although the bāt.in is more profound, both are equally true and indispensable, and the
Tijāniyy Order asks disciples not to abandon the z.āhir but to complement it with the bāt.in.
Prayers pronounced over an congregation normally ask for blessing “in the z.āhir and in
the bāt.in.”3 These two kinds of blessings are understood both as simultaneous—as ma-
terial and spiritual blessing in this world—and as successive—blessing first in this world
(the seen world) and then in the world to come (the unseen world). Shaykh O Ah.mad at-
Tijāniyy insisted that mystical experience and knowledge did not come at the expense
of worldly pursuits but in addition to them, and he criticized schools that called for a
life of ascetic renunciation.4 From the beginning, then, the Tijāniyyah has explicitly and
2 Zāhiris the active participle of the verb z.ahara, “to appear,” thus, “appearing” or “apparent.” Bāt.in is
.
the active participle of the verb bat.una, “to be inside,” thus “being inside” or “what is internal.”
3 “Ci saahir ak ci baatin” or, in more pure Wolof, “Ci luy nëbbu ak ci luy feeñ.”
4 See the foudational text of the Tijāniyyah, the Jawāhir al-Mac ānı̄ (Aliyy al-H
. arāzim 2002.
32
z.āhir ↔ bāt.in
sharı̄c ah .tarı̄qah h.aqı̄qah
apparent hidden
exterior interior
engagement/accommodation disengagement
compromise deeper belief/desire
distinction unity
worldly life after-life
material spiritual
shallow deep
dissimulation pure being
Table 1.1: Connotations and uses of z.āhir and bāt.in
consistently defined itself as an order that accommodates both z.āhir and bāt.in, worldly
and spiritual, pleasure and devotion.
In S.ūfı̄ discourse, this pair is often used analogously with several other sets of terms
and concepts, roughly set out in the above table. Z c

. āhir and bāt.in correspond to sharı̄ ah
(law) and h.aqı̄qah (reality).5 Again, one truth does not negate or supplant another. Rather,
the disciple must begin with sharı̄c ah, which includes following the five pillars and other
injunctions of Islam, from whence a spiritual guide can lead the disciple to h.aqı̄qah, which
is built on the foundation of sharı̄c ah but often appears to contradict it from a z.āhir point
5 The two are often opposed in S.ūfı̄ literature, for example in Jawāhir al-Mac ānı̄, page 73 (c Aliyy H
. arāzim
ibn al-c Arabiyy
Barād al-Maghribiyy al-Fāsiyy 2002).
33
of view.
The path leading from sharı̄c ah to h.aqı̄qah is .tarı̄qah (“path”), or the practice of a S.ūfı̄
order. These three are often described as a triadic progression, starting with universally
available sharı̄c ah, progressing through .tarı̄qah, and ending in h.aqı̄qah. Each builds on and
presupposes the previous, and they are sometimes described as three floors of a building.
However, although the bāt.in does not negate the z.āhir, statements made in reference to
the bāt.in may seen to contradict z.āhir truths. Hence, although Taalibe Baay generally
consider themselves to be as serious about sharı̄c ah as the most orthodox Muslims, some
orthodox Muslims accuse them of holding heterodox beliefs about the nature of divine
reality (h.aqı̄qah). Taalibe Baay leaders explained to me that their critics’ understanding of
Islam is limited to the z.āhir and that bāt.in truths simple do not make sense to them.
A claim that is acceptable on one of these two levels likely seems absurd on the other,
and someone may therefore openly disavow some statement while referring to the z.āhir
level while believing the statement to be true in some mystical sense (or vice versa). For
example, Taalibe Baay public speeches and everyday talk often dwell on the importance of
seeing and knowing God. When I mentioned this teaching to one prominent muqaddam
in Medina Baay, he responded that whoever says that a person can see God is simply
wrong, and he refused to discuss the issue further. Soon after this discussion, a muqaddam
in Dakar mentioned to me that he sees God, and I asked him how often. He answered:
“constantly,” even when going about his daily business, explaining that one who knows
that God is everything is constantly aware that everything one sees is God. When I
mentioned that someone had denied that one can see God, he replied that that person
was wrong. He ultimately admitted, however, that in a sense one cannot see God, at least
in His entirety, as God is everything and one cannot see everything at once. Others offered
a somewhat different explanation of this paradox: an individual cannot know or see God,
34
yet the self can dissolve to the point where nothing remains but God, at which point there
is nothing but God to be, see, and know. But because the one perceiving is no longer the
individual, the truth that a person cannot know or see God remains strictly true. Many
specialists reserve such explanations for insiders and prefer to disavow mystical teachings
when speaking to outsiders, although these mystical teachings are abundantly available to
anyone attending Taalibe Baay public speeches or listening to widely circulated cassettes
recordings of Taalibe Baay leaders.
The paradoxical logic of z.āhir and bāt.in extends beyond explicitly religious domains.
On several occasions I have commiserated with some of Baay Ñas’s sons about George
Bush’s heavy-handed foreign policy, especially after the war in Iraq began in 2003. One
of them followed his damning criticisms with a startling proclamation: “But truthfully, I
like Bush deeply. He appeals to me a lot.”6 Like Sheex, when I said he must be joking,
he emphatically answered no. His immediate return to criticisms allayed any suspicion
that he was trying to placate me in case I was a Bush supporter. On a separate occasion,
another son of Baay Ñas made an almost identical proclamation. In this second case, he
followed his comment it with the explanation that Bush is better than other American
presidents because, even though his violence is more apparent, he truthfully says the im-
perialist things that American politics has always been about. Clinton, on the other hand,
convinced the world that America was about tolerance and freedom, changing people’s
perceptions while leaving intact the underlying realities. My interlocutors used the lan-
guage of the z.āhir and bāt.in to suspend two opposing yet true points of view concerning
Bush—the visible and catastrophic consequences of Bush’s words and deeds as opposed
to the more profoundly truthful embodiment of immutable American foreign policy. A
paradoxical utterance brought two opposing truths into a tense conversation to highlight
6 “Waaye wax dëgg Yàlla, Bush bëgg naa ko sama xol. Daf maa neex torob.”
35
a complexity that a single truth would miss. Thus, the work of paradox is not merely
to accommodate multiple truths but to bring them consciously and simultaneously into
view to highlight the tensions between them.
1.2 The inside and outside of paradox
These paradoxes are examples of the routine paradoxical speech employed by many Taal-
ibe Baay leaders counterposing a z.āhir truth to a bāt.in one. The whole Taalibe Baay project
rests on larger paradoxes that appear throughout this dissertation. The ability to speak in
such paradoxes indexes a religious specialist’s level of mystical knowledge, and the ability
to appreciate such paradoxes—to make sense of apparent nonsense—is an important part
of a disciple’s sense of distinction and aesthetic appreciation of religious speech. These
mystical paradoxes are not simply language games but index deeper realities, paradoxical
in their very nature, embodied and experienced through mystical education. Although
Taalibe Baay participate in cultivating both z.āhir and bāt.in religious knowledge, bāt.in is
the most distinctive in the Taalibe Baay context, and it is through testing a person’s bāt.in
knowledge that one can gauge a person’s level of spiritual development. Disciples are
initiated into deep knowledge of God through the mystical education of tarbiyyah, whose
aim is to cultivate in all disciples a shared understanding of certain mystical truths, par-
ticularly the experience of knowing God.
By the same measure, like any marker of distinction, the discursive genres of para-
doxes that mark this community and the multiple levels (“maqām”: “station”) of S.ūfı̄
knowledge also mark constitutive outsides. Many leaders actively guard certain mysti-
cal truths from outsiders as well as from disciples deemed unprepared to receive them,
for not only must one be prepared to understand the truths unlocked through tarbiyyah
and subsequent instruction, but bāt.in knowledge in the wrong hands may harm either
the recipient or the community. I muqaddam I interviewed in Dakar compared giving
36
tarbiyyah and other powerful mystical secrets to someone unprepared to plugging a low-
voltage appliance into a high-voltage outlet. A muqaddam must prepare the disciple care-
fully for each stage of knowledge to avoid “ruining” the disciple. If transmitting mystical
knowledge to disciples is a sensitive process, sharing secrets with outsiders is particularly
dangerous, both to that outsider and to the community should the outsider distort and
spread the secret.7
This does not mean that religious specialists refused to share any mystical knowledge
with me. A religious specialist might at one moment disavow a particular mystical be-
lief to prevent me from misunderstanding or misrepresenting it while at other moments
seeking to impress me with paradoxes to illustrate the power and gravity of these S.ūfı̄
teachings. Thus, my conversations with specialists were marked by constant making and
unmaking of paradoxes, sometimes with an aim to guide me and at other times with
an aim to throw me off. Leaders hoping to prevent mystical doctrines from being made
public and drawing criticism either from skeptical modernists or from anti-S.ūfı̄ Salafiyys
often simply told me that statements I had heard regarding these doctrines were false,
opting not to explain how these statements might be true from a particular, mystical
viewpoint. Nearly any statement I might make, especially one regarding a mystical truth
not universally accepted in Islam, could immediately meet an opposite claim.
I initially felt these leaders’ disavowal of certain mystical doctrines to be disingenuous,
but I later came to understand it as rooted in a belief that such doctrines are only true
from a particular, mystical vantage point and are in fact false from the point of view
they ascribed to me. According to some leaders, the true claims a S.ūfı̄ makes while
experiencing the realm of the bāt.in are genuinely false from a z.āhir point of view. For
7 Taalibe
Baay and broader S.ūfı̄ approaches to guarding and distributing the secrets of mystical knowledge
are in many ways reminiscent of the practices of “secret societies” that anthropologists around the world have
analyzed. See page ?? for observations on the similarities and differences.
37
example, S.ūfı̄s generally agree with other Muslims that any claim equating a person
with God is false and blasphemous. Yet when one becomes aware that nothing exists
apart from God, the pronoun “I” can refer to nothing but God. During a state of fanāO
(extinction of the self), the 9th-century Persian mystic H

. allāj famously declared “I am the
Truth” (O Anā ’l-H

. aqq), and he was executed for this claim. Many S.ūfı̄s say his enemies
mistakenly equated the “I” with his individual ego, which from his viewpoint did not
exist. Attempting to impress upon me the importance of tarbiyyah, one young man in
Medina Baay often insisted that I address him as “God” and corrected me if I called him
by his given name. Others told me in an aside that the young man was ignorant and was
taking a true phrase out of context, because however true that statement may be during
a state of fanāO , he clearly was not in this state when he said this. For such reasons, some
leaders have told me that tarbiyyah can ruin people if not done correctly.
An acute sense that Taalibe Baay are under attack from both within and outside Islam
has led many leaders to be particularly reticent about mystical teachings, which interpret
in a z.āhir frame of reference, thus understanding them to contradict sharı̄c ah. Because
the Taalibe Baay movement rose in prominence in Northern Nigeria at the same time as
anti-S.ūfı̄ neo-orthodox movements such as Yan Izala (Kane 2003b), it has attracted par-
ticularly vehement opposition in Nigeria. Many leaders take particular care, therefore, to
avoid mystical talk that might occasion accusations of heterodoxy. A large anti-Tijāniyy
literature, mostly of Nigerian origin, has spurred an equally large apologetic literature in
response. Perhaps the best known attack—one that has profoundly affected Taalibe Baay
leaders’ reception of foreign researchers like me—was the Nigerian T.āhir Maygariyy’s
(1979) scathing biography of Baay Ñas.8 Maygariyy’s attack relied on presenting Baay
8 Shaykh Tijāniyy O Ibrāhı̄m Ñas, Baay Ñas’s son who hosted Maygariyy, told me of how, after presenting
himself as a loyal disciple (which he indeed had been at one point), Maygariyy used his privileged access to
documents to publish a denunciation of Baay Ñas and of Sufism in general. Two of the best known replies to
Maygariyy’s accusations are from two Mauritanian muqaddams, Al-H . ājj wuld al-Mishri (my host as I studied
38
Ñas’s S.ūfı̄ writings and practices as incongruent with orthodox Islamic beliefs. Several
Taalibe Baay leaders cited Maygariyy’s actions in refusing interviews with me or other
members of my project, and others hesitated to be interviewed for the same reason. The
coincidence of my research with my country’s omnipresent “War on Terror” and inva-
sions of Afghanistan and Iraq gave credence to persistant rumors, generally spread by
people I apparently never met, that I was a spy or otherwise unfriendly to Islam. Despite
the complicating effects these events had on my research, I doubt that more favorable po-
litical circumstances would have facilitated more straightforward explanations of mystical
doctrines.
Nearly all the numerous written and spoken defenses of the Tijāniyy Order against
charges of heterodoxy limit themselves to a purely z.āhir explanation of Tijāniyy prac-
tices, arguing that there is nothing more to the Tijāniyy order than repeating formulas
sanctioned by the QurO ān and Sunnah. Perhaps the two most commonly attacked and
defended practices are the Tijāniyy wird, the formula whose reception and pronunciation
marks belonging in the Tijāniyy order, and the S.alāt al-Fātih., a prayer on the Prophet
that is a central part of Tijāniyy practices (including the Tijāniyy wird) despite post-dating
Muh.ammad. Tijāniyy apologists argue that as the these formulas include nothing more
than phrases whose value and benefits are clearly documented in the QurO ān and h.adı̄th,
they are therefore strictly orthodox. I have not encountered an apologetic argument that
attempted to explain or justify any belief or practice in terms of bāt.in truths, although
books addressing Tijāniyys freely discuss such things, as bāt.in teachings are only consid-
ered to be relevant and comprehensible to those already on the path.
One might interpret this refusal to address S.ūfı̄ doctrines with outsiders as a cynical
tactic to sidestep criticisms. Perhaps such an interpretation is at least partly justified,
Arabic in Mauritania) and a more exhaustive one by c Abd Allā wuld al-Jayjaba.
39
as these defenses seem calculated to imply that Tijāniyys have no mystical doctrines at
all instead of stating openly that discussion of these doctrines is reserved for certain
contexts. Yet it is important to note that from these apologists’ perspectives, a teacher of
mystical knowledge is somewhat like the philosopher in Plato’s cave who may guide a
person to experience deeper truths but cannot simply explain them. They assume that
any explanation they can give—including the fact that they cannot give an explanation—
will necessarily be misunderstood by anyone not on the path. Taalibe Baay religious
specialists engage with broader Muslim public spheres in an ecumenical language that
limits itself to what can be stated in z.āhir terms. Their interactions with the larger Muslim
community are similar to their interactions with secular authority in this bracketing of
notions of truth incompatible with the public discursive fields shared with non-disciples.
Their communications with outsiders are often ambivalent, as Taalibe Baay generally
believe their movement’s attraction to be in the bāt.in knowledge it offers, and there is a
constant tension between the desire to share that knowledge and protect it from exposure
to those who might misrepresent it.
1.3 Paradox and pluralism
The tendency to accept two apparently contradictory statements as simultaneously and
fully true profoundly shapes the Taalibe Baay movement’s ability to accommodate mul-
tiple socio-cultural identities, ideological positions, interests, and tendencies. It has thus
shown a particular flexibility as it has integrated people of contrasting cultural, national,
and ideological backgrounds. Paradoxical language contributes to handling numerous
apparent contradictions: that Taalibe Baay simultaneously believe nothing outside of Is-
lamic orthodoxy and yet have something unique; that two people are considered to have
been Baay Ñas’s direct khalı̄fah; that all distinctions are illusory and yet that some stark
social distinctions—such as that between shaykh and disciple—are necessary; that God
40
is entirely incomparable to humans and that the QurO ān ascribes Him human attributes
(eyes, hand, feelings); and so on.
Although apparently contradictory truths are typically explained in terms of z.āhir
and bāt.in, it would be simplistic to say that these two terms correspond to two stable
and internally consistent “realms” or “systems” of truth. The duo of z.āhir and bāt.in are
used to accommodate a multiplicity of truth claims, and which is understood as z.āhir and
which as bāt.in is often an object of disagreement. What is essential is that, as opposed to
compromised negotiations occurring on a single rational ground, the opposition of z.āhir
and bāt.in involve not compromise but simultaneity. Likewise, such an opposition does
not reduce one meaning to figurative and hold another as literal but allows two meanings
to be simultaneously literal. The effect can range from mere tolerance (such as accepting
a rival point of view as legitimate in some sense) to positive synergy (such as hierarchical
relations of authority and the experience of egalitarian community).
Perhaps the most central paradoxical relationship is that between orthodoxy and Su-
fism, an opposition that Taalibe Baay’s opponents tirelessly raise against them (as men-
tioned above). Taalibe Baay generally consider themselves to be as orthodox as any other
Muslim, accepting the QurO ān to be literally and completely true and attempting to gov-
ern their lives strictly by the rules of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). In their view, Sufism
does not detract from or replace orthodoxy but supplements it. I once asked a descendant
of Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy (who is not a Taalibe Baay but expresses similar views) in
Rabat what he thought of Salafiyys who categorically denounce Sufism. He replied that
Salafiyys are not bad and are not wrong, but they have only experienced the ground floor
of Islam, from which point of view Sufism appears to be false. He says their point of view
is not invalid but simply shows that their experience is limited to that particular view-
point. His response was eminently diplomatic: Salafiyys genuinely love and follow their
41
religion, and Islam does not require a person to go beyond this level. Yet it seemed to have
a more critical bāt.in meaning: Salafiyys understand only the most basic and superficial
aspects of their religion and pronounce about things far beyond their ken.
Thus, although neither point of view is more true than the other, there is a hierarchy:
the deeper truth subsumes the shallower one, which in turn does not comprehend the
deeper one. Anyone who has achieved the higher bāt.in meaning has necessarily entered
through the ground-level z.āhir meaning. Speakers who accept two opposing viewpoints
as true typically frame their own preferred viewpoint as the bāt.in while framing rival
viewpoints as the z.āhir, although different speakers often disagree concerning which
viewpoint is which. Thus, to avoid conflict, someone might acknowledge an opposing
opinion as true yet only at a lower and less profound level.
This logic serves to manage various potentially divisive internal differences. For ex-
ample, some maintain that Baay Ñas’s first khalı̄fah was Sëriñ Alliw Siise, while others
insist that his successor was Baay Ñas’s eldest son Allaaji Abdulaay (see Chapter 7. To
this day, each side of the issue has its own account of why one rather than the other
was Baay Ñas’s designated successor even though on the surface one could argue for the
other. Yet there was never a “succession struggle”—only a quiet disagreement about who
held which post in the deepest sense. Refraining from attacking an opposing viewpoint
on the grounds that z.āhir viewpoints are equally valid, while not as profound, as bāt.in
viewpoints defuses many potential struggles. The logic of paradox is invoked in many cir-
cumstances to handle differences between Taalibe Baay of different cultural backgrounds
(see Chapter 8).
1.4 Conclusion
This chapter has introduced a thread that I will more fully develop in each subsequent
chapter. The paradox of simultaneously existing logics and truths, which are neither
42
harmonized nor euphemized but rather emphasized and appreciated aesthetically, is cen-
tral to Taalibe Baay strategies of engagement and disengagement, of reconciling multiple
cultures and interests, and of accommodating conflicting truths. Paradoxical reasoning
allows people to handle and even embrace multiple simultaneous truth claims, whether
these contrasting claims are held by different people or by the same people in response
to different contexts. I aim to show throughout this dissertation that such paradoxes have
been at the heart of the Taalibe Baay movement’s concepts of knowledge, authority, and
community and ultimately of its globalizing and intercultural project.
While I situate Taalibe Baay techniques of cultivating multiple rationalities in distinct
forms of religious education, the roots of paradoxical juxtapositions of truth claims have
a longer history in Sufism and in the conflicting imperatives of practicing Muslims living
under secular rulers. The next two chapters therefore discuss the Njolofeen, the socio-
cultural group most directly involved in the initial expansion of the Fayd.ah, as they have
strategically engaged with secular power and cultural norms with the aim of preserving
the autonomy of their religious spheres of authority. They have negotiated their ambigu-
ous status in broader Senegalese society through strategies of simultaneously asserting
and undermining hegemonic norms.
43
Part I
History and Culture

Chapter 2
The Njolofeen and Saalum:

Distinction beyond Caste
2.1 A Landscape: From Jolof to Saalum
Heading southward from Jolof to Saalum near the end of the dry season, the scant green
that punctuates Jolof’s sparse landscape is mostly found inside the villages I pass—the
green accenting mosques’ doorways and minarets and the ample shade of nime trees,
ubiquitous since they were introduced from India in the 1970s. The end of the dry season
is silvery, fiery white, like the parched bones of livestock in the sand beside the road.
Punctuating Jolof’s open expanse of pale, yellow sand are the crooked forms of acacia
and sump trees, whose airbrushed, drab softness turns thorny as one nears them. My
untrained eye cannot foretell that soon, millet, peanut, and bean fields will cover much
of this undifferentiated sand. Yet as the Sahara has stretched southward, farming Jolof’s
land has become increasingly difficult, and several centuries of migrants have sought
more fertile land southward in Bawol and Saalum, taking the Wolof language and, in
some cases, Islam with them. Jolof’s open spaces now serve primarily to graze the cattle,
sheep, and goats of semi-nomadic Fulbe who live in hamlets throughout the countryside
and on the outskirts of Wolof farming villages.
This stay in Jolof has been my first experience in Senegal’s interior. I take south with
me the name my hosts have given me, Abdulaay, which will stay with me throughout my
45
Joseph Hill Chapter 2. The Njolofeen and Saalum
research in Saalum. As the car inches southward, both the vegetation and the population
become incrementally denser. About an hour southwest of Daara, the taxi I share with
a driver and six other passengers enters a vast sprawl of mostly unfinished cinder block
houses, and I can see a towering minaret on the horizon. Most storefronts and roadsigns
are written in Arabized Wolof (O ac jamiyy), the most widely known script in Senegal’s
interior (and yet one not counted by the government as a form of literacy) due to the
near universality of QurO ānic education. We have entered Tuubaa, the holy city of the
Murid S.ūfı̄ order. Since the mystic Ahmadu Bàmba Mbàkke (more commonly known as
“Sëriñ Tuubaa,” or “Holy Man of Tuubaa”) founded Tuubaa in 1887, the city has grown
spectacularly to become Senegal’s second largest city and an economic, religious, and
political powerhouse. Yet because it is not an administrative center, it does not generally
appear on maps made before the 1980s. Tuubaa is part of Bawol, the Murid heartland
surrounded by the predominantly Tijāniyy areas of Jolof, Kajoor, and Saalum.
Many of the unfinished houses we pass belong to Dakar businessmen who come to
Tuubaa only for religious festivities. Days after I pass through Tuubaa—but for only
a couple days—its population will grow larger than Dakar’s as Murids come from all
over Senegal and abroad for the yearly Màggal celebration. Pilgrims will fill even these
unfinished houses for a day or two. The driver says he is from Tuubaa (as many taxi
drivers have told me), and he stops on the way to pass the car on to another taxi driver
from Tuubaa as he goes home to take care of family business.
Although Tijāniyys form a majority of Senegal’s population, Murid dominance in
politics, commerce, the transportation industry, and the print and broadcast media makes
many Tijāniyys feel like a minority. Indeed, many visitors to Senegal have the impression
that nearly all Senegalese are Murids, as they own the most visible stores and taxis in
Dakar and mark these spaces prominently with representations of “Sëriñ Tuubaa” and
46
other Murid leaders. Around 94% of Senegal’s population is Muslim, nearly all of whom
adhere to one of four S.ūfı̄ orders: the Tijāniyyah, the Murı̄diyyah, and to a lesser extent
the Qādiriyyah and Laayeen.1
We leave Tuubaa, continuing southwest on a black, newly paved road leading from
Tuubaa to Dakar, turning south in the regional capital, Jurbel. The road we now take to
Kaolack, whose terminus is the Gambian border, is riddled with gigantic potholes, and
the driver often leaves the pavement to drive on its much smoother shoulder. Friends in
Medina Baay will later explain with some consternation that politicians gave Tuubaa this
nice road to the capital in exchange for Murid leaders’ promise to deliver their disciples’
votes to incumbent politicians. They complain that the government marginalizes Kaolack
because Taalibe Baay do not concern themselves with politics. Although I have not veri-
fied this particular claim, I am well aware of the regular front-page news stories detailing
politicians’ frequent visits to Tuubaa’s leaders while the less politically engaged religious
leaders in Kaolack seldom appeared in headlines. Well connected religious leaders have
enormous influence on how state moneys are spent.
As the road wends southward from Bawol to Saalum, the view startles me. After six
months in Senegal I have not seen a drop of rain and can hardly picture a green Senegal.
As I enter Saalum, I find a pale green veil covering the reddish earth and the trees capped
with rich foliage. Saalum’s rainy season (nawet) has just begun, while Jolof must still wait
for over a month for its first rain. Even before the first rain, Saalum’s impatient dimb trees
have already hidden their jagged branches with a lush, spherical canopy and its abundant
fruit have enriched the local cuisine. Later, elders in one village will tell me that when
the dimb tree rethatches (its canopy), it is time to rethatch your hut,2 as the rains will soon
1 See note on page 7.

2 “Su dimb xàddee, xàddal sa néeg.”
47
flood the hut of the unprepared. The giant, wild fig trees3 have kept their broad canopy
throughout the dry season. Within a couple days after Saalum’s first rain, tiny sprouts
blanket a grateful ground that has likely not drunk a drop of rain for nearly eight months.
The rains revive not only the landscape but also a village’s population, which during
the dry season lacked most of its working-aged men. Men who have worked or studied
in the towns return to the fields. Students of both state and Islamic schools typically take
a vacation during much of the rainy season, and even young people who were born and
raised in the city may spend the summer helping relatives farm. Semi-nomadic Fulbe
herders living in neighborhoods or villages on the outskirts of sedentary Wolof villages
will also increasingly confine themselves and their animals to the village, farming their
own fields and hiring their oxen out to plough Wolof farmers’ fields.
Near harvest time (lolli) in October and November, the landscape will again transform,
turning the color of fire. That time will be both the hottest and the poorest time in
Saalum’s villages, as food stores and cash are at their lowest and illness is plentiful. Yet
hope obscures the suffering as market day draws near, and a misfortune during lolli is
often described as a sign of a good harvest and market price.
As I enter northern Saalum, I pass several Séeréer-speaking villages. The Séeréer
in this area are considered the original inhabitants of western Saalum. For centuries,
northwestern Saalum was the political heart of the Saalum Kingdom ruled by the Séeréer
speaking Gelwaar dynasty, descended from Mande-speaking rulers south in the Gambia
River Valley. Their capital was in Kawon, four kilometers northeast of the region’s cur-
rent capital, Kaolack. Gelwaar lost their control over the area largely as the result of a
nineteenth-century Islamic revolution led by Wolof-speaking immigrants from Jolof who
established an Islamic state.
3 There are several species of fig common in Saalum, including soto, bàpp, gëN, and looro.
48
My trip ends in Kaolack (Kawlax), the economic, administrative, and religious heart
of Saalum, on the north bank of the saline Saalum river and near Saalum’s northwest-
ern edge. The taxi stops at a large road station in downtown Kaolack, where there are
very few trees. Although its economy depends primarily on trading and processing the
peanuts farmed in its hinterland, much of Kaolack itself is barren, saturated with salt
from the river, which seeps through the foundations and walls of houses in its south-
ern and eastern neighborhoods, causing them to crumble and leak. People who grow
up in Kaolack are recognized throughout Senegal for the dark stains on their teeth from
drinking the city’s highly mineralized and saline tap water.4
Soon after I arrive in Medina Baay for the first time in 2001, Baay Ñas’s new khalı̄fah,
Shaykh O Ah.mad Ñas (known to disciples as “Pàppa Daam”) invites me to witness a
work day in his peanut fields in Baay’s birthplace of Tayba Ñaseen. Disciples have come
from nearby villages to spend a day clearing the weeds from the khalı̄fah’s peanut fields.
In contrast to Kaolack’s saline infertility, in the area between Kaolack and the Gambian
border lies some of Senegal’s most fertile peanut-farming land, which has drawn waves
of migrants from the more arid north for centuries.
Pàppa Daam invites me into his room for lunch. He asks me, as many do, how I
like Senegalese food. As my host is the khalı̄fah’s paternal cross cousin, a joking relation
people often call their “slave” (jaam), our conversations tend to be lighthearted and often
involve food. I answer that I enjoy it very much, especially this good Saalum-Saalum
rice with meat. He corrects me, saying that his family is not from Saalum but from Jolof.
He explains that his grandfather, Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, immigrated to Saalum from Jolof
during the nineteenth century and was responsible for bringing many people into Islam.
Although I recall having read that Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas was born in Jolof over a century
4 Some people from Kaolack told me that the water no longer has this effect, but people in their early teens
still have these spots, so I have saw no indication that this effect had diminished.
49
and a half ago, I did not expect his grandchildren to identify themselves as people from
Jolof. Over the next few weeks, many others in Medina Baay tell me that they too are
from Jolof, and I have the impression that Jolof’s pale, yellow sands are as alive in their
collective memory as they are in my own.
I had heard the term “Njolofeen” numerous times before I realized that it did not refer to
a broad category of people tracing ancestry to Jolof, a category that would include many
Saalum-Saalum who do not call themselves “Njolofeen.” Rather, my interlocutors were
using it as a corporate identity for a particular group of closely allied families. Neither
did I realize that “Saalum-Saalum” (literally “People of Saalum”) refers to an entirely
different category of Wolof speakers longer established in Saalum, many of whom trace
ancestry to Jolof and other regions. Other Wolof speakers in western Saalum identified
themselves as “Siñi-Siñi,” descendants of immigrants from Siñi, also in Jolof. Each of
Saalum’s three principal linguistic groups—Séeréer, Wolof, and Haal-Pulaar—comprises
numerous groups of families who maintain a certain degree of social and cultural distinc-
tion. This may be particularly true of the Wolof speaking population, which has absorbed
waves of migrants from many ethnic groups and geographical areas over the past five
centuries.
I had assumed that terms such as Njolofeen and Saalum-Saalum matched their ety-
mology in a straightforward fashion. The term “Njolofeen” could be translated as “people
of Jolof,” yet people from Jolof are not called “Njolofeen” but “Jolof-Jolof.” Doubling the
name of a region is the usual way of deriving a name for inhabitants of that region.
“Njolofeen,” on the other hand, follows a morphological pattern connoting family be-
longing. For example, members of the Ñas family are collectively known as “Ñaseen,”
50
as are villages founded by Ñaseen.5 “Njolofeen” might thus better be glossed “the Jolof
family.” Indeed, as young Njolofeen members of the Research Committee6 introduced
themselves to elder interviewees as the grandson of so-and-so, elders would often receive
them warmly, saying that they shared the same “Njolofeen family.”7
This chapter discusses the status of Njolofeen as a dominant minority in the Taalibe
Baay movement and as a socially marginal yet respected and feared group in Senegam-
bia. Chapter 3 discusses their emergence as they migrated from Jolof during a time of
Islamic revolution. I discuss the Njolofeen at length in these two chapters because of
their disproportionate role in promoting Baay Ñas’s movement and because their distinc-
tive position and ambiguous status in Senegalese society consequently influences how
outsiders perceive Taalibe Baay as a whole. Njolofeen most explicitly define themselves
in terms of religious orientation, which includes a long tradition of organization around
religious leaders and distance from secular authority. Their disputed caste status, I ar-
gue, has significantly affected their particular position, contributing to a degree of social
disengagement from surrounding groups to prevent being tainted by the status imputed
to them. Their disengagement from the caste regime in the form of a high degree of en-
dogamy and single-caste villages has not only served to avoid questions of social stigma
but has also allowed them to form villages focusing only on activities they consider proper
to their Islamic ideals. Thus, their villages do not have the kinds of loud entertainment
or menial artisanal work they shun as being incompatible with their religious life.
The price of disengagement, however, has been marginalization from hegemonic forms
5 This nominal form of a proper name is formed by nasalizing or otherwise transforming the first letter
(wherever possible) and adding the suffix “-een.” Consonants that have nasal forms (such as b and j) are
nasalized, while certain consonants are replaced with a related consonant and other consonants do not
change. Thus, Bittéy becomes Mbittéyeen, Faal becomes Paaleen, and Jóob becomes Njóobeen. See Appendix
B
6 See Appendix A
7 “Famii (famille) bu Njolofeen.”
51
of power and knowledge and in some cases even persecution. Njolofeen and Taalibe Baay
have not only been marginalized on the pretext of their low status but they have been ex-
cluded from public life while members of other Islamic groups have taken an active role
in government and national culture. Njolofeen have increasingly responded by selectively
and strategically engaging with secular institutions and social norms in order to reduce
marginalization, yet they have framed this engagement as a pragmatic accommodation
with, not a deeper acceptance of, z.āhir realities. In many cases, this accommodation
seems to contradict their bāt.in principles, which they do not proclaim openly but instead
apply privately. This paradoxical use of contradictory principles is a discursive practice
rooted in a religious orientation toward different kinds of truth (see Chapters 5 through
6). Njolofeen historical narratives and approaches to questions such as caste and secu-
lar culture reflect paradoxes of engagement and disengagement through the language of
z.āhir and bāt.in that are common to Taalibe Baay discourses.
Some Njolofeen express their attitudes toward caste distinctions in terms of paradox,
simultaneously accepting the caste regime as an unavoidable z.āhir reality and rejecting it
on the basis of bāt.in reality. Such responses reflect a broader strategy of accommodation
in the service of disengagement. Selective obeisance toward political power and social
norms not founded on religious principles has often been a strategic accommodation
to promote autonomy in other matters. Accommodation is expressed as a pragmatic
response to a z.āhir reality, whereas disengagement is expressed as a refuge in deeper
bāt.in realities (see Chapters 1 5. Their paradoxical response to caste distinctions is only
one example of Njolofeen tendency to approach political, social, and cultural norms they
see as incompatible with their interests and beliefs through both accommodation and
disengagement. Chapter 3 discusses other areas in which Njolofeen have drawn near to
political power in order to foster a more profound autonomy.
52
When I arrived in Senegal in 2001 I knew little about the movement I was to study
aside from the few tidbits I could glean from the academic literature on Islam in Sene-
gal available at the time. Academics seemed to agree on a few points: Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m
Ñas, better known as “Baay,”8 was the son of Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, the major Islamic
leader of the area, but after his father’s death his renown surpassed that of his elders
and even his father, and he became the most well known leader of the “Ñaseen” branch
of the Tijāniyyah. Yet he inherited his father’s blacksmith (tëgg) caste status and there-
fore, despite his uncommon degree of learning, failed to attract many fellow Senegalese
beyond his fellow tëgg.9 Perhaps to compensate for his lack of popularity at home, this
same point of view maintains, he cultivated relationships abroad, cultivating a vast dis-
cipleship in Nigeria and Mauritania and becoming a prominent figure in world Islamic
organizations in the Middle East.
Perhaps the “fact” that scholars most unanimously agreed on—even where they dis-
agreed on the implications—was that the Ñaseen are of blacksmith origin, a fact they
usually mentioned in the first sentence mentioning a member of the Ñas family. Vin-
cent Monteil (1980:165) describes Baay Ñas as “one of the most remarkable” Senegalese
marabouts and “the son of a marabout [and] the grandson of a simple blacksmith of
Djolof.”10 Gellar (1995:113) introduces Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas as “a marabout of black-
smith origins.”11 Villalon (1995:68) maintains that Baay Ñas’s caste status has prevented
his appeal from extending beyond fellow “casted” people (ñeeño). Others consider his
8 His
name is usually spelled according to French phonetics, as Cheikh Ibrahim Niasse or Niass, or “Baye.”
I use Wolof and Arabic phonetic spellings throughout.
9 See below for sources of this point of view.
10 Monteil also says that Baay Ñas was educated in Mauritania, which is not supported by Taalibe Baay
histories, which say he was educated entirely by his father.

11 Gellar
also inaccurately identifies Ibrahim Ñas as Allaaji Abdulaay’s successor and identifies Ahmed Ñas
(“The Ayatollah of Kaolack”) and Sidi Lamin Ñas, both of whom had Islamist political ambitions, as sons of
Baay Ñas. They are sons of Baay Ñas’s older brother and rival, Muh.ammad Xalifa Ñas.
53
lowly background a boon to his cause. According to Piga, Baay Ñas, the grandson of
“a man of humble condition, a blacksmith by status,” has become an international phe-
nomenon, embodying “the ideology of social mobility in the Tidjane brotherhood” (Piga
2002:262). Magassouba comes to a similar conclusion: the “niassène” branch, “which
presents the particularity of having been founded by a man of caste (El Hadj Ibrahima
Niass was the son of a blacksmith) is the perfect illustration of the social mobility lauded
by Sufism” (1985:47).12 Both these conclusions—that Baay Ñas’s caste status has limited
his appeal and that it increases his stature as a socially mobile S.ūfı̄—reproduce popular
assumptions that caste status is uncontroversial in the first place and that, more particu-
larly, it has had a deciding influence (whether negative or positive) in people’s decisions
to follow Baay Ñas. The only Western academic I am aware of who recognizes the con-
tested nature of this status is Rüdiger Seesemann, who says that Mauritanian shaykhs
who followed Baay Ñas were concerned not about “whether he was a blacksmith, but
whether his mystical methods were successful” (Seesemann 2004:95).13 Most Western
academics seem to have obtained their information from non-Taalibe Baay and therefore
seem unaware of any disagreement. Considering the movement’s rapid growth among
multiple groups, especially among youth of all castes in urban areas, there is little rea-
son to assume that caste is a deciding factor for anyone not already predisposed against
becoming Taalibe Baay.
As I returned to Senegal in 2001 and prepared to travel to the Taalibe Baay capital of
12 Magassouba (1985:47) also makes two common but logically contradictory mistakes, calling Baay Ñas
the “founder” of the “niassène” house (Allaaji Abdulaay founded the Ñaseen house) and its successor or
“khalife” (Baay Ñas never claimed to be the “khalife”—he founded his own branch, distinct from his father’s
Ñaseen house). He claims that after Baay Ñas’s death, the movement stagnated and could have been revital-
ized by Ahmed Khalifa Niass, the Islamist “Ayatollah” This makes little sense considering that Ahmed Niass
is the son of Xalifa Ñas, Baay Ñas’s older brother and rival (as many see him), and has on some occasions
been hostile to Baay Ñas’s community, even sending armed men to prevent a ceremony during which the
two branches of the family were to be reconciled (Kane 2000).
13 Itis important to remember that Mauritanian Arabs have the same caste regime and that the question of
caste is potentially as important to them as it is to Senegalese and is compounded by the question of race.
54
Medina Baay to begin my research, nearly everyone to whom I mentioned my projected
research project repeated almost verbatim the same “well known facts”: “Ah, I’ll tell
you something about the Ñaseen (the common designation for followers of Baay Ñas or
his father): they are mostly casted people, because Baay Ñas was a tëgg, and no noble
(géer) would want to follow a tëgg leader. That’s why Baay Ñas went to Nigeria, where
people are not concerned with his caste.” The seemingly well-rehearsed response was
nearly identical whether it came from employees of the National Archives, salespeople in
Dakar’s central Sàndaga market, or Western scholars writing on Islam in Senegal.
After encountering unanimity on these basic facts among scholars and non-scholars
alike, I was quite surprised to find on my arrival in Medina Baay that Baay Ñas’s disci-
ples contested nearly all the facts that everyone else seemed to agree upon. First, Taalibe
Baay never refer to themselves as collectively “Ñaseen” and certainly do not view Baay
as a representative of his father’s branch of the Tijāniyyah. The few Taalibe Baay who
admitted to being “casted” (“ñeeño,” i.e., of either artisanal or griot caste background)14
were from groups unrelated to Baay Ñas, and these insisted that Baay Ñas and his rela-
tives were of noble caste and therefore, in theory, unmarriageable to them. Furthermore,
whereas outsiders answered the question of Baay Ñas’s failure to attract a large and di-
verse following at home in terms of caste, Taalibe Baay would see such a question as
nonsense, consistently describing the Fayd.ah as a dynamic movement that was sweeping
through Senegal and the world like wildfire.
Whatever their caste status, I soon sensed that most Taalibe Baay I met in Medina Baay
were indeed related to one another and to Baay and therefore must share caste status.
I learned about these relationships through being adopted into a Medina Baay family.
14 “Casted” (casté) is the most common translation of ñeeño, a category that includes several distinct groups
of artisans and griots. Many reserve the word “castes” for artisanal and griot groups only, whereas some
consider the géer group to be a caste as well, and others consider all ñeeño to occupy a single caste. For
simplicity’s sake, I refer to each category of artisan as well as géer as castes.
55
My host family insisted on calling me Abdulaay, the Senegalese name I had received in
Jolof. They introduced me to neighbors as Abdulaay Caam, son of my host’s parents,
Paa Baraam Caam Kasamaas (so called because he lived for many years in the southern
region of Casamance) and Yaa Xadi Caam. I relented and have continued, for better and
for worse, to bear this name and family affiliation throughout my work in Medina Baay.
As a member of a well known family, I was expected to keep track of how the people
I met were related to me. I quickly realized that most of the people I met in Medina Baay
were related to me and my adopted family by blood, marriage, or both. A surprising
number of them were my paternal cross cousins, or “slaves” (jaam), and therefore joking
relations and dependents worthy of receiving gifts. (I suspected that many were masters
[sàng] too but were more reticent.) Nearly all of my new fictive kin—the majority of
people in Medina Baay—had a limited number of family names: Caam, Ñas, Sekk, Jóob,
Bittéy, Géy, and ÑaN. I had known tëgg families in other parts of Senegal named Ñas
and Caam, and I had known griots (géwal) named Sekk, ÑaN, and Caam. Most people
I had known named Jóob and Géy, on the other hand, had been “nobles” (géer). But
in Saalum, the griots I met were mostly named Fay, Jaañ, or Cobaan. The handful of
tëgg I met were named Caam but did not intermarry with my own Caameen family,
even though the vast majority did not work as blacksmiths but as farmers and teachers
like the Njolofeen. When people greeted me and my adopted kin, as a sign of respect
they would repeat “Caam Demba,” the nickname15 for the “noble” Caameen, whereas
they would greet Caameen who were tëggs as “Caam Baylo.” Some would quiz me on
whether they should greet me as Caam Demba or Caam Baylo,16 apparently testing my
15 Many family names have a “nickname” (dàkkantal) added to it during greetings. Some reflect the name
of an ancestor (such as Caam Demba) or one’s caste (such as Gise “Maabo,” the pulaar word for the weaver
occupational group). I have not been able to determine the meaning of some others (such as Bittéy Ngaari).
16 Baylo is a Pulaar word for “tëgg.”
56
caste consciousness.
Much later, I realized that all these related families used the term “Njolofeen” not
simply to indicate ancestry to index a shared cultural identity. These were precisely the
families others referred to as tëgg but who contested the status themselves. One argu-
ment of this chapter is that Njolofeen have emphasized this identity partly as an alliance
to assert a noble status over a stigmatized one. Njolofeen solidarity and distinction can be
understood as a strategy to disengage from the caste regime through creating an alterna-
tive identity outside this regime while tacitly accepting the caste regime by discursively
rejecting the caste that others assign them. Their disputed caste status, I argue, has sig-
nificantly yet subtly contributed to Njolofeen distinctiveness through limiting affinal ties
with neighboring groups and promoting intense internal solidarity and disengagement
from the caste regime. Njolofeen identity allows them to frame endogamy and social
distinctiveness in terms of religious commitment and shared culture and history while
minimizing the occasions on which the question of caste may be raised (such as intermar-
riage). They do not overtly criticize the regime of caste distinctions; rather, they employ its
language strategically while at the same time disengaging with the social regime through
which these distinctions are enforced.
2.2 Njolofeen and other groups in Saalum
Scholars of Senegal seem not to have noted the existence of the Njolofeen despite their
sharp social and cultural distinction from their neighbors and their prominent role in
Senegalese religious life. One reason is surely that Njolofeen identity does not map onto
the identity categories—ethnic, linguistic, tribal, caste, class, religious, political, etc.—
that scholars generally recognize. Njolofeen cultural differences and identity are also
subtle enough that anyone not intimately familiar with them is unlikely to be aware of
it. In most cases, Njolofeen do not invoke their group identity in contradistinction to a
57
set of other groups of the same category (language, ethnicity, caste, race) but invoke it
internally in terms of internal solidarity, shared history, and religious orientation. That is
to say, “Njolofeen” often presents itself not as one identity among others but as something
to which one simply belongs or does not belong. It is only a relevant identity among
Njolofeen and those who interact with them routinely, and many young urban Njolofeen
are not even familiar with the term even if they primarily socialize with and will marry
other Njolofeen. Njolofeen “groupness” (Brubaker 2003) today is often more practical
than discursive, visible mostly in marriage patterns, social solidarity, and a distinctive
approach to religious learning and practice. In some ways, Njolofeen are similar to the
clerical Jakhanke as described by Lamin Sanneh (1989), sharing the language of their
neighbors but maintaining a strong sense of social, cultural, and religious distinction. Yet
Njolofeen identity is newer, less widely known, and potentially unstable.
The three principal “ethnic groups” in Siin and Saalum—Séeréer, Wolof, and Fulbe
(Pulaar speakers)—might be better understood as internally diverse “speech communi-
ties” than as coherent socio-cultural groups. For example, Ñoominka fishers are culturally
distinct from inland Séeréer peasants and Gelwaar chiefs (themselves of Mande origin)
who share the same language.17 This is especially true of the Wolof, whose ethnic iden-
tity can be described as “thin” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998:73) in that it implies little
beyond shared language and includes people of diverse backgrounds and cultural prac-
tices. Speaking of “Wolof society” as if it were spatially and temporally homogeneous
(for example, Diop 1981, 1985) flattens the significant diversity and dynamism of those
who identify themselves as Wolof. Ethnicity is only partially coextensive with identity,
social belonging, or cultural similarity and is subdivided and crosscut by other axes of
17 Thecategory “Séeréer” also commonly includes even more distinct groups around Cees who speak the
Cangin languages. They currently identify themselves as Séeréer, although grouping them together with
Séeréer speakers resulted from a confusion akin to grouping Native Americans and South Asians together
as “Indians.”
58
social and cultural belonging at least as salient as ethnicity.
If there is anything distinctive about the greater Wolof speech community, it is not a
“thick” identity or set of shared cultural practices but an openness to absorbing sedentary
migrants—something Mamadou Diouf has called a “cosmopolitan tendency” (2000:689).
To identify oneself credibly as “Wolof,” it is typically sufficient to speak Wolof as a first
language and, generally, to have a sedentary lifestyle (although some who meet these cri-
teria opt to identify themselves with other ethnic groups).18 At a certain level, Wolofiza-
tion can be understood as a voluntary strategy geared toward forming alliances with
members of a large speech community. Immigrants to predominantly Wolof-speaking ar-
eas may either establish separate speech communities (Bambara, Malinke, Séeréer, Haal-
Pulaar, etc.) or become part of the Wolof speech community. Some villages have indeed
remained linguistically distinct, but most immigrants to the area have taken on the Wolof
language and ethnic identity, even if they maintain some degree of social distinctiveness.
Wolof’s hegemony as the language of agrarian settlement is apparent in the fact that
Tukulóor (sedentary Pulaar speakers from the Senegal River Valley) who settled in the
area Wolofized while sharing villages with Saalum’s many Pulaar-speaking pastoralists.
“Wolof” in Saalum, then, corresponds not to a socio-cultural group but to an open-ended,
sedentary speech community.
In the larger scheme, Njolofeen can be said to have have elected the Njolofeen iden-
tity as some of their ancestors elected the broader identity “Wolof.” They had a choice
between assimilating into the Saalum-Saalum population and setting themselves apart as
a distinct group. Yet some identities are more easily accepted and widely known than
others, and for various reasons “Njolofeen” has had much more limited currency than
“Wolof.” The category “Njolofeen” is most commonly used among Njolofeen themselves
18 This is particularly the case in Dakar, where many young people identify with their parents’ ethnic
identity yet speak Wolof as a first language.
59
and those who deal with them regularly, for whom the distinction is most meaningful.
When they arrived in the western part of the Saalum kingdom, the Njolofeen found a
culturally diverse and predominantly non-Muslim population ruled by the Gelwaar dy-
nasty, a non-Muslim matrilineage of Séeréer speakers of Mande (present-day Guinea) an-
cestry (Venema 1978; Klein 1968). To the north and west, around the lower Saalum River
and its delta and up to the area around Saalum’s capital of Kawon, lived Séeréer speaking
agriculturalists. Semi-nomadic, Pulaar speaking Fulbe pastoralists lived throughout the
region, often establishing themselves near agricultural villages to exchange meat, milk,
and livestock for agricultural produce.
To the south and east were several distinct groups of Wolof speaking agriculturalists.
In the Lagem area south of Kaolack, around Kër Majabel, were villages of Siñi-Siñi, Wolof-
speaking Muslims who, like the Njolofeen, had recently immigrated from the Siñi area of
Jolof and formed a closely integrated community. Unlike the Njolofeen, they were Mus-
lim but not typically Islamic specialists. Eastern Saalum, in the Ndukkumaan area around
present-day Kafrin, was dominated by Wolof-speakers who considered themselves Wolof
by heritage. To the southeast, around Medina Sabax, were Saalum-Saalum of various
backgrounds, many of whose ancestors were Wolofized Mande speakers from the south
and east. Most Saalum-Saalum were non-Muslim at the time, but among them were sev-
eral Islamic clerical families of Malian origin, notably the Siise and Ture families, who
had been expelled from Jolof during the sixteenth century (Venema 1978). Some other
Saalum-Saalum do not trace their ancestry outside Saalum and do not consider them-
selves “Wolofized.” Saalum-Saalum are often contrasted to the Njolofeen and Siñi-Siñi
as the “original” inhabitants of Saalum, although they are internally diverse and do not
form a single, tightly integrated community as do the Njolofeen and Siñi-Siñi.
Lefilliâtre’s (1904) census reflects the ethnic makeup of Siin and Saalum at the turn of
60
Ethnic group Siin Western Saalum Eastern Saalum Rip (S. Saalum) Total
Séeréer 62,560 13,860 170 76,590
Fulbe 3,744 7,099 3,834 4,246 18,923
Tukulóor 455 547 1,911 2,889 5,802
Mandinko 139 3,552 1,297 354 5,342
Wolof 12,322 16,969 12,924 42,215
Saraxulle 80 80
Lawbe 40 35 75
Bàmbara 43 43
Jóola 25 25
Table 2.1: Ethnic makeup of Siin and Saalum according to Lefilliâtre (1904).
the century (see Table 2.1), three decades after the jihad (see Chapter 3). The proportion
of Wolof and Tukulóor reported in Western Saalum are probably somewhat higher in this
report than they had been when the Njolofeen arrived, as many came from the north
during the time of the jihads. To the west, Siin was clearly dominated by Séeréer. Moving
south and east, Séeréer become less numerous and Wolof more numerous. Thus, Wolof
and Séeréer are nearly equal in number in Western Saalum, next to Siin, but Séeréer are
nearly absent from southern Rip (now considered part of Saalum) and Eastern Saalum.
With long roots in Islam, the Njolofeen contrasted sharply in religion and culture
with most inhabitants of their new home. Many Njolofeen claimed a millennium-long
genealogy of Muslim ancestors tracing beyond Jolof to the Tukulóor (Pulaar-speaking
61
agropastoralists) of the Senegal River Valley, and some claimed descendance from the
Prophet or other Arabs. This sharp contrast surely reinforced their solidarity and sense
of distinction, and they soon became closely allied with several Wolof-speaking Islamic
clerical families already established in Saalum, especially the Siise, Ture, and Ba families,
all of whom also trace roots outside Saalum. Their identity as defenders of Islam and
their solidarity with other Muslim families solidified especially during the movement
led by Màbba Jaxu Ba to establish an Islamic state (see Chapter 3). This revolutionary
movement led not only to the conversion of nearly all of Saalum’s population but also to
a new model of authority organized around S.ūfı̄ muqaddams. Njolofeen and several other
Islamic families emerged as the vanguard in the field of religious authority.
According to my informants, Njolofeen have founded around thirty-five Njolofeen
villages. Most of these villages are in western Saalum, along with one to the west in Siin,
one to the north in Bawol, three in Jolof itself, one further south in the Gambia. Based on
interviews, I have enumerated 22 such villages and 2 neighborhoods in Kaolack.19 Most
villages founded by Njolofeen are found in a corridor stretching south from Kaolack to
the Gambian border consisting of the areas of Lagem and Waalo (see map on page xvii).
Directly south of Kaolack is Lagem, historically been dominated by Séeréer speakers. It
was in 1929 in Kóosi Mbittéyeen, a Njolofeen village in Lagem, that Baay Ñas first an-
nounced that he was the bringer of the Fayd.ah, the flood of Islamic knowledge awaited by
Tijāniyys since the order’s founder predicted it in the late nineteenth century (see Chapter
19 Through several interviews (most helpful of which were interviews with Xalifa Caam of Medina Mbàbba
and Baabakar Aadama Caam of Sanc Caameen), I have assembled the following list of Njolofeen villages and
neighborhoods, totaling 24. In the Waalo sub-region of Saalum (formerly considered part of Rip): Caameen
Waalo, Mbittéyeen Waalo, Tayba Ñaseen, ÑaNeen Waalo, Sanc Caameen (originally called Medina Caameen,
commonly called Caameen Sanc), Kër Maa Kànji, Njóobeen Waalo, Ñaseen Waalo, Njóobeen Sanc, Njóobeen
Kër Ammat Majigéen, Medina Mbay Fay, Kër Abibu Ñas, Kër Ammat Rasta Ñas, Kër Ammat Roqiya, and
Kolma Joor-Joor. In the Lagem sub-region of Saalum, directly south of Kaolack: Daaru Mbittéyeen, Tayba
Mbittéyeen (also called Mbittéyeen Abdu), Kóosi Mbittéyeen (also called Kóosi Baay Ñas because the Fayd.ah
began there), and Kóosi Caameen. In the city of Kaolack: the neighborhoods of Medina Baay and Lewna
Ñaseen. To the west in Siin: Caameen Taatagin. To the north in Bawol: Caameen Kër Allaaji Moor Caam. In
Gambia: Caameen Kër Baay Daam. To the north in Jolof: Jaaga, Medina Ñaseen, Daabi Ngama.
62
4. Between Lagem and the Gambian border is Waalo,20 a small area of southern Saalum
where around half of Njolofeen villages are concentrated. Waalo was formerly under the
control of the chiefdom of Rip (Badibu in Maninakakan) but is now considered part of
Saalum. It includes at least fifteen Njolofeen villages, including the first Njolofeen village
established in Saalum, Mbittéyeen Waalo (also called Mbittéyeen Bàpp),21 and Baay Ñas’s
birthplace, Tayba Ñaseen. Most Njolofeen villages were established by families who had
settled temporarily in Mbittéyeen Waalo toward the end of the jihad and had left over the
next several decades.
Although Njolofeen villages are predominantly mono-caste and mono-ethnic, all are
located near the villages of other groups with whom they interact routinely. For example,
most are adjacent to Fulbe pastoralist villages, with whom the Njolofeen exchange their
money and agricultural produce for meat, milk, livestock, and farm labor. In Mbittéyeen
Waalo, the oldest Njolofeen village and the one where I spent the most time, elders say
a nomadic Fulbe approached the Njolofeen four days after the village had been founded
and requested permission for his people to settle there. They asked him who had led
him to the village, and he told them God had shown it to him numerous times in a
dream. Such narratives suggest that Njolofeen tend to see Fulbe as a natural complement
to their communities. Despite minor conflicts over land and water reported in some
villages, Njolofeen-Fulbe relations have generally been complementary, as opposed to
Bawol, where Murid settlers justified expelling large numbers of Fulbe herders on the
basis that the land would be better used in agriculture (Copans 1980). Lagem is much
more culturally diverse than Waalo, with a strong presence of Séeréer speakers, who
20 This“Waalo” is not to be confused with the northern region of the same name in the St-Louis area. The
word waalo means “floodplain” in Wolof and could be applied to a number of places, although this region
must have been named after some other area, perhaps by migrants from the north, because it does not match
its Wolof definition.
21 Bàpp is one of the species of large wild fig found in the area, and the village’s nickname comes from a
large bàpp tree formerly found there.
63
dominated the area when the Njolofeen arrived, as well as Siñi-Siñi and some Wolofized
Mandinko. Some Njolofeen villages in the area, such as Kóosi Mbittéyeen, were founded
by Njolofeen who had attempted to settle in Séeréer villages but left due to religious
tensions. Njolofeen have typically had more tense relationships with Séeréer speakers
and Saalum-Saalum Wolof than with Fulbe, who have not vied with them for influence
over the area.
2.3 Njolofeen distinction
Like most other sedentary groups in Saalum, Njolofeen’s primary occupation and means
of subsistence is farming peanuts, millet, and corn, and many have long been involved
in commerce as well. Additionally, a relatively high proportion of Njolofeen practice
one or more religious specializations, which many of them combine with other forms of
work, especially farming. Njolofeen distinguish themselves in several ways, among them
a strong orientation toward religious education and practice, a strong tendency toward
endogamy related to their disputed caste status, and a long history of disengagement
from secular authority in comparison with some of the other leading religious families in
Senegal.
Perhaps more than anything else, Njolofeen identity is tied to a long history of pre-
serving, practicing, and promoting Islam. Their support for the nineteenth-century Is-
lamic revolution and their subsequent emergence as leaders of the Islamic community
are central to their self understanding and their reputation among their neighbors. This
orientation toward Islam works in two directions. Njolofeen foster a cosmopolitan ten-
dency of openness to diverse people through Islam, and people of diverse backgrounds
come to their villages and schools to pursue religious knowledge. At the same time,
their religious zeal and rejection of behaviors and cultural practices they see as un-Is-
lamic sometimes sets them apart from and even at odds with many of their more recently
64
Islamized neighbors. Many Njolofeen claim recent ancestors from among the Toorodo22
(the clerical class) of the Senegal River Valley, where Islam has been practiced for nearly
a millenium,23 and many claim Arab and even Prophetic ancestry, further separating
themselves socially from recently Islamized neighbors.
What sets Njolofeen apart from many of their neighbors is not merely being Muslims—
they have always lived in areas with a significant Muslim population—but the fact that
they have long been governed at the local level by Islamic holy men. Most Njolofeen vil-
lages are described as having been founded by one or more Islamic scholar-leaders who
decided to set up an intentional religious community and a school with their families
and followers. Although not all these founders were specialists in Islamic law, they had
studied a certain level of Islamic law and aimed to govern according to Islamic principles.
Most of their village names are composed of two names, of which one is the collective
name of the founding family, and the other of which is in many cases a religious name.
Village chiefdom is passed through the senior members of the village founder’s family,
preferably but not always his direct descendants, much in the same way that succession
(khilāfah) works among the larger S.ūfı̄ community.24 As descendants of the founding
religious leaders, chiefs today are often religious specialists of some kind, and some are
educated in Arabic, although many today are occult specialists but are not educated in
Arabic. The Njolofeen are similar in this way to O Idawc ali clerics who have formed com-
munities around clerics based on a combination of lineage and discipleship. Although
22 The Toorodo (plural: Toorodbe) clerics overthrew the Deñanke dynasty and established one of the first
Islamic regimes during the late eighteenth century.

23 Al-Bakriyy,an Arab traveller, reported that the king of Takrūr (from which the inhabitants’ ethnonym,
Tukulóor, derives) converted along with his people during the eleventh century.
24 In every case I know, the village chief has been a member of the founding family, whose name is usually
reflected in the name of the village. When the Cubb family wanted to install one of their own as chief of
Mbittéyeen Waalo, Baay Ñas is said to have pronounced that the Mbittéyeen are chiefs of this village, and
that a Cubbeen should go to the village of Cubbeen to be chief. Yet the conception of family is quite broad,
and it sometimes suffices to be of one of the founding families with the same last name as the founder even
if no direct relationship is known.
65
most Njolofeen are not themselves religious specialists, all study the QurO ān and certain
members of each extended Njolofeen family are designated as its religious specialists and
continue to advanced studies.
An important difference between Njolofeen and many of their neighbors is that Njolofeen
villages do not comprise multiple distinct, endogamous groups but instead comprise al-
most exclusively people related through multiple cognatic and agnatic ties. Outsiders
therefore can assume that all Njolofeen share the same caste status. The fact that all
Njolofeen families intermarry defines them as sharing a caste status. Njolofeen villages
do not exclude non-Njolofeen, but the non-Njolofeen who have opted to join them, in-
cluding a handful of non-Njolofeen griots and blacksmiths, constitute only a very small
and somewhat marginal part of a village’s inhabitants. Their griots tend to be Saalum-
Saalum or Séeréer and often live in other villages, although some immigrated from Jolof
around the same time as the Njolofeen.25 Caste uniformity complements their Islamic
orientation well: village activities are limited mostly to the complementary activities of
religious practice and agriculture. In many Senegalese Islamic groups, especially among
the Murids (see Copans 1980; Cruise O’Brien 1971; Coulon 1981), agriculture is a de-
votional activity and has explicitly religious meanings, whereas other castes’ activities
are seen at best as indifferent to Islam (such as smithing and other artisanal activities)
or at worst anti-Islamic (such as the singing and dancing of griots). In Njolofeen areas,
the youth’s nocturnal entertainment consists of religious chant meetings rather than the
loud sabar dances and ndàgga variety shows staged by griots in Saalum-Saalum villages.
Signs posted at the entrances to Medina Baay and Tayba Ñaseen prohibit loud music,
drumming, and smoking, and similar standards are applied in other villages.
25 We interviewed one griot in Medina Baay who told us his ancestors came from Jolof during the nine-
teenth century. Moreover, he claimed to be a descendant of the Jolof king Alburi Njaay through a man who
became a griot through a search for knowledge.
66
As opposed to their northern counterparts in the Wolof-speaking areas of Bawol, Jolof,
Kajoor, and Waalo, the Njolofeen have generally opted to disengage from the colonial
and post-colonial governments, and only since the 1980s have they begun to establish a
visible presence in Dakar. This disengagement has accompanied a broader Taalibe Baay
disengagement and marginalization in Dakar compared to the more urbanized Murid
and Laayeen orders and the Tiiwaawan branch of the Tijāniyyah. Njolofeen and Taalibe
Baay more generally have only recently begun to participate in government and national
media after concerted efforts to raise their public profile.
Many Njolofeen families had been allied by marriage and had been part of the same
tight-knit Islamic community for generations before their migration to Saalum, intermar-
rying and taking part in he same religious schools. Today, older Njolofeen often speak
of a “Njolofeen family.” Although I have no statistical data, numerous interviews with
Njolofeen and their neighbors suggest that, comparatively, Njolofeen have a very high
degree of internal cohesion and endogamy. I knew a number of people in Medina of
mixed Séeréer and Haal-Pulaar ancestry, but I knew relatively few, aside from the chil-
dren of prominent religious leaders, who were children of Njolofeen and someone of
another group. The genealogies that I collected along with members of the Research
Committee, consistently telling of marriages among the same families, suggest that this
endogamy and cohesion existed before the Njolofeen came to Saalum. As a result, nearly
all Njolofeen are somehow related to nearly all other Njolofeen through blood or mar-
riage, and a Njolofeen who wants to marry a non-Njolofeen may encounter family op-
position. Nearly everyone admits that Islam abolishes enforced endogamy, yet there is
still a wide perception that marrying outside the “Njolofeen family,” just like marrying
someone of another caste, might result in practical problems.
A common saying throughout Senegal holds that a man’s paternal cross cousin (his
67
father’ sister’s daughter) is his preferred marriage partner, and men jokingly refer to their
female cross-cousins as their wives (the same cross-cousins are also called their “slaves”
[jaam]). This ideal is not generally upheld among Njolofeen men, who prefer and are
much more likely to marry a paternal parallel cousin, especially as a first wife. Subse-
quent wives may also be paternal parallel cousins or may be cross cousins, some other
relation, or non-kin, but there is a marked tendency to choose close paternal relatives.
Women throughout Senegal retain their maiden surnames, so a man’s wives may all have
different last names, although the first wife most often shares his surname. This strong
tendency to marry close paternal kin sets Njolofeen apart from many of their neighbors,
aside from Fulbe, and may suggest an Arab influence. Non-Njolofeen clerical families,
such as the Siise family, seem to show similar tendencies.
2.4 Endogamy and the question of caste
Endogamy Abdoulaye-Bara Diop (1981) considers the incidence of endogamy to be the
primary index of a caste’s social distinctness, and he considers the rate of hypergamy
and hypogamy to be the primary indexes of a caste’s relative social status. For example,
the various occupational groups included in the ñeeño category, whose tolerance for in-
termarriage between them is relatively high, are less socially distinct from one another
than any of them is from the géer, with whom intermarriage is highly unlikely. When
Diop encountered occasional marriages between géer and ñeeño, the husband was almost
always géer, because a husband’s status accrues to the whole household and is passed on
to children. While I do not understand castes, socio-cultural groups, or schemes of hier-
archy to be as stable and unequivocal as Diop describes them, I agree that the incidence
of endogamy reflects perceptions of social distinctness among various kinds of social and
cultural groups. By this measure, Njolofeen form a highly distinct social group, and the
social distinctness reflected in their endogamous marriage patterns is accompanied by a
68
sense of cultural distinctness.
Njolofeen distinctness and endogamy seem to be less clear today than a generation
or two ago, and a growing number of Njolofeen young people are marrying outside the
Njolofeen “family,” especially among fellow Taalibe Baay. Many young high school stu-
dents are only vaguely if at all aware that they are Njolofeen, and they associate regularly
with non-Njolofeen of the same and opposite sex. Elders also admit that marriage restric-
tions are not justified in Islam, and they often cite the example of Baay Ñas, who married
a number of women of different ethnic groups. Yet despite increasing social contacts with
other groups, when it comes time to marry, young Njolofeen remain much more likely
and to choose a close Njolofeen relative whom both they and their family know well. As
one elder stated, in the past, Njolofeen have married other Njolofeen:
No one went elsewhere [to non-Njolofeen] to take a wife. Your paternal
kin (doomi baay) or your paternal cross-cousin (doomi bàjjan), maternal cross-
cousin (doomi nijaay)—you only marry these people, take them as wife. There’s
no going elsewhere to get a wife, and if you do they’ll tell you you’ve left your
kind (xeet), meaning that you no longer belong in the family (kër). But when
Baay Ñas came, he brought what’s called “démocratie,” or “intégration”: to go
to any country in the world, seek out a wife there, bring her back, and make
her part of the family. He told them that any person is their relative, and
that even in the QurO ān and in Arabic [books of Islam] this is the true word
of God, and no servant of God [person] on earth can deny this. Baay is the
one who brought us that democracy here in Saalum, but people never used to
intermarry anywhere but among their own relatives.26
26 MBHSRC interview conducted by Abdu Salaam Caam, Baay Laay ÑaN, and Sheex Baay Caam.
69
A common claim in Taalibe Baay discourse is that through bringing disciples from all
African countries together, Baay realized the ideals that secular states and Pan-African
movements have failed to accomplish—African unity, democracy, ethnic integration, equal-
ity, and so on. This elder describes enforced endogamy as an aspect of custom (aada) in-
compatible with Islam. By marrying women of many different ethnic backgrounds, Baay
Ñas showed that all people are of the same family. Note that he does not diminish the
importance of marrying within the family but instead describes the family as having ex-
panded to include anyone (although he implicitly refers not to all people but to all Taalibe
Baays). Njolofeen who intermarry with people from other cultural groups tend to marry
fellow Taalibe Baay, and these intercultural marriages are most common among elites
and often involve second wives, after the husband already has a first wife who is related.
Despite widespread discursive acceptance of equality and intercultural solidarity ideals
among Senegalese and Taalibe Baay in particular, most Njolofeen families today, like this
elder’s family, continue the practices of Njolofeen endogamy and social solidarity.
Caste Among the most salient yet sensitive Njolofeen peculiarities is the fact that their
caste status is disputed: Njolofeen claim to be of géer (“free” or “noble”) caste, whereas
many other Senegalese claim them to be of the smith (tëgg) caste. They typically refuse
to marry people of non-géer status and many géer refuse to marry them.
In Senegal and neighboring countries, highly pronounced social distinctions and mar-
riage prohibitions between families historically associated with different occupations re-
main a salient part of life for most Senegalese. Many scholars writing on the area have
thus devoted to the Sudanic “caste system” a prominent place in the introductory sec-
tions of works dealing with broader questions of politics and social change (for exam-
ple, Johnson 1971; Klein 1968; Diop 1981). According to Judith Irvine, “the ideology
of the caste system” in Senegambia relies on “the assumption that an individual’s birth
70
and genealogical background are primary determinants of his character and future be-
havior” (1990:653). Those who describe themselves as “nobles” (géer) therefore rarely
marry “casted people” (ñeeño), a category that includes bards (griots, géwals), blacksmiths,
leatherworkers (uude, and woodcutters.27 To do so would be seen as polluting one’s lin-
eage, and one’s children will be assumed to bear the moral traits of one’s spouse’s caste.
This prohibition on marriage between people of different caste status applies even if
one’s distant ancestors are said to have performed some occupation, regardless of an in-
dividual’s accomplishments or material possessions. In other words, both in theory and,
usually, in practice, caste is a question of “status” independent of “condition” (Meillas-
soux 1991). Although the various narratives recounting the origin of “casted” lineages
show people being downgraded through some cowardice or ignoble act, it is nearly in-
conceivable that a “casted” person could be openly upgraded to a “noble” status. In the
eyes of géer who vigilantly guard the recognition of noble status, the only way to escape
pollution is to demonstrate a lineage that has never been polluted.
While endogamy and ideologies have become somewhat less pronounced in urban
areas such as Dakar, effective marriage prohibitions and avoidance of close contact be-
tween people deemed socially incompatible remain overwhelmingly dominant in rural
areas and small towns, despite widespread discursive agreement that Islam frowns upon
enforced endogamy and ascribed social inequality. Whatever a cosmopolitan Muslim’s
ideology, the visceral, habitual belief in the baseness of a “casted” person’s moral charac-
ter, as well as the more conscious recognition of social pressures beyond one’s personal
control, remain persistent. An individual’s approach to caste is often complex and para-
doxical, combining discursive disavowal of caste inequalities while practically submitting
27 Inmany Wolof-speaking areas, woodcutters were called “seeñ,” although in most areas this category
has largely disappeared, being absorbed into other occupational groups, and Pulaar-speaking woodcutters,
lawbe, have taken their place.
71
oneself to it and even invoking to impugn an opponent’s character.
Despite the rigidity implied by such potent, deeply felt notions of purity and pollu-
tion, several scholars have explored the ways in which endogamous groups in Senegal
are not as hermetically sealed, static, or unambiguously hierarchical as the term “caste”
tends to imply. Several archaeologists have discussed the emergence and differentia-
tion of the occupational groups that have come to be known as “castes,” arguing that
what we now see as static stratification is a snapshot in the rising and falling fortunes
of the various professional groups. For example, Roderick MacIntosh suggests abandon-
ing the term “castes” and speaking instead of “endogamous occupational groups.” He
describes ancient societies in the Niger River Valley as “heterarchical” rather than “hier-
archical” (McIntosh 2005), in that different professional groups maintained reciprocal yet
significantly autonomous relations without one clearly dominating another. Archaeolo-
gist Hamadi Bocoum (personal communication, 1998) also wants to dispense with “caste”
and instead proposes “systems of exclusion and dominance,”28 which are not fixed cat-
egories or hierarchies but agonistic techniques in constant competition. Anthropologists
David Conrad, Barbara Frank, and their collaborators have pointed out the ambiguities
that persist despite what appears to be a fixed identity and status (Conrad and Frank
1995). Tal Tamari (1995; ; 1991) traces the emergence of caste endogamy to the thirteenth
to fifteenth centuries but argues that castes have been repeatedly redefined and reconfig-
ured since then.
These studies show that caste is at best fluid and ambiguous and at worst an incoher-
ent category of little analytical use. What is called “caste” in Senegal does not seem to
stand up to For lack of a suitable alternative term to describe the deep-seated, hegemonic,
and visceral beliefs in the risks of pollution by association, I continue to use “caste” as
28 This phrase recalls the subtitle to Abdoulaye-Bara Diop’s (1981) comprehensive book on Wolof social
structure: La société wolof: Les systèmes d’inégalité et de domination.
72
an adjective describing practices and ideologies of exclusion and prohibition based on
perceived distinctions. As an adjective, “caste” implies stratifying and hierarchizing ten-
dencies without positing the analytical existence of stable strata called “castes” or an
unambiguous hierarchy called a “caste system.” Thus, I speak of the “caste regime” as a
set of hierarchizing practices and beliefs that are hegemonic in many contexts but coexist
with numerous other visceral and ideological schemes of social and moral ordering. I be-
lieve that “caste distinctions” serves better than “occupational distinctions” in describing
contemporary schemes of differentiation where the it is not necessary to have any notion
of an occupation or even to have any social memory of having had ancestors who prac-
ticed an occupation to bear the social stigma ostensibly deriving from that occupation.
However, use of this conventional term to designate a phenomenology of pollution and
distinction does not suggest a broader, cross-cultural analytical category called “caste”
shared with other social contexts.
Indeed, despite the systematic appearance of caste, in practice there is often a slippage
between various occupational categories and between them and other social and cultural
categories. As in English and French before the nineteenth century, Wolof has no word
that unambiguously refers to the concept of “caste” as opposed to other principles of
classification. The word “xeet” can refer to a caste as well as to a cultural group, nation-
ality, and even kinds of trees and animals too.29 Lawbe are often described as a “caste” of
woodcutters among Wolof speakers, although Lawbe are generally Pulaar speakers and
are culturally distinct from their Wolof-speaking patrons. Ñoominka, Séeréer speaking
fishers, are also an occupational group largely seen as culturally distinct from Séeréer-
speaking farmers, although I have heard no one refer to them as ñeeño. The Lebu of the
Cap-Vert peninsula (where Dakar is found) are variably described as an independent eth-
29 Similarly, the Arabic word qabı̄lah, most often translated as “tribe,” in classical Arabic can refer to “kinds”
of birds, trees, and so on.
73
nic group (an identity they tend to use themselves) and simply as Wolof fishers. Njolofeen
mobilize the slippage between different schemes of classification, answering caste distinc-
tion with cultural and religious distinction, and disrupting any fixity between presumably
horizontal categories of cultural belonging and vertical categories of caste status.
Yet in disengaging themselves from the caste regime, Njolofeen have in many ways
come to resemble the caste categories they disavow. To a certain extent, they exemplify the
endogamy, social distinctness, and occupational specialization (they are religious speca-
ialists and farmers) that Dumont ascribes to castes in India (Dumont 1980) Njolofeen
generally insist on marrying either other Njolofeen or, less frequently, non-Njolofeen of
prominent religious or noble families. I have encountered several cases of prominent
Njolofeen refusing to allow their children to marry tëgg, and others said they would op-
pose such a marriage if it came up. Outsiders would probably interpret any such union
as an admission to tëgg status. At the same time, géer from other groups typically do
not marry Njolofeen. Exceptions most often involve the religious elite. Baay Ñas and his
children married children of prominent disciples in Senegal and abroad. In some cases,
these marriages have involved groups traditionally considering Njolofeen to be tëggs. A
well known example is the marriage between Baay Ñas and Mariyaama Njaay, a member
of a leading Kaolack Gelwaar family. According to a member of this Gelwaar family, her
relatives opposed the marriage vehemently, even threatening death, on the grounds that
the Ñaseen were tëgg. Her son, Xalifa Ñas, became Kaolack’s mayor in 2004, suggesting
that this union between the political and religious elite is no longer necessarily a political
liability despite alleged caste differences. Now that many Gelwaar in the area are Taalibe
Baay, it is no longer uncommon to hear of Gelwaar-Ñaseen marriages. Many transcultural
marriages involve Njolofeen and disciples from other countries where Senegambian caste
distinctions are not a factor. Baay Ñas married off many of his daughters to muqaddams
74
from Nigeria, Mauritania, and other West African countries (Kane 1989).
Holding up marriages between Baay Ñas’s family and the families of prominent dis-
ciples or political figures as showing the dissolution of caste and ethnic boundaries does
not reflect the reality of most Njolofeen. Baay Ñas’s saintly status lifts him and his di-
rect descendants above such social constraints in many disciples’ eyes. Significantly, his
disciples believe that his paternal line (the only one counted in determining status) goes
straight back to the Prophet, and unions can be justified on the basis that he is above tëgg
and géer.
Yet despite the exception of the religious elite, perceived caste distinctions have led to
both internally and externally enforced endogamy: Njolofeen refuse to marry tëgg, and
many others refuse to marry Njolofeen. Consequently the Njolofeen function somewhat
like a distinct and localized caste. Are Njolofeen really tëgg? Many non-Njolofeen, in-
cluding some who are devoted disciples of Baay Ñas, insist that they certainly are, while
Njolofeen themselves uniformly insist that they are not, even if some tell me that that
some of their distant ancestors were blacksmiths by trade. Countless times in Dakar and
in other parts of Senegal, upon explaining that my research concerned Baay Ñas and his
disciples, I heard the same refrain that Baay Ñas and most of his disciples (the Njolofeen)
are tëgg. However much the speaker professes respect for Baay Ñas as a holy figure, there
is almost always an undertone of disdain and an implication that Baay Ñas will never be
able to accomplish whatever the speaker’s own leader, blessed with an untarnished ge-
nealogy, can accomplish.
Even Taalibe Baay do not unanimously agree on Njolofeen status. One Séeréer disciple
of Baay who now lives in Medina Baay told me that Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas was reported
to have ordered relatives to get rid of their anvils and to devote themselves instead to
the QurO ān and farming. This informant says he would never voice such a point of view
75
publicly for fear of being called a traitor, and he personally considers caste distinctions to
be meaningless, but he is convinced that strictly speaking, the Ñaseen are of tëgg origin.
Several other non-Njolofeen disciples from the region told me that in their communities
Njolofeen have always been considered unmarriageable because they are considered to
be tëgg.
Yet more commonly, Njolofeen and disciples of Baay Ñas in general insist that this
common belief is a fiction originally invented by Baay Ñas’s enemies who were jealous
to see him succeed and wanted to bring him down. They disagree over who invented
this belief. One of the most common explanations is that the French spread the rumor
because they saw Baay Ñas as a political threat. A Taalibe Baay journalist (himself a Siñi-
Siñi) told me the Séeréer-speaking Gelwaar faction in Kawlax first spread the rumor in the
1950s out of anger that Baay Ñas had taken a wife (Mariyaama Njaay) from among them.
Seesemann adds credence to this claim, arguing from archival documents that French
administrators picked up on the Gelwaar allegation and began to spread it precisely
when Baay Ñas’s influence became a concern for them. Seesemann points out that the
French had documented the Ñaseen on many occasions prior to the 1950s and an never
mentioned any alleged tëgg status (Seesemann 2004). Another theory is that leaders
of other S.ūfı̄ obediences fabricated the allegation because of the distinct possibility that
Baay Ñas might take all their disciples. (In the same breath, they often say that Aamadu
Bàmba’s Mbàkke family is of slave origin, so they are in no position to accuse others
of having low backgrounds.) In short, most disciples of Baay Ñas, especially Njolofeen
themselves, tend to dismiss as vicious libel any implication that Baay Ñas or Njolofeen in
general might have tëgg ancestors.
Most Njolofeen narrate genealogies that lead outside Senegambia and therefore are
not subject to Senegambian caste distinctions. Most accounts only list one or a few gener-
76
ations in Jolof, before which their ancestors are said to have come from Fuuta and before
that from other countries. For example, accounts of Baay Ñas’s genealogy trace Arab de-
scent, and many insist that he is a direct descendent of the Prophet (see Chapter 3). Thus,
Ñaseen and their followers generally say the question of Baay’s caste is irrelevant. (As
they follow the Islamic/Arab practice of tracing descent patrilineally, they do not describe
their descent as part Arab and part Wolof.) Many other Njolofeen families also claim Arab
roots. Many Caameen interviewees agreed that the name Caam derives from the Arabic
“Shām,” the name of the region corresponding roughly with Syria and Lebanon today. A
prominent Cekkeen (that is, someone from the Sekk family), himself an Arabic teacher,
informed me that the Cekkeen are direct descendants of Sı̄bawayhi, the eighth-century
Persian scholar who founded the discipline of nah.w (Arabic semantic grammar) while
living in Bas.rah. My Mbittéyeen interviewees did not tell me of Arab ancestors, instead
describing their ancestors as having come to Fuuta from Mali after having passed through
Ethiopia and Nigeria. They said that in Mali they were known as Dukore (still a common
name in Mali) and in Nigeria as Berete.
Even if one accepts Ñaseen claims to be of Sharı̄f origin and therefore above caste, the
Ñaseen family has intermarried with other Njolofeen families for many generations and,
from the point of view of the Senegalese caste regime, must therefore be considered part
of the same caste. The pervasiveness and apparent longevity of the belief that Njolofeen
are tëgg calls into question claims that these accusations were concocted from scratch
by French colonial officials or other political enemies to limit Baay Ñas’s influence, even
though many clearly oppose him and have doubtless exploited existing popular concep-
tions to this end.
I have no interest in establishing the historical truth of whether or not the Njolofeen
and Baay Ñas are “really” tëgg. While a powerful and deeply ingrained ideology and
77
interpretive category with important effects on social exclusion, caste is not a useful ana-
lytical category and has clearly been much more malleable than essentializing discourses
about it suggest. Considering the constant migrations and reconfigurations in Senegam-
bia’s history, it would be unimaginable that those unquestionably accepted as géer today
have no ancestors who once practiced the casted professions. What I mean to point out
here is that the contested nature of caste status has had its important effects on Njolofeen
distinctiveness. Thus, the relevance of the question of caste to the Njolofeen case is not
that it can or should be settled but that caste perceptions and contestations lead to mul-
tiple kinds of social distinction. I believe that the disputed nature of Njolofeen caste has
contributed significantly to their endogamy, their internal social integration, and their
distinct identity.
Many Njolofeen show paradoxical attitudes toward caste distinctions. On the one
hand, many vehemently defend their noble status rather than openly challenging caste
ideologies, lending credence to these distinctions. At the same time, they explicitly
and yet privately admit that such distinctions are incompatible with the equality of hu-
mankind under God. Several Njolofeen and other interviewees insisted that designations
such as tëgg simply referred to occupations and did not apply to someone who did
not follow that occupation. Baabakar Caam, a well known Ñoominka30 muqaddam and
chanter, told us “tëgg is not a lineage (askan)—they’re just people who have mastered
their occupation.”31 One Njolofeen elder and occult specialist (a Mbittéyeen) made a rare
admission that his ancestors practiced blacksmithing for a time but insisted that “it’s just
a job” that they took up at one point and abandoned at another. As he has never learned
blacksmithing but does know a lot about farming, the géer profession, he considers him-
30 Ñoominkaare Séeréer speakers who live primarily from fishing. As someone whose last name is Caam,
many would automatically classify him as a tëgg even though he comes from a fishing family.
31 Interview with Baabakar Caam, Medina Baay, 24 September, 2004. Conducted with Abdu Salaam Caam.
78
self géer. Despite his admissions, he says that if his children wanted to marry a tëgg, he
says that he would oppose vehemently.
I once discussed the issue of caste distinctions with a prominent Arabic teacher and
close relative of Baay Ñas who, as I expected, does not consider the Ñaseen ñeeño
(“casted”). When asked whether he would allow his children to marry a tëgg, he said
he would refuse, not because of any essential impurity as is often said but because of
the dispositions learned from their work. He explained that blacksmiths cannot cultivate
the dispositions necessary to be leaders and public figures. Mimicking the blacksmith’s
work by looking down and imitating someone pounding on metal, he said this down-
ward and myopic outlook becomes the way the blacksmith deals with everything, and
that the blacksmith cannot look up and outward to deal with larger issues and publics.
The cultivator, on the other hand, works out in the open air alongside others and casts
his gaze out over the fields, developing a more outward-looking and social demeanor. As
an egalitarian Muslim, he does not believe in assigning social distinctions by birth, yet
he argued that it is legitimate to make such distinctions based on observable personal-
ity characteristics. In his view what is passed on from generation to generation is not
an automatic status but a lowly disposition and a myopic gaze that persists even when
one has left the work of the blacksmith behind. His distinction of social potentialities
based on occupational-based habitus evoked in my mind Aristotle’s claim that those who
work in private contexts (tutors, artisans) cannot be citizens of the polis because their
spatially confined work and their dependence on an employer’s social mediation leads
them to have a myopic ethos (Aristotle 1997). This teacher’s defense of Baay Ñas and
the Njolofeen as world religious leaders rested not on an outright renunciation of a set of
social categories but on the disavowal of a particular category for themselves.
The Njolofeen elder I discussed above who admitted having tëgg ancestors explained
79
that more recently his ancestors are religious people (sëriñ) and farmers. He explained
that there is no real difference between people of different castes, as we are all children
of Adam and all distinctions are “folly,”32 a fact I would know if I had undergone tar-
biyyah. When I told him that my neighbors who live on the edge of Medina Baay insist
that Njolofeen are tëgg and therefore unmarriageable, he replied that these people are
crazy. How then, I asked, does he justify his vehement refusal to allow his children to
marry people of tëgg or other castes? Because he is crazy too, he replied. He relented,
however, saying that in fact one of his sons had married a tëgg woman in spite of his
initial opposition and they had not had any problems.
This elder explained his deeply held belief in the radical equality of humankind and
his simultaneous pragmatic acceptance of “crazy” social distinctions in terms of z.āhir and
bāt.in. It would be simplistic to claim that, by asserting their identity as géer, Njolofeen
naively buy into the ideology of caste distinctions that they explicitly admit contradict
the equality of humankind under God. This elder surely does not represent all Njolofeen,
many of whom would accuse him of breaking ranks and arming their adversaries by
admitting any tëgg ancestors. Yet his selective engagement with the question of caste
mirrors a more general Taalibe Baay approach to engaging with the dominant political
order: they pay it sufficient lip service to keep it at arm’s length while quietly holding a
view that negates and undermines it. The bāt.in truth does not depend on us proclaiming
it openly and in direct opposition to the contingent, z.āhir truth. Rather, it prevails in its
slow, sure way. Rather than attacking the situation head-on, Njolofeen advocate a truth
that they believe will ultimately negate the situation of its own accord.
32 It
is interesting that he described the z.āhir view as folly and the bāt.in view as sanity, whereas disciples
often describe the reverse when speaking of tarbiyyah.
80
2.5 Conclusion
Njolofeen simultaneous disengagement from and pragmatic acceptance of the caste re-
gime exemplifies a much broader tendency to accommodate yet disengage from their
political, social, and cultural milieu in order to cultivate autonomous spaces governed by
religious knowledge and authority. The following chapter discusses how they have sought
to found villages in locations where they can be independent of the secular chiefs of the
area and have sometimes struggled to maintain their autonomy. In Chapter 4, we will
see how this pattern has continued in the contemporary Taalibe Baay movement despite
some leaders’ efforts to reinvent the movement as a more publicly engaged organization.
81
Chapter 3
The Njolofeen in the Shadow of

Revolution
3.1 Islamic revolution and S.ūfı̄ authority in Saalum and Western Sudan
Scholars examining Senegalese state-Islam relationships have typically taken the Murid
order to represent the ideal type of quasi-political Islamic authority that articulates with
state power. Indeed, the Murid order is the most centralized and the most politically and
economically powerful of Senegalese Islamic groups despite its minority status. It also
has a powerful cultural effect on the other orders. A strong sense of comparison and
competition with the Murid order leads disciples of other leaders to define their relation-
ship to their leader and community of disciples much as Murids do. Yet this focus on
the more conspicuous forms of engagement between Islam and the state has led scholars
to neglect aspects of Islamic authority and practice outside the view of political engage-
ment. Islamic and state authority sometimes appear coextensive, sometimes at odds, and
sometimes in an uneasy truce. Robinson’s (2000b) conception of “accommodation” aptly
characterizes the stance Njolofeen and Taalibe Baay have generally taken. Their narra-
tives often suggest a profound ambivalence toward and subjective distance from state
ideologies and institutions. They engage with the state through the mediation of certain
delegates who speak the state’s language and can therefore negotiate with state actors,
yet beyond these delegates, many Njolofeen understand the state primarily as something
82
Joseph Hill Chapter 3. The Njolofeen in the Shadow of Revolution
foreign and distant from their experience in their religious community.
Although Njolofeen’s relationships with outsiders is significantly conditioned by the
ambiguity surrounding their caste status, far more central to their own self-conceptions
is their long history of orientation to Islam. The Njolofeen’s ancestors immigrated to Saa-
lum during the second half of the nineteenth century, a time of profound political and
religious change in Senegambia and the Western Sudan more broadly. Western Sene-
gambia comprised a number of politically independent Wolof and Séeréer kingdoms that
were coming under strong French influence (Klein 1968; Colvin 1974; Robinson 2000b).
Five centuries ago, most of these ethnically diverse kingdoms had been united under the
Jolof empire, which received tribute from the Wolof-speaking rulers of Waalo, Kajoor,
and Bawol; the Séeréer-speaking rulers of Siin and Saalum to the southwest; the Pulaar-
speaking rulers of Fuuta Tooro and Dimaar in the north; and the Mande-speaking rulers
of Ñaani and Wuli in the Gambia River Valley (Boulègue 1987). From the sixteenth cen-
tury onwards, Atlantic trade routes had eclipsed inland Saharan trade routes and power
shifted to the coast. As former coastal tributaries such as Kajoor and Waalo became more
commercially important, they asserted their independence, and Jolof lost its political and
economic hold on the region (Boulègue 1987).
Islam’s presence had grown gradually throughout the Senegambian region since Islam
was adopted in the Senegal River Valley during the eleventh century.1 Defining what
percentage of the population was Muslim at the time is not straightforward, not only for
lack of data but because there was a continuum between strictly practicing Muslims and
those who opposed it outright. A European observer in 1818 noted that Muslims were
a minority in Jolof, and Muslims seemed to consider themselves to be living in a pagan
1 Arab traveler Al-Bakriyy reported that the Takrūr king War Jabi and his people converted during the
eleventh century (Levtzion 1985; Hiskett 1994).
83
state (Charles 1975).2 Colvin (1974) argues that as long as there have been Wolof states,
Wolof have been Muslim, and that the term “pagan” (ceddo) was used to impugn an
enemy’s orthodoxy and not to designate clear non-Muslims. Indeed, many had adopted
certain Muslim discourses and practices and used QurO ānic amulets without observing
the pillars of Islam.3 In any case, Islam seems to have been far less established in Bawol
and Saalum than it was to the north and west in Waalo, Jolof, and Kajoor.
Although advanced Islamic learning was not widespread, a handful of clerical fami-
lies had well known schools, especially in Kajoor and Jolof, and some members of these
families studied in Mauritania and maintained close relationships with Mauritanian re-
ligious specialists. Most of these families, even those who spoke Wolof, originated in
the Senegal River Valley or in Mali where Islamic scholarly traditions had longer roots.
Wherever one chooses to draw the line between Muslims and non-Muslims, a significant
cultural gap separated the majority from the small minority who aspired to an ortho-
dox form of Islam. Islam only saw mass conversions and became a banner for political
and social reform in Senegambia during the mid-nineteenth century (Klein 1968; Charles
1975; Hiskett 1994), during the death throes of increasingly tyrannical chiefly rule and the
onset of European imperialism and colonialism.
Between the mid-nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Is-
lam grew from a minority religion to a nearly universal religion in Senegambia’s interior
and asserted itself as the primary axis of social and political organization (Coulon 1981).
A number of jihad movements attempted with varying success to establish Islamic gov-
ernments. Most of these movements were multi-ethnic, yet nearly all leaders of major
2 Charles quotes Gaspard Mollien thus: “The country of Bourb Joloffs contains Pagans than Mahometans.”
3 As evidence that the Kajoor king was Muslim, Colvin cites Islamic discourses invoked by the king
against jihadists. In my view, such statements do demonstrate that Islamic discourses were widely perceived
as morally legitimate, yet invoking such discourses when speaking to an Islamic leader says nothing about
the daily practices and religious identity of those who invoke such discourses in other contexts.
84
jihads spanning from Senegal to Nigeria were clerics of Haal-Pulaar (Pulaar speaking)4
origin. During the late eighteenth century, jihads swept Fuuta Jallon (now in Guinea) and
then Fuuta Tooro in the Senegal River Valley (Coulon 1981). The Haal-Pulaar Qādiriyy
shaykh Usmaan dan Fodio in Northern Nigeria had provided an early model for Islamic
revolution in the Sokoto Caliphate, which he consolidated by 1812 (Hiskett 1973). An-
other Qādiriyy shaykh, Amadu Lobbo Bari, followed the Sokoto model and launched
a jihad against pagan Bambara and Fulani, consolidating a centralized Islamic state in
Maasina by the mid-nineteenth century (Hiskett 1994). These jihad movements, originat-
ing in agricultural villages of the interior, aimed both to bring non-Muslims into Islam
by persuasion and force (as in parts of Fuuta Jallon and southern Mali) and to establish
an Islamic government in a place where Islam was already well established (as in Fuuta
Tooro, which was Islamized since the eleventh century).
During the second half of the nineteenth century, when secular chiefdoms reached
a low-point in legitimacy and French imperialism encroached on the region’s political
autonomy, Tijāniyy clerics led far more ambitious jihad movements than Senegambia
had ever seen. According to Klein (1972), secular rulers grew increasingly distant to
their subjects, for example, depending heavily on raiding for slaves to trade for horses
and ammunition and making increasingly unrealistic demands on peasants and fishers.
Two major Tijāniyy jihad leaders—Al-H c

. ājj Umar Taal and Màbba Jaxu Ba—established
large yet short-lived inland empires just as the French were reinventing their role from a
coastal commercial presence to a direct political government over the interior. Although
the movements did not arise as a direct response to the French, they ended up confronting
the French militarily, both directly and through proxies, and the jihad leaders’s succes-
sors ultimately had to accept French domination and the circumscribed roles the French
4 Haal-Pulaar go by numerous names from Senegal to Ethiopia, including Fulbe, Fulani, and Pël.
85
administration was willing to grant them.
Al-H c
. ājj Umar Taal spent several years in Sokoto and was appointed a Tijāniyy mu-
qaddam in Mauritania before leaving his native Fuuta Tooro (in the Senegal River Valley)
to unite much of what is now eastern Senegal, Guinea, and southern Mali into a large
Islamic empire (Robinson 1985). Perhaps as important as Al-H c

. ājj Umar’s political im-
pact through building a vast empire was his role in introducing the Tijāniyyah S.ūfı̄ order
to sub-Saharan Africa and in producing texts still recognized as authoritative among
Tijāniyys around the world.5 Lacking social capital themselves, secular chiefs were forced
to ally themselves with either or both of the two growing forces of the day—militarily
and financially powerful French imperialism and popularly powerful jihad leaders (Klein
1968).
The Islamic states established by Allaaji c Umar Taal and Màbba Jaxu Ba did not long
outlive their leaders, both of whom died in battle (al-H c

. ājj Umar in 1864 [Robinson 1985],
Màbba Jaxu in 1867 [Klein 1968]). Internal divisions divided and weakened both states,
and their successors were compelled to submit to the French colonial government, being
treated under the French as indirect rulers—a job that the French reluctantly conferred
and that Islamic revolutionaries reluctantly accepted.
Yet the Islamic revolution’s most profound transformations concerned not political
sovereignty but reorienting everyday social relations and practices around Islam and S.ūfı̄
orders: S.ūfı̄ authority became the primary axis of social organization throughout Sene-
gambia’s interior, and the day and year became oriented around the Islamic ritual sched-
ule and Islamic education. Although the French continued to sign treaties with secular
chiefs, these chiefs had already lost their political relevance outside their own small com-
5 Al-Hājj c Umar Taal’s book Kitāb Rimāh. H

. . izb ar-Rah.ı̄m is considered central enough to the global
Tijāniyyah that it is usually published in the same volume as the foundational Tijāniyy book Jawāhir al-
Mac ānı̄ by Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy’s closest disciple, c Aliyy al-H
. arāzim. Editions of this double feature
have been published in Egypt and Morocco.
86
munities. Even these chiefs joined the larger population in submitting to Islamic leaders
as disciples.
Yet ironically, moral authority and legitimacy after the jihads was concentrated neither
in the hands of the French nor in the hands of Muslim theocratic rulers but in the hands
of S.ūfı̄ leaders who cultivated spaces of quasi-political, religious authority outside the
political sphere. All these Islamic leaders had played some role in the same revolutionary
movement, yet after the armed struggle was over, the jihad leaders were established as
indirect rulers while others took little interest in seeking political power. Màbba Jaxu’s
successors became so consumed by the military and political aspects of their campaign
that they ended up ruling much like those they had displaced and did not retain much
social capital. Rather than rally around these heirs of the jihad, most Senegambian Mus-
lims gave their allegiance to several saints, all very close contemporaries and most from
Wolofized Haal-Pulaar clerical families. These saints included Allaaji Maalig Si (1855–
1922),6 who established his Islamic center in Tiwaawan; Aamadu Bàmba Mbàkke (known
as Sëriñ Tuubaa, c. 1850–1927), who established the holy city of Tuubaa (although the
French kept him under close supervision in Jurbel); and Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas (1840–
1922), who established the Islamic center of Lewna Ñaseen in the city of Kaolack.7 The
family of Al-H c
. ājj Umar Taal also maintained influence among some Haal-Pulaar com-
munities, especially in the Senegal River Valley and the east, but did not form a major,
unified community. Màbba Jaxu’s son Sayeer8 Mati’s insistence on continuing the jihad
alienated some of his closest followers and led the French to drive him permanently to
6 The biographer c Uthmān Njaay (2004:15) says that estimates of his birth date range from 1847 to 1875,
but that the most credible is February 25, 1855, the day the French governor first attacked the ceddo. Si died
on July 27, 1922 (c Uthmān Njaay ibn Sëriñ Baabakar Njaay 2004:15).
7 Another saint, Mahdi Limaamu Laay, is usually numbered with these leaders, but his case is different,
as he was not a scholar or a cleric like the others but a charismatic leader who had never studied. He was
the founder of the Laayeen order, dominant among the Lebu fishers of Cap Vert (the Dakar Region).
8 His name is pronounced “Seet” in Saalum, where many people pronounce final rs as t.
87
Gambia (Klein 1968).
The idea of communities organized around Islamic holy men was not novel. For ex-
ample, Njolofeen and other Islamic communities led by Islamic clerics enjoyed relative
autonomy under the secular states. What was novel—and continues to be particularly
Senegalese—was the large-scale, voluntary organization around S.ūfı̄ saints, who became
de facto rulers over large numbers of people across a large geographical area despite nei-
ther holding nor seeking political sovereignty. These leaders’ seemingly unlimited pop-
ular influence initially alarmed colonial officials, who attempted to marginalize Islamic
leaders, imprisoning and exiling several of them. Colonial officials exiled Aamadu Bàmba
to Gabon and then to Mauritania, but this only enhanced his heroic stature. Both colonial
officials and Islamic leaders soon realized the impossibility of defeating each other. The
French realized that it would be impossible to reach the people without working with
Islamic leaders who represented them and had their trust. Some Islamic leaders, such
as the Mauritanian Qādiriyy Shaykh Sı̄diyā Bāba9 and c Umar Taal’s grandson Seydu Nu-
uru Taal, actively worked with the French to convince Muslims that resisting the French
would be suicide and therefore forbidden by Islam (Robinson 2000b). The two sides
therefore negotiated a mutually reinforcing relationship whereby the colonial state ruled
with the mediation of Islamic leaders. Rule through officially a-political Islamic leaders,
while resembling indirect rule, was distinct from the rule through the pacified revolution-
ary leaders, who were officially recognized as chiefs. This coexistence of a secular state
and powerful and relatively centralized Islamic authority that mediates state power has
been identified as a particularly Senegalese model of governance and Islamic authority
9 Robinson (2000b:179) quotes a widely circulated 1903 fatwah by Sı̄diyā Bāba in which he tells his fellow
Muslims: “It is evident that the obligation [to wage] holy war disappears in the face of the inability to
accomplish it. . . . The inability of this land [of Muslims] to fight against the force of the Christians is
obvious. . . . [There is also no obligation] to emigrate . . . from the territory conquered by the ‘infidel. . . .
”’ On the contrary, he insisted, the French would promote freedom of religion and overcome strife, thus
allowing Islam to flourish.
88
(Villalon 1995; Behrman 1970).
Scholars have rightly seen the model of governance that emerges from Islamic S.ūfı̄
orders’ engagement with the secular state as a challenge to the notion of the secular na-
tion state. As Villalon (1995) argues, the viability of the secular Senegalese state relies on
the mediation of religious authority, which engages with the secular state and represents
disciples’ and leaders’ interests. In a place where authority is defined as fundamentally
religious, political actors’ legitimacy depends on performances of submission to and ne-
gotiation with religious authority. State actors’ submission to religious authority calls
into question the notion that sovereignty resides in the state and suggests what Hansen
and Stepputat (2005) have called “informal sovereignties. Scholars emphasizing the polit-
ical engagement between S.ūfı̄ orders and the state have emphasized one side of informal
Islamic sovereignty—religious leaders’ participation in political negotiations and politi-
cal leaders’ demonstrations of loyalty to religious leaders—yet a significant part of what
might be called informal Islamic authority occurs in contexts intentionally disengaged
from the nation-state. Religious engagement with state authority is selective and directly
involves primarily religious delegates well versed in the language and performances of
the state. Often, this engagement can be better understood as part of a larger strategy
of disengagement. Engagement is the pragmatic recognition of an unavoidable state of
affairs—something that many S.ūfı̄s call z.āhir, whereas autonomous and uncompromised
religious practice is bāt.in. Addressing z.āhir realities, as I discuss in Chapter 5, is generally
a precondition of moving to the more valorized bāt.in. Njolofeen have interacted with
state power and national secular culture, yet these interactions can often be understood
as pragmatic attempts to achieve the ultimate goal of autonomy.
David Robinson (2000b) characterizes the relationship between Islam and state power
as one of “accommodation” whereby Islamic authority engages with the state selectively
89
and pragmatically, without ideological commitment to the state’s secular principles. The
history of Njolofeen engagement with state power, from their interaction with Jolof and
Saalum chiefs to the heirs of Màbba Jaxu’s theocracy to the French and post-colonial gov-
ernments, has overwhelmingly been one of pragmatic, strategic engagement specifically
geared toward constructing and preserving spheres of religious knowledge and authority
disengaged from and irreducible to state politics. This tendency toward superficial en-
gagement and more profound disengagement has permeated Njolofeen history and has
continued to characterize the Taalibe Baay movement in Senegal.
Many of my interviews with Njolofeen elders drifted toward the subject of Njolofeen
migration from Jolof during the time of Islamic revolution in Saalum. Their migration,
their role in the jihad, and the emergence of villages dedicated to agriculture and Islamic
education were all stories that profoundly informed their self-understanding as Njolofeen
and as Muslims. This chapter is primarily a composite narrative of how my Njolofeen
informants understand their history, without attempting to write a synthetic or objective
history of the region. I sometimes attempt to situate events in a chronological timeline to
clarify the general time frame, but this is intended to be more of a story than a history.
The story has many themes, but perhaps above all, Njolofeen stories illustrate a desire
to cultivate an autonomous community based on Islamic knowledge and authority. This
has sometimes required drawing near forms of knowledge and authority they consider
fundamentally inimical to their own in an effort to preserve that autonomy.
3.2 Disengagement and Islamic spheres of authority: Njolofeen migration and villages
Multiple factors led the Njolofeen to leave Jolof and to establish themselves in Saalum.
Although widespread droughts and gradual desertification in Jolof doubtless influenced
many people’s decisions, my interviewees most often stated the reasons in religious and
political terms. More specifically, oral accounts show the first Njolofeen migrants leaving
90
to avoid a confrontation with the Buurba Jolof (the king of Jolof), Bàkkantam Xadi Njaay,
while later Njolofeen came in response to Màbba Jaxu’s letter to Muslims throughout
Senegal calling them to join him in preparing for holy war, and French observers (see
below) described them as leaving in response to famine. It seems that they were attracted
by the possibility of living under a regime in which they would not be subject to rule by
non-Muslim chiefs. The first Njolofeen are said to have immigrated to Saalum shortly
before or during the time Màbba Jaxu returned from Jolof to Saalum to take over his
father’s school and thus acted independently of his call to jihad, which he sent out nearly
two decades later. The jihad began in 1861 and tapered off after Màbba’s death in 1867,
although Màbba’s son Sayeer Mati attempted to keep it alive until 1880 (Klein 1968).
Toward the end, however, Sayeer Mati was more preoccupied with maintaining control
and keeping his former allies in check than in spreading Islam. During the jihad period,
most Njolofeen settled together in the first Njolofeen village, Mbittéyeen Waalo, founded
by Mbay Galo Bittéy near the Gambian border. After the French treaty in 1880, heads
of several family groups went off to found their own villages, most of them in Waalo
and Lagem. These villages dedicated themselves to farming, Islamic teaching, and S.ūfı̄
activities. The Njolofeen chiefs were family patriarchs and, for the most part, occult
specialists and QurO ān teachers.
At the time of migration, there were no Tijāniyy muqaddams in Senegambia aside from
Al-H c c
. ājj Umar Taal, but shortly before the jihad, Al-H
. ājj Umar appointed Màbba Jaxu
and one Njolofeen cleric, Baabakar (Mbay Galo) Bittéy as Tijāniyy muqaddams. Following
the jihad, around 1875, the Njolofeen cleric Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas was also appointed as
muqaddam in the order.10 Njolofeen played a prominent role in the jihads but held no
positions of political power higher than the village level after the Islamic regime came
10 Klein 1968:223. (Look for other sources.)
91
to power. Instead, their prominent leaders established their reputations as teachers and
holy men, and people voluntarily associated themselves with them without any political
structure. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, two muqaddams gained a large
following in Saalum: Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas and Allaaji Aali Laamo Bittéy, the son of
Mbay Galo Bittéy. The latter’s following was mostly limited to Njolofeen, whereas Allaaji
Abdulaay Ñas had disciples among the Saalum-Saalum, Siñi-Siñi, and other groups.
3.2.1 Early migrations: Mbittéyeen Waalo
Njolofeen interviewees in several Waalo villages agreed that the first Njolofeen village
was founded by the farmer and Islamic cleric Mbay Galo Bittéy and those allied with him.
My informants in Mbittéyeen Waalo told me this emigration occurred soon after 1800, but
they also say it was near the same time that Màbba Jaxu Ba returned to Saalum, which
seems to have been in the 1840s.11 Oral accounts describe the people who accompanied
Mbay Galo as disciples (taalibe), although neither he nor anyone else in the area had yet
become a Tijāniyy muqaddam, so the designation “disciple” could only refer to his social
functions as senior representative of the lineage, QurO ān teacher, and occult specialist.
Mbay Galo came from a long line of QurO ān teachers, and his descendants still have a
copy of the QurO ān they say was penned by Mbay Galo’s great grandfather.
My interviewees agree that Mbay Galo and his followers left Jolof due to tension
between the Buurba Jolof (king of Jolof) and Mbay Galo’s Muslim community.12 Some
describe the tension in religious terms, saying that the pagan king wanted to prevent
them from practicing their religion, and they were no match for the king militarily. One
interviewee said they did what any good Muslim does under such circumstances and
11 Martin Klein says that Umar Taal met with Màbba Jaxu in Kabaakoto around 1850, which was several
years after he returned to the area.

12 Several interviewees, including Mbay Jée Bittéy, village head of Mbittéyeen Waalo, name the king as
Bàkkantam Xadi, who according to Charles (1975) was not enthroned until 1959. If they came during his
reign, this would suggest the Njolofeen came well after Màbba Jaxu and did.
92
left.13 Others describe the problem as a conflict of interest: the king summoned Mbay
Galo and his followers to help him with a raiding expedition, which Mbay Galo normally
could not refuse. But this time he refused, saying they were at a critical moment in the
rainy season and would not abandon their crops. Warned of the king’s certain punitive
raid and powerless to defend themselves, Mbay Galo and his allies left. Both accounts
may reflect more or less immediate causes of emigration, as secular chiefs were becoming
increasingly uneasy with clerics’ increasing popular legitimacy. Early twentieth-century
colonial archives say the Ñaseen emigrated due to “a great local famine” (Archives Na-
tionales du Sénégal nd).
Each of the founding Njolofeen families negotiated with people they found in Saalum
to stay in their villages, often spending several years living under other chiefs before
settling in their own village under an Islamic leader. Mbay Jée Bittéy, current chief of
Mbittéyeen Waalo, says that Mbay Galo Bittéy was born in Mbëllëxe Jolof and went off to
found Aynu Maal,14 also in Jolof, before migrating with his followers to Coofog15 (now on
the northern edge of Kaolack) during the rainy season to avoid attack by the king. When
they arrived, they told the Séeréer chiefs of Coofog, the Mbóojeen (the Mbóoj family), that
they were headed to Gambia and needed a place to rest and scout out a more permanent
location. Mbay Jée says the people of Coofog lent them land on which they grew manioc,
watermelon, and beans, arriving too late in the rainy season to farm grains.
During his temporary stop in Coofog, Mbay Galo made arrangements for a more
permanent place to stay, speaking with a Fulbe chief in Gambia, Saa Jongoma16 who gave
13 Interview with Baabakar Caam of Caameen Taatagin, in Mbittéyeen Waalo, 15 July, 2004.
14 This village is named after Shaykh O Ahmad Tijāniyy’s birthplace, c Ayn Mādı̄, in Algeria, suggesting that
. .
Mbay Galo was already a Tijāniyy. After he left, he left the village to Maqari Buuso, a relative of Aamadu
Bàmba, who renamed the village Mbàkke Baari, its current name.
15 This name is sometimes spelled Thiofoke or Thiofate.
16 This village is called Kër Paate today. According to Mbay Jée, “Saa Jongoma” was both the name of the
93
him permission to settle there. Mbay Galo brought his people and founded a village
next to that village, calling it Mbittéyeen Saa Jongoma. After seven years there, Mbay
Galo founded Mbittéyeen Waalo. Bittéy says no one else lived near the area at the time,
although the Njolofeen gave Fulbe permission to settle next to the village soon after they
arrived.
Through the jihad period, other families allied with Mbay Galo left Jolof, many of
them establishing themselves in Mbay Galo’s village of Mbittéyeen Waalo during the
hostilities. Among those who joined Mbay Galo in Mbittéyeen Waalo were two Ñaseen
families whose genealogical relationship is unknown: the families of Saa Bunaax Ñas (a
contraction of Sàmba Bunaax) and Ammat17 (Muh.ammad) Ñas. Accompanying Ammat
Ñas was his son, the young Abdulaay Ñas. The Ñaseen first stopped in the Saalum-
Saalum village of Kër Yoro Xoja to the southeast. Mustafaa Géy, along with colonial
documents (Archives Nationales du Sénégal nd), says the Ñas family probably came from
the village of Béeli, whereas most of my oral informants said they came from Mbëllëxe
like Mbay Galo.18 Klein (1968) and Kane (1992) say the elder Ñas came to Saalum in 1865.
Whereas most accounts say the Allaaji Abdulaay accompanied his father, Kane says he
came three years after his father, in 1868, after Màbba Jaxu’s death, and that he therefore
fought alongside Sayeer Mati Ba and not Màbba Jaxu. Many local accounts insist they
came earlier and that Allaaji Abdulaay fought in Màbba Jaxu’s jihad and refused to fight
alongside Sayeer Mati, recognizing that resisting the French was futile.19
chief and the name of the village at the time.

17 “Ammat” is often used as an abbreviation of Muh.amad, whereas “Aamadu” is a Wolofized pronciation
of O Ah.mad.
18 Mustafaa Géy, the orator whose account of the Ñas family history is most well known, says they came
from Béeli, although most of my interviewees in Saalum villages said he came from Mbëllëxe. Some say
Béeli was a separate village near Mbëllëxe, while others say Béeli is the region in which Mbëllëxe is found.
19 An elder interviewed in Kóosi supports this.
94
Màbba Jaxu came in the 1840s from Jolof to Pawos Dimba, which he later renamed
Ñooro20 after Al-H c

. ājj Umar’s capital. This would become the capital of his Islamic em-
pire, after which the French would make it the major sub-regional administrative center
for the area south of Kaolack. Màbba dedicated himself quietly to farming and teaching
for the better part of two decades before launching the holy war. Màbba Jaxu Ba was
not a Njolofeen but was born in southern Saalum (Rip) to a family of Deñanke, the Haal-
Pulaar group that ruled Fuuta Tooro before being deposed during the late eighteenth
century by the Toorodo clerics, who established an Islamic state there (Robinson 1985).
Màbba Jaxu studied in Kajoor and subsequently taught for several years in Jolof, proba-
bly during the 1830s, and became acquainted with the other prominent Muslim leaders
there. These included the Njolofeen scholars Mbay Galo Bittéy, Ammat Ñas, Ibrayima
Caam (known as Sëriñ Kéllël), and Maa Sàmba Caam. After his father’s death, Màbba
Jaxu was called back to take over his father’s school in Saalum. He devoted himself to
teaching in Pawos Dimba before founding his own village near the Gambian border, Kër
Màbba Jaxu,21 building a reputation as a scholar and holy man and building the alliances
he would need to lead the holy war. As tensions and violent incidents between Muslims
(referred to during the conflict as sëriñs) and the non-Muslim ruling class (referred to as
ceddo) increased, Màbba Jaxu prepared for a revolutionary jihad and issued a call to all
Muslims to help overthrow the “ceddo.” Venema (1978:34) cites an event conspicuously
absent from my oral sources: an irreparable rupture between Màbba Jaxu and Saalum’s
secular rulers occurred when Màbba Jaxu guided British troops on a punitive expedi-
tion against the Saalum king after British traders complained of his tyranny, and Màbba
took refuge in Bathurst (now Banjul). An oral source22 did mention Màbba’s stay in Ban-
20 Mbay Jée Bittéy says the name Ñooro derives from “Nūru ’Llāh,” or “light of God.”
21 Kër means “house (of)” and is one of the most common forms of village names.
22 Mbay Jée Bittéy.
95
jul, saying that while he was there he procured the gunpowder he would need for his
holy war. Many Njolofeen families cite this call to jihad as the immediate cause of their
ancestors’ migration to Saalum.
At one point, the kings of Kajoor and Jolof, Lat Joor Jóob and Alburi Njaay, submitted
themselves voluntarily to Màbba Jaxu and joined forces with him, successfully uniting
most of Western Senegal for a brief period against the French and the pagan rulers.
Màbba’s state extended briefly northward to Jolof until Màbba Jaxu was killed in battle
against the king of the coastal Séeréer state of Siin in 1867. The movement split into
those who believed the jihad was finished and those who insisted on resisting the French
(Klein 1968). His son, Sayeer Mati Ba (pronounced “Seet” in Saalum), represented the
latter group and even fought against his own lieutenants when they refused to continue
with him, yet he was eventually pushed permanently across the Gambian border. Those
who had participated in the struggle had to content themselves that ceddo rule was over
and that they might hope to practice their religion without interference under French
rule. The French continued to give the former secular rulers governing roles in their own
communities but, while wary of the Islamic faction’s power, appointed relatives of Màbba
Jaxu as chiefs in Ñooro, the revolutionary capital. The struggle between these three poles
of power continued long after France officially controlled and officially “pacified” the
interior, and the faultlines between them are still visible.
The French retained the Séeréer chiefs in Siin and in the Séeréer-dominated areas
north of the Saalum River, and in Màbba Jaxu Ba’s capital of Ñooro to the south, they
governed through the more cooperative members of Màbba Jaxu’s family after expelling
his more militant son Sayeer Mati. After 1889, Manjaay Ba, Màbba Jaxu’s grandson (the
son of Sayeer Mati), was installed as “Elimaan” (Imam) of Ñooro (Archives Nationales
du Sénégal nd). On the surface, this was a theocratic appointment bearing a religious
96
title and resulting from the successful Islamic revolution, yet it did not conform to the
model of Islamic authority the Islamic revolutionaries had fought for. To many former
allies, the Imam under indirect French rule was little different from the secular chiefs
they had deposed, and Njolofeen accounts refer to him not as an Imam but as a “king”
(buur). Manjaay Ba went to great pains to follow the letter of the French law while setting
himself up as a quasi-independent chief, subtly driving a wedge between his subjects and
the French (Klein 1968:152–153). His popular legitimacy was fragile, and the Njolofeen
carried on their activities without much heed to local or colonial officials.
3.2.2 Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas and Tayba Ñaseen
Ñaseen genealogical accounts often (but not always) portray them as descendants of the
Prophet (sharı̄f, pl.: shurafāO ), quite the opposite of the blacksmith (tëgg) status assigned
them by many others. Taalibe Baay accounts, apparently relying entirely on Baay Ñas’s
writings, say a Tunisian prince named Rid.d.ā the Second,23 came to Senegal and married a
Jolof princess, Jayla Ñas. According to Mustafaa Géy,24 whom many consider the official
Ñaseen historian, Rid.d.ā was a holy man, and Jayla Ñas’s family gave her to him in
marriage after he cured her lame leg, which no one else could cure. But he suddenly
returned to his country shortly before the baby she carried was born. The baby was
named Sàmba Jayla Ñas, its second name coming from the mother’s first name as is
customary in Wolof speaking areas, and its family name coming from her instead of the
father, who as an Arab had no family name. Like many narrators of Taalibe Baay history,
23 Géy names Baay’s ancestors as follows: Al-H c

. ājj Abd Allāh, son of Muh.ammad (who came from Jolof),
son of Mademba, son of Bakkari, son of Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n, son of Sàmba, son of Rid.d.ā the Second, son
of Shams ad-Dı̄n, son of Māyāsı̄n, son of H O
. āmid, son of H. abı̄b Allāh, son of Rid.d.ā the First, son of Ibrāhı̄m,
c c c
son of S.ādiq, son of S.āqurı̄j Mubattud, son of Ta qı̄, son of Makam, son of Uqbat, son of Nāfi , son of Qays,
son of c Aqı̄l. c Uqbat ibn Nāfı̄ was the O Umayyid general who conquered much of North Africa. I know of
no indication that these ancestors have any other source than Baay’s writings, although they have become
standard parts of géwals’ genealogies.
24 From Mustafaa Géy’s speech at the annual Gàmmu Baay in Jëppël, Dakar, 24 April, 2004. Géy says he
gets his genealogy directly from Baay Ñas, who set it forth in Nūr al-H
. aqq, published in Ibadan, Nigeria in
1959. He also draws his conclusions from Baay Ñas’s poetry.
97
Géy holds that the Ñaseen are sharı̄fs, direct descendants of the Prophet, supporting this
claim with lines from Baay Ñas’s poetry in which he calls Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy,
himself a descendant of Muh.ammad, a good ancestor.25
Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas was born sometime around 184526 had come with his father
from Jolof during the jihad and had fought in some of the later battles before being
inducted into the Tijāniyy order around 1875 by a follower of Al-H c

. ājj Umar Taal (Klein
1968:223, (Archives Nationales du Sénégal nd)).27 In 1890,28 he made his first pilgrimage
(h.ajj) and his first trip to Fās, Morocco, where Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy is buried and
where some of the most renowned muqaddam of the order lived. This trip doubtless
increased his renown as a muqaddam of the order, but he did not receive the appointment
of O ijāzah mut.laqah until he returned to Fās nearly two decades later.
Disagreements about Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas’s role in founding Tayba Ñaseen often
reflect deeper disagreements concerning the roles of the various Njolofeen families in the
region’s history. All secular and religious written accounts, as well as public speeches by
leaders associated with Baay Ñas’s family, state uncontroversially that Allaaji Abdulaay
25 In the same Gàmmu Baay speech in Jëppël and in personal communication, Géy quotes two lines of
poetry by Baay that he translates thus: “My father is Al-H c O
. ājj Abd Allāh, and you [Shaykh Ah.mad at-
Tijāniyy] are his heritage. And you are his forefathers and which makes you good forefathers. That is
a luxury for me, Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m, and just saying your name can be a cure.” Seesemann notes another
genealogy given in Nigeria (found in Paden 1973) that claims Baay Ñas to be a sharı̄f but says that “in
Senegal, the leaders and supporters of the Niasse branch content themselves with a claim to a more generic
Arab ancestry for the family” and found that they seemed unaware of the sharı̄fian genealogy given in
Nigeria (2004:91). I found, however, that Mustafaa Géy’s conclusions were widely accepted.
26 Estimates
range from 1840 to 1850. Ousmane Kane (1992) estimates around 1844. A colonial document
(“Les groupements Tidiania derives d’Al Hadj Omar” from ANS G-13-67) says he was born around 1846.
27 Most accounts mention being inducted into the order through receiving the wird and remain silent on
becoming a muqaddam through receiving an O ijāzah. According to the document “Les groupements Tidiania
derives d’Al Hadj Omar” (Archives Nationales du Sénégal nd), Allaaji Abdulaay received the Tijāniyy wird
in 1975 by the Fuutanke Shaykh Mamadu Jàllo in the village of Kër Mamadu Nenne (in Waalo Rip), around
1976. The report says Jàllo received the wird from Cerno Aamadu, son of Buubakar, a lieutenant of Al-H. ājj
c Umar. It is not clear whether this included an appointment as a muqaddam.
28 See Archives Nationales du Sénégal nd.
98
Ñas founded and named Tayba Ñaseen,29 . All oral accounts I heard in Tayba Ñaseen and
other Njolofeen villages agree that Sàmba Bunaax Ñas (Saa Bunaax), a fellow Njolofeen
but not known to be relative of Abdulaay Ñas, preceded Allaaji Abdulaay there. Nearly
all accounts agree, however, that it was only after Allaaji Abdulaay took over as village
chief that it became a viable village.
To this day the Ñaseen in Tayba Ñaseen are said to include two large families: “the
people of Bakkari” (waa Bakkari)30 or descendants Allaaji Abdulaay’s grandfather, Bakk-
ari, and “the people of Njéri” (waa Njéri) or those related to Saa Bunaax. The name njéri
for those related to Saa Bunaax is said to come from a stream near which their people
lived in Jolof. These two clans occupy two roughly separate neighborhoods. Yet because
they share the same name and are therefore considered relatives and both lay claim to
having founded the village in a sense, village chiefs are chosen from both families. Both
families include eminent muqaddams and Arabic scholars.
According to Mbay Jée Bittéy, after the jihad, the French had all parties sign a peace
treaty. Mbay Galo Bittéy called the heads of the Njolofeen families together and told them
they were welcome to remain in Mbittéyeen Waalo but that their security no longer de-
manded that they band together. The first to leave was Ammat Ñas, who went (along with
his son Allaaji Abdulaay and the rest of the Bakkari clan) to found nearby Ñaseen Waalo,
which became the ritual center with a Friday mosque, suggesting that the Njolofeen
early recognized the Ñas family as the foremost spiritual specialists. The heads of the
other families followed suit: Coon ÑaN left and founded ÑaNeen Waalo; MaasuraN Jóob
founded Njóobeen Waalo; Majaañ Géy founded Ngéyeen (now abandoned);31 and Saa
29 Among the many academic works that name Allaaji Abdulaay as founder are Klein (1968). Biographies
written by disciples include Yac qūb O Abū Bakr (2003:27), etc. In speeches and personal communication, Baay
Ñas’s elder sons and the major public speaker Mustafaa Géy tell the same version of events.
30 These are also called “Ñaseen Suuf,” or “Ñaseen of the earth.”
31 The site, now called Gent Ngéyeen (Ngéyeen Ruin) is near Mbittéyeen Waalo and has been cleared
99
Bunaax Ñas founded Tayba Ñaseen with the Njéri clan.32
Later, during the first quarter of the twentieth century, more families left Mbittéyeen,
some of the later ones going north to Lagem. Soon after the turn of the century (some
say 1902, others 1904), Allaaji Aali Laamo Bittéy, a prominent Tijāniyy muqaddam and
probably the only son of Mbay Galo Bittéy, founded Daaru Mbittéyeen. Around the same
time, Maat Biigé Bittéy left with his family and founded Kóosi Mbittéyeen, after staying
for a year in the Séeréer village of Kër Sele and leaving due to tension with the pagan
chief.33 Three clerics, Abdu Jaxate Bittéy (a muqaddam of Allaaji Abdulaay), Mattaar Sekk,
and Ibrayima Caam, founded Tayba Mbittéyeen in 1911.34
According to most oral accounts, the site of Tayba Ñaseen, previously called Urub,
had a large population of jinne (jinn), invisible creatures described in the QurO ān as one
of three types of intelligent being along with humans and angels. Some of the jinne in
the new village were angry that their land was being taken over by humans and they did
everything they could to get rid of the humans. When Saa Bunaax and his companions
came to and from the village, the jinnes would confuse them and get them lost in the
wilderness.35 According to one elder of Mbittéyeen Waalo, the jinne would pass in front
of human inhabitants’ compounds every night and throw stones into their compounds,
yelling “Wake up, Mbunaaxeen! Boo! Mbunaaxeen! Wake up, Mbunaaxeen!”36 Most
for farming. According to Mbay Jée Bittéy, most of the inhabitants went to Daaru Mbittéyeen and Kóosi
Mbittéyeen in Lagem.
32 Mbay Jée Bittéy insists that Saa Bunaax not only founded the village but named it; others say he founded
it but that it retained the name of Urub until Allaaji Abdulaay named it; and others say he did not found it
at all or even that he never existed or was a jinne (views that his descendants contest).
33 MBHSRC interview with Omar Bittéy of Kóosi Mbittéyeen, by Abdulaay ÑaN and Abdu Salaam Caam,
2004.
34 Interview with Mustafaa Caam, Arabic teacher in Tayba Mbittéyeen (Mbittéyeen Abdu), 2004.
35 Interview with Aas Maxmuut Ñas in Medina Baay.
36 “Mbunaaxeen yeewuleen! Mbunaaxeen jirrr! Mbunaaxeen yeewuleen!” Mbunaaxeen is the nominal form
of relation derived from “Sàmba Bunaax” and refers to the family and associates of Saa Bunaax Ñas.
100
troubling of all (and this is the most consistent element of the narratives), when Saa
Bunaax and his followers attempted to dig a well, the jinne caused it to implode, so
the few early inhabitants who could stay under such conditions had to carry all their
water from Mbittéyeen Waalo. Some describe this as a one-time event, and others say it
happened repeatedly over the course of a year.
Saa Bunaax and his companions did not last long—some say only a few days and
others say a year—before returning to Mbittéyeen Waalo until they could solve the prob-
lem. Many say that Saa Bunaax himself was quite an expert at dealing with jinne (some
even say he had a jinne wife) but that the situation was beyond his skills.37 There are dif-
ferent accounts of what happened next. Most accounts show Saa Bunaax asking Allaaji
Abdulaay Ñas, whose fame as a religious leader was quickly spreading through the area,
to fix the problem. In exchange, Saa Bunaax would make Allaaji Abdulaay the village
head. According to Ibra Ñas, a muqaddam and relative of Saa Bunaax interviewed in
Tayba Ñaseen:
At this point the story has some disagreements. That is, Tayba Ñaseen here
was a wilderness called Urub which was full of jinne. The first ones to settle
here were a man named Saa Bunaax Ñas, also called Maam Sàmba—he was
the first to settle here—and Maam Lamin Mëti [Ñas], the father of my father.
. . . After they finished clearing the land and were preparing to set up [their
compounds], they set about digging a well. As they finished digging, the well
37 One companion of Baay Ñas who accompanied Baay Ñas in the original exodus from Lewna Ñaseen
to Medina Baay in 1930 insisted to me that Saa Bunaax was not a person but the leader of the jinnes and
that Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas had not found any people in Tayba Ñaseen. A son of Baay Ñas told me that Saa
Bunaax simply did not exist and that Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas simply founded Tayba Ñaseen without finding
anyone there. According to one companion of Baay Ñas in Medina Baay, Saa Bunaax was simply a great
master of jinnes and could socialize with them as he could socialize with humans, to the point where he
had a jinne wife. I found few who agreed that he had a jinne wife, especially his descendents. But most
accept that he was a skilled worker with jinnes. That he was fictional or even a jinne himself are views
sometimes asserted by those who emphasize the historical importance of Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, although a
large number of inhabitants of Tayba Ñaseen trace their ancestry back to Saa Bunaax and his relatives said
to have accompanied him to found Tayba.
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began to collapse. . . . They soon returned to Mbittéyeen [Waalo], the parent
village. He told Maam Allaaji Abdulaay: I give my village to you—only you
can make it habitable [dëkkal]. At the time Maam Allaaji Abdulaay [Ñas] was
living in Ñaseen [Waalo], where the Friday mosque was.
This account agrees with most accounts in crediting Allaaji Abdulaay with solving the
problem at Saa Bunaax’s request, yet the account from one Mbittéyeen elder primarily
credits Mbay Galo Bittéy’s skills with jinne. He says the three holy men (Mbay Galo, Saa
Bunaax, and Allaaji Abdulaay) pooled their knowledge, and that Allaaji Abdulaay did
not actually move into Tayba until three years after the problem had already been solved.
When I asked whether the jinnes were expelled, he answered that they are more numerous
now than ever and were not expelled but converted with the help of amulets (téere, gàllaaj)
and potions (saafara).38 Considering that the Mbittéyeen had been prominent clerics and
were overshadowed when Allaaji Abdulaay’s and then Baay Ñas’s fame spread, it is not
surprising that such accounts attempt to revive the memory of the religious knowledge
possessed by other families.
Most, but not all narratives of the history of Tayba Ñaseen take for granted that the
problems were caused by jinne. Two elders we interviewed in Tayba Ñaseen, both of the
Mbunaaxeen family (Saa Bunaax’s relatives), said that the problems attributed to jinne
could have had natural causes. One said that a minor earthquake could have caused the
well to implode, and the other attributed the problems to ceddo who still opposed the Is-
lamic faction. These accounts void the need to determine which ancestor was responsible
for solving the problem.
Regardless of whether Allaaji Abdulaay solved the problem of the well, an event
normally given as a charter for why Saa Bunaax gave up leadership of the village to
38 Interview on 5 December, 2004 in Mbittéyeen Waalo.
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Allaaji Abdulaay, Saa Bunaax certainly saw Allaaji Abdulaay’s fame as a potential boon
to a languishing village. The village soon became a center of religious education, and
Allaaji Abdulaay received offerings (hadiyyah) from the many disciples who came to visit.
Ibra Ñas continues:
Now, in Ñaseen, where the Friday mosque was, the soil wasn’t good for farm-
ing, so when they farmed they wouldn’t gain much. So Maam Allaaji consid-
ered it, and they cleared him some fields in Tayba. As they worked the fields
here, they soon built some huts, so that when the rain came they could come
live in the huts and devote themselves to farming up until time for Friday
prayer, when they would go back to Ñaseen to offer Friday prayer, and after
Friday prayer, they would return to the fields and work. In that period, after
3 years, that was when Baay Ñas was born. . . . When he was born there, they
put him in a large calebash 39 and carried him to Ñaseen [Waalo] to ngénte
[ceremonially name, one week after birth] him there. After naming him, they
came back to the fields. This was only a few days before the problems with
Ñooro started, when they burned the Friday mosque, they burned the dàggas
[millet granary], spoiled, and gathered up the wealth and carried it off. That
was when it happened.
This suggests that Allaaji Abdulaay came to Tayba around 1897 or 1898, staying only
three years, as Baay Ñas is said to have been on November 8, 1900.40 Some say Allaaji
Abdulaay came much earlier. Ousmane Kane (1992) says that Allaaji Abdulaay founded
Tayba thirty years earlier in 1868 and continued to fight in the jihads alongside Sayeer
Mati Ba until the treaties were signed in 1880. A French colonial document (Archives
39 Wolof: téng-téng.
40 See the following chapter on the competing dates given for Baay Ñas’s birth.
103
Nationales du Sénégal nd) implies that he founded it around 1884, saying he stayed there
six years before going on pilgrimage in 1890.
Since the problems are said to have happened “only a few days” after this, the impli-
cation is that Allaaji Abdulaay left Tayba near the end of 1900 or the beginning of 1901.41
The problems described here, according to the same account, started when Allaaji Abdu-
laay invited the “king” (buur) of Ñooro (Imam Manjaay Ba, son of Sayeer Mati Ba)42 to
visit and gave him a royal reception. Allaaji Abdulaay produced a most luxurious meal
served in a special wooden recipient of exquisite craftsmanship commissioned for the oc-
casion. The king was so amazed with the elaborateness of the reception that he was filled
with jealousy. Allaaji Abdulaay could tell that all was not right and when the guests left,
he sent two men to follow them, telling them to hide in the tall grass at the side of the
road ahead of them and to listen to their guests’ conversation. The two men went and
listened:
They heard the man [the king] say: This man, he owns the country! He’s the
king here, and I’m nothing! They may say my name [call me king], but this
man owns the country, laayila!43 Now his heart was filled with envy, and the
[two] men came back and told Maam Allaaji.
The spies told Allaaji Abdulaay that if he stayed the night there, he would be siezed.
Allaaji Abdulaay immediately left with some of his close disciples and family members to
preserve his own safety and to avoid conflicts with the people of Manjaay Ba, but left the
bulk of the disciples in Tayba. (Although it is often said that the village was burned, this
implies that many compounds were still standing and that many people stayed.) When
41 The French account (Archives Nationales du Sénégal nd) puts these events in 1896.
42 This
account refers to the chief of Ñooro as “Abdu Ba” but certainly refers to Manjaay Ba, the Imam at
Ñooro whom the French treated as chief of the area.
43 Abbreviation of Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh, used here as an expression of astonishment.
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some disciples proposed to stay in and take care of Allaaji Abdulaay’s hut, he insisted
that only a relative would stay there, and it was decided that Ammat Mëti Ñas (the father
of the narrator) would stay there44 . As soon as Allaaji Abdulaay left, as noted above,
the men of Manjaay Ba came to Ñaseen Waalo and burned the Friday mosque, then they
came to Tayba and burned much of the village, including the millet granaries. When
they came to burn Allaaji Abdulaay’s compound, Ammat Mëti pled “for the sake of God
and the Prophet" to leave the hut. They asked him his name and learned that he was a
Ñaseen, and they asked him how they were related, and he answered that he was just
Allaaji Abdulaay’s taalibe and only studied with him, and they left the hut. According to
the same account:
Still, the men kept wandering around the village, and whenever they saw a
goat they took it—whatever they saw, they would take it. That’s what they
did here. It so happened that Maam Allaaji Abdulaay had given my father
a saafara (potion) and had told him: when you’ve sat until the middle of
the night, go up on the crown of the hut45 and apply it there. When he did
that, applying the saafara in the middle of the night, the men heard someone
bathing but couldn’t see him—they could hear someone bathing but couldn’t
see him. At that point all the soldiers left and went home. But when they
went home, everything they had taken here, and everyone who went off with
them, died: the goats, the people, and everything else they took here, it all
44 How he is related to Maam Allaaji Abdulaay is not clear: he is of the not-clearly-related Mbunaaxeen
family, but as usual, being a fellow Ñaseen suffices to establish a relation. To ask two people of the same
surname if they are related is generally considered a non-sense question in Senegal—the appropriate question
would be how they are related.
45 Crown of the hut: puj, a bundle of grass at the top of the hut where the layers of thatch are tied together.
During a pitch-dark night, this is one of the few places where it would be impossible to see someone because
it would be too high for the light of any fire to project. Still, it is difficult to imagine someone applying a
saafara in such a place without supernatural help.
105
died. That was how Maam Allaaji Abdulaay dealt with them.
According to the same account, Allaaji Abdulaay moved 16 kilometers from Tayba
and across the Gambian border to the village of Kër Sàmba while Ammat Mëti Ñas
oversaw the work in the fields back in Tayba. At the end of nearly every day during the
cultivating season (nawet), Ammat Mëti would walk to Kër Sàmba to consult with Allaaji
Abdulaay or “even if only to find out how Maam Allaaji Abdulaay’s day had been.” After
the harvest, Ammat Mëti would go to Kër Sàmba to live with Allaaji Abdulaay. Thus,
according to this account, Allaaji Abdulaay maintained close relations with his disciples,
the vast majority of whom did not exile with him, while he was in Gambia.46
After his stay in Kër Sàmba,47 most accounts say that Maam Allaaji Abdulaay did not
return immediately to live in Senegal, as the French were wary of his political clout and
were likely to interfere in his activities. Instead, he made a second visit to Fās (many say
in 1910, while a colonial account, Archives Nationales du Sénégal nd says in 1903). While
in Fās, Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy’s Khalı̄fah, Sukayrij, gave him an O ijāzah mut.laqah, a
higher degree of authority in the order than had previously been available in the region.48
During this visit, muqaddam Ibra Ñas of Tayba Ñaseen says, he received a personal
visit from the departed Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy, who told him to address his wishes to
the Sı̄dı̄ T.ayyib as-Sūfiyāniyy.49 He told the as-Sūtiyāniyy that he had come to Fās with
46 Lefilliâtre’s
1904 census mentions the main Njolofeen villages as being inhabited during this time, in-
cluding Tayba with a population of 170 and Mbittéyeen Waalo with a population of 193.
47 Some sources say Allaaji Abdulaay did not stay in Kër Sàmba during his whole stay in Gambian Bàmbug
but that he went on to other villages, but they do not agree on where he went and some of the stories
concerning this period may be apochryphal.
48 Allaaji Abdulaay received eleven O ijāzahs over the course of his life. He was initiated into the order by
Mamadu Jàllo, a companion of Al-H c
. ājj Umar in 1875 (Kane 1992), when he presumably received his first
O ijāzah. According to Al-Hājj wuld Mishri, other O ijāzahs included one from Sayyid al-c Arabiyy al-Mahabb
. .
in Fās, another from Morocco from Shaykh O Ah.mad Sukayrij, and one from the O Idawc ali shaykh c Abd Allāh
wuld Al-H . ājj (grandfather of Al-H
. ājj wuld Mishri).
49 Anaccount by Imam Hasan Siise, quoted by Professor Gane Samb Lô at http://www.geocities.com/
CollegePark/Housing/8584/faydha2.html says the Shaykh told him to see the Imam of the zāwiyah, “Cheikh
Muhibbi” (probably Sayyid al-c Arabiyy al-Mah.abb mentioned by Al-H
. ājj wuld Mishri).
106
four desires: to receive an unlimited (mut.laqah) O ijāzah; to receive beads from Shaykh
O Ahmad at-Tijāniyy’s rosary; to receive some of the Shaykh’s white hairs; and to have a
.
son who would be the pole of the age (qut.b az-zamān). The Shaykh gave him his first three
wishes and told him that the last was in God’s hands. During the same visit, Sukayrij,
the which leaders in Fās recognized as a sign that he was to be appointed the Shaykh’s
Khalı̄fah for all of Senegal. In his canonical biography, Sëriñ Alliw Siise calls Allaaji
Abdulaay “Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy’ khalı̄fah without a doubt and the bearer of the
.tarı̄qah to the western [African] countries” (in Nyās nd:11). Ñaseen accounts also claim
that Sukayrij instructed Allaaji Abdulaay to give Allaaji Maalig Si his first O ijāzah mut.laqah
(unlimited authorization).50 Allaaji Maalig Si’s followers deny both these claims, which
would imply that Allaaji Maalig is below Allaaji Abdulaay in a spiritual genealogy. Their
lists of O ijāzahs do not list one from Allaaji Abdulaay.51
A crucial result of this visit was that it gave Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas a more direct line
of authority to the Tijāniyyah’s founder than any spiritual lineage he could receive in
Senegal. This new line superseded his O ijāzah through the c Umarian line and therefore
bolstered his claims to independence from all other Senegalese Tijāniyy branches. This
independence was crucial to his ability to establish himself as a major religious figure
with a religious center recognized by Mauritanian and Moroccan shaykhs.
50 Gane Samb Lô (http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Housing/8584/faydha2.html) cites a talk by

Imam Hasan Siise given July 26, 1993 in Kaolack telling how Allaaji Abdulaay presented Sukayrij with a
letter from Allaaji Maalig Si requesting an O ijāzah, to which Sukayrj replied with a letter Allaaji Maalig Si
explaining that Allaaji Abdulaay was instructed to give him an O ijāzah. Ibra Ñas in Tayba Ñaseen tells a
nearly identical story.
51 For example, see c Uthmān Njaay’s (2004:23) biography of Allaaji Maalig Si does not list an O ijāzah from
Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas among the ten that it lists. It says that Allaaji Maalig received his first O ijāzah 37 years
earlier, when he was eighteen years old, and his first O ijāzah mut.laqah two years later from Shaykh Mawlūd
Vāl, the Mauritanian shaykh who inducted Al-H c
. ājj Umar Taal into the order.
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3.2.3 Two religious centers: Lewna Ñaseen and Kóosi Mbittéyeen
Before returning to his family and disciples in Saalum, Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas stopped by
Tiwaawan to visit Allaaji Maalig Si. According to Maahi Ñas (personal communication),
a son of Baay Ñas, Allaaji Abdulaay hesitated to come back to Senegal, as he believed
the French would not give him the autonomy to practice his religion as he wished, and
he seriously considered relocating permanently to Gambia. Allaaji Maalig Si convinced
him to return to where his disciples were, and he wrote a letter to the French administra-
tion vouching that Allaaji Abdulaay was not interested in meddling in political matters.
Maahi Ñas says that Allaaji Maalig reasoned that if he did not come back, Saalum would
be deserted. Despite common perceptions that Allaaji Abdulaay had been awaiting ap-
proval from the French to return, his children say he was loath to return, and a colonial
administrator agrees, saying that he “had received the authorization several years earlier
to return to Senegal” (Archives Nationales du Sénégal nd).
After returning to Saalum, Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas did not live in Tayba Ñaseen. His
strategy up until this point had been to stay as far from political authority as possible,
first establishing himself in a village near the Gambian border and then leaving Senegal
altogether when the French and local quasi-religious authorities would not leave him in
peace. Instead of returning to his remote village, he went straight where he would be
most visible to the French—the trading town of Kaolack, where the French had a military
and administrative presence. Setting himself up in Kaolack was, to use Robinson’s (2000b)
phrase, an “accommodation” designed to put the French at ease, not an expression of his
personal desire. It can be understood as a z.āhir engagement with secular power designed
to facilitate bāt.in disengagement, as he knew his religious autonomy required sacrificing
any claim to political autonomy.
When Allaaji Abdulaay returned from his long stay in Fās in 1910, the French gave
108
him a large stretch of land in a part of Kaolack called Lewna (Léona), which makes up
a large part of Kaolack’s city center today. The part of Lewna that Allaaji Abdulaay and
his disciples settled in is called Lewna Ñaseen. It is often assumed that Allaaji Abdulaay
founded and named Lewna itself (the name means “it is legitimately earned” in Wolof).52
But Lefilliâtre’s (Lefilliâtre 1904) census of the region, written six years before Allaaji Ab-
dulaay came back from exile, describes “Lewna”53 as by far the most populous part of
Kaolack’s suburban area, with a population of 712, and it names its head, Alioune Sow,
as the head of the whole canton of Kaolack and Lagem, suggesting that it was already
considered the chief part of the urban area. Still, Allaaji Abdulaay and his disciples did
indeed build their religious center and homes in a part of Lewna distinct from any pre-
viously settled part of Kaolack, and he was clearly the founder and head of this religious
center.
Until his death in 1922, Allaaji Abdulaay had two religious centers, splitting his year
between Lewna Ñaseen and Kóosi Mbittéyeen, another just south of Kaolack in Lagem.
Thus, although Lewna Ñaseen is considered his capital, Kóosi functioned as the de facto
center during nearly half of each year, when Kóosi became not just an agricultural center
but an educational center and the place where Allaaji Abdulaay received guests. Kaolack
was a compromise in more than one way: it not only limited Allaaji Abdulaay’s political
autonomy but also hemmed him into an infertile parcel of salty, urban land where his
religious activities could no longer be integrated with agriculture. Therefore, during the
dry season, Allaaji Abdulaay dedicated himself to teaching and other religious activities,
and during the rainy season he and many of his relatives and disciples lived in Kóosi.
After his death, Baay Ñas volunteered to keep up his father’s fields in Kóosi.
52 Several interviewees told me this, including a muqaddam of Baay Ñas, Tayyib Ñas.
53 Surprisingly, the spelling used in this report coincides with today’s preferred Wolof spelling and not
with the official French spelling, “Léona.”
109
Lewna Ñaseen remained a predominantly Njolofeen area, and elders still list it as one
of about three dozen Njolofeen settlements. Yet most of Allaaji Abdulaay’s disciples were
probably not Njolofeen. My interviews with Siñi-Siñi and Saalum-Saalum, and Séeréer
Taalibe Baay in the area suggest that many of them, along with a large proportion of
Saalum’s multi-ethnic population, were disciples of Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas. Some of his
most important muqaddams were from these other groups, including the fathers of some
of Baay Ñas’s muqaddams. These include H

. asan Siise the elder (father of Baay’s right-
hand man, Sëriñ Alliw Siise) and his brother Muh.ammad Siise and Allaaji Maxtaar Ture,
father of Baay’s muqaddam Sheex Omar Ture. It was through his father’s muqaddams and
disciples that Baay met his first disciples, some of whom he knew in his childhood.
3.3 Conclusion
The Taalibe Baay movement is a multi-ethnic movement, yet I have limited this discus-
sion primarily to the Njolofeen, a small minority that has played a central role in shaping
the movement. The Njolofeen’s history of overall disengagement from secular political
authority and limited, pragmatic engagement aiming ultimately to protect and extend
disengaged spaces of Islamic authority have conditioned the larger Taalibe Baay move-
ment.
Many Njolofeen describe their ethos of disengagement from state politics and national
culture as a legacy of their ancestors’ disengagement from the Jolof state and later author-
ities in Saalum. They describe themselves as fleeing Jolof when they saw no chance of
salvaging their religious autonomy. They engaged in jihad when secular power was weak
and could be realistically defeated and when they saw the potential for an entirely new
Islamic state that would respect their autonomy. Whenever neither fight nor flight was
possible, they disengaged, cultivating their own spheres of religious authority outside the
state spaces. After the former jihad leaders became entrenched as political rulers, they
110
had little to do with these officially Muslim rulers. Although they perceived colonial poli-
tics as inherently antithetical to their Islamic mission, they accepted at a certain point that
resistance was futile and therefore religiously impermissible. When even disengagement
was impossible, as in the case of Allaaji Abdulaay’s settlement in Lewna Ñaseen next to
colonial officials, their engagement with secular power served as a strategy to maintain
their autonomy. That is, engagement in politics remains a pragmatic recognition of con-
tingent, z.āhir realities, while retreat in religion reflects the deeper, bāt.in desire that one
can only reach by going through the z.āhir.
While engagement is a means to the end of disengagement or autonomy, autonomy
itself is also a means. Njolofeen religious specialists couple the negative project of disen-
gagement with the positive project of cultivating spheres of Islamic knowledge and au-
thority incompatible with secular authority. On the whole, Njolofeen leaders have been
religious specialists who have spent their lives studying and teaching, focusing especially
on the QurO ān and fiqh, the bases of Islamic practice and governance. Hence, political
disengagement is a kind of politics, a surreptitious implementation of Islamic law and
governance in a situation where to define it as law and governance would jeopardize its
very existence.
111
Chapter 4
Man and Metonym: Baay Ñas and his

New Revolution
4.1 Narrating Baay Ñas and his disciples
Scholars writing on Islam in West Africa have long noted the remarkable fact that mil-
lions abroad flocked to Baay Ñas—sometimes against all expectations, as in the case of
the Mauritanian O Idawc ali tribe—while his own compatriots have shunned him. Many
commentators attribute Baay’s alleged lack of popularity to his alleged blacksmith (tëgg)
status (see Chapter 2). Many conclude, relying on hearsay from non-Taalibe Baay, that
those few who have accepted him have overwhelmingly been fellow “casted people”
(ñeeño). The question of why Baay Ñas’s movement failed to become a politically pow-
erful “brotherhood” (confrérie) like the movements of the previous generation’s saints—
particularly, Ahmadu Bàmba Mbàkke, Allaaji Maalig Si, and Limaamu Laay—misses the
mark. The upheaval of the nineteenth century had left a vacuum of moral and political
authority that several men accorded saintly status (most notably Ahmadu Bàmba) had
promptly filled at the turn of the century. As the previous chapter notes, colonial authori-
ties turned these leaders’ profound popular influence to their advantage, dealing directly
with the heads of the major “brotherhoods” to reach the population. The idea of “bro-
therhoods” as coherent corporate groups under a clear hierarchy headed by a khalı̄fah
was largely a colonial invention. It was a strategy to appropriate certain local concepts
112
Joseph Hill Chapter 4. Man and Metonym
of authority to manage unpredictable charisma while reaching the population through
a clear hierarchy. The colonial, politicized notion of brotherhoods has survived nearly
unscathed both in Senegalese government policies toward Islamic leaders and in current
scholarship on Islam in Senegal. This notion has almost completely overshadowed the
notion of S.ūfı̄ shaykhs as religious specialists who head lineages of spiritual knowledge
and authority.
Unlike Senegal’s previous saints, Baay Ñas did not emerge in a landscape where
institutions of governance and moral authority had recently collapsed or where Islamic
leaders offered the hope of resisting imperialism. By the time Baay Ñas announced the
Fayd.ah, most Senegalese Muslims had become firmly attached to one of the major saints,
all of whom had died during the previous decade and been succeeded by their eldest
sons. There was little sign of disaffectedness with current Islamic authorities. As opposed
to Nigeria, where Baay provided a neutral outside banner behind which a number of
internally divided Tijāniyy could unite, most Senegalese Tijāniyys were either happily
united under the families of Allaaji Maalig Si and Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas or were in more
remote parts of Senegal where their independence posed no problem. As opposed to
Mauritania and Nigeria, where leaders brought whole populations of disciples into the
movement, no head of any independent Senegalese Tijāniyy branch became a disciple of
Baay.
The question, therefore, is not why the Fayd.ah failed to become a major “Senegalese
brotherhood” with a large geographical base, a unified hierarchy, and a strong economic
and political presence. This would have been an anachronism after the conjuncture dur-
ing which colonial-Islamic entente divided Senegal’s interior and political labor. The
question, rather, is how this movement has succeeded in steadily permeating Senegal
and beyond, opening multiple and highly localized conjunctures and challenging long-
113
solidified alliances, despite its late arrival, its much smaller initial geographical base, and
its low political and economic profile. Western Saalum provided a critical mass of disci-
ples that continues to form a small Taalibe Baay heartland, yet networks of Taalibe Baay
knowledge and authority have spread in capillary fashion all over Senegal and abroad,
not through emigration but through new adherences. Muqaddams and daayiras are spring-
ing up by the dozen in every neighborhood in Dakar, where the movement was nearly
invisible until the late 1980s. New disciples are overwhelmingly under thirty years old,
as they have been from the beginning of the movement, but they share no class, caste,
ethnic, or previous religious profile.
Disciples’ narratives suggest that the quiet yet rapid growth of the Taalibe Baay move-
ment has much to do with its approach to knowledge, which appeals particularly to
an individual’s personal quest for spiritual fulfillment. Perhaps most importantly, what
draws adherents and lends the movement its dynamic ethos is the promise of knowledge
and personal experience disciples believe not to be available anywhere else. Disciples
become aware—often through friends—of the possibility and importance of attaining Di-
vine Knowledge, and they understand their participation in the movement as part of a
personal quest. The promise of knowledge is sufficiently abstract and malleable to lend
itself to diverse situations, allowing the movement to retain its dynamism across space
and time.
My approach to the growth of this movement points to a conception of charismatic
authority that I discuss in the chapters on religious knowledge but that I will only briefly
mention here. Weber (1978) describes charismatic authority as a configuration of power
that tends to arise at historical conjunctures where more structured forms of authority
break down. A new structured order soon emerges as a status quo can be established,
and charismatic authority is routinized. The Fayd.ah’s growth has not been tied to a
114
particular moment in which the status quo has been disrupted but has become part of
many individuals’ personal religious narratives. Rather than responding to a disrupted
status quo, it actively disrupts the status quo, reminding people that it is possible to go
beyond the status quo and cultivate charismatic knowledge and authority perpetually.
That is, mysticism is not simply an attempt to recover or compensate for lost order but
can be a way of upsetting order and going beyond it. The emphasis on cultivating one’s
own knowledge and mystical experience gives disciples a sense of empowerment and
achievement.
What has kept the Taalibe Baay movement from becoming a major “brotherhood”—
understood as a quasi-political order with a large geographic base and a significant pres-
ence in national politics and economy—like the other principal Senegalese S.ūfı̄ adher-
ences is not its limited appeal to a particular caste or region but that it emerged after
the moment when one could establish a centralized “brotherhood” spreading out to fill
a large geographical zone. Its spread has depended instead on leaping across zones,
appealing to diverse people’s personal desires for self-cultivation and self-fulfillment
through geographically dispersed networks. The longstanding Njolofeen disengagement
from political authority has been compounded by the movement’s exclusion from and
belated entry into the quasi-political field of “brotherhood” authority, as I discuss in Sec-
tion 4.7. Many Taalibe Baay leaders are increasingly aware of the stakes of participating
in the state-sponsored sphere of “national” brotherhoods and have begun fighting their
marginalization. Yet most disciples’ activities remain focused on the personal quest for
mystical knowledge and participation in a community of people who share a similar
quest.
It would be difficult to overestimate Baay Ñas’s importance in Taalibe Baay imagina-
tions and practices of knowledge, authority, and community. This apparent fixation on
115
Baay Ñas must be treated carefully and subtly to avoid the simplistic characterization
of “anthropolatry” common in many treatments of Sufism in West Africa. This chapter,
along with the final two chapters on community, explores various understandings of Baay
Ñas both as a person and as a mystical reality that metonymically becomes the commu-
nity of disciples, an inexorable movement, and a manifestation of Divine Truth. Like
everything, Baay Ñas has a z.āhir being as a person and a bāt.in being, and descriptions of
his attributes, his teachings, and his actions are often self-consciously paradoxical, juxta-
posing references to both kinds of being. It is important to distinguish the z.āhir from the
bāt.in, or at least to recognize the existence of both while not distinguishing too sharply
between the two, as it is not only the tension between the two but also the fuzziness that
can be productive. The history of the Taalibe Baay is also a history of Baay, both his
person and his mystical manifestations through space and time to various disciples.
When they learned that I was conducting research on their movement, most Taalibe
Baay, whether high-placed leaders or rank-and-file disciples, reacted with enthusiasm.
Their immediate response was very often to recommend someone they believed could
tell me a lot about “Baay,” often saying that they themselves were simple disciples and
knew little about Baay. Even members of the Research Committee who had spent months
conducting interviews and surveys invariably introduced me to others as someone who
was researching “Baay.” They would often explain our visit to an interviewee by saying
that they knew that that person knew something about Baay. This puzzled me for some
time, as they knew very well that as an anthropologist I was primarily interested the
daily lives and personal narratives of members of Baay’s movement, not in collecting
facts about Baay himself.
Many disciples have learned a deeply ingrained performative practice of framing
themselves and their activities as dim shadows of Baay Ñas, staking their own legiti-
116
macy on their submission to Baay, through whom Divine knowledge and authority flow.
What an outsider may see as self-abasement is in many cases better understood as a
performance of discipleship. In many cases, invoking Baay is part of a performance of
community (see Chapter 8). To understand what Taalibe Baay mean when they invoke
the name “Baay,” one must understand how this name simultaneously—sometimes am-
biguously and sometimes paradoxically—references both a historical figure—Baay’s z.āhir
being—and a mystical presence—his bāt.in being.
First, current legitimacy depends on a relation to an originary moment, the onset of
the Fayd.ah Tijāniyyah in 1929. Many Tijāniyys had watched for signs of this event since
Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy predicted: “A flood [fayd.ah] will come to my companions
[O as.h.āb] to the point that the people will come into our path [t.arı̄q] in great multitudes.
This fayd.ah will come when people are in the gravest of destitution and hardship.”1
Fayd.ah (equivalent to its more widely used form fayd.)2 in Arabic means an abundance,
overflowing, or inundation, and in Sufism generally refers to an overflowing of divine
grace or experience or, as Seesemann (2000b:6) translates it, “emanation.” In Taalibe Baay
contexts, the term Fayd.ah refers to a flood of Divine Knowledge following this originary
event during which the secrets of Divine Knowledge were made available to all who
sought them. When I asked Maahi Siise, a son of Alliw Siise, what the proper term for
disciples of Baay Ñas was, he answered “the People of the Fayd.ah” (Waa Fayda, O Ahl al-
Fayd.ah”) and said that “Taalibe Baay” is an accurate description as well. On one level, it
is likely that many informants assumed that I had come to the scene of the flood to study
this event and not those living in its shadow. At the same time, placing themselves in its
1 Many authors relate this quote, including Baay Ñas himself (Nyās 2001:86) and Shaykh Hassan Cisse
(1984).
2 The term used in the foundational Tijāniyy text, Jawāhir al-Mac ānı̄ (c Aliyy al-Harāzim, 2002), is fayd, not
. .
fayd.ah, which, as far as I can determine, is a form of the word rarely used outside the context of Baay Ñas
and his disciples. All Arabic sources and dictionaries I have located use the word fayd., which Baay Ñas and
his disciples treat as equivalent to fayd.ah.
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shadow is an act of piety necessary to claim this unique knowledge.
Not only did Baay play the key historical role in ushering in the Fayd.ah, but he con-
tinues to be a mystical presence in disciples’ daily activities. Baay regularly appears in
dreams, and Taalibe Baay public speeches often invoke his mystical presence as a contin-
ued ground of unity. Much of the talk of Baay refers to his bāt.in essence as the “doorway”
(bunt) to Divine Knowledge, a role far greater than his personal and historical identity
as a person. Many leaders emphasize that they are all directly and literally disciples of
Baay and that the muqaddam is only an instrument through which Baay carries out his
tarbiyyah (see Chapter 6 and Chapter 8). Thus, invoking and emphasizing Baay is not
simply a laudatory or self-deprecatory act but has a dual function of placing the speaker
(and often the interlocutor) within a historical tradition of knowledge and performing the
unity of all disciples through Baay’s mystical presence. To speak of Baay is therefore to
index both oneself as a disciple and a global movement.
This chapter discusses narratives of the appearance and spread of the Fayd.ah.3 Taal-
ibe Baay narratives show a multi-ethnic community forming around Baay Ñas to learn
the secrets of Divine Knowledge. They depict Baay Ñas as the central figure for disci-
ples, maintaining a constant presence even after his death through dreams and mystical
invocations. On the one hand, Taalibe Baay religious discourse (especially official dis-
course) treats Baay as a historical figure who spent his life defending Islamic orthodoxy
(his z.āhir being as an individual).4 On the other hand, speeches at public meetings and
casual speech among disciples emphasize Baay’s mystical presence, which continues to
3 Use of the word Faydah to describe this movement is not uncontroversial, as it assumes Baay’s claim to
.
fulfill Shaykh at-Tijāniyy’s vision. I use it not in its general Arabic or S.ūfı̄ senses but as disciples of Baay Ñas
use it, to describe the events through which Baay Ñas’s spiritual education were made available and, more
broadly, the movement associated with Baay Ñas. Seesemann (2000b) discusses the development of Taalibe
Baay conceptions as compared to previous conceptions of Fayd./Fayd.ah.
4 Hence, the titles of two well known works by his descendants: Shaykh Hasan Cisse’s Shaykh Ibrahim
Niasse: Revivalist of the Sunnah and Mahdy Niasse’s Baye Niass: le défenseur de l’Islam: tome 1 .
118
act as the “doorway” to Divine Knowledge, even after “Baay” the individual’s death.
Baay’s mystical (bāt.in) being is literally seen as coextensive with the mystical being of
Muh.ammad, whom many S.ūfı̄s understand not simply as a person but literally as the
Light of God (Nūr Allāh) that animates everything.5 Muh.ammad mystical being is known
as the “Muh.ammadan Reality” (al-H

. aqı̄qah al-Muh.ammadiyy ), which, unlike Muh.ammad
the man, has always existed.
Narrations of Baay Ñas’s life often highlight parallels between Baay and the Prophet,
many of which Baay mentioned in his voluminous poetry. Like Muh.ammad, Baay was
forced out of the dwelling of his father (whose name was also c Abd Allāh) and went with
his followers to a place called Madı̄nah, where he lived out his days and is buried. Like
Muh.ammad, among his first followers were O Abū Bakr (Baabakar in Wolof, his younger
brother Mbay), c Umar (Sheex Omar Ture), c Uthmān (Usmaan Njaay), and c Aliyy (Alliw
Siise). Like Muh.ammad, Baay’s oldest daughter, Fāt.imah az-ZahrāO (in Wolof Faatumata
Zaaraa), married c Aliyy and had a son named H

. asan (Hasan Siise, current Imam of
Medina Baay). Baay centered his life around Muh.ammad, for example, naming nearly all
of his at least 40 sons after Muh.ammad.6
5 This concept is clear in the poetry of Sharaf ad-Dı̄n al-Būsayriyy. His Hamziyyah, which is chanted at
.
many Taalibe Baay gatherings, describes Muh.ammad as being not only the greatest prophet but the principle
that animates all other prophets: “They [the other prophets] merely reflected your attributes to the people as
the water reflects the stars. You are the beacon of all excellence, for no light shines but by your light.”
6 Most of his sons are directly named after Muhammad (that is, not after another person named after
.
Muh.ammad), and even those who are named after someone else generally bear a name that can describe
Muh.ammad. His oldest son, Al-H c
. ājj Abd Allāh in Arabic, is named directly after Baay’s father and in-
directly after Muh.ammad’s father, although the QurO ān repeatedly calls Muh.ammad “c Abd Allāh.” His
sonShaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy (known as Pàppa Sheex) is, of course, named after the Order’s founder, but
the name O Ah.mad (Most Praiseworthy) is also one of Muh.ammad’s names. The current Khalı̄fah is also
named O Ah.mad. Xalifa is named after his older brother, whose official name is Muh.ammad. Other sons bear
more or less well known names of Muh.ammad, many of which officially start with “Muh.ammad al-,” which
is often dropped: Hādı̄ (Guide), Māh.ı̄ (Obliterator [of unbelief]), Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n (Baaba Lamin, the
Trustworthy), Nūr (Nuuru, Light), MaO mūn (Trustworthy), Muntaqā (Selected), Mah.mūd (Praised), c Abd al-
Mālik (Servant of the King), c Āqib (the Last), Makkiyy (from Makkah), Nadhı̄r (One who Warns), Murtad.ā
(Beloved), Mukhtār (Chosen), Qurayshı̄ (of the Quraysh tribe), and less known names like Sirāj ad-Dı̄n,
Munhaminah, and so on. Of at least 40 sons, I count only two whose names cannot be construed as names
of Muh.ammad.
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Baay’s closeness to Muh.ammad the person is often cited as an index of a deeper mysti-
cal identity, and this underlying unity manifests itself through countless dreams, mystical
experiences, and discourses. One disciple reports a dream in which he saw a crowd of
people gathered around the Prophet in a ravine, but when they looked at him “they sud-
denly saw Baay.” He suddenly awoke at this point.7 While explaining the importance
of the 2005 Gàmmu Baay in Tayba Ñaseen8 one sikkarkat (chant leader) explained to me
the importance of this celebration: “Baay is our Prophet.”9 Many Taalibe Baay would
certainly bristle to hear such a pronouncement in a context in which it could be misin-
terpreted, yet the point was not to question the the orthodox belief that Muh.ammad is
the last prophet. “Prophet” here is a proper noun referring to Muh.ammad, and Baay is
identified mystically with Muh.ammad. As an individual, Baay is neither a prophet nor
Muh.ammad, but the two share a mission, and it it through Baay’s mystical reality that
disciples attain Muh.ammad’s mystical reality.
Descriptions of Baay thus often show the same paradoxical play of z.āhir and bāt.in one
finds in talk about mystical truths. One disciple in Ndóofaan articulates the paradoxical
attributes that many disciples attribute to Baay:
They say that sometimes, if you see Baay on one occasion his complexion is
light, and if you see him again he’s pitch dark. It is that kind of the miracle
that . . . make my mind set on him.10
Baraam Jóob, for many years Baay’s personal secretary, reports a Mauritanian muqaddam’s
impression of Baay:
7 MBHSRC interview by Yuunus Caam, Mbittéyeen Abdu, 2004.

8A celebration of Baay’s birth, patterned after the celebration of Muh.ammad’s birth in Medina Baay
9 Baay mooy suñu Yonent.
10 MBHSRC interview by Aadi Faal, Ndóofaan, 23 August, 2004.
120
In Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Ñas he first saw a sea that sat on a bed—by which he
means a sea of knowledge of z.āhir and bāt.in—for if a sea sat on a bed, the
room would get wet . . . He says, in him I first saw a sun that walked in the
shade of trees11
Baay’s ward and personal assistant of many years, Jibril Sàmb, explains such statements:
Baay didn’t know these transformations [that people impute to him], because
people would see him however they looked at him. God is unfathomable,12
but Baay too was unfathomable, because God made him unfathomable like
that. He was a person, but he was different from people in many ways, in his
speech and in his acts.
It is not always clear whether a disciple means to reference Baay’s z.āhir attributes or
his bāt.in attributes (just as in Sufism in general it is not always clear whether someone
means Muh.ammad the person or the “Muh.ammadan Reality”). As in most z.āhir and
bāt.in pairs, one cannot always rigorously separate the two. What is essential is the notion
that Baay is paradoxically both a person with a finite lifespan and something greater than
an individual who often stands metonymically for the Taalibe Baay movement as a whole.
The views represented here are not intended to represent official Taalibe Baay positions or
S.ūfı̄ philosophy but simply to identify meanings commonly encountered among disciples’
everyday speech. The movement’s public representatives, typically reticent about mystical
doctrines, would surely downplay or explain these concepts differently. I will discuss the
idea of Baay as a mystical presence more fully in Chapter 8.
11 Talk by Ibrayima Maxmuut (Baraam) Jóob at the 2005 Medina Baay Ziyārah.
12 Ku doy waar.
121
This narrative of Baay Ñas and the Taalibe Baay movement, focusing on Senegal,
refers primarily to interviews with a wide range of leaders and disciples, supported by
a few public speeches and hagiographic and academic texts. Although there are broad
elements and themes shared by most narratives, many details are contested. Rather than
smooth the diverse points of view into a coherent and objective historical picture, I have
attempted to preserve some of the complexity and competing understandings. I aim to
show how various Taalibe Baay understand Baay as a religious figure and their place in
his movement as disciples. Thus, while I rely on historical and hagiographic accounts,
this is neither a history nor a hagiography but rather a story refracting multiple, mutually
irreducible points of view. I begin with a spatial orientation in the Taalibe Baay religious
center, Medina Baay.
4.2 A tour of Medina Baay
To get to Medina Baay from Kaolack’s city center, one pays 100F ($.20) to share a small
taxi with four other passengers and then heads straight north-northeast for around three
kilometers on one of Kaolack’s few paved roads. Just outside the city center in Lewna
Ñaseen, one can see the mosque and the adjacent mausoleum where Baay Ñas’s father,
Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, is buried alongside his senior sons. One then passes by the large
Islamic institute of the orthodox Falāh. movement in the Jaleñ neighborhood. Past Jaleñ,
one passes through Medina Mbàbba, formerly a Séeréer village whose Gelwaar rulers
gave Baay Ñas a place to spend his first night after he left Lewna Ñaseen in 1930, af-
ter conflicts had erupted between his disciples and the disciples of his older brothers.
As the road angles northeast, one can perceive Medina Baay’s entrance, a monumental
cement-block gate capped with the canonical drawing of Baay Ñas. Block letters on the
gate’s right column spell out “BIENVENUE A MEDINA BAYE” (“WELCOME TO ME-
122
Figure 4.1: Baay Ñas’s house in Medina Baay, 2001. His room is partially visible beyond
the arched front gate. The structure to the right is the stand where leaders sit during large
meetings, and the Medina Baay Mosque (not pictured) is across the public square from
the stand.
DINA BAYE”). Through the gate is Medina’s small but bustling market,13 followed by
Medina Baay’s clinic and pharmacy and then the El-Hadji Ibrahima Niass public elemen-
tary school. A little further, after the clinic and pharmacy, Medina’s only paved road ends
just in front of the entrance to Baay Ñas’s house, and the shared taxi will turn around
and take five more clients back downtown. This terminus, at the heart of Medina Baay, is
popularly called the Xay, even though the giant xay tree that used to stand at the end of
the pavement fell disastrously over twenty years ago.
At this terminus ends anything to remind one that one is still in a city counting
13 The Medina Baay market was until recently part of Medina Mbàbba, and even now the houses behind
the market are part of Medina Mbàbba.
172,000 people. Leaving the taxi, one faces Medina Baay’s vast central square. To one’s
left, flanking and opening onto the central square, is Baay Ñas’s house. Through its
front gate one can clearly see the door to Baay Ñas’s bedroom, the same spot, Baay’s
companions say, where he and his companions slept under the stars during his first night
in Medina Baay. This bedroom, kept unchanged as a pilgrimage site since Baay’s death in
1975, opens directly onto the house’s gate, immediately outside of which is a large cement
tribune where religious figures sit during important gatherings like the yearly Gàmmu.
Less conspicuous is the corrugated zinc roof between the house’s gate and this tribune,
under which Baay Ñas received guests and gave his daily lessons on Arabic poetry, h.adı̄th,
and other topics. The open square is inhospitable and empty in the sunlight, but on
most evenings, men from some of the leading religious families gather there on woven
mats throughout the square to enjoy the breeze and to discuss politics, the weather, and
community comings and goings. Facing Baay Ñas’s house across the square is the Great
Mosque of Medina Baay, with an immense green dome over its rectangular structure and
a green-capped minaret on each corner.
This is the heart of Medina: Baay Ñas’s house, the mosque, and the open square
between them. When Baay arrived in 1930, one of the first things he did was trace the
dimensions of this central area, following the layout of many Islamic, especially Njolofeen,
villages in Senegal: the founder’s house faces east and is separated from the central
mosque only by a large, open space used for public gatherings. Yet he clearly thought
big from the beginning, designating a central square and mosque area far more vast than
anything he could have previously seen, apparently envisioning the thousands that would
fill this open space and mosque. Although much of Medina Baay feels like an enormous
and culturally homogeneous Njolofeen village, the central mosque area reflects both the
hereditary and the multi-ethnic nature of the movement. The space around the mosque
124
and square is divided between Baay Ñas’s oldest sons and his earliest muqaddams, who
represent multiple ethnic backgrounds.
The terminus is a short walk from many of Medina’s important sites, most of them
houses of deceased muqaddams and teachers appointed by Baay, now occupied by their
children and grandchildren. Walking across the open square (bayaal), with the tribunes
and Baay Ñas’s house on the left and the mosque on one’s right, one approaches the
arched entrance to the house and QurO ānic school (daara) of Baay’s Mauritanian Arab
disciple Muh.ammad ar-Rabbāniyy, whom Baay brought there to teach his children and
the children of his muqaddams the QurO ān with proper Arabic pronunciation. Passing by
the school one can still hear the buzz of children reciting inside, where his grandsons
still teach. Beyond Rabbāniyy’s school, just out of sight, is Medina Baay’s first QurO ānic
school, which Allaaji Asta Ñas opened on Baay’s orders.
From Rabbāniyy’s school, looking to the left beyond Baay Ñas’s house, one can see the
block containing the houses of four senior sons of Baay Ñas—Allaaji Abdulaay (“Aas,”
d. 2001), Ahmadu (“Daam,” the current khalı̄fah), Sheex Tiijaan, and Haadi (d. 2005).
Houses of Baay Ñas’s other sons are scattered throughout Medina Baay and a few are
across the railroad in Saam. Few of his daughters still live in Medina Baay, most of them
having married into muqaddams’ families in Mauritania, Nigeria, and other West African
countries. Baay’s sons in turn have married daughters of Baay’s muqaddams from these
same countries.
Walking along the red, unpaved road to the right, past the square and along the north
side of the mosque, one finds the houses of Arab Mauritanian muqaddams Muh.ammad
al-H 14
. āfiz. wuld an-Nah.wi and Shaykh wuld al-Khayri, both of whom run villages in
14 Mauritanian Arab names are generally formed by the person’s given name followed by the person’s
father’s (or some more distant ancestor’s) name, separated by “wuld” for men and “mint” for women. These
are derived from Arabic “walad” (“son of,” equivalent to “ibn”) and “bint” (“daughter of”). Mauritanian
Arabs do not typically have family names as in Senegal or the West.
Figure 4.2: The Medina Baay Mosque and disciples before Friday prayer, photographed
in 2001.
126
Mauritania. The latter has a strong following in Senegal. Continuing to the mosque’s east
side, one finds the house of Baay Ñas’s closest disciple and designated spiritual successor,
a Saalum-Saalum named Sëriñ Alliw Siise. In the same area are the houses of his three
sons born of Faatumata Zahra Ñas, Baay Ñas’s oldest child. Sëriñ Alliw Siise’s house
was originally next to Baay’s house, where the Rabbāniyy school is now.15 The oldest of
these three sons is Medina Baay’s Imam, Shaykh Hasan Siise,16 whose house is often full
of American disciples who have come to work with his NGO or to study or teach at the
African American Islamic Institute that he founded, both across the street from his house.
Turning right onto the mosque’s south side, one finds oneself before the house of
Baay’s first disciple, his younger brother Baabakar Ñas, better known as Sëriñ Mbay
or Baay Mbay.17 Certain times of day, one can find his sons, who are Arabic teachers,
discussing politics and Islamic scholarship with other teachers under the tree in front of
the house or on a mat in the square. Also south of the mosque are the houses of two
late Siñi-Siñi muqaddams, Sëriñ Daara Usmaan Njaay and Ma Abdu ÑaN. Njaay’s son,
successor, and homonym runs a large informal school (majlis) in his father’s house. Ma
Abdu ÑaN’s wife, Baay’s daughter Roqiya Ñas, is a renowned Islamic scholar and poet
who runs a well known Islamic school in the house.
Southeast of the mosque is the house of the late Shaykh H

. asan Dem, the Haal-Pulaar
muqaddam from the Mauritanian side of Fuuta Tooro (in the Senegal River Valley). Certain
times of day, one can find his son, Abdul Baaqi Dem, teaching a handful of young men
their daily lesson on Islamic texts under the tree in the street. Across the street is the
15 MBHSRC interview with Seynabu Faal by Baay Sàmb, Medina Baay, 2 August, 2004.
16 Shaykh Hasan Siise is not Sëriñ Alliw’s oldest son but is the oldest of Faatumata Zaaraa.
17 “Mbay,” not to be confused with the family name often associated with griots, is a common nickname for
people named Baabakar. The respectful title “Sëriñ” often accompanies a leader’s name. For leaders of Baay
Ñas’s generation, disciples often replace this title with the more affectionate “Baay” (“Father”). Disciples
often prefix the names of leaders from the preceding generation with “Maam” (Grandparent), and leaders
from the next generation (especially Baay’s sons) with “Pàppa.”
127
house of Aamadu Caam “Gine,” who trained Medina Baay’s most eminent scholars in
his informal school. Many were admitted to Arab universities after performing well on
entrance exams without any previous official diploma. Caam’s son still lives there but
teaches Arabic in a public school rather than in a majlis.
Coming full circle to the terminus and looking south, one can see the houses of several
Mauritanian Arab shaykhs, including my own Mauritanian host, Al-H

. ājj wuld al-Mishri,
who visits Medina Baay with a large entourage several times a year. Like the houses of
other muqaddam and sons of Baay, these houses are rather large and include a number of
smaller apartments and rooms for the dozens of guests, relatives, teachers, and students
who live or visit there. These houses are as much meeting places, schools, and shelters for
travelers as they are leaders’ personal homes. Medina Baay’s administration takes place
not in offices but in these houses.
Many houses in the mosque area include informal QurO ānic and Arabic schools (daara
and majlis respectively). Many QurO ānic schools take place in a designated space in
an open-air courtyard, and one can hear the buzzing of students reciting their lessons
throughout Medina Baay. Many schools, especially majlis, have no dedicated structure
and take place within the teacher’s house, so a passerby will likely not notice them.
During my first stay in Medina Baay in 2001, when I spoke no Arabic, subtle hints of
widespread Arabic learning largely escaped my notice and most schools looked like sim-
ple houses. When I returned from 2003 to 2005, after having become conversant in Arabic,
I found that many strangers I met at houses around the mosque would greet me with a
subtle mixture of Arabic and Wolof, leaving me to choose which language in which to
continue the conversation. (Although many Wolof greetings are of Arabic origin, it is
easy to distinguish a Wolofized greeting from an Arabic one.)18 Most in this neighbor-
18 Wolof speakers Wolofize Arabic terms according to somewhat regular rules, with some idiosyncrasies.
The Arabic greeting “As-salām c alaykum” (“Peace be upon you”) becomes “Salaam (m)aalekum” and the
128
hood who are fluent in Arabic are religious specialists of some kind, and although such
Arabic speakers live throughout Medina Baay, they are by far most concentrated at its
southern end around the mosque.
Outside the mosque area, the proportion of Arabic speakers, religious specialists, and
foreign disciples decreases considerably. The northern parts (Daaru Raxmati) and east-
ern parts (Faas Ahmat Tiijaan) are almost solely inhabited by Senegalese, most of them
Njolofeen. Just west of Baay Ñas’s house is the railroad that separates Medina Baay from
Saam. The cashew and mango orchards that Baay had planted in Saam have given way
to an influx of disciples overflowing Medina Baay’s borders and Kaolack’s general urban
sprawl.
Medina Baay offers few employment opportunities outside the market, religious work,
and education. Children come from around Saalum and beyond to study in the dozens of
QurO ānic schools (daara) in and around Medina, some living in the school itself and others
living with relatives or acquaintances. Most families, even those involved in these sectors,
must rely on income from outside Medina. A significant number of religious specialists
come to or stay in Medina expecting to teach or engage in religious work yet find little
demand for their services. Many of these live off the charity of better established religious
leaders and other Medina Baay residents.
A large bus, likely a European luxury bus before its ventilation system stopped work-
ing, leaves the xay in front of Baay Ñas’s house every morning around 4:00, heading to
Baay Ñas’s other house in Dakar’s Jëppël neighborhood, where it will remain until 3:00
in the afternoon. Passengers will fill it again and return to the xay in time for the dusk
answer, “Wa-c alaykum as-salām” (“And upon you peace”) becomes “Maalekum Salaam,” which sounds to
an Arabic speaker like “Mā c alaykum salām” (“No peace upon you”). The Arabic “Al-h.amdu li-’Llāh” is
Wolofized in several ways, including “Alxamdu lilaay” or “imdullaay.” “Bismi ’Llāh” (“In the name of God”),
spoken before beginning many things, often becomes “Bisimila,” and “Bāraka ’Llāh [fı̄kum]” (“May God bless
[you]”) becomes “Baarikalla.” Wolof speakers tend to elide several Arabic consonants, for example, s, s., dh,
z, z., and th are all pronounced s. (See Appendix B for more details).
129
prayer. The bus is owned by an enterprising muqaddam and relative of Baay Ñas who also
owns several shops in Kaolack’s city center and tells me he refuses to live off disciples’
gifts. Although many will always call Medina Baay “home,” many men have established
their primary residence in Dakar and possibly a second one in Medina Baay, sometimes
with a wife in both locations. Several of Baay Ñas’s children have houses in Dakar and
spend far more time there than in Medina Baay, as there are many times more disciples
and daayiras in Dakar today than in Medina Baay.
Yet Medina Baay remains the spiritual center of this global movement. Medina has
seen a stream of foreigners since the 1940s, when large numbers of Mauritanians and
Nigerians became disciples of Baay Ñas and began to visit Medina Baay regularly. The
annual Gàmmu attracts hundreds of thousands each year, many from abroad. When I
visit the senior sons of Baay Ñas, I find young Hausa men, mostly from Nigeria, living in
many of their houses and acting as personal assistants (bëkk-néeg), often while studying
the Islamic disciplines. Numerous teachers in Medina’s two major Arabic institutes, the
El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niass Islamic Institute and the African American Islamic Institute,
are from Mauritania, Egypt, and other Arabic-speaking countries. Shaykh Hasan Siise,
who studied in Egypt, England, and the United States before returning to Medina Baay
in 1982 to succeed his father as Imam of the Medina Baay mosque, has been particularly
active and successful in spreading the Fayd.ah in the United States. He has collaborated
with Americans in numerous educational, development, and health projects through the
African-American Islamic Institute, which has grown from a QurO ānic school to a full-
fledged school and and from there to an NGO involved in numerous domains. Each year,
dozens of kindergarten- to college-aged Americans come to study in the school and to
interact with the Imam. In and around the Imam’s house, I probably heard English and
Hausa as often as Wolof.
130
Baay Ñas’s movement has from the beginning been described as a flood (Fayd.ah) em-
anating from Medina Baay to the rest of the world, not as a gathering of disciples into a
single physical community. Coming to Medina Baay is for many disciples an obligatory
visit (ziyārah) to one’s leader, but not a permanent emigration (hijrah). Despite the Taalibe
Baay movement’s global reach and the many intermarriages among its prominent fami-
lies, significant day-to-day social integration among disciples is most prevalent in places
like Dakar that are ethnically mixed to begin with. Those who continue to settle in Me-
dina Baay come mostly from the same groups that founded it and are related to people
already living there.
Parts of Medina Baay therefore feel like a large but relatively homogeneous Njolofeen
village. Several of my non-Njolofeen Senegalese acquaintances who have lived for de-
cades in and around Medina describe themselves as “foreigners” (gan) in Medina. The
various social and cultural groups who share Medina Baay often retain their distinctness,
interacting mostly among themselves. What brings them together is not a shared culture
or social integration but a profound attachment to Baay Ñas.
4.3 Baay Ñas’s early years (1900–1922)
Baay Ñas was born in Tayba Ñaseen, most likely on 15 Rajab, 1318, which corresponds to
Thursday, November 8, 1900.19 His father, Allaaji Abdulaay (Al-H c

. ājj Abd Allāh) Ñas, was
a Tijāniyy muqaddam who by that time had become the principal Islamic leader in Western
19 Most Arabic accounts and non-Arabic accounts based on them say Baay Ñas was born on 15 Rajab, 1320
h., which corresponds to 1902 (for example, Yac qūb O Abū Bakr (2003), Maygariyy (1979), and Cheikh Hassan
Cissé (1984)). This date apparently comes from a widely distributed biographical sketch by Sëriñ Alliw Siise
written in 1934 and reproduced without correction in recent editions of Baay Ñas’s Kāshif al-O ilbās (Nyās nd,
2001). However, as Baay Ñas is said to have been born just before his father’s exile in Gambia, mentioned
in colonial documents dated 1901 (see Klein 1968:224), this date makes little sense. Rüdiger Seesemann
(personal communication) points out that Baay Ñas wrote to Alliw Siise in 1934 (directly after Siise wrote
his biography) correcting the date. According to Seesemann (the same personal communication), the most
likely time for Allaaji Abdulaay’s exile is early 1901. Ñas’s letter to Siise states, in part: “I think—and God is
most knowledgeable—that the birth date is the year 1318 h. . . . And disagreement concerning this does not
harm anything, for this is a pursuit for historians.” The only biography I have encountered that gives the
corrected 1318 as Ñas’s birthdate is Muh.ammad c Abd Allāh ibn as-Sayyid’s recent Min O akhbār ash-Shaykh
O Ibrāhı̄m (2004), which quotes the letter to Alliw Siise in full.
131
Saalum and was seen as a politically powerful rival by Màbba Jaxu’s successors and the
French (see Chapter 3). His mother, Astu Jànqa,20 had come from Jolof without her family
while still young and was in effect adopted by one of Baay’s close relatives.21 Before his
disciple Omar Màlle Caam nicknamed him “Baay” (Father) shortly after Medina Baay
was founded in 1930, oral accounts say he was known variably as Ibrayima, Ibra, or Ibra
Asta,22 all Wolof variations on the Arabic name O Ibrāhı̄m.23
Baay was reportedly born during the family’s last year in Tayba and brought to the
family village of Ñaseen Waalo for his naming ceremony, only days before his father ex-
iled with his family and close disciples to Kër Sàmba, in the English colony of Gambia,
around the beginning of 1901 after being warned that local authorities were preparing to
attack (see the previous chapter). Thus, Baay spent much of his first decade in Gambia,
and during the last part of this period his father is said to have been away in Fās, Mo-
rocco.24 Upon Allaaji Abdulaay’s return from Morocco in late 1910, he moved with his
family and many disciples to his new settlement of Lewna Ñaseen, now within the city
boundaries of Kaolack, which French traders had set up as a peanut exporting port on
the Saalum River.
It is said that sometime during Baay’s youth (some informants say around 1920), an
important Mauritanian Arab shaykh from the O Idawc ali tribe, c Abd Allāh wuld al-H
. ājj,
visited Allaaji Abdulaay in Lewna Ñaseen. The O Idawc ali are considered sharı̄f (descen-
20 Her name is also sometimes pronounced Asta and derives from the Arabic c ĀO ishah, wife of Muh.ammad.
21 The household of Omar Faati Jàllo’s father took her in, which accounts for the Baay’s care in teaching
Omar Faati Jàllo, who despite his blindness became a muqaddam, Arabic teacher, and head chanter.
22 This
last nickname follows the common practice in Wolof-speaking areas to compound names from their
given name followed by their mother’s name.
23 Hewas named after Ibrayima Caam, nicknamed Sëriñ Kéllel, an eminent QurO ān and Arabic teacher
who left Jolof during the same time as the Ñaseen and founded the nearby village of Caameen Waalo.
24 Oral accounts say Allaaji Abdulaay went to Fās before founding the zāwiyah at Lewna Ñaseen in Kaolack.
Ousmane Kane (1992) says Allaaji Abdulaay went to Fās in 1912, after settling in Kaolack.
132
dants of the Prophet), and they also occupied a leading role in the Tijāniyy order, having
introduced it to West Africa. At the time, Mauritanian shaykhs commonly toured through
Senegal and received the offerings that many Senegalese Tijāniyys see as their obligation
to give sharı̄fs (even though some of those giving the offerings consider themselves sharı̄fs
as well). Many of these O Idawc ali shaykhs, including c Abd Allāh wuld al-H
. ājj, regularly
visited Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas in Lewna Ñaseen (Seesemann 2004).
Taalibe Baay accounts agree that what happened during c Abd Allāh wuld al-H
. ājj’s
visit was a key moment leading up to the Fayd.ah, although they diverge widely on what
actually happened during the visit. Some say that c Abd Allāh. wuld al-H
. ājj recognized
the young Baay as a great holy man and asked him to pray for him. Baay himself said that
the shaykh told him “the Fayd.ah will surely appear at your hands, and it will definitely
not appear at the hands of anyone else” (Seesemann 2004:80).25
The account far more commonly told among Taalibe Baay, which I have heard from
numerous muqaddams, Arabic teachers, and elders, holds that c Abd Allāh. wuld al-H
. ājj
was directly responsible for Baay Ñas receiving the “secret” (mbóot) that would later be
revealed through the Fayd.ah. Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy had appeared to c Abd Allāh
in a dream, telling him that he had been given a secret (mbóot) and was to give it to the
bringer of the Fayd.ah. He set out searching for the person to whom he was supposed to
transmit the secret and had looked in all the other Tijāniyy centers in Senegal in vain.
He finally came to Kaolack and asked Allaaji Abdulaay to bring all his sons. In a
story strongly reminiscent of the Biblical story of David’s selection26 , he asked Allaaji
25 Baay wrote on this event in Kāshif alO ilbās.

26 In the Hebrew Bible (1 Samuel 16:1–13), God tells Samuel to visit Jesse to anoint the new king of Israel.
Jesse brings his sons, but God tells Samuel that none of these are the one he seeks. When Samuel asks if all
are present, Jesse admits that his youngest, David, is missing, and he calls David in from guarding the sheep.
God tells Samuel that David is the one, and after he anoints David, the spirit of God stays with him. The
QurO ān mentions David (Dāwud) several times (for example, 2:249-251), but the story of his selection is not
told as it is in the Hebrew Bible.
133
Abdulaay if a son was missing. According to Allaaji Bittéy, c Abd Allāh wuld al-H
. ājj told
Allaaji Abdulaay that Shaykh at-Tijāniyy himself had let him know that not all the sons
were there. Allaaji Abdulaay began to fidget with his pillow, placing it here and there,
and finally called out “Ibrayima!” and Baay Ñas appeared. As soon as he entered the
room, Baay Ñas looked around and noticed writing on the wall that no one else could see
and commented on it. c Abd Allāh wuld al-H

. ājj concluded that this was the one he sought.
One Arabic teacher told me that during this meeting, c Abd Allāh requested something
in the form of an Arabic grammatical riddle, and while everyone else sat mystified, Baay
went and brought the materials to make tea.27
Most accounts say that at the time, Baay Ñas was living in a thatch hut, and that c Abd
Allāh wuld al-H

. ājj told Allaaji Abdulaay that he wished to be lodged in Baay Ñas’s hut,
which resembled the tents he was accustomed to in Mauritania more than the house’s
cement block structures. They granted his request, and while he stayed with Baay (some
say a single night, others say a week) he initiated Baay into the secrets. As c Abd Allāh
prepared to leave, he told Baay Ñas not to reveal the secret he had been given until seven
years after his father died. After the Fayd.ah, the shaykh’s son, Muh.ammad al-Mishri28
wuld c Abd Allāh (d. 1975), who met Baay during at least one of his father’s visits to
Kaolack, would become one of Baay Ñas’s closest friends and most devoted muqaddams.
When I asked one muqaddam in Waalo if this meant that c Abd Allāh possessed all that
Baay possessed, he responded that c Abd Allāh had simply been entrusted with the secret
(mbóot), which had been transmitted from Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy. He did not have
27 The teacher, a great grandson of Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, said that c Abd Allāh had asked for “a verb
that is also a superlative with an initial vowel and a first person suffix” (fic lun O afc alu ’t-tafd.ı̄li bi-’l-hamzati
mud.āfatun bi-’l-yāO i ’l-mutakallim). The Wolof word for tea (ataaya, derived from the H . assāniyyah word for
tea O atāy ) matches this description morphologically.
28 Muhammad al-Mishri is named after one of Shaykh O Ahmad at-Tijāniyy’s principal muqaddams. Mishri
. .
is a local H
. assāniyyah pronunciation of the Arabic “Mushrı̄,” and his name is therefore sometimes written
in this way.
134
the authorization to use it, and it was therefore latent in his hands.
After hearing versions of this story numerous times from Senegalese disciples, I asked
c Abd Allāh wuld al-H
. ājj’s grandson and namesake, Al-H
. ājj wuld Mishri, what he could
tell me of the story, he said he was not familiar with it. I do not know whether he
declined to comment because he had no knowledge of this narrative or because it involved
mystical secrets not to be divulged to outsiders—he is, after all, one of the most discreet
muqaddams I knew regarding mystical matters. In any case, Al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri simply
says that his father, Mishri wuld c Abd Allāh, was present during a later trip, in 1927, when
his visionary father exclaimed: “There is no God but Allāh [a term of astonishment]!
What great things God has in store for this black youth!”29 From this point on, Mishri
took Baay very seriously. It was apparently during the same trip that c Abd Allāh gave
Baay an unlimited O ijāzah.30
Regardless of whether this story of c Abd Allāh wuld al-H

. ājj represents official Taalibe
Baay history, it illustrates the pervasive notion that S.ūfı̄ knowledge and authority always
come from an authorized source and are never invented, stumbled upon, or created ex
nihilo. The secret given to Baay Ñas had come from Muh.ammad to Shaykh O Ah.mad at-
Tijāniyy and then passed down from generation to generation until reaching its desti-
nation. Thus, Baay Ñas’s claims to have brought nothing to the Islamic religion do not
contradict the fact that he taught something unique. Passing on a secret, as I discuss in
Chapter 7, is not an act of letting someone know a fact (which might occur accidentally)
but a ritual transmission of knowledge and authority that is ineffectual without certain
conditions (shart.).31 This principle of ritual transmission applies to S.ūfı̄ knowledge, occult
29 “Lā O ilāha O illā’Llāh, hādhā ’shābb al-kūriyy mā O akthara mā ’ddakharahū ’Llāh!” Interview with Al-H
. ājj
wuld Mishri, Mac ta. Mulāna, Mauritania, 12 May, 2004.
30 Seesemann reports this O ijāzah in 1926, which may or may not refer to the same trip.
31 Understanding these conditions in terms of the “felicity conditions” Austin (1962) describes as making
possible performative speech acts is only useful at a certain level, but hastily falling back on Austin’s theory
135
knowledge, and in many cases textual knowledge.
During his father’s later years, during his teens, Baay spent his rainy seasons culti-
vating the family fields in his father’s second capital of Kóosi Mbittéyeen. There he built
his reputation among the sons of his father’s muqaddams, the village’s people, and the
disciples who came through to work in the fields.
According to their descendants and followers, several of Baay Ñas’s earliest and most
well known disciples were sons of Allaaji Abdulaay’s muqaddams who committed them-
selves to Baay during Maam Allaaji Abdulaay’s lifetime and while both Baay and these
disciples were in their teens. They say that Allaaji Abdulaay supported this. Although
Baay was not a muqaddam at the time and could not technically be their shaykh, they
showed him the deference due to an important shaykh. One of Baay’s closest disciples,
Sheex Omar Ture, who was two years younger than Baay, became attached to Baay dur-
ing his teens and announced to Maam Allaaji Abdulaay that he would be Baay’s disciple.
According to Sheex Omar Ture’s son and successor, Ammat Tiijaan Ture,
Baay Sheexu Omar was already a disciple of Maam Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas.
During a visit to Maam Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas in Kóosi, he saw Baay for the
first time reading the QurO ān under the direction of his father Maam Allaaji
Abdulaay Ñas. [Baay’s] penetrating voice and his behavior drew the attention
of Baay Sheexu Omar Ture, and he told Maam Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas that he
chose [Baay] to be his guide. Maam Allaaji Abdulaay accepted this request and
during Sheexu Omar’s periodic visits to Kóosi he drew close to Baay signifi-
cantly and sincerely. . . . Maam Allaaji Abdulaay recognized this relationship
might distract us from fundamentally different notions of symbolic, spiritual, and other kinds of efficacy.
Symbolic felicity conditions sufficiently explain the efficacy of a statement such as “I hereby name you . . . ”
but do not explain transmission a mystical secret whose efficacy is believed to originate outside the symbolic
authority of the bestower. See Chapter 7.
136
and commended Baay Sheexu Omar Ture.32
After Allaaji Abdulaay’s death, Sheex Omar Ture officially became a disciple of Baay
Ñas by renewing the wird with him. Yet those who received or renewed their wird from
Baay before 1929 were not disciples in the same sense intended by “Taalibe Baay” today.
Despite Baay’s many early admirers, the Fayd.ah had not yet begun. Histories enumerating
“the first Taalibe Baay” begin counting with those who first received tarbiyyah in 1929 after
the beginning of the Fayd.ah in Kóosi.
During his father’s lifetime, during his late teens and early twenties, Baay was already
very active as a religious leader and scholar despite not having been appointed a muqad-
dam. Around the age of twenty, he wrote his first known work, a long poem called Rūh.
al-O Adab (“The Spirit of Propriety/Good Behavior”), a treatise on the behavior becoming
of a good Muslim, still considered an important reference for Taalibe Baay. He had close
relations with his father’s disciples around Saalum and was delegated to represent the
family at certain events. This is evident in the fact that one disciple and muqaddam of his
father, Usmaan Kebbe, gave Baay Ñas his eight-year-old son as a ward in 1922 while Baay
was visiting the Saalum-Saalum village of Kebbe Mbudaay to trace the foundation of the
village’s new mosque.33 Baay raised the boy, Allaaji Abdulaay Kebbe (better known as
Àjji Màkka), and later made him chief of Medina Baay’s annex, Saam.
4.4 After Allaaji Abdulaay and the beginning of the Fayd.ah
When Allaaji Abdulaay died in 1922 and Baay neared twenty-two, Allaaji Abdulaay’s
oldest son Muh.ammad succeeded him as representative of the family and leader of his
32 Interview by Aamadu Njaay and Barham Sekk with Ammat Tiijaan Ture, Serekunda, Gambia, 2004.
33 When a village prepares to build a mosque, it is common practice to call the highest leader possible
to trace (rëdd) its dimensions. This practice serves to demonstrate proper authorization, to bring the con-
struction process barakah, and to make sure the mosque’s dimensions do not exceed or fall short of what
authorities deem appropriate. The visiting authority also sometimes brings material support for the project.
137
father’s community of disciples. Since then, Muh.ammad’s official nickname among dis-
ciples and non-disciples alike has been “Xalifa” (from Khalı̄fah) or “Baay Xalifa” (“Father
Xalifa”),34 and those named in his honor are also called Xalifa. Contrary to widespread
perceptions, any tension between the followers of Baay and those of Xalifa does not re-
sult from a succession dispute, for Baay and his disciples have never called into question
Muh.ammad Ñas’s role as Allaaji Abdulaay’s khalı̄fah. Despite tension between commu-
nities of disciples, leaders from both branches of the family have generally attempted to
maintain good relations, sending representatives from one zāwiyah to the other’s ma-
jor events. Baay even named a son, mayor of Kaolack since 2004, “Xalifa” after his
brother well after relocating to Medina Baay, both honoring his brother and confirming
his brother’s status as his father’s successor.
Moreover, by the time of his father’s death, Baay Ñas had not yet received an O ijāzah
(Seesemann 2004; Kane 2000), so he could not have directly succeeded his father. Soon af-
ter his father’s death, Baay received O ijāzahs from representatives of all the major Maurita-
nian Tijāniyy families, receiving not only all his father’s lines of authority and eventually
lines directly linking him to all the shaykhs of the Mauritanian O Idawc ali tribe that had
brought the Tijāniyyah to West Africa. As his father had done when he received O ijāzahs
from central authorities in Fās, Baay received O ijāzahs from O Idawc ali shaykhs placing him
beyond the chains of authority both of other Senegalese Tijāniyy groups and of his entire
family (Seesemann 2004).
This point is crucial in Taalibe Baay insistence that Baay Ñas did not found a branch
of a larger “Ñaseen” line of authority. His disciples consider him the founder of a spir-
34 Itis common in Senegal to nickname a person (and everyone named after this person) by his or her title,
especially if the person is seen as uniquely exemplifying that title—for example, “Sheex” (Shaykh) usually
refers to Shaykh at-Tijāniyy in Senegal and Baay in Mauritania and those named after one of these; “Imaam”
refers to Imam H . asan Siise and those named after him; Sëriñ among Murids usually refers to Ahmadu
Bàmba (Sëriñ Tuubaa); etc.) “Baay” is a title applied to anyone of Baay’s generation, although as a name, it
refers unambiguously to Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m and those named after him.
138
itual lineage directly connected to Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy and independent of his
family. His muqaddams’ O ijāzahs do not mention Allaaji Abdulaay in their chain of au-
thority (silsilah, sanad) but instead trace authority directly to O Ah.mad Sukayrij, then head
of the Fās zāwiyah, and even this line is considered less the source but a recognition of
his authority. Many scholars (for example, Gellar 1995; Magassouba 1985, Colvin 1981)
commit the mistake of referring to Baay Ñas as Allaaji Abdulaay’s successor, conflating
two independent branches of the Tijāniyyah.35 This confusion reflects a broader tendency
of outsiders to refer to disciples of all Ñaseen leaders as part of a single obedience or even
as an independent “Ñaseen” S.ūfı̄ order.
According to Seesemann (2004), Baay’s first O ijāzah came from through O Idawc ali
shaykh Muh.ammad Mah.mūd wuld Muh.ammad as.-S.aghı̄r ash-Shinqı̄t.iyy on behalf of
Allaaji Abdulaay in 1922. An unlimited (mut.laqah) O ijāzah, it included all eleven of his fa-
ther’s lines of authority (sanad, pl. O asānı̄d), including authority from three major branches
of the Tijāniyyah.36 Yet because it came through his father, this O ijāzah did not necessarily
supercede anything available in his family.
Between this time and the early years of the Fayd.ah, Seesemann (2004:78) continues,
Baay Ñas cultivated relationships with other O Idawc ali shaykhs, collecting O ijāzahs from
c Abd Allāh wuld al-H O
. ājj in 1926 and another from Muh.ammad al-Kabı̄r ibn Ah.mad al-
c Alawiyy in 1927. In 1930, after he had already announced the Fayd.ah, he received an
O ijāzah from Muh.ammad Sac ı̄d, grandson and representative of Muh.ammad al-H
. āfiz.,
who had first introduced the order to West Africa. In 1935, he received an O ijāzah
from Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n, who represented the important sub-branch of the H
. āfiz.iyyah
35 Both Gellar and Magassouba also name Ahmad Xalifa Ñas, a radical Islamist son of Xalifa who nick-
named himself “the Ayatollah of Kaolack” as Baay Ñas’s son, assimilating his politics with a general Ñaseen
politics. Most scholars of Islam in Senegal similarly confound these two families.
36 These are Mauritanian H O c
. āfiz.iyyah branch (founded by the Idaw ali Muh.ammad al-H . āfiz.), the Moroccan
line of c Aliyy at-Tamāsı̄niyy, and the line of Al-H c
. ājj Umar Taal coming through Muh.ammad al-Ghālı̄.
139
founded by Baddi wuld Sı̄dı̄na. In the same year, he received an O ijāzah from the other
Tijāniyy branch established by Mawlūd Vāl,37 who had inducted Al-H c

. ājj Umar Taal into
the order and was therefore the root of all other Senegalese branches. Seesemann rightly
emphasizes Baay’s gathering of recognition from these families both in placing Baay be-
yond his family’s religious authority and in facilitating international acceptance of Baay
Ñas’s claims to be bringer of the Fayd.ah, Khalı̄fah of Shaykh at-Tijāniyy, and Ghawth az-
Zamān (“help of the age”). Yet for many Taalibe Baay, even more important than receiving
authority and recognition from these Mauritanian leaders, Baay received and activated
the latent secret of Divine Knowledge, many say through c Abd Allāh wuld al-H
. ājj, which
only he could teach.
Baay’s independence in his daily activities and relations with disciples matched his
independence in cultivating chains of authority outside his family. Soon after his father’s
death, Baay Ñas was already largely independent from the rest of the family and began
to build a community of disciples largely outside his family’s sight in Kóosi Mbittéy-
een. According to a village elder in Kóosi Mbittéyeen, “when Maam Allaaji Abdulaay
was no longer around, the elders (of Kóosi) looked to Baay Xalifa (Muh.ammad Ñas)38 ,
who sought someone to represent him here. He asked his younger brothers, who all re-
fused, so he asked Baay, and Baay said fine (bisimila).” Baay established himself in Kóosi,
overseeing the family’s fields in Kóosi and also becoming the representative of Allaaji Ab-
dulaay’s family in the village, thus acting as the village’s highest religious authority even
while still in his twenties. It appears that he and a group of close disciples lived there
37 “Vāl” (often spelled Fāl) is not Mawlūd Vāl’s last or family name but an integral part of his given name,
and it is therefore inaccurate to speak, as many foreigners do, of the “Vāl family.” Vāl, in Mauritanian Arabic
(H
. assāniyyah) is one of the epithets of the Prophet and is therefore part of several possible given names
derived from the Prophet’s (such as Muh.ammadhin Vāl). It is therefore not equivalent to the widespread
Senegalese family name “Faal,” although it is not unthinkable that the Senegalese name derives from it.
38 “Baay” (Father) is a title applied to any leader of this generation, not to be confused with the nickname
given to O Ibrāhı̄m Ñas.
140
throughout the year and not only during the rainy season, and that the rest of ths family
had relatively little idea of what was brewing there. The young people who had vowed
before his father’s death to become his disciples now surrounded him, and when they
were not farming he would teach them Islamic texts in his informal Arabic school (majlis).
It appears that he also appointed other teachers during this same period, including Sëriñ
Daara Allaaji “Karaw” Ñas, who taught there for twenty years before becoming the prin-
cipal teacher, muqaddam, and imam in Tayba Ñaseen.39 During this seven-year period, as
mentioned above, Baay not only focused on his growing community of disciples but also
gained the respect of the O Idawc ali shaykhs who came through the area.
Narratives consistently describe Baay’s month-long tafsı̄r (QurO ānic interpretation) in
Kóosi as the event that made him into a major leader and heralded the onset of the
Fayd.ah. In preparation for the month of Ramad.ān, probably in 1929, the people of Kóosi
requested him to deliver the customary month-long tafsı̄r lesson. In Taalibe Baay and
other Islamic communities, during each Ramad.ān, residents of a village or neighborhood
organize a month-long tafsı̄r in or around a mosque, inviting the most qualified religious
scholar available to speak for at least two hours each afternoon throughout the month.
Commenting on two of the QurO ān’s sixty h.izbs each day, a speaker can touch on all h.izbs
in the month’s 30 days.40
Accounts of this event say that the people of Kóosi requested the 28-year-old Ibrayima
to deliver a tafsı̄r, but he refused, saying they should seek someone older and more
qualified. Delivering a tafsı̄r is a job normally reserved for a senior scholar. But the
39 MBHSRC interview with Baabakar Sadiiq Ñas by Abdu Salaam Caam and Abdulaay ÑaN, Tayba Ñaseen,
27 August, 2004.
40 Some have told me that Baay’s first tafsı̄r was actually before the Kóosi tafsı̄r, in the Siñi-Siñi village of
Njaayeen Kàdd. It appears that Baay did indeed give a lengthy speech on the occasion of a funeral at a
private home well before the events in Kóosi. As that speech continued, the crowd at the home gathered and
the assembly had to move to the mosque to accommodate all the people who had come. Although this event
doubtless helped him build a reputation in this village, most elders I have asked agree that this single speech
does not qualify as a tafsı̄r.
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people of Kóosi told him that if he did not deliver it, they wanted no tafsı̄r at all, and
he relented. Respecting protocol, he approached his older brother Xalifa and asked his
permission. The practice of seeking permission of the highest authority possible any time
one wishes to organize a tafsı̄r is still a common practice, as I observed with several of my
informants. One companion of Baay reported that Xalifa told Baay “Ah, Ibrayima, you’re
getting ahead of yourself!”41 He then asked his brother to lend him the book Tafsı̄r al-
Jalālayn,42 which is still the primary tafsı̄r reference in the area. According to the same
account, Xalifa refused, telling him that if he knew anything he should say it. Another
informant says Baay’s mother told him she would prefer him to drop it, to which Baay
answered: “With regards to all that comes from God, I take no one’s orders. In asking, I
was only accommodating (maslaa) but what is in here (the heart) is in no book.”43
Narratives of the tafsı̄r often relate that Xalifa send two younger brothers (accounts
differ on the names) to listen to the tafsı̄r and to report back to Xalifa regarding how well
Ibrayima performed. They became enthralled by Ibrayima’s performance and spent days
longer in Kóosi than Xalifa expected. When they returned to Lewna, they reported to
Xalifa that they had never heard anything like Ibrayima’s tafsı̄r, and that if their father
knew all the things Ibrayima had spoken of they certainly had never heard him say it.
The Kóosi tafsı̄r is the moment in Taalibe Baay narratives when Baay, theretofore a
young and minor son of Allaaji Abdulaay, publicly proved himself as a formidable scholar
and mystic. He did not simply have a large quantity of knowledge in his followers’ eyes
but, more importantly, taught things that no one else knew. One of the many miracles
attributed to Baay is that he studied only with his father (and some say with Xalifa after
his father’s death) and yet knew things neither of these knew, and the Kóosi tafsı̄r is cited
41 Interview with Allaaji Bittéy, Saam, Kaolack, 28 July, 2004, with Yuunus Caam.
42 Its title is usually abridged in speaking to “Jalāl”)
43 Interview with Usmaan Bittéy by Abdu Salaam Caam and Abdulaay ÑaN in Kóosi Mbittéyeen.
142
as the first proof of this fact.
Ibrayima’s distinction as a qualitatively different leader became irrevocable at the
Gàmmu in Lewna Ñaseen of 1929,44 when a 28-year-old Ibrayima arose, pounded his
chest, and proclaimed himself to be the bringer of the Fayd.ah, saying that anyone who
wished to know God must do so through him. It was finally time, many narratives say,
to reveal the secret that c Abd Allāh wuld al-H

. ājj had told him not to reveal until seven
years after his father’s death. At that very moment when he first announced the Fayd.ah,
many people are said to have come to “know God” immediately without a formal tar-
biyyah process. They spontaneously shrieked, cried out, and otherwise showed signs of
h.āl, a state of spiritual transformation. As one might expect, anyone who did not take
Baay’s claims at face value saw such a grandiose claim from a junior family member as
highly disruptive of family and religious order, and a major rift emerged between those
who accepted Baay’s claims and those who didn’t.
Up until 1929, Baay and his community of disciples had been living in Kóosi, where
they stayed for some time after the Fayd.ah began. Lists of his first disciples generally give
only the names of men who would later become his principal Senegalese muqaddams,
although we can assume that women were among the first group as well, since young
women were in many places the first and most numerous to join the movement. Lists
of the first disciples also do not include those who followed Baay before the Fayd.ah, as
Ibrayima had not yet become “Baay” and could not give them the knowledge that makes
one distinctly Taalibe Baay. Baay would soon send all of these first muqaddams, aside
from Alliw Siise, whom he would keep by his side, to represent him in villages and
towns throughout Senegal.
The list of major disciples begins with Baay’s younger brother, Baabakar, more com-
44 The Gàmmu (Mawlid) occurs on the eve of 13 Rabı̄c al-O Awwal, which would have been around 19 August,
1929.
143
monly known as Sëriñ Mbay (Mbay being a standard nickname for Baabakar) or “Baay
Mbay.” (“Baay” or “Father” is a title prefixed to the name of anyone of Baay’s generation,
although it is only an independent name for Baay himself.) Sëriñ Mbay would go on to
become one of the major intellectuals of the movement, building a house next to Baay’s
in Medina Baay and setting up an important informal school and community of disciples
in the town of Kër Majabel in Lagem.
The second was Sëriñ Daara45 Usmaan Njaay, a Siñi-Siñi from Njaayeen Kàdd, who
would become one of Medina Baay’s principal teachers and muqaddams and also a gàm-
mukat of renown. During part of his career, Baay would send him to the Njolofeen village
of Kër Maakànji in Waalo.
The third was Sheex Ibra Faal,46 who would become Baay’s representative in Kóosi.
Ibra Faal would become the subject of many of the most popular miracle stories having
to do with Baay.
Usually, the fourth disciple is listed as Baay’s childhood friend Sheex Omar Ture, a
Saalum-Saalum whom Baay would send to represent him in Ndóofaan Lagem. Omar
Ture would later found his own village, Saam Kër Sheex Omar, between Ndóofaan and
Tayba Ñaseen, and after Baay’s death he would move to Serekunda, near Banjul, Gambia,
to set up a large school and mosque and become the movement’s principal leader there.
Some list another disciple, Allaaji Ture, as preceding Sheex Omar, but minor disciples are
usually left out of these accounts.47
Among the next disciples were another younger brother of Baay named Haadi Ñas
45 The title “Sëriñ Daara” means “school master” or “master teacher.” In many villages or families, the
most well known teacher goes by this title alone, which may become his nickname.
46 Not
to be confused with Ahmadu Bàmba’s closest follower of the same name who founded the Baay Faal
movement.
47 For example, Allaaji Ture is listed in the list given by Maalig Ndebaan in an MBHSRC interview by Aadi
Faal in 2005.
144
and then Sëriñ Alliw Siise, whom Baay would name his khalı̄fah. The son of a Saalum-
Saalum muqaddam of Allaaji Abdulaay, Sëriñ Alliw would rarely leave Medina Baay, act-
ing as Baay’s personal secretary when Baay was present and his replacement when Baay
was away.
After these disciples, they say the disciples came like rain. What is striking about lists
of early disciples is that they do not show an abundance of people from a single village but
list individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds, most from Saalum and several from the
coastal area of Siin, who sought out Baay as part of a personal mystical vocation. Aside
from Baay’s own relatives, only a small number of the first individuals are Njolofeen.
When people began to join the movement in larger numbers, many of the first villages
to become predominantly Taalibe Baay were Njolofeen and other neighboring villages
formerly affiliated with his father, yet those who came individually were from diverse
backgrounds and often ended up leading their whole communities into the movement.
News of the Fayd.ah quickly spread through Saalum and Siin and through Tijāniyy ar-
eas of Mauritania. Baay’s was not a homegrown movement that incubated within a single
group before spreading across space but was from the beginning multi-cultural, translo-
cal, and almost immediately international. The international nature of the movement was
facilitated by already international Tijāniyy networks and his father’s long imbrication in
international touring circuits of Tijāniyy muqaddams. Within the first decade of Baay’s
announcement of the Fayd.ah, all the pieces were in place for a movement spanning West
Africa: the key Mauritanian shaykhs were on board, as was the Emir of Kano, perhaps the
most high-profile Tijāniyy in Nigeria.
Sometime in 1929,48 Baay and his disciples moved from Kóosi to Lewna Ñaseen.
48 Yac qūbAbū Bakr (2003:46) says 1939, which is certainly a typographical error, as he then says work on
the zāwiyah in Medina Baay was begun later in 1931. 1929 is the date commonly given for the beginning of
the Fayd.ah.
145
Biographers say that Lewna Ñaseen had little space for the influx of disciples. As Lewna
Ñaseen became crowded, tensions between Baay’s disciples and those allied with his
elders grew, and some “began to harrass the Shaykh, his disciples, and his followers”
(Yac qūb Abū Bakr 2003:46).
Many elders today decline to talk about the “family problems” between Baay’s and
Xalifa’s disciples, saying they have made their peace and do not want to reawaken old
tensions. But stories are still passed down, especially stories demonstrating Baay’s wise
response to the problems. Muqaddam Duudu Bittéy relates an account from his teacher
Omar Màlle Caam, saying that some people in Lewna would try to provoke Baay’s dis-
ciples, throwing rocks and calling them insane, but Baay ordered them (with uneven
success) not to retaliate. Once, a rock knocked the eye out of one disciple, and Baay
placed it back in its socket and rubbed it, and it returned to perfect health. In fact, the
other eye occasionally suffered from conjunctivitis but the eye Baay had cured always
remained healthy until the man’s death (which Bittéy says was not too long ago).
A definitive rupture occurred immediately at the mid-morning prayer of Korite (c Īd
al-fit.r ) in 1930.49 According to a disciple who was there at the time, some people wanted
to attack Baay because of his many disciples, and his older brother, Allaaji Baabakar,
brandished a sword (jaasi) and told them to leave him, for in Islam, whoever wants to
proclaim can proclaim, and whoever wants to follow can follow, but one must leave alone
whomever proclaims.50
Another companion described what happened after Baay left the scene:
After they did the prayer of korite and they had just said “as-salāmu c alaykum,”
49 Thiswould have fallen around 2 March, 1930. Alliw Siise writes in 1934 that work on the zāwiyah began
on April 2, 1931, and an interval of a year between the temporary, thatch mosque and the more permanent
structure is reasonable.
50 Allaaji Bittéy, Maam Astu Cubb.
146
the sëriñ (Baay) got up with his disciples, . . . and wanted to go home. No one
knows how it all started—the fight broke out. . . . The sëriñ was in his room
and had with him a géwal (griot), telling him: “say, whoever is my taalibe do
not retaliate.”51
After the early afternoon prayer (tisubaar) and the late afternoon prayer
(tàkkusaan), a chief in Kaolack who liked Baay a lot told him that if he wanted,
he would give him a place to go, and he gave him a place over in Daral. . . .
Baay saw the place and said “I won’t fit here.” . . . So he continued to Medina
[what is now known as Medina Mbàbba]. . . . 52
This suggests that the French authorities were immediately alerted to the situation
and were apprised that relocation was the only solution. Another account53 says Baay
refused to settle in Daral because he could perceive a lot of noise there, which turned
out to be true, because that is where the large sheep market is now located. According
to Baay Elimaan Ñas, Baay and several of his companions brought their possessions and
placed them in Medina Mbàbba, where they spent the night, then the next morning that
moved on to what is now Medina Baay.
The current head of East Medina Mbàbba, Ngisali Njaay,54 insists that his father,
Mbàbba Njaay, owned what is now Medina Baay and gave Baay permission to settle
there. The Mbóojeen of Coofog insist that their chief, Séeni Mbóoj, son of the Saalum king
51 Aas Maxmuud Ñas, a nephew of Baay, says this commonly related element of the story is not accurate,
and that Sheex Omar Ture, Baay’s disciple, was the one speaking through the griot. From a disciple’s
perspective, it would be hard to tell the difference, as the leaders were inside the house and the disciples
outside only saw the griot.
52 Baay Elimaan Ñas, interviewed 7 August, 2004 with Abdulaay ÑaN.
53 Interview with Duudu Bittéy, 25 July, 2004, recounting a narrative by his mentor, Maam Omar Màlle
Caam.
54 Medina Mbàbba is divided in two: the eastern part has a head from the Njaayeen family that founded it,
and the western part generally has a Njolofeen head, currently Xalifa Caam of Caamen Waalo.
147
Gadel Mbóoj, gave Baay this permission, although they say there was tension between
them for several years because Baay did not properly seek their permission to expand his
territory.55 Those accompanying Baay say the Mbóojeen (not the Njaayeen) did indeed
control the area at the time, but that the French were the only ones with the authority to
cede land. Doubtless, the French kept a close enough eye on religious leaders that their
permission was indispensable, but Baay attempted to maintain good diplomatic relations
with all his neighbors and likely discussed his plans with all of them. Baay eventually
gave Séeni Mbóoj a very fine horse and accoutrements to smooth over any hard feelings.56
Many members of both families are now Taalibe Baay, and descendants of both families
have since intermarried on several occasions.
Not everyone agrees that Baay left for Medina the very day of Korite. Allaaji Bittéy,
the other of the two remaining companions from that day, says they were given until
Tabaski (c Īd al-Fit.r ), almost two and a half months later, to prepare to leave. Allaaji
Abdulaay (Aas) Maxmuud Ñas, a nephew of Baay considered an authority on historical
matters, differs from both surviving companions, saying Baay did indeed leave that day
but retreated instead to Kóosi, which he had only recently left and from where he then
made arrangements with colonial administrators to occupy a new settlement. In any
case, Baay and his close companions left well before the bulk of the disciples, many of
whom left later and some of whom stayed indefinitely. We can assume that by Tabaski
(approximately 9 May, 1930), the time Allaaji Bittéy reports as the deadline set by the rest
of the family, Baay and the bulk of his disciples were in Medina Baay.
Ousmane Kane (2000) says that during this initial scission, there were in fact three
55 Interview with Mbóoj, Coofog.

56 This is a famous story that whose implications people on both sides of this issue contest. I heard detailed
accounts from a member of the Mbóoj family and Mbay Jée Bittéy. The latter (and other Njolofeen) said the
Mbóojeen were so impressed that many converted to Islam right then, whereas the former says they were
all already Muslim at the time and that it was not the horse that solved the problem but simply Baay finally
asking their permission to expand.
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groups: those who went with Baay, a larger number who considered Xalifa their leader,
and a third and smaller group that considered Allaaji Abdulaay to be their only leader.
Taalibe Baay sometimes adduce the fact that Baay went out to find his own disciples rather
than taking his brothers’ as a sign of his respect for his elders. This may have been so
during the beginning of the Fayd.ah, but my own observations lead me to believe that over
the years, a large part of these last two groups has gradually become disciples of Baay.
Several Saalum-Saalum muqaddams from Eastern Saalum I interviewed who have become
disciples of Baay Ñas between the last years of his life until the present told me they
come from families that followed Allaaji Abdulaay, although their communities have since
become overwhelmingly Taalibe Baay. In Kaolack, Dakar, and many villages throughout
Senegal, I have met very few people claiming to be disciples of Allaaji Abdulaay or Xalifa
and seen very few posters or other such symbols of discipleship.
4.5 Founding Medina Baay
Baay’s companions say they all spent their first night in Medina Baay under the stars
where Baay’s room is now the day they left Lewna Ñaseen. According to one, they
cleared a space with their bare hands and slept around Baay to protect him from snakes
and wild animals through the night.57 As they settled into their new home, the first
activities were to build a mosque and a dwelling for Baay, then they cleared the open
square (bayaal) between them. Both structures were originally temporary structures made
of thatch, wood, and millet stalks, and Baay’s house was soon rebuilt with the same
mud bricks that he lived under until his death—a fact often cited as a demonstration his
humility. Baay evidently was thinking big from the start, having his house placed across
from the mosque and tracing a wide open space (bayaal) to be cleared between the two.
Many Islamic villages with a clear authority figure have such spaces, but this one was
57 Interview with Duudu Bittéy, relating an account of Maam Omar Màlle Caam.
149
large enough to accommodate thousands who would soon fill it for the annual Gàmmu
celebration.
Sëriñ Alliw Siise’s canonical 1934 biographical sketch58 says work on the zāwiyah (the
more permanent, cement-block mosque) began a year later on April 2, 1931 (in Nyās
(nd:17))59 and was completed soon thereafter. At the time, there was only one Friday
mosque in Kaolack, which the French had built in the 1920s in greater Lewna (not Lewna
Ñaseen) for a muqaddam and son in law of Allaaji Maalig Si named Usmaan Kan. So until
1936, when Medina Baay’s mosque was expanded and designated as a Friday mosque,
Medina Baay’s residents had to walk three kilometers to Kaolack’s Friday mosque in the
greater Lewna (not Lewna Ñaseen) every Friday for prayer. The mosque would be ex-
panded to its current dimensions in 1958 (Monteil 1980:166). The Lewna Ñaseen zāwiyah
itself would not become a Friday mosque until 1966.60
The French administration gave Baay control over a large stretch of uncultivated land
north of Medina Mbàbba stretching north to Gelwaar-ruled Coofog and west to NdooroN,
which the French in turn gave to the Murid shaykh Bashiiru Mbàkke. Thus, Medina Baay
is hemmed in on the south and north by two longstanding Gelwaar communities, to the
west by a predominantly Murid area, and to the east by a salty floodplain of te Saalum
River. Baay’s disciples now say that by circumscribing Baay’s domain in this way, the
French were trying to prevent Medina Baay from becoming a sprawling quasi-theocracy
like Tuubaa.61 Baay called the eastern part of this land grant, where Baay and his disciples
58 The sketch was published as a preface to Baay’s book Kāshif al-O ilbās, the book in which Baay makes the
case for his being the bringer of the Fayd.ah
59 He gives the date 14 dhū ’l-Qac dah, which translates to Thursday, April 2, 1931, although he says it was
a Monday. Discrepancies of one or two days based on differences in moon sighting are common, but three
days or more is unusual.
60 Interview with Mbay Jée Bittéy 16 July, 2004.
61 In 1927, Ahmadu Bàmba had just been buried in Tuubaa after being confined under house arrest in
Jurbel, and Tuubaa was still rather small but was quickly filling up with disciples.
150
lived, “Madı̄nah al-Jadı̄d,”62 or “New Madı̄nah,” named after the second holy site of Islam,
but it was soon nicknamed in Wolof “Medina Baay,” following the common practice of
appending the founder’s name to a village’s name.63 The northwestern part, across the
railroad, was called Saam (Shām), named after the part of the Holy Land, Greater Syria
similarly located northwest of the historic city of Madı̄nah. These place names are part of
a pervasive analogy equating Baay to Muh.ammad. Baay compares himself to Muh.ammad
in his poetry, saying that like Muh.ammad, his own people had expelled him from one
holy city (Lewna Ñaseen is thus likened to Makkah) to Madı̄nah.
Baay and his followers did not lose time setting up sites of education. Baay assigned
Allaaji Asta Ñas to open the first QurO ānic school. Three teachers took the advanced
students: his closest disciple, Sëriñ Alliw Siise taught fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence and
practice); Aamadu Caam Gine (nicknamed after his village, Gine Waalo), taught Arabic
grammar and language; Baay Ñas himself taught various other subjects, such as h.adı̄th,
rhetoric (balāghah), the art of language (badı̄c al-mac ānı̄), poetry, and tafsı̄r.64 A number
of other teachers opened their own QurO ānic schools (daaras) and Arabic schools (majlis).
Later, Baay would enlist his Mauritanian disciple, Muh.ammad ar-Rabbāniyy, to teach
his own and other disciples’ children the QurO ān using Arabic pronunciation (Senegalese
teachers typically teach a simplified, Wolofized pronunciation).
Baay Ñas and his closest muqaddams split their day between their various religious
tasks. They devoted part of the day to studying, reading the QurO ān, and reciting prayers
62 Alliw Siise, reproduced in Nyās nd:17. That the name is a reference to the original Arabian city and is
not intended to be the Arabic word for “city” (madı̄nah) is apparent in that it has no definite article (Al-) and
that Jadı̄d does not have the feminine ending, -ah. (A more grammatically rigorous translation of this phrase
would be “Madı̄nah of the New.”)
63 Asidefrom formal Arabic writings from that early period, that official name is rarely encountered.
Arabic documents today tend to call it “Madı̄nat Bāy Nyās” or (especially in Mauritania) the more phonetic
“Madinah Bāy” (with a short i).
64 Mustafaa Géy, speech at Gàmmu Baay, Jëppël, Dakar, 24 April, 2004.
151
and wirds in seclusion; part of it to receiving guests; part to teaching students; and part
to giving disciples tarbiyyah. It is often said that Baay Ñas would recite the entire QurO ān
twice every Friday, once reading during the day and once from memory at night.65 Baay
taught students in his majlis in front of his house between the prayers of tàkkusaan (c as.r)
and timis (maghrib), that is, from around 5:00 in the afternoon until sundown two or three
hours later. Alliw Siise’s son Sheex Tiijaan Siise says his father would teach young people
in his majlis during the same hours. Then during the evening he would give tarbiyyah to
those Baay had delegated to him. Sëriñ Alliw Siise was also Baay Ñas’s personal secretary
and would sit in Baay’s audiences during the day, writing letters and O ijāzahs on Baay’s
behalf. When not travelling, Baay could be found either in his room or under the open-
air roof directly in front of his house.
Like Lewna, Medina Baay’s land was too saline and populous for farming, and it was
devoted entirely to religious and educational activities. It depended on other villages,
especially Baay’s summer village of Kóosi Mbittéyeen, for sustenance. Baay continued to
spend his rainy seasons in Kóosi, which had already become a stronghold in his move-
ment, and many people who joined the movement at this time describe finding him in
Kóosi and receiving tarbiyyah there. Although the land in eastern Medina Baay was saline
and partially flooded from the river during certain times of year (the water has subsided
since then), the northwestern land of Saam was fertile, and Baay soon assigned his ward
and disciple Àjji Màkka Kebbe, a Saalum-Saalum from Kebbe Mbudaay, to lead the effort
to turn Saam into a large orchard, planting mangoes, cashews, and other fruit trees, and
systematically digging wells every hundred meters. The fruit trees were plentiful until
the 1970s and 1980s, when Saam became completely absorbed into Kaolack’s residential
65 Baraam Jóob, for example, reported this in his address at the 2005 Ziyārah meeting in Medina Baay, as
does Baay’s obituary in Le Soleil (Ibrahima Mahmoud Mboup, 30 July, 1975, “Sa Lumière Guidera nos Pas”).
The same is said of his son Haadi, who took on many of Baay’s public speaking functions after his death.
152
sprawl. Although Baay Ñas remained the ultimate authority, he installed his nephew Aas
Jatu Ñas (son of his older brother Haadi) as village head in charge of routine matters, and
in 1952, as Saam’s trees began to be replaced by houses, he sent Àjji Màkka Kebbe to live
in Saam and to be its neighborhood head.66
It appears that only a core group of disciples from surrounding Saalum and a critical
mass of Njolofeen relatives stayed with Baay indefinitely during this period. Many others
came to receive tarbiyyah and returned to their villages soon thereafter. The inhabitants of
a number of Saalum villages had already become attached to him before the Fayd.ah and
others joined en masse immediately after. Residents of the Njolofeen village Mbittéyeen
Abdu said Baay visited the village in 1930 and that the whole village joined him that
year.67 Yet at this point few people who did not seek Baay out personally had received
tarbiyyah, as muqaddams had not yet been assigned to represent Baay to these villages.
Many disciples describe becoming his disciple as a deeply personal mystical vocation
initiated by dreams that pushed them to seek Baay out in Kóosi or Medina Baay and to
stay with him for some time. Some narrative elements from the earliest disciples remain
constant in more recent narratives of discipleship: someone who knows very little about
or is even antagonistic toward Baay has a profoundly moving dream or series of dreams
that instills a great desire to learn who Baay is and what he has to offer; sometimes
this desire is latent for days or years, but at some point, the person can no longer wait
and seeks out Baay or a muqaddam; the choice to follow Baay is usually accompanied
by persecution by family and friends, although in many (but not all) cases the family
eventually sees the benefits and becomes Taalibe Baay as well. Women especially tell of
trekking to Kóosi to receive tarbiyyah and then returning to their domestic duties, often
66 Interview with Usmaan Kebbe, 2004.

67 Interview with school director Mustafaa Caam, Mbittéyeen Abdu, 2004.
153
berated initially for abandoning their responsibilities but ultimately playing a leading
role in bringing their male relatives into the movement. In fact, it appears that in many
places, the Fayd.ah was initially a phenomenon among young women and then spread to
the general population (see below).
It was during this early period that Ñas received the nickname “Baay” from one of
his first disciples (said to be his fortieth) and later muqaddam, Omar Màlle Caam. One
evening, Sheex Ibrayima sent Omar Màlle Caam on an errand—“go find the Prophet for
me.”68 Omar Màlle Caam was confused but thought Sheex Ibrayima intended him to go
to Kóosi, so he set out on foot for Kóosi. As he walked, he realized that if he went all the
way to Kóosi, he would not be back to Medina Baay in time for morning prayer (fajar). So
he returned and slept in front of Sheex Ibrayima’s door in order to be awakened as Baay
left to lead morning prayer. When Sheex Ibrayima found someone blocking his doorway,
he asked “who is it?” and Omar Màlle Caam answered: “it’s me, Baay” (“Father”). Those
who heard him, Duudu Bittéy says, scolded him for disrespecting Sheex Ibrayima with
such an ordinary name. But they did not understand, Bittéy continues, that Baay is the
father of us all, whether we know it or not—including me. Even Baay’s mother asked him
what to call him, and he replied that she should call him Baay like everyone else. This
story’s subtext is that Omar Màlle’s search for the Prophet led him to Baay’s door.
4.6 The Fayd.ah’s spread
The Fayd.ah quickly spread through Saalum and parts of Siin and, soon after its inception,
gained the allegiance of members of prominent O Idawc ali Tijāniyy families in Mauritania.
Beginning in the 1940s, several prominent Nigerian Tijāniyy leaders joined the movement,
and from that point the movement spread rapidly through Nigeria and neighboring coun-
68 According to an interview with Duudu Bittéy, a muqaddam and nephew of Omar Màlle Caam, conducted
with Abdulaay ÑaN, 25 July, 2004, in Medina Baay.
154
tries, starting with Hausa and eventually winning over many Yoruba. The spread of the
Fayd.ah in Mauritania and Nigeria will be discussed in Chapter 9.
Baay Ñas’s movement caused polarized reactions nearly everywhere: many people
found in it a deep mystical experience they could find nowhere else, while others con-
sidered the manifestations of what Taalibe Baay called Divine Knowledge to be excessive
and even a kind of elective folly. Those most often named as Baay’s earliest disciples are
those who became his major muqaddam, yet oral accounts suggest that the first follow-
ers, and even some of the first muqaddams, in many places were women. Many of these
women went to Kóosi against their husbands’ orders, and after they returned their whole
family usually followed them into the movement.
The road to Kóosi. Ummi Géy was born in the village of Kër Soose in Lagem, but her
grandparents had immigrated to the area from Fuuta.69 Around 1935, she says, she heard
of a great sëriñ in Kóosi, and she felt compelled to find out more about him but no one
around her could tell her anything more specific. Finally an old Baay Faal (a Murid who
follows the way of Ahmadu Bàmba’s follower Ibra Faal) who had taken refuge in the area
since the wars between the king of Kajoor and the French, was able to tell her something
about Baay. She decided to seek Baay in Kóosi, but her husband forbade her from going.
As she worked alongside her husband in their fields, a snake bit him and she pan-
icked, not knowing what to do. Just then a group of men passed by and volunteered to
carry him to the village to a doctor. Soon after this incident, she had a dream in which
she saw herself going to Kóosi and finding Baay Ñas, and she told her husband of the
dream but he still forbade her. One day she surreptitiously left and began to walk toward
where she thought Kóosi might be, although did not know where she was going. She
happened upon the same group of men who had taken her husband to the hospital, and
69 This account comes from an MBHSRC interview conducted by Yuunus Caam with Ummi Géy in Kaolack,
26 July, 2004.
155
she asked them if they could direct her to Kóosi. They said that they were going to Kóosi
and that she should join them.
When she arrived in Kóosi, she was overcome with emotion and cried. The village
was full of disciples who had come to learn Baay’s secrets, and she had to wait weeks
before seeing him, eating in the house and sleeping in a hut called “the taalibe hut.” The
day she finally saw Baay, she cried. He came to her and put his hand on her head and
told her to arise, so she arose, still crying. She looked at his face and saw a light in it, and
her heart began to beat very quickly. He then gave her the Tijāniyy wird and helped her
to know God (i.e., gave her tarbiyyah). She adds that she has never regretted this and has
practiced the wird faithfully since. Since then, sometimes when she has gone out during
the evening to pronounce the wird, she has seen a light surrounding her.
She returned to Kër Soose a staunch Taalibe Baay and had problems with her hus-
band’s family. She wanted to organize a sikkar (dhikr) chant meeting, but her husband’s
brother refused to allow her to host it in their house. She finally was able to convince
her husband to allow her to host the meetings, and they brought in a great chanter from
nearby Daaru Mbittéyeen, Baaba Caan, to lead the chants. This was the first Taalibe
Baay sikkar meeting held in Kër Soose. Since then, her husband’s whole family became
disciples, and they continued to host sikkar meetings in the village.
She adds to her story her own testimonial that Baay Ñas was sent by God to teach
people to know God and will that no other man like him will ever come again. Anyone
who does not know God through Baay will not know God through anyone. Baay is a
river from which one can drink without reducing it.
Daaru Mbittéyeen early became a stronghold in the Taalibe Baay movement, even
though its founder, Allaaji Aali Laamo Bittéy, founded a separate Tijāniyy branch that
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remains independent of the Taalibe Baay movement. Several of his children and grand-
children nonetheless became Taalibe Baay. Two interviewees who lived in Daaru Mbit-
téyeen at the time (a man and a woman)70 said that Baay’s first disciple and muqaddam
in Daaru Mbittéyeen was Ibrayima Bittéy, followed by Baaba Jée Cubb. They both name
two women, Faati Musaa Bittéy and then Xadi Kutaa, appointed directly by Baay as mu-
qaddams near the beginning of the Fayd.ah. These women were prominent members of
the Taalibe Baay community there and organized sikkar meetings, and one interviewee
said they began to give many people the wird (which among Taalibe Baay often implies
giving tarbiyyah as well).71 This indicates that from the beginning of the movement, Baay
appointed women as muqaddams. Many disciples are unaware that Baay personally ap-
pointed woman as muqaddams, although his own close muqaddams have appointed other
well known women who work actively today.
The entire populations of most Njolofeen villages soon became strong supporters of
the Fayd.ah. One exception was Caameen Waalo, one of the earliest Njolofeen villages
near Mbittéyeen Waalo and Tayba Ñaseen. The village split in two, and the greater part
remained supporters of Xalifa Ñas. In 1936, most of the Taalibe Baay left Caameen Waalo
to found their own village, which they named Medina Caameen after Medina Baay. Their
neighbors referred to the village as Caameen Sanc or Sanc Caameen (“the settlement of
the Caameen”). Interviews with muqaddams from other Saalum villages who became
Taalibe Baay relatively recently suggest that many Saalum-Saalum villages, especially
in the east, remained attached to Allaaji Abdulaay and his successors and only became
70 Allaaji Bittéy and his wife, Astu Cubb, interviewed separately by Yuunus Caam.
71 I spoke with several Taalibe Baay who disbelieved that Baay himself appointed women as muqaddams,
as these women’s appointments usually were not made public, but Baay clearly gave O ijāzahs to several of
his own daughters, and some interviewees mentioned names of women muqaddams appointed by Baay but
asked me to keep their names confidential. Baay’s muqaddam have since appointed numerous women, most
of whom do not publicly act as leaders but several of whom are important muqaddams, especially in Kaolack
and Dakar.
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Taalibe Baay recently.
While Baay’s renown was growing among Wolof speakers in Saalum, several muqad-
dams spread his movement quickly to the west among the Ñoominka, Séeréer-speaking
fishers in the Saalum River Delta in the former kingdom of Siin.72 It was the pagan
king of Siin whose forces killed Màbba Jaxu Ba in battle in 1867, heralding the dissolu-
tion of the jihad movement and the Islamic empire. Only well after the jihad, during the
early twentieth century, did Islam become widespread in these areas, although there were
Tijāniyy communities and scholars there since the time of Allaaji Abdulaay. Several key
Ñoominka who became muqaddams during the 1930s have brought the Fayd.ah to perhaps
a majority of Ñoominka (one muqaddam says ninety percent of all Ñoominka are Taalibe
Baay), whereas inland, agriculturalist Séeréer are not predominantly Taalibe Baay. The
movement’s major muqaddams, schools, and disciple communities are concentrated in the
coastal towns of Sóokóon,73 Jirnda, Jam Ñaajo, and Medina Sàngaako, with local groups
of disciples throughout the area.
Arfaan Jaañ,74 a Ñoominka whose parents were Tijāniyy and who studied in Siin
with a Wolof friend of Baay, was appointed a muqaddam during the early days of the
Fayd.ah. He installed himself in the fishing community of Jirnda, where he first inducted
his relatives into the order while teaching QurO ān and the Islamic disciplines. After setting
up a community there, he began having nightly dreams that let him know that other
places awaited his work.75 He left Jirnda and set up a school in Badandan, where he
72 Information
about the movement in Ñoominka areas comes primarily from several MBHSRC interviews
conducted by Aamadu Njaay and Aadi Aydara Faal with Ñoominka muqaddams in late 2004.
73 Omar Ngom, a muqaddam in Sóokóon, names the muqaddams of Baay who have played the most direct
role in spreading the movement in and around Sóokóon: his father Tamsiir Alliw Ngom in Sóokóon, Tamsiir
Baaba Saaxo in Sanc ba, Allaaji Maalig Saar in Ndangan, and Allaaji MamadiN Koor in Njaafat. Others add
Mbara Jaase and the chanter Baabakar Caam to the list.
74 This
example comes from an MBHSRC interview with Arfaan Jaañ’s son, Mustafaa Jaañ, conducted by
Aamadu Njaay in Jirnda.
75 The dream, as recounted by his son Mustafaa Jaañ, was of a bright light that would fall into the water
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built up a community of disciples over three years. He continued to move through other
villages where Islam was not firmly implanted (Pasi Maamur Ngataan, then Mundaay),
then in 1965 returned indefinitely to Badandan. In each of these places, he set up a
vibrant communty of disciples, most of them Ñoominka, and taught the QurO ān to as
many people as possible. He died there in 1974. (See Chapter Chapter 7 for more on
this story.) Arfaan Jaañ’s trajectory is similar to many teachers and muqaddams in areas
where Islam and the Taalibe Baay movement are not well established. Rather than develop
a community in one place, they describe it as their duty to spread religious knowledge
to as many places as possible, leaving as soon as there is a viable community. As a
teacher-muqaddam grows older, he will likely settle in a single place. Arfaan Jaañ’s son
and successor, Mustafaa Jaañ, says that through these peregrinations, his father became a
leader over many disciple communities throughout the Ñoominka area.
Another major Ñoominka figure is Baabakar Caam, whose story is told in Chapter 6.
As opposed to Arfaan Jaañ, Caam was born to a convert to Islam in a newly Islamizing
community. Despite his blindness, he has become a prominent teacher, muqaddam, and
chanter. He has made his mark on Séeréer-speaking areas not only through represent-
ing Baay there as a muqaddam and teaching but also through being delivering gàmmu
recitations in Séeréer in addition to Wolof.
Throughout Siin and Saalum, Baay Ñas established a system whereby each predom-
inantly Taalibe Baay village or region has a muqaddam representing Baay there. Most
Njolofeen villages are overseen by a son of Baay, in many cases one whose mother is from
that village. This resulted in a system of religious governance through which Baay dele-
gated responsibility during his lifetime and through which religious authority was main-
tained after Baay’s death. For example, Sheex Tiijaan Ñas oversees Daaru Mbittéyeen,
and cool off, awaiting him to come to set it alight again.
159
O Ahmad (Daam) Ñas oversees Mbittéyeen Abdu, and Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima (Aas)
.
oversaw Tayba Ñaseen, which his sons now oversee. Baay assigned other muqaddams to
oversee other areas: Omar Faati Jàllo was over many Ñoominka fishing communities in
Siin; Sheex Omar Ture was over Ndóofaan Lagem and nearby villages. Many villages in
Saalum have their own muqaddams, each of whom nonetheless has a principal “doorway
to Baay” (bunt ci Baay) to whom he reports and owed hadiyyah. Usually a muqaddam
reports to a direct descendant of Baay, although sometimes they may be attached to an-
other muqaddam. In eastern Saalum, Abdu Wilaan in Kafrin reports to Baay’s son Haadi;
Jim Njaay in Kañmoor reports to Imam Hasan Siise; yet Allaaji Baabu Ba of Ngódiba
reports to the Mauritanian muqaddam Shaykh wuld al-Khayri, who has a large following
in Senegal.
The Taalibe Baay movement continues to expand in Siin and Saalum, with much of
the current expansion in eastern Saalum among Saalum-Saalum. Yet the seeds of its
current expansion were planted in the 1930s with the appointment of key muqaddams
who set up early communities throughout the region that have since expanded steadily.
The movement grew in Siin in the west largely through new or recent converts to Islam
without strong attachments to any zāwiyah, but in Saalum, many followers seem to have
been disciples of Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas or, to a lesser extent, disciples of Allaaji Maalig
Si or Ahmadu Bàmba. Those who joined the movement overwhelmingly describe their
path into the Fayd.ah as a personal quest for knowledge guided by dreams and mystical
experiences.
4.7 Dakar: The frontier at home
Considering the history of Njolofeen and Taalibe Baay disengagement from colonial and
post-colonial government, it is perhaps unsurprising that Taalibe Baay established a pres-
ence in Dakar much later than more politically engaged groups like the Murids and
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Tiwaawan’s Tijāniyys. What is remarkable is that Baay had millions of disciples in Mau-
ritania and Nigeria decades before his disciples had a discernable presence in his own
country’s capital. Since the relative obscurity in the late 1980s, the Taalibe Baay move-
ment has become a dynamic movement in Dakar today with daayiras springing up by the
dozen in every neighborhood. Njolofeen play an instrumental role in organizing large
community events and in drawing new disciples, but the vast majority of Taalibe Baay
in Dakar today are youth from diverse cultural backgrounds, many of them Séeréer and
Pulaar speakers.
Taalibe Baay are especially concentrated in the northern coastal neighborhoods and
suburbs, especially Parcelles Assainies, Pikin, and Géjawaay, with important communities
in neighborhoods such as Xaar Yàlla, Liberté VI, and Grand Dakar. Several yearly activ-
ities draw thousands of disciples, including the yearly Gàmmu Baay near Baay’s house
in the Jëppël neighborhood; the feast (c Īd) prayers held at Saydaa Maryama Ñas’s school
in the Patte d’Oie neighborhood; the Gàmmu held by Sheex Ibrayima Sàll’s community
in Géjawaay; and the Gàmmu organized by the Federation of Student Taalibes of Baay
at the University. Baay’s son Baaba Lamin, who has long taken a personal interest in
Dakar, is Baay’s official Khalı̄fah in the Dakar region and all daayiras are officially under
his leadership. All daayiras are also officially supposed participate in the O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n
Federation that represents all disciples in the area. Yet despite the efforts of Federation
leaders, Dakar’s Taalibe Baay continue to form a loose network of quasi-independent
daayiras and muqaddams whose dimensions change too rapidly for leaders to track.
Since the 1980s, Taalibe Baay have made concerted efforts to be recognized as a “na-
tional” Islamic group on the same level as other Islamic groups. This has entailed con-
scious efforts to attract the attention of national media and financial support from the
government. I will not attempt to tell reconstruct the history of the Taalibe Baay move-
161
ment in Dakar, as it is really the history of hundreds of quasi-independent daayiras and
muqaddams. Instead, I will discuss a narrative of a Taalibe Baay and his own efforts to
consolidate the movement and to gain national recognition.
Muh.ammad Ñas, better known as Paab Maxmuut, is an adviser for the Mayor of
Dakar and also works as an administrator at the national Islamic Institute in Dakar.
Three members of the MBHSRC and I met with him in his office at the Islamic Insti-
tute, where he was engaged in administrative work organizing the national pilgrimage
(H 76
. ajj). According to Paab Maxmuut, before independence in 1960, Dakar was home to
several prominent Taalibe Baay, although there was no strong central organization and
Baay seldom visited Dakar. As Baay instructed them, a group of disciples organized a
daayira called Jamc ı̄yat O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n (Community of the Defenders of the Faith), although
the organizers had no idea how many disciples were in the Dakar region or how to con-
tact them. Perhaps the most prominent Taalibe Baay in Dakar was a successful trader,
Omar Kan, whose wife, Baay Ñas’s daughter Saydaa Maryama Ñas, has opened several
large Islamic institutes and QurO ānic schools in Dakar. Until 1960, Baay Ñas would stay
in disciples’ houses when he came to Dakar, first Omar Kan’s house and then Ibu ÑaN’s.
In 1960, the year of Senegal’s independence, disciples collected money and bought
Baay Ñas a house in the Jëppël residential neighborhood. They also renamed their orga-
nization Rābit.at O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n (Federation of the Defenders of the Faith), indicating that
they were no longer a single organization but a group of organizations. In 1963 they or-
ganized their first gàmmu in Jëppël, a yearly event that in recent years has been dedicated
to Baay Ñas. Around the same time, Baay established an Islamic school downtown on
Raffenel street named after his father, Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, and several important future
scholars studied there (such as Mustafaa Géy and Siidi Lamin Xalifa Ñas, founder of the
76 This narrative outline is based on MBHSRC interviews with Muhammad (Paab Maxmuut) Ñas in Dakar
.
in 2004.
162
media conglomerate Wal Fadjri).
Still, the community of Taalibe Baay in Dakar remained small and marginalized for
decades, and most disciples were unaware of each other’s existence. Paab Maxmuut
attributes their marginalization by the government in part to Baay’s support for Lamin
Géy’s party instead of Léopold SeNoor’s, who had won over the other major Islamic
leaders.77 As late as 1980, the O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n Federation counted only four daayiras:
one in Dakar’s suburb of Pikin, the Njolofeen daayira in the suburb of Géjawaay, one
in the neighborhood of Grand Dakar, and a Séeréer daayira in the far end of Pikin (an
area called “Ginnaaw Raay” or “beyond the rail”). Three more daayiras were founded
in that year, including one founded by our informant Paab Maxmuut, a student at the
university at the time. (Unlike most Taalibe Baay leaders, he has a French education, and
he emphasizes that he is not active as a muqaddam.)
Starting 1982, when Paab Maxmuut became the personal secretary of acting khalı̄fah
Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima, members of the Federation began more serious collabora-
tion to raise their profile, organizing monthly religious gatherings (called “conferences”)
around the Dakar area, where Baay’s charismatic son Baaba Lamin Ñas was often the
principal speaker. The turning point in their visibility came in 1986 with the organization
of a public Cultural Week for Maam Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas (Baay Ñas’s father), after sim-
ilar cultural weeks had been organized for Ahmadu Bàmba and Maalig Si. Taalibe Baay
in the area came together and realized they were far more numerous than anyone had
assumed, and outsiders began to take note of them. Paab Maxmuut says that after this
time, instead of approaching others, others approached them.
In 1988, the government called a meeting concerning preparations for the yearly
Gàmmu festivities, inviting the heads of the Tijāniyy zāwiyahs at Tiwaawan, Piir, Ceyn-
77 Baay had at one point officially called on fellow Muslims to rally behind Lamin Géy, arguing that he was
a more appropriate leader for an Islamic country than the Christian SeNoor.
163
aba, and Njaawan, neglecting Medina Baay. As the Taalibe Baay representative in Dakar,
Paab Maxmuut brought a delegation to the meeting and was told that it was by invitation
only. He went to speak with the director responsible for the meeting. He complained that
Medina Baay was marginalized because its leaders had not had relations with the French,
and that the current government had inherited their attitudes from the French. The direc-
tor told him that he could not admit them because the government had already finalized
the invitations, but he promised to bring the matter up with the Minister responsible (he
did not specify which one).
The Minister answered that the problem was simple: Medina Baay was not on the
list of “national gàmmus” and they needed to write a letter to the Senegalese President to
make an official request. Paab Maxmuut says he wrote a scalding letter to the President
criticizing them for marginalizing the Taalibe Baay. He says he had no fear speaking to the
President like this because he knew he was right and had many powerful people backing
him up. The Minister invited a delegation including Paab Maxmuut Ñas, Baay’s oldest
son Allaaji Abdulaay, Baay’s brother Allaaji Muh.ammad Zeynabu Ñas, and muqaddam
Baaba Roqi ÑaN. The Minister concluded that their demands were reasonable, and the
government would allot two television slots to the Ñaseen to broadcast the Medina Baay
Gàmmu and the Ziyārah, the largest yearly meeting in Lewna Ñaseen.
The “Ñaseen”—both the Medina Baay branch and the Lewna Ñaseen branch—were
now among Senegal’s nationally recognized “houses of religion” (këru diine). Paab Max-
muut then went to the Direction du Matériel et du Transit and campaigned to receive stands
for seating at the Gàmmu as other Islamic groups received. He and other Taalibe Baay
leaders spoke with the nationalized Radio et télévision du Sénégal to demand more cover-
age. They discovered that they had been excluded because they did not know the protocol
for requesting coverage. The Murids and other Tijāniyys had long had employees at these
164
organizations who knew how to get their religious organizations the maximum amount
of airtime. As an adviser to the Mayor of Dakar, Paab Maxmuut has been able to obtain
more government participation in Taalibe Activities, such as substantial financial support
for renting material for the Jëppël Gàmmu. He suggested that the Mayor would have
more popular support if he had a street named after Baay Ñas. It is through having more
people involved in government and the national media, he says, that Taalibe Baay have
developed a higher profile in Dakar. He does not like the current politicized system, how-
ever, and advocates setting up a separate Ministry of Religion that would give religious
groups a set amount of support rather than making them depend on personalized politi-
cal relations. (Indeed, many disciples complain that the opening minutes of a Gàmmu in
Dakar often includes thanks to politicians who secured government funds—the money is
not these politicians’, and yet they use it to try to influence disciples’ votes.)
Paab Maxmuut and his fellow Taalibe Baay realized the stakes of reinventing them-
selves from a loose network of disciples of a S.ūfı̄ shaykh into an officially recognized
“Islamic brotherhood” along the lines of other Islamic organizations and in terms the
state would recognize. It is through delegating specialists such as Paab Maxmuut who
speak the language of the state—that is, both the French language and, more specifically,
bureaucratic language and protocols—that the Taalibe Baay have learned to engage with
Senegal’s state-Islam complex. It is important to emphasize, however, that the point of
engagement with the state consists of such specialists who are specially trained and del-
egated to mediate between the two spheres. The greater part of Taalibe Baay activity in
Dakar happens not at this point of engagement but in spaces where specifically Islamic
knowledge and authority are largely disengaged from secular power. These activities will
be discussed in subsequent chapters.
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4.8 Conclusion
This chapter has aimed to give a broad picture of the growth of the Taalibe Baay move-
ment through Senegal and West Africa. Its growth has been dynamic and swift but
has been less visible than the growth of the more publicly visible Islamic movements in
Senegal. Its limited visibility owes partly to its not beginning as a politically and publicly
engaged movement but instead spread through diffuse, capillary networks of muqaddams.
Taalibe Baay have inherited from early Njolofeen leaders such as Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas
an overall stance of disengagement from state politics and national culture (the culture
of national “brotherhoods”). Only recently have Taalibe Baay leaders, especially those
in Dakar, attempted to engage the state, especially when they have become aware of the
financial support other Islamic groups receive and the ways in which raising their profile
in the national media could further their cause. Doing so has not been a simple matter of
changing their attitudes but has involved learning the specialized knowledge of state-Is-
lam relations, setting up official institutional organizations, and establishing connections
with state, media, and non-governmental actors.
The question that academics have posed as to why the Taalibe Baay movement has
not become a “Senegalese brotherhood” of the same magnitude as the two other major
Senegalese Islamic groups (the Tijāniyys adhering to Allaaji Maalig Si and the Murid
order), presupposes a kind of religio-political order that bears a particular relationship to
state and public culture. Taalibe Baay have, for the most part, sought the opposite of what
is generally implied by the idea of a national brotherhood, accommodating the state as
much as needed to forge autonomous spaces of knowledge and authority with minimal
interference from outsiders.
It is significant that in religious, political, and cultural matters, Taalibe Baay repre-
sentatives engage with outsiders using a language of z.āhir truths. When dealing with
166
the broader Muslim community, for example, they emphasize literal interpretations of
religious practice that all Muslims can agree on and that they refer to as z.āhir amongst
themselves. When dealing with the State, Baay Ñas emphasized peaceful relations be-
tween people of different viewpoints, and when he became involved in political matters
it was to ensure that state laws did not contravene Islamic laws (for example, in his inter-
ventions into the Family Code). Taalibe Baay engagement with national culture, at least
until recently, was largely limited to efforts to preempt possible incursions into autonomy,
not to become an integral part of an alien state machinery.
From this viewpoint, one might consider that the Taalibe Baay movement has played
a limited role in Senegalese life. When one looks at the disciples’ narratives, however, it
is clear that they understand their decisions to adhere to and to participate in the move-
ment in terms of bāt.in realities, such as dreams, visions, and mystical experiences that
they generally withhold from their interactions with outsiders. Although this movement
counts a significant number of Senegalese, it is striking how little outsiders (whether aca-
demics or fellow Senegalese Muslims) know about them, a fact that I attribute largely
to the centrality of such mystical realities to their self understanding and their tendency
not to talk about such things publicly. The result is an general reticence with regards to
outsiders regarding their religious activities.
It is this preoccupation with deeply personal religious experiences that has lowered
the Taalibe Baay public profile while at the same time increasing its ability to appeal
to individuals in diverse circumstances. As a result, it has appealed to small groups of
people throughout Senegal and abroad rather than sweeping a contiguous region.
This chapter has only hinted at the ways in which the forms of knowledge upon
which the Taalibe Baay movement’s growth and governance are based. The Taalibe Baay
movement has taken terms found throughout the varieties of Sufism—especially z.āhir
167
and bāt.in—and has given them a particular practical implementation informed to an im-
portant extent by the history of engagement and disengagement inherited from the early
Njolofeen community. Paradox often mediates between a z.āhir truth—often a contin-
gent fact of life that one has no choice but to accept—and a bāt.in truth—often regarding
fundamental or mystical principles. It is through various kinds of education, especially
tarbiyyah, that Taalibe Baay learn to experience and speak about multiple kinds of realities.
The following chapters, therefore, discuss the various forms of religious knowledge, ed-
ucation, and apprenticeship that Taalibe Baay undergo and their practical consequences.
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Part II
Knowledge
Chapter 5
Textual Knowledge: QurOānic Schools

(Daara) and Informal Arabic
Education
5.1 Introduction: Z.āhir and bāt.in in textual education
I am here to tell you to go ahead and be in the vanguard of things. Surely the
future of every nation is based on its youth. But not upon all of them. No, not
upon every individual, but on the intellectual ones, the educated ones with
good character, good manners, and zeal. As for the youth lacking education
and good character, he is like a seed unfertilized. So make every effort to seek
and do your best to acquire more knowledge, not only Islamic knowledge,
not only mathematics and its branches, but also be part of and cooperate with
those whose zeal is to discover the unknown and unseen things of this world.1
He who learns during his youth will serve tomorrow. I encourage you to move
forward, and God, who began your work, will complete it, for all things are
of little consequence to Him aside from knowledge.2
1 Thisspeech by Baay Ñas at the 1968 Gàmmu is quoted on several web sites in English, including http://
www.tijaniyya.com/book.htm.
2 Graduation speech delivered in Wolof by Baay Ñas at the Institut Islamique El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niass in
Medina Baay, Kaolack, 19 August, 1973. Recorded in Arabic by Seydinaa Baabakar (Haraka) Caam in HNI
C-16a-1973-08-19 01a.
170
Joseph Hill Chapter 5. Textual Knowledge
Baay Ñas’s preoccupation with simultaneously cultivating z.āhir (exoteric) and bāt.in (es-
oteric) knowledge, perhaps more than anything else, has defined his movement for both
disciples and other observers. It is in terms of knowledge that leaders are evaluated,
projects are framed, and daily activities are organized and understood. Beyond demon-
strating Baay Ñas’s insistence on the importance of knowledge, these quotations from
two of Baay’s public speeches demonstrate several important points about Baay Ñas’s
understanding of knowledge. First, knowledge and education include not only factual
knowledge but also good moral character and manners (O adab).3 The phrase “educated
ones with good character” most likely translates a single Wolof word, “yaru” (well man-
nered, educated, disciplined).4 Second, Baay’s comparison of an uneducated person to an
unfertilized seed echoes the premise of tarbiyyah that only education can unlock one’s po-
tential and reveals one’s true being. Third, implicit in the last sentence is the call to seek
out all kinds of knowledge, religious and secular, bāt.in and z.āhir. “Islamic knowledge”5 is
a phrase that commonly designates (z.āhir) textual studies, while “unseen things”6 refers
obliquely to mystical (bāt.in) knowledge.
As the first quotation above exemplifies, exoteric knowledge such as knowledge of Is-
lamic texts or secular disciplines is often contrasted to knowledge acquired through S.ūfı̄
mystical disciplines in terms of z.āhir and bāt.in. At the same time, everything has z.āhir and
bāt.in aspects, even something understood as fundamentally one or the other. For exam-
ple, textual knowledge has z.āhir attributes (such as facts learned through texts) and bāt.in
Ñas’s first known literary work, Rūh. al-O adab (“The spirit of manners/character”), written when
3 Baay
Baay was around 20 years old, is a poem that discusses the behavior becoming of an educated Muslim. This
poem remains one of his most oft-cited works, and many Taalibe Baay teachers encourage their students to
memorize it.
4 Yaru is the reflexive/passive form of “yar” (n.: good manners, education, discipline, upbringing, whip;
v.: to educate, to discipline, to bring up, to whip). “Good character” might also be expressed by the word
teggin. “Education” in French has similar connotations of both schooling and moral upbringing.
5 Probably glossing “xam-xamu Lislaam”
6 Likely “luy nëbbu” in Wolof.
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attributes (textual associations with occult power and authority). Particular methods and
relationships of apprenticeship emphasize one of these two sides. Like shaykh O Ah.mad
at-Tijāniyy, who insisted that mystical pursuits did not necessitate worldly renunciation,
Baay Ñas insisted on simultaneously accommodating z.āhir and bāt.in in numerous do-
mains, including in religious knowledge and even within textual studies.
The pervasiveness of informal education and its impact on life in Senegal has received
little scholarly attention. This has much to do with the fact that informal schools, held
in private homes unrecognizable as schools to a passer-by, are often barely visible to the
general public and also that the kinds of knowledge taught there do not strike Western
observers as “knowledge” in the same sense as the knowledge taught in formal, West-
ernized institutions. Although informal schools offer subjects such as QurO ān, grammar,
Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and Islamic history, the transmission of religious knowledge
in them is closely bound to religious authority and barakah much as S.ūfı̄ and occult
knowledge are.
Ousmane Kane (2003a) has signaled the problem of the invisibility to Arabic-lan-
guage scholarship to scholars writing in European languages. He criticizes statements
such as that made by philosopher Kwane Anthony Appiah that “For many of its most
important purposes most African intellectuals, south of the Sahara, are what we can call
‘europhone”’ (Appiah 1993:4). Appiah reflects a common assumption that African “in-
tellectuals” are a product of an encounter with the West. Kane aims to remedy this false
assumption by bringing to light intellectuals who wrote in Arabic.
In the same spirit, this chapter focuses on the milieu in which such intellectuals and
lay disciples are formed and the ways in which textual knowledge is understood. Looking
at informal educational institutions suggests that this invisibility may stem not only from
Western-educated scholars’ unfamiliarity with the Arabic language and bias toward more
172
familiar Western languages and institutions but also from the diffuse and non-public
nature of informal education. Islamic education in Senegal often takes the form of a
private relationship between teacher and apprentice, and Arabic-language literature is
often transmitted through such relationships rather than through large printing houses
and bookstores that display these works for all to see. Also the embeddedness of this
knowledge in a private religious environment may lead outsiders not even to recognize
it as “knowledge.” To gauge the importance of informal Islamic education in Senegal
requires a close look at how knowledge is transmitted and understood and subsequently
on the broader effects of this education.
This analysis of textual specialization among Taalibe Baay shows how informal schools’
educational methods, relations of apprenticeship, and spaces of transmission overlap sig-
nificantly with, yet are not coterminous with, those of mystical education. Informal tex-
tual education is no less essential to the reproduction and extension of Taalibe Baay net-
works of religious authority than is mystical education. Scholars have noted a growing
number of formal schools over the past century whose approach to pedagogy, knowledge,
and authority contrasts sharply with that of informal schools and mystical education.
These scholars have often described formal schools as representing an exoteric, ortho-
dox orientation toward knowledge at odds with the esoteric, S.ūfı̄ orientation of informal
schools. Galilou Abdoulaye (2003) describes S.ūfı̄s in Benin as explicitly rejecting formal
schools for their clear Salafiyy genealogy and orientation.7 Louis Brenner (2001) perceives
formal schools in Mali as a fundamental challenge to S.ūfı̄ authority and argues that their
growing prevalence has accompanied a broader societal shift from an esoteric religious
outlook to an exoteric one. In places such as Mali where Salafiyy-style reform move-
7 Abdoulaye quotes a (presumably Sūfı̄) imam who justifies not sending children to study in formal Islamic
.
schools: “We do not want our children . . . to become devils (saytan) like them [Salafiyys]” (Abdoulaye
2003:16).
173
ments have explicitly challenged S.ūfı̄ authority and informal education (Soares 2002) as
they have not in Senegal, the “rationalization” thesis of religious modernity (described in
the Introduction ) is probably at home.
Yet the proliferation of formal schools in Taalibe Baay areas has not accompanied a
decline in S.ūfı̄ authority in favor of more “rationalized” or “secularized” approaches to
Islamic knowledge and authority. On the contrary, instead of competing, formal and
informal education have developed a synergistic relationship. Many of the same peo-
ple advocate, organize, teach, and study at both simultaneously, understanding them as
complementary parts of the same religious project. Among Taalibe Baay, this simultane-
ity and synergy of alternative approaches to knowledge and authority finds expression in
the simultaneity of z.āhir and bāt.in. As other chapters of this dissertation have shown, this
paradoxical simultaneity and synergy relies not on reconciling opposing claims through
a unifying field but through cultivating contrasting practical repertoires and discourses
that are understood as simultaneously valid. The z.āhir/bāt.in distinction is not a mutually
exclusive binary but a way of talking about multiple truths and imperatives that might
impinge on a single situation (c.f. Lambek and Strathern 1998, 1990).
This discussion of Islamic schools draws on several sources. I studied Arabic with a
tutor in the village of Mac t.a Mulāna and sometimes sat in on the group lessons given at
the village informal school (mah.z.ara) and other educational activities. I also interviewed
teachers of the QurO ān and other texts in Senegal and Mauritania and observed their
teaching, and other members of the Committee8 also conducted interviews with teach-
ers and collected life stories and information about their schools. Wanting to have more
systematic information about schools, I devised a simple survey, which Committee mem-
bers and I took to over a hundred Taalibe Baay and non-Taalibe Baay informal schools in
8 See the Introduction for a discussion of the Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee.
174
Kaolack. I had initially intended to survey all informal schools in Kaolack and several in
other locations, but I soon realized that there were many times more schools in Kaolack
than I had resources and time to survey. Additionally, as the case studies below illustrate,
many informal schools are transitory, and students may alternate between studying at
several simultaneously and studying at none. Thus, an attempt to count students and
schools would yield numbers that would mask complex realities. I have therefore used
both the surveys and the interviews to cull narratives, to form general impressions, and
to get an idea of the nuances and variations rather than to form an aggregate profile.
5.2 The field of textual knowledge
Until recently, nearly all S.ūfı̄ specialists in Senegambia and Mauritania were also textual
and occult specialists (although the reverse was not the case). That is to say, any religious
specialist could practice occult cures involving verses from the QurO ān and various plant
and animal substances, while a subset of these were also QurO ān teachers, a subset of
QurO ān teachers had pursued further studies in other Islamic and Arabic texts, and a
handful of textual specialists were authorized to initiate into a S.ūfı̄ order. To this day,
nearly all well known S.ūfı̄ specialists are reputed textual scholars and occult specialists
as well. All of Baay Ñas’s major representatives became esteemed scholars and teachers
of the Islamic disciplines as well as S.ūfı̄ shaykhs, having studied and then established
well known informal schools. Most wrote voluminously on Islamic law, Sufism, and
hagiographic poetry. Taalibe Baay leaders from subsequent generations, including the
sons of Baay Ñas and his major representatives, have typically earned university degrees
in the Arab world (especially Al-O Azhar in Cairo) and are likewise recognized as textual
scholars as well as S.ūfı̄ “knowers of God” (c ārif bi-Llāh). To be recognized as a major
leader, one must manifest a deep knowledge of the Islamic textual disciplines (xam-xam)
and a deep knowledge of the secrets (O asrār) of Divine Knowledge, most conspicuously
175
through public speeches that combine both.
Although mystical, textual, and occult specializations overlap somewhat and are often
practiced by the same people, textual studies have existed in many parts of Senegambia
independently of S.ūfı̄ orders, and an increasing number of Taalibe Baay muqaddams are
not textual specialists. For this reason, among others, I do not follow the widespread
practice of collapsing all religious specialists into the category of marabout. Specialization
in one field often accompanies specialization in another but is by no means automatic.
Formal schools have increasingly created spaces proper to textual specialization, while
the growth of the Taalibe Baay movement in urban areas has called for a proliferation
of muqaddams who are not textual specialists. As a result, increasing numbers of people
specialize in one or the other.
Still, textual specialists describe their educational work as integral to the pursuit of
mystical knowledge. First, S.ūfı̄ practices must be firmly grounded in the QurO ān and
Sunnah, and second, textual education is a discipline that develops proper Muslim char-
acter. Accordingly, S.ūfı̄ specialists who are not textual specialists rely heavily on textual
specialists for oral explanations of Islamic principles, which they then teach their disci-
ples in conjunction with mystical education. To specialize in either textual or mystical
knowledge requires a certain degree of knowledge, even if indirect, of the other, and it
typically requires a relationship of apprenticeship with a specialist of the other field.
Taalibe Baay textual specialists engage in diverse activities, most of them educational,
whether oriented toward students or toward the larger community. Most textual special-
ists I knew taught in a formal or informal school, whether as a primary or secondary oc-
cupation. A handful of prominent specialists, most of them muqaddams, oversee networks
of small formal elementary schools, QurO ānic schools, and secondary Islamic Institutes.
Many textual specialists disseminate their textual knowledge to a broader public through
176
acting as O imāms of Friday mosques, giving weekly speeches and public lessons in textual
interpretation, participating in radio programs on Islamic law and practice, and giving
speeches in large meetings that are subsequently circulated as cassettes and on occasion-
ally on the Internet. They are consulted in matters of inheritance, marriage, and religious
practice for their knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Thus, although a relatively
small minority of Taalibe Baay have a high degree of textual education, the textual Islamic
disciplines play an important role in non-specialists’ lives through specialists’ mediation.
Despite the proliferation of several kinds of formal Islamic school over the plast half-
century, informal schools9 remain the most widespread site of Islamic textual education
in the areas I studied. Informal schools include the ubiquitous QurO ānic schools (daara)
where nearly all Senegambian Muslim children study and less numerous post-QurO ānic
schools (majlis). Many students combine study at informal and formal schools, studying
the QurO ān at an informal school while studying other subjects at a public Francophone
school or taking classes at an Islamic institute while studying advanced texts with a
private tutor. The line between formal and informal schools is not always clear, although
most schools can be classified based on a “family resemblance” (Wittgenstein 1953) of
more or less shared traits.
Schools I designate as “informal” more or less share the following characteristics:
(1) a teacher who also acts as administrator and is paid directly by students (perhaps
through mendicancy) or their parents or teaches without pay; (2) location within a private
house, either of the teacher, the teacher’s relative, or a patron; (3) direct, individualized
instruction catered to particular students’ needs and level; and (4) reliance on a handful of
quasi-canonical, mostly verse texts largely shared by schools throughout North and West
Africa. Informal schools can range from one or two students to hundreds, and therefore
9 My usage of the terms “formal” and “informal” differs from that of scholars who consider any kind of
education involving a teacher and a student “formal.”
177
number of students is not a distinguishing characteristic.
Schools I designate as “formal” more or less share the following characteristics: (1)
a governing body separate from the teacher, whom the governing body selects and em-
ploys; (2) a dedicated physical structure that is not part of a private home; (3) a classroom
arrangement where lessons are taught to an entire class graded by year; and (4) reliance
on prose, non-canonical lessons designed for a classroom setting, which students copy
into their notebooks or onto a slate, usually from a blackboard.
Textual education in informal schools shares many methods and relationships of ap-
prenticeship with the transmission of mystical and occult knowledge. More specifically,
students establish a personal relationship of apprenticeship with a teacher, from whom
they receive a text and internalize it through repetition. Texts are important not only
for their literal content but for the spiritual power and the relationship of apprenticeship
that accompany them. Today, nearly all boys and girls study at one time or another in
QurO ānic schools, although boys tend to stay much longer and are much more likely
to advance to a majlis. A growing number of formal Islamic schools have sprung up
offering contrasting models of institutional structure, knowledge, and teacher/student
relationships more similar to modern schools found in the West and Arab countries. To a
significant degree, formal schools abstract the subject matter from the texts, removing to a
large extent the spiritual element and model of apprenticeship found in informal schools.
Partly because they cater only to local students who do not board in the school, they tend
to attract nearly equal numbers of boys and girls, at least at the elementary level.
Louis Brenner is among the few scholars of Islam in West Africa to recognize the
importance of Islamic knowledge production in various kinds of schools. Discussing
the historic rise of formal Islamic schools (médersa)10 in Mali, Brenner argues that “a
10 Médersa is a French pronunciation of the Arabic madrasah, which simply means “school.”
178
fundamental epistemic shift has been taking place in Mali, driven by a social and political
change, which has profoundly affected the way in which Muslims see themselves and
their religion” (Brenner 2001:8). The rise of formal schools at the expense of informal
ones (QurO ānic schools and majlis), he continues, has accompanied a broader societal
“movement from an esoteric to a rationalistic episteme” (8).
Brenner derives his model of epistemic change from Foucault’s “archaeology of knowl-
edge” framework, which identifies historical periods characterized by the continuity of
discursive patterns that span multiple scientific fields. Such a period of discursive con-
tinuity is characterized by a stable “episteme,” or “the total set of relations that unite, at
a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences,
and possibly formalized systems” (Foucault 1972:191). An episteme does not gradually
evolve into another but gives way to a new kind of logic at a moment of radical disjunc-
ture. Thus, an episteme is internally coherent, while discontinuity appears at its limits. An
episteme was never meant to be more than one dimensional: it is purely temporal, explic-
itly bracketing space, depth, and variation and disjunctures between a single era.11 This
notion of discursive coherence and disjunctures seems best suited to specifically “scien-
tific” discourse that defines itself in terms of self-contained, systematic logic describing
an objective world, which is the context in which Foucault elaborated the concept.12
During the same period that Brenner studied, formal schools similarly multiplied in
Taalibe Baay milieus in Senegambia and Mauritania. I concur with Brenner that formal
11 Foucault’s early “archaeology” differs significantly from the “genealogy” of his later works,
which largely
concerns the relations between knowledge and power in institutions. It differs even more significantly from
his yet later work on micropolitics and technologies of the self, which are much more relevant to the current
study.
12 The notion of the succession of discontinuous logical patterns governing scientific thought also charac-
terizes Kuhn’s (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions, who described radical shifts (“revolutions”) between
two internally stable “paradigms.” While Foucault’s and Kuhn’s theories differ in many ways, both have
explanatory power in the context of rationalized discursive fields that already assume the systematic nature
of reality.
179
schools’ methods cultivate a rationalistic approach to religious knowledge that contrasts
sharply to informal schools’ approach, which assigns texts and relationships of appren-
ticeship spiritual efficacy. What characterizes this “rationalistic” approach is less a cur-
riculum than the bodily and discursive orientation toward the text, the teacher, and the
information. In short, formal and informal schools cultivate contrasting repertoires of dis-
positions. Yet, as Lambek (1990) has shown among Muslims in Madagascar, the growth of
one does not necessarily imply an eclipse of the other or an epistemic shift. Students are
capable of embodying multiple contrasting repertoires simultaneously, and those who
advocate formal instruction do not necessarily do so because they have abandoned an
esoteric approach to knowledge.
What schools inculcate is not a self-contained “episteme” but a set of dispositions
that, while transferable to other domains (Bourdieu 1990; Starrett 1998), does not form
a unitary habitus but enters into a play of contrasting dispositions. While I find the no-
tion of habitus as discussed by Mauss (1950) and Bourdieu to be useful in expressing the
embodiment of knowledge, it is not useful to see a person’s habitus as unitary and con-
sistent or as shared by people of a given social background. In Taalibe Baay contexts, the
techniques learned in formal schools neither replace nor blend with the techniques and
relations of mystical knowledge and authority, but rather, they coexist with and in many
cases even reinforce them. Taalibe Baay actively cultivate these opposing approaches to
knowledge. Whether formalized schooling challenges mystical knowledge and authority
depends not on its intrinsic logic but on how it is deployed in a situation.
Despite some resemblance to Brenner’s “rationalistic” and “esoteric” epistemes, z.āhir
and bāt.in for Taalibe Baay are not mutually exclusive or temporally successive epistemes
but are mutually constitutive and inclusive, yet often paradoxically contradictory, ap-
proaches to the same reality. In Taalibe Baay discourse, everything has z.āhir and bāt.in
180
attributes and can therefore be known, spoken about, and practically approached in mul-
tiple ways. Many Taalibe Baay would likely agree with Brenner that formal schools em-
phasize exoteric knowledge at the expense of the somewhat more esoteric approach found
in informal schools. Yet they would likely describe the difference between informal and
formal schools not as a matter of replacement but of subtraction: formal schools teach
z.āhir knowledge particularly well at the expense of the bāt.in, whereas majlis have room
for both. The bāt.in does not give way to the z.āhir but subsumes it. Taalibe Baay do not
insist on choosing one of the two or even on harmonizing them under a single rational
framework but rather allow both to coexist paradoxically in the unity of the bāt.in. The
z.āhir and bāt.in interpenetrate and mutually reinforce one another despite their apparent
antagonism.
Among the most committed proponents of formal schooling are several prominent
Taalibe Baay muqaddams, many of whom have degrees from Arabic universities, who
oversee networks of small, rural schools and large, government-subsidized Islamic insti-
tutes into which these rural schools feed. (See the discussion below on formal schools
below.) Some of these muqaddams divide their time between providing tarbiyyah and oc-
cult cures and directing large Islamic institutes. Nearly all Taalibe Baay textual specialists
I encountered, including several who hold government posts, have studied extensively in
both formal and informal schools, and many have taught in both as well. Thus, partici-
pation in formalized, government-sponsored Islamic Institutes coexists alongside partic-
ipation in informal schools and the practice of mystical and occult forms of knowledge.
In fact, it is advantageous for a religious specialist to combine z.āhir and bāt.in approaches
to knowledge, for example, pursuing both textual and mystical training, study of Islamic
law with study of S.ūfı̄ poetry, and formal with informal schooling. Brenner rightly con-
cludes that formal pedagogical methods by themselves leave little room for specifically
181
esoteric knowledge transmission. Yet rationalized and mystical forms of knowledge pro-
duction often coexist synergistically. For many Taalibe Baay, formal schooling is part of a
larger quest for fundamentally mystical religious knowledge.
It is useful for many purposes to treat textual and mystical knowledge as separate
fields of specialization, in that they employ contrasting methods and ends and in that it is
possible to specialize in one and not another. Textual education emphasizes memorizing
and interpreting texts, as opposed to mystical education, which emphasizes cultivating
experiences of Divine Reality (al-H O

. aqı̄qah al- ilāhiyyah). Even the textual study of Sufism
(tas.awwuf) must be considered “textual” and not “mystical” insofar as it approaches expe-
rience of the Divine conceptually and not experientially. My Arabic teacher in Mauritania
explained to me that S.ūfı̄ scholars such as Ibn al-c Arabiyy and Al-Ghazāliyy had sought
Divine Knowledge and correctly posited its attributes based on religious texts yet had
not succeeded in attaining it because they lacked the proper techniques and initiation.
According to my teacher, one can theorize Divine Knowledge in detail without attaining
Divine Knowledge, which is a matter of experience. A constant refrain in Taalibe Baay
religious discourse holds that God cannot be known through books but only through the
heart. This difference is reflected in two separate words for “to know” in Arabic: c alima
(to know [facts]) and c arafa (to know, be familiar with). Likewise, c ilm designates textual
learning while mac rifah designates experiential knowledge.13
Textual education is often described as more exoteric (z.āhir) while mystical education
is described as more esoteric (bāt.in). Through texts one learns the Law (Sharı̄c ah), and
through mystical education one learns the Reality (H

. aqı̄qah) behind that Law. Textual
study does not require particular beliefs or moral character, and hence textual teachers
13 Hence, “c ālim” (pl: c ulamāO ) means “scholar” while “c ārif” means “gnostic” or “mystic,” although both
terms could literally be translated “knower.” Many Wolof-speaking Taalibe Baay are familiar with and use
both terms.
182
typically accept to teach any student regardless of .tarı̄qah (or even students like me who
are not Muslim), whereas S.ūfı̄ knowledge necessitates following a path, beginning with
belief and discipleship, as one’s level (maqām) of S.ūfı̄ knowledge is measured in terms of
one’s spiritual progression as indexed through experiences and discursive abilities.
In practice, however, rather than sharply distinguishing textual, mystical, and occult
pursuits, Taalibe Baay tend to treat them as complementary approaches to the same thing.
Not only does their transmission often follow the same paths of apprenticeship, but these
fields of knowledge significantly share repertoires of bodily dispositions, techniques of
verbal repetition, and relations of authority and apprenticeship. They are mutually con-
stitutive and mutually reinforcing: texts emanate from and manifest mystical truths while
mystical truths and practices are grounded in and justified through texts. Textual educa-
tion in informal schools shares a repertoire of techniques and social relations with mysti-
cal education and occult practice, which the examples in this chapter illustrate. Each field
of religious knowledge—textual, mystical, and occult—uses similar techniques, bodily
dispositions, and assumptions toward different ends and meanings.
First, all three fields of knowledge rely on repeating texts countless times in order to
produce some bodily and mental effect. In textual education, one repeats one’s lesson
ceaselessly until it rolls off one’s tongue naturally. Not all texts are memorized in this
way, but many pedagogical texts are written in verse to facilitate rhythmic memorization,
and students set these verses to melodies and rocking motions to internalize the texts
physically. Incorporating a text means simultaneously incorporating these movements
and melodies. Taalibe Baay mystical education (tarbiyyah) also consists to a large degree
in repeating certain phrases (especially Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh and the S.alāt al-Fātih.) for days
or weeks to bring about an experience of the Divine. Occult specialists similarly repeat
wirds, especially the names of God (dhikr) for days to bring about an ecstatic mental
183
state in which the solution to a problem, which usually involves applying an occult cure,
becomes clear. The ends of these practices are distinct, but all rely on the physically and
mentally transformative effects of repetition, which most disciples first learn during years
of QurO ānic education.
Second, in addition to similar repeated bodily practices, these fields of knowledge
involve similar social and spatial configurations of authority and apprenticeship. In ad-
dition to incorporating the text and its accompanying motions and sounds, a student-
disciple incorporates a spatial disposition to authority that applies not only in disparate
religious environments but also in daily practice. Each field of religious knowledge has
typically been transmitted directly and individually from teacher to student rather than
as a standardized lesson delivered simultaneously to a group of students as occurs in for-
mal schools. In informal Islamic schools, a small group of students may study the same
text at the same time and therefore share an audience with the teacher, but the program
of study is often individually negotiated, and the process of receiving the text individu-
ally, mastering (mokkal) it, and reciting (tari) it back to the teacher, still holds. One kneels
before the teacher, often looking downward and facing the teacher or slightly to the side
to avoid direct confrontation, while the teacher sits atop a chair or on a rug or mattress
in a central location. Girls cover their heads while in the presence of a religious leader or
teacher, although most do not cover themselves in other circumstances. The student may
approach a teacher with a particular subject or book in mind, but the student is to sub-
ject him- or herself to the teacher’s command as soon as teaching begins. Similar spatial
arrangements of teacher and apprentice applies to all three fields of religious knowledge
and to ritual visits (ziyārah) to religious leaders. The attitude of a student of any field of
religious knowledge or a disciple seeking barakah is that of a supplicant. The word taal-
184
ibe, derived from the Arabic term .tālib al-c ilm,14 or supplicant of knowledge, designates
textual students, mystical initiates, and general followers of a spiritual leader.
Inseparable from this relationship of authority and apprenticeship are other forms of
reciprocity and mutual support common to textual and mystical education. If the student
has a medical or other material need that the teacher can address, the teacher may see this
need and attempt to take care of it. A textual student or S.ūfı̄ disciple may be expected to
work in the teacher’s fields, and the produce is used to feed not only the teacher and his
family but also students and other dependents. A teacher or spiritual guide is expected
to have a deep insight into the kinds of knowledge and experience the pupil needs. A
textual teacher may share S.ūfı̄ and occult secrets with a student outside the official lesson.
Islamic schools are thus training grounds in all three fields of religious knowledge, even
though a pupil rarely admits to approaching a teacher to learn anything other than texts.
The observations made here are, of course, generalizations, but they remain widespread
in informal schools, and deviations from them are likely to be noticed as such.
Third, in informal schools, one is said to “receive” a text in the same way in which one
“receives” a S.ūfı̄ wird or an occult secret. That is, one’s knowledge is not simply a function
of internalizing information or bodily dispositions but also includes the ritual reception of
authority and barakah from the teacher. In many contexts, a text has an occult or mystical
component that is activated and transmitted through a relationship with a teacher.
Fourth, advancing in one field typically entails acquiring a certain degree of knowl-
edge that strictly falls into the other categories. To act as a muqaddam requires an ability
to draw on texts to speak about mystical practices and experience, whether through direct
study or through oral education. Mystical practices themselves are deeply grounded in
both interpreting and physically repeating sacred texts, whether the person interpreting
14 The word tālib (literally “supplicant,” “one who appeals”) in Arabic means “student,” and in formal
.
Arabic the full phrase “t.ālib al-c ilm” is often used.
185
or repeating physically reads the text or hears it from someone else. A serious initiate
into the .tarı̄qah will learn that the same texts used toward cultivating mystical experi-
ences also have powerful occult uses and can potentially make nearly any prayer heard.
From the beginning of their QurO ānic studies, students are aware of the occult properties
of the text they are studying, and they internalize its awesome power through the often
austere and ascetic life of the QurO ānic taalibe. As they advance in their QurO ānic studies,
their teacher will likely delegate to them the task of covering white sheets of paper with
QurO ānic verses to use in occult cures.
To show how the relationships between various kinds of textual education and mys-
tical and occult education, I will discuss examples of several sites of education. I begin
with informal education, including near-universal QurO ānic education and more special-
ized post-QurO ānic education in Islamic disciplines. I then discuss much more briefly
formal education. To give a view of the landscape in which this education takes place in
the Taalibe Baay context, I precede my discussion of informal education with a narrative
of educational migration and study in the Mauritanian village of Mac t.a Mulāna, where I
studied Arabic for six months.
Mac t.a Mulāna: a “school village” on the Sahara’s edge. Many residents of the Maurita-
nian Arab village of Mac t.a Mulāna,15 including the village’s shaykh, al-H
. ājj wuld Mishri,
have spent their last days of Ramad.ān in Medina Baay, where they come for several major
religious occasions every year. The founder of the village, Muh.ammad al-Mishri wuld
c Abd Allāh, was one of several important Arab muqaddams who became disciples of Baay
Ñas along with their own disciples, and nearly all Mac t.a Mulāna’s residents remain fer-
vent disciples of Baay Ñas. His son al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri succeeded him as leader of the
15 The
name is a contraction of “Mac .tā Mawlānā,” or “Gift of our Lord.” Following French phonetics,
the name is also spelled “Matamoulana” (as in the web site http://www.matamoulana.net/) and “Maata-
moulana” (as on the road sign that directs traffic from the highway).
186
village and is among the most well known shaykhs in Mauritania.
Knowing that the month of Ramad.ān will end when the new moon is sighted either
this evening or the next, Mac t.a Mulāna’s residents meet after the afternoon prayer in
front of al-H
. ājj’s house, their habitual meetingplace in Medina. They must rejoin their
families in Mac t.a Mulāna to celebrate the feast of fast-breaking (c Īd al-fit.r). Several young
Senegalese men accompany them, including at least four grandsons of Baay Ñas and the
sons of other muqaddams who are returning from their month-long Ramad.ān vacation
to continue their studies at Mac t.a Mulāna’s mah.z.ara, or traditional Islamic school.16 al-
H
. ājj has invited me to spend the feast in the village where I studied Arabic for much of
the previous year. Three seven-passenger taxis and an all-terrain vehicle await us before
al-H
. ājj’s house and soon form a caravan heading toward the border checkpoint on the
Senegal River.
I sit in a seven-passenger taxi next to Madame, and on her other side sits a taciturn
and mild-mannered black boy of around ten or twelve years old. A QurO ān teacher who
earned her nickname from years of teaching French in Mac t.a Mulāna’s public school,
Madame spent years teaching French during the day and assisting her mother in teach-
ing the QurO ān before and after hours. After her mother’s death in 2001, al-H
. ājj called
her to leave the French school to replace her mother as a full-time QurO ān teacher. I no-
tice that Madame is attentive to the boy sitting next to her. As we cross the increasingly
sparse landscape of Bawol and then Jolof toward the Sahara, she explains to me that this
boy’s mother is a daughter of Baay Ñas and his father a muqaddam in Sierra Leone, and
that al-H
. ājj entrusted her with his education five years ago. Just yesterday, he certified his
QurO ānic memorization at the house of one of Baay Ñas’s sons in Medina Baay, reciting
16 Theterm mah.z.ara in H O
. assāniyyah Arabic can designate any informal Islamic school, whether Qur ānic
c
or more advanced. In Ma t.a Mulāna, it usually refers to the school organized at the village level, which
usually has around four to five specialists teaching various post-QurO ānic disciplines.
187
the final sūrahs before an audience including many Medina Baay notables and sons of
Baay Ñas. Although she does not say so, I suspect that Baay’s family gave her a lav-
ish reception and a generous financial contribution, customary tokens of appreciation to
the teacher when one’s child memorizes the QurO ān. Managing to teach him the whole
QurO ān in five short years no doubt pleased them.
We reach the river at midnight and wait. Someone is arranging for a large, motor-
ized canoe to take twenty-five passengers across, while someone else is arranging for the
Mauritanian border officials to meet us on the other side. (The border post closed at 5:00,
but exceptions can be made for an eminent shaykh.) Waiting on the bank, I find myself
standing near a white-robed man and his three young sons, aged from four to seven. They
appear to be Fulbe, but the father somehow strikes me as a well-traveled cosmopolitan,
and he soothes his sons not in Pulaar but in Fus.h.ā (literary) Arabic: “Look! All that sepa-
rates Senegal from Mauritania is this simple river. They’re practically one country!” Stoic
and calm, the children gaze silently at the moonless river. However simple this river may
be, I know there is only one reason a father would take his boys across it: they will join
hundreds of children sent from all over West Africa to study the QurO ān in Mac t.a Mulāna
and will scarcely see their father over the coming years.
Once across the river and past the Mauritanian border checkpoint, the assembly climbs
into several all-terrain vehicles, which bounce along the dunes, careening around wispy
sump trees and dodging lumbering camels. This family—the man, his wife, their boys,
and a baby—sit behind me, and behind them sit two Tunisians who study with another
shaykh in a nearby village. Next to the Tunisians sits an old Mauritanian man who chants
“Allāh Allāh” quietly in a mournful pentatonic scale throughout much of the three-hour
drive.
I learn that the family has recently returned from Saudi Arabia, where the father
188
worked for nearly two decades. The mother, who speaks Pulaar with the children, will
stay with them for some months to oversee their transition, while the father, himself a mu-
qaddam and QurO ān teacher (although he engaged in other kinds of work while in Saudi
Arabia), will return to Senegal to work. Although he or any number of QurO ān teachers
could teach the sons in Senegal, he wants them to continue studying at an Arabic-speak-
ing elementary school and to grow up fluent in Arabic. He imagines that Mac t.a Mulāna
will be an ideal educational environment, not allowing distractions such as television and
loud music. I do not think to ask if they have daughters who have stayed behind to study
in Senegal.
Around 4:30 in the morning, we arrive at al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri’s house, a visitor’s
obligatory first stop. The guests are served a meat and vegetable .tajı̄n, their last meal
until they break the month’s final fast at sundown.
In the afternoon, the family visits the shaykh to discuss their children’s education.
Al-H 17
. ājj (the shaykh prefers to be called by his first name) has decided to assign the boys
to study the QurO ān with Madame as they study concurrently at the public elementary
school. He has called Madame to attend the children’s initiation into QurO ānic study in
Mac t.a Mulāna.
Al-H
. ājj signals the children to approach him, and they kneel before the shaykh with
down-turned eyes, answering his simple questions with exaggerated brevity and hushed
tones as their parents have instructed them. Al-H

. ājj smiles affectionately and jovially,
patting and stroking their shaved heads as he speaks to them. As usual, he gives each
child a small plastic bag of dates, telling them to distribute these dates among their
17 The title al-H. ājj literally designates someone who has performed the greater pilgrimage to Makkah, but
the “al-H c
. ājj” in this shaykh’s name comes from being named after his grandfather, al-H . ājj Abd Allāh, and
is thus simply part of his name. His preference, therefore, does not imply an insistence on a respectful title
but, on the contrary, an insistence on being addressed by his simple first name like anyone else without a
title.
189
classmates to earn their friendship. He also gives each child a brand new lawh., a round-
topped, wooden tablet upon which they will write their lessons and upon which al-H
. ājj
had already written their first lesson: the Arabic phrase they will always utter before
every QurO ānic recitation and the first two letters of the Arabic alphabet,18 , O alif and bāO .
In the days following the feast, the village settles back into its routine. After the early
afternoon prayer (az.-z.uhr ) in the mosque, many villagers remain seated to hear al-H
. ājj’s
daily h.adı̄th lesson. Formerly a student of economics at the University of Dakar, al-H
. ājj
is better known today as an expert in h.adı̄th.19 After the lesson, many young men hike
over the west dune to a spot called “Shām,”20 where they study at the village’s tradi-
tional Islamic school (mah.z.ara). Many of them are from Senegal and other West African
countries and have spent their month-long Ramad.ān vacation at home. Lessons have
long been held in tents, but many lessons are now held in a recently completed cement-
block structure that doubles as a dormitory for foreign students, who come from Nige-
ria, Guinea, Senegal, Indonesia, and beyond. Al-H

. ājj has recruited some of Mauritania’s
best known “traditional” scholars, only one of whom is his disciple, to teach the various
Islamic disciplines there. Three of the four teachers have returned, although one is still in
Yemen, where he has taught for the past two years. Al-H
. ājj and his disciples raise money
to pay the teachers and to provide room and board for all students of the mah.z.ara. Some
students who live in the Mah.d.ara and have not left for the holidays. As the mah.z.ara does
not take female students, women who study the Islamic disciplines must do so in private
18 The passage is “O ac ūdhu bi-Llāhi min ash-Shayt.āni ’r-rajı̄m. Bismi Llāhi ’r-Rah.māni ’r-Rah.ı̄m”: “I take
refuge in God from the accursed Satan. In the name of God the merciful, the benevolent.” The first sentence
is conventionally pronounced before reciting any QurO ānic verse (although the phrase itself is not contained
word-for-word in the QurO ān. The second is the sentence the precedes all QurO ān sūrahs.
19 Al-Hājj
studied at the University of Dakar for only a year, from 1974–1975, but was called back home to
.
succeed his father, who died in an automobile accident in 1975, shortly before Baay Ñas’s death.
20 The spot is named after the neighborhood of the same name (Saam) founded by Baay Ñas northwest of
Medina Baay. The neighborhood in Kaolack itself is named after the part of the Middle East northwest of the
original Madı̄nah.
190
homes with female teachers.
The evening chant session at the mosque returns to its normal time after the waz.ı̄fah.
The chant leader’s melismatic voice, amplified by the mosque’s loudspeakers, echoes
Baay Ñas’s poetry praising Muh.ammad off the surrounding dunes. A QurO ān teacher,
the chant leader alternates with a chorus of men who repeat countless melodic variations
of Allāh Allāh, and occasionally an audience member takes the microphone to chant a few
lines of Baay Ñas’s poetry.
After the chant session, around a hundred fifty villagers gather in the spacious court-
yard adjoining al-H O

. ājj’s house for the weekly lesson in tafsı̄r, or Qur ānic interpretation.
The women sit several meters behind the men (where I suspect they can hardly read the
text). A page from the village’s giant QurO ān has been hung on the wall of the court-
yard. A cloud of insects hovers before the page, bouncing against its well-lit surface. The
white, cotton fabric page is around three meters tall, with black letters and red diacritics
spelling out the text in local Mauritanian calligraphy.21 Al-H

. ājj has told me he suspects
the village’s QurO ān22 is the largest in the world, although he admits he has no way of
knowing for sure.
A QurO ān teacher well known for his recitation skills reads a sūrah into a microphone,
highlighting each subtle shade of pronunciation by lingering on each syllable and by
chanting almost entirely on a single tone. When he has finished, my own teacher, a
specialist in grammar and poetry, briefly analyzes grammatically some of the passages
whose wording might not be clear to some readers, citing several lines of ancient poetry to
justify his reading. Another teacher then takes the microphone, reading and commenting
21 The calligrapher, Muh.ammadan wuld O Ah.mad Sālim, was Mauritania’s presidential calligrapher at the
time.
22 They would not actually call it “the QurO ān,” which is the actual text as revealed by God. It is a copy of
the QurO ān, or mus.h.af.”
191
on a passage from the most widely used tafsı̄r book, Tafsı̄r al-Jalālayn. As this teacher is
finishing his commentary, al-H

. ājj comes out from the house and sits in the middle of the
teachers, discussing the broader implications of the passage in question and supporting
his conclusions with h.adı̄th.23
After dinner, when many people have gone to bed, some of the Senegalese and Mau-
ritanian mah.z.ara students meet in the street in front of al-H

. ājj’s house and sing dhikrs in-
terspersed with Arabic poetry until well after midnight. A little further down the street,
in front of the mosque, several older women sit in a circle in the sand and chant their
own dhikrs. Their chanting is simple and repetitive and is not mixed with poetry, and it
becomes a sonic backdrop that accompanies me like crickets chirping as I fall to sleep at
home.
From before sunrise until after sundown, the constant presence of holy texts such
as the QurO ān, religious poetry, and the books of Islamic learning profoundly shape the
aesthetic and ethic of life in Mac t.a Mulāna. In many of these contexts, the poignant
melody of the chant adds a dimension to the text’s impact. After a full day of memorizing
the QurO ān and other religious and grammatical texts, students are surrounded by various
performances and applications of textual knowledge, making these texts an integral part
of their everyday life.
5.3 An overview of Islamic schools: formal and informal, QurO ānic and Arabic
Mac t.a Mulāna is one of numerous Tijāniyy religious educational centers scattered through-
out Senegambia and Mauritania. Although these centers are perhaps most commonly
known for their importance as S.ūfı̄ centers (zāwiyah), the most widespread economic ac-
23 Al-Hājj, like many leaders, often joins such meetings near their end, not simply because he is busy and
.
the meetings are many, but perhaps more importantly out of consideration for other speakers, many of whom
find speaking in front of the shaykh intimidating or even improper.
192
tivity practiced in these places is religious textual teaching, and those who live and study
there are not required to adhere to a S.ūfı̄ order and often come solely for textual study.
The extent of religious education in these areas is not readily apparent to a passerby, as
much of it takes place in private homes that are in no way recognizable as “schools.”
Religious studies begin with the QurO ān, and one who has memorized most or all
of the QurO ān may decide to pursue more advanced studies on the various Islamic and
Arabic disciplines, known in Wolof as xam-xam (“knowledge”) and in Arabic as c ulūm
(“sciences”). The vast majority of Islamic schools are QurO ānic schools (daara), and a
smaller number of more advanced schools (majlis) offer further textual study. Most in-
formal schools operate independently, although they are morally subject to the highest
authority of the religious center, and some schools take part in loosely organized “federa-
tions” (rābitah). These religious educational centers contain the same kinds of educational
institutions found in villages and towns but at a far higher concentration and larger scale.
A Taalibe Baay from Saalum who pursues a religious textual education will likely
study in several places, including Medina Baay, one or more nearby villages, and possibly
in a non-Taalibe Baay center of Islamic education such as St. Louis (Ndar) or another
important Tijāniyy center (especially Jaamal in Saalum, the Medina Gonaas in eastern
Senegal, and Tiwaawan to the northwest). In addition to the many schools in and around
Medina Baay, Taalibe Baay muqaddams have founded numerous other centers of learning
throughout Senegambia. Among the most famous are Sheex Omar Ture in Serekunda,
Gambia; Abdulaay Wilaan in Kafrin (eastern Saalum); and Ibrayima Sàll in the Dakar
area. Near Mac t.a Mulāna, the Taalibe Baay villages of Barayna, Tumbuyc ali, Bubakkar,
and (more recently) Ribāt. al-Fath. have centrally organized traditional Islamic schools
(mah.z.ara) that similarly draw students from numerous countries.
In addition to major religious centers, nearly every predominantly Muslim village in
193
Senegambia and Mauritania has at least one QurO ānic school, either formal or informal,
and Njolofeen villages typically have several, plus at least one informal majlis or formal
Arabic school. Some of these schools serve primarily local students, while others draw
students from throughout the country and even from other countries depending on their
reputation. Nearly all Muslim children in Senegambia and Mauritania study the QurO ān
for at least two years (and often much longer) at a daara. Boys tend to study the QurO ān
longer than girls, who often withdraw from school after a couple years to help with do-
mestic work. Both boys and girls often phase out their QurO ānic studies to attend French
school. Only boys are sent to board at schools away from home. In many respects, includ-
ing the progression from QurO ānic memorization to other disciplines and the generally
harsh discipline, Islamic education in Senegambia and Mauritania resembles informal Is-
lamic education in Islamic countries throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and other
parts of the world.24
The stage of QurO ānic study emphasizes memorization, and only those students who
go on to study tafsı̄r (interpretation) and other more advanced subjects will learn much
of the text’s meaning. The QurO ān’s status as the Word of God is sufficient to warrant
memorizing it, regardless of whether one understands and can apply what one learns.
A minimum of QurO ānic memorization is required to perform the five daily prayers,
although this requirement does not account for the years typically dedicated to QurO ānic
study. Some daaras provide some practical instruction on living Islam but not necessarily
in conjunction with the meaning of the verses studied.
A serious student who completes or advances in his or her QurO ānic study may ad-
vance to the study of other Islamic and Arabic texts, usually called “knowledge” (xam-
24 For a comparison of educational practices in numerous countries, see Gregg (2005), who describes
QurO ānic schools throughout North Africa and the Middle East as having similarly harsh discipline and
focus on memorization.
194
xam) or “Arabic” in Senegambia. The first subject is usually fiqh (often translated “Islamic
jurisprudence”), the branch of study dealing with proper religious and social practices.
Students then add texts in various other disciplines, including poetry (lughah), actions
and sayings of the Prophet (h.adı̄th), QurO ānic interpretation (tafsı̄r), grammar (nah.w), and
morphology (s.arf). Although xam-xam may only differ from QurO ānic study incremen-
tally, studying xam-xam differs in several important ways. This stage adds comprehen-
sion to memorization: beyond internalizing the Arabic text, a student now memorizes
an interlocked, word-for-word, Wolof translation of the text, and during the lesson, the
teacher provides an oral explanation (sharh.), without which the cryptic text is often nearly
incomprehensible. Some students continue to study xam-xam in the same school where
they studied the QurO ān if their teacher is qualified to teach advanced subjects. Others
move to a more advanced teacher at a majlis or to a formal school or institute. A common
pattern I observed was for students who memorized the QurO ān to enroll at a formal
institute, such as the El Hadj Abdoulaye Islamic Institute in Saam, while continuing to
study the canonical texts of xam-xam part-time with their informal teacher.
Schools dedicated primarily to teaching the QurO ān, whether formal or informal, usu-
ally go by the Wolof name daara. Informal Arabic schools in Senegal are called majlis,
whereas formal Arabic schools, which often include QurO ānic instruction, are most of-
ten called by the French name “école arabe” (Arabic School), reflecting the perception
that they are foreign and resemble state education. In Mauritania, any informal school,
whether QurO ānic or advanced, goes by the H

. assāniyyah term mah.z.ara, whereas for-
mal schools with “modern” institutional bodies and classroom arrangements are called
madrasah (“school”).
Although informal schools come in infinite gradations, I identify five major categories:
1. A small, ad hoc group of students who visits a teacher informally for QurO ānic and
195
other kinds of lessons. This teacher may work or study elsewhere full-time, teaching
only relatives and acquaintances for short periods of time. These schools may be
called daara or majlis or both, depending on which texts they emphasize.
2. Small, temporary QurO ānic schools held in a patron’s home organized for a par-
ticular group of children, usually the patron’s relatives, usually taught by a young
man who recently finished studying. Enrollment is usually between five and twenty
students.
3. Somewhat larger and more permanent schools, also sponsored by a patron but
directly administered by the teacher, usually a young man who teaches there for no
more than two to five years. Enrollment can vary widely but is usually under fifty.
4. Schools associated with a particular teacher or a family of which the teacher is a
member, held in the family’s house. As these are more permanent and tend to be
run by more seasoned teachers, they tend to have larger and more stable enroll-
ments, and many of these schools allow advanced students to continue studying
xam-xam as they teach junior students the QurO ān. These schools are still called
daara but act as majlis for advanced students. Enrollment usually varies from fifty
to three hundred students.
5. Permanent majlis dedicated to the Islamic disciplines (xam-xam) alone. These schools
usually have a single teacher, who is often a muqaddam or is otherwise a recog-
nized scholar, and enrollment is unstable, usually falling between a handful and
two dozen. Some larger majlis may take the structure of the large daaras with sev-
eral assistant teachers while maintaining their focus on xam-xam.
Formal Arabic schools, which have proliferated since independence in 1960, can also
be roughly divided into five categories, although in practice formal schools are no less
196
Type Characteristics
1. Ad hoc daara/majlis Impermanent; a handful of students; teacher

usually has some other work.
2. Temporary patron-sponsored daara Convened for particular students; young,

impermanent teacher.
3. Long-term patron-sponsored daara Medium-sized; a series of young, impermanent

teachers.
4. Teacher-run daaras Can serve hundreds of students; can outlive a

generation.
5. Majlis Usually small; a single teacher, often a muqaddam or

imam, teaches for an hour or two daily.
Table 5.1: Types of informal schools
Type Characteristics
1. Village daara Organized by parents’ associations; teacher usually

young and impermanent.
2. Arabic primary schools Often one-room; usually a young, impermanent

teacher; some larger schools have up to three rooms
and teachers.
3. Islamic institutes Urban; primary and secondary; run by muqaddams

or movements; some receive government funding.
4. Public Franco-Arabic schools Since 2003, currently elementary only; equal French
and Arabic hours; in confines of Francophone
schools.
5. Arab-world universities Previously Morocco, now most prominently Al-

O Azharin Cairo.
Table 5.2: Types of formal schools
197
varied than informal schools:
1. QurO ānic schools organized by parents’ committees instead of by a teacher, common
in villages. These schools sometimes offer limited instruction in other subjects, but
they are called daara because they emphasize the QurO ān above all.
2. Small Arabic primary schools in villages and neighborhoods, similarly organized
by committees and umbrella organizations that hire the teachers. Many smaller
ones in villages have a single teacher for all grades, who meet together in a seasonal
millet-stalk structure. Larger primary schools occupy several cement-block rooms,
with a separate room and teacher for one or two grades. These schools are open
to boys and girls, who may or may not sit in separate sections. These schools
often combine QurO ān with both religious topics and the secular topics taught at
public Francophone schools, such as mathematics and civic education. Because they
somewhat resemble Francophone schools, they are popularly called by the French
name “école arabe” (Lekkool Araab).
3. Larger primary- and secondary-level urban Islamic institutes organized by major
muqaddams or neo-orthodox Islamic movements, often receiving government fund-
ing and offering Francophone instruction as well. They are called by their French
name “institut islamique” or by the Arabic name “mac had” (institute). The ones that
receive government funding are often called “Ecole Franco-Arabe” because they are
required to be bilingual. These schools closely mirror the institutional structure of
public schools, many even offering Arabic equivalents (although not recognized by
the state) of the national exams (Certificat de fin des études élémentaires [CFEE] for
elementary studies, the Brevet de fin des études moyennes [BFEM] for intermediate
studies, and the Bacalauréat for a secondary diploma).
198
4. Fully public Franco-Arabic schools, which began in 2003 and are still in pilot stage.
These schools divide time equally between French and Arabic instruction and offer
limited religious education. Officials say these schools were designed to attract
parents who sent their children to unrecognized informal schools.
5. Arab-world high schools and universities (jāmic ah), which have become a standard
part of many religious leaders’ trajectories. Until 1963, Morocco dominated among
Senegalese Taalibe Baay but since then Al-O Azhar in Cairo is by far the most common,
followed by universities in Lybia, Morocco, and Tunisia.
The Senegalese state has gradually increased its involvement in Arabic and Islamic ed-
ucation in an attempt to move students from informal schools into more easily regulated
formal ones. The state participates in Arabic and Islamic education in three principal
ways: by offering Arabic and (since 2001) Islamic courses in nearly all public primary
and secondary schools in Islamic areas; by offering limited funding to Islamic institutes
that meet certain requirements, such as teaching French alongside Arabic; and, since 2003,
instituting bilingual schools that divide their hours equally between Arabic/Islamic in-
struction and French instruction. I will discuss state moves to co-opt Islamic education
below in the section on formal schools.
That formal schools have grown in number and have taken proportionally larger num-
bers of students does not indicate that they have displaced or eclipsed informal schools.
Nearly all the Arabic specialists I spoke with under the age of sixty, even those who
worked in government agencies, had studied at both formal and informal schools, often
simultaneously. During Baay Ñas’s lifetime, his sons and other Medina Baay youth were
admitted to Arab universities based on placement tests and without any previous formal
schooling. Some teachers move between formal and informal schools during different
stages of their career. For example, many young teachers teach part-time in an informal
199
school as they finish their formal secondary studies and then take jobs in formal schools,
and some retired formal school teachers hold a majlis in their home. Informal schools’
flexible schedules facilitate these kinds of combinations.
Although their proliferation does not clearly jeopardize informal schooling or mysti-
cal knowledge and authority, formal schools tend to advance social relations and mental
and bodily habits sometimes radically different from those found in informal schools.
Education in informal schools is at least as much about learning the attitudes of dis-
cipleship and embodying the spiritual attributes of the texts studied as it is about the
content learned. An informal textual teacher, whether or not he or she is a muqaddam,
can be a source of mystical and occult knowledge and is also a moral authority responsi-
ble for shaping one’s character. An informal teacher is, first and foremost, an “educator/
upbringer” (murabbı̄), not an instructor (muc allim). When I asked QurO ānic and informal
Arabic teachers to describe their work, they almost always answered first that their job
was to inculcate good behavior in their students.
Formal schooling, on the other hand, seeks to abstract the information to be taught
from the occult and mystical dimensions of texts and from the relations of discipleship
and peership, and the techniques of textual embodiment that characterize informal teach-
ing. Formal schools also emphasize developing good character, but techniques of stan-
dardized instruction and evaluation shift the emphasis from upbringing (tarbiyyah) to in-
struction (tac lı̄m). Critics of informal schools typically base their criticisms at least partly
on the assumption that the techniques of memorization used in informal schools compare
unfavorably to formal techniques of instruction in terms of learning information, as mod-
ern techniques abstract the material to be taught and calculate the most effective way of
getting it into students’ heads. A student may study for many years in informal schools
and still speak very little Arabic and understand little of the texts he or she is learning,
200
as discursive ability in Arabic is not a direct objective of this system and only arises as a
cumulative effect of memorizing many texts.
5.4 Informal schools (daara and majlis), texts, and orality
Despite the growing number of formal schools, informal schools remain central to Taal-
ibe Baay religious education, especially to the training of religious specialists. Nearly all
the growing proportion of Taalibe Baay textual specialists who have studied in formal
schools have also pursued post-QurO ānic studies in informal schools. That is, formal Is-
lamic schools tend to supplement, not replace informal study. The continuity in methods,
relationships of apprenticeship, and spiritual implications between textual and mystical
education preserve the close relation between mystical and textual knowledge. This con-
tinuity, which unifies religious specializations and techniques into overlapping networks
of knowledge and authority, seems to account largely for informal schools’ continued
importance in Taalibe Baay religious networks.
In informal teaching, it is not only the information encapsulated in texts that mat-
ters but also the texts in themselves, the chain of transmission accompanying them, and
the embodiment of blessing and knowledge beyond the text’s literal meaning. Shaykh
O Ahmad at-Tijāniyy himself had memorized the QurO ān early in life and had subsequently
.
studied many texts and prayer formulas when Muh.ammad visited him to “give” him the
QurO ān and many of the same texts and prayers he had previously received from various
shaykhs throughout Morocco and Egypt.25 What mattered was not the mere fact of “pos-
sessing” these texts but the particular blessings the Prophet associated with this direct
transmission, which would be transmitted to all who received the same texts through the
Shaykh’s chain of transmission. Similarly, as the narratives below show, students “re-
ceive” the QurO ān from authorities such as Baay Ñas’s sons at certification ceremonies,
25 See Wright (2005) and the foundational Tijāniyy text Jawāhir al-Mac ānı̄ by c Aliyy H
. arāzim (2002).
201
even if they “learn” it from someone else. The blessing (barakah, barke) that accompanies
the text when received from a particular authority is vital. (See the chapter on authority.)
Informal education begins with a near exclusive emphasis on memorization, and as
a student advances, textual understanding and certain practical applications (mobilizing
both their occult power and information) gradually take on more importance. Memoriza-
tion itself has both instrumental and spiritual importance. On a practical level, texts are
scarce and vulnerable to fires, which elders report frequently swept through villages in
the past,26 and the text in one’s memory may often be the only copy available. An abil-
ity to quote texts extemporaneously in public and private speech is an important mark
of a qualified religious specialist. When I told a teacher in Mac t.a Mulāna that we do not
memorize texts in American schools, he retorted that studying a text without memorizing
it is like shopping without buying anything. It may be interesting while one is reading
it, but it has no lasting effect without memorization. As important as these instrumental
reasons is the fact that without memorization, one cannot “receive” a text and its mystical
benefits. This is equally true for short and easily memorized texts such as the Tijāniyy
wird and for longer texts such as the QurO ān.
As the narrative above about Mac t.a Mulāna shows, religious studies are often under-
taken far from home, and many students study in numerous villages, cities, and even
countries. This is true both of QurO ānic studies and more advanced studies.
5.4.1 QurO ānic study
QurO ānic study is widely perceived among Senegambian and Mauritanian Muslims as a
phase of childhood prerequisite to developing good Muslim character. QurO ān students,
most of them between seven and thirteen, are expected to transform from selfish, unruly,
26 Villageelders in Mbittéyeen Waalo and Tayba Ñaseen told of numerous intentional and accidental fires
during the nineteenth and early twentieth century that made transmitting texts from generation to generation
difficult.
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and irrational children to social beings with good Islamic manners (O adab) and reason
(c aql, xel). The phase of QurO ānic study, like tarbiyyah, is a liminal phase, during which
students are often removed from family life and broken down through intense poverty
and harsh discipline. The Wolof term taalibe can designate any student or disciple of a
religious teacher, although it commonly refers to a boy residing away from his family in a
QurO ānic school. The term has taken on extraordinarily complex and often controversial
connotations in everyday usage and the popular press. Despite popular depictions, only
a minority of all boys studying the QurO ān live away from home in the QurO ānic school,
and all girls live with their families or relatives, usually in their home village. Those who
do live away from their families typically subsist by begging (yelwaan) for scraps of food,
pocket change, and water.
For many Senegalese, whether in villages or cities, the lunch and dinner routine in-
cludes a well-rehearsed scene. One or more taalibes stop at the door or enter the house
if they find no one near the door, repeating the phrase “laarabi laaral.”27 If other taal-
ibes have already come through, the woman of the house may say “saraxe nañ ba pare”
(we’ve already given), and the taalibes will move on to another house. Otherwise, she will
say “taalibe kaay” (come, taalibe) and will spoon leftover rice and perhaps a little sauce
into the boys’ tin tomato can or plastic bowl. Another part of the daily routine includes
handing one or more taalibes a small coin to support themselves or their teacher.
Throughout Senegal, Mauritania, and many other Islamic countries, a widespread be-
lief holds that children are incapable of reason (c aql) and that it is pointless to reason
with them or to explain the implications of what they are learning. At the same time,
they are more malleable and able to absorb raw information than adults. Thus, children’s
behavior can be fashioned and they can memorize texts through austere discipline and
27 I have been unable to determine the origin and meaning of this word. Some have suggested to me that
it may come from Pulaar. As far as I can tell, it is only used in this context.
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instilling fear of authority and God. They are like “mud bricks” (Sanneh 1997:137) or a
green branch (Perry 2004:60) that must be formed before they dry out and become rigid.
As people get older and more rigid, memorization will become increasingly difficult but
understanding will become possible, and they will come to understand the meaning of
the texts and behaviors they have learned. I found the denial of children’s reason most ex-
plicit and strongest in Mauritania, although I knew informal teachers in both Mauritania
and Senegal who self-consciously attempted to reason with a student before resorting to
physical punishment. Al-H c

. ājj wuld Mishri, for example, exhorts Ma t.a Mulāna’s teach-
ers to spare the rod, although he has found that only a few younger teachers heed his
exhortation. I found much less corporal punishment in formalized schools and among
younger teachers.
In his novel Ambiguous Adventure, Cheikh Hamidou Kane (1962) famously described
the indelible awe inspired by his protagonist’s teacher’s draconian punishments—which
include pinching his ear until it bleeds—whenever he does not properly recite his lessons
(Kane 1962). Yet Kane casts this education in a positive light as what enabled the protago-
nist to appreciate the sublime power of God, whereas his Francophone education reduced
the world to sterile Cartesian logic.
Even where intense corporal punishment is not used, memorizing the QurO ān is often
a physically and emotionally intense process, composed primarily of repeating several
verses from morning until night until they become indelibly inscribed on one’s tongue
and pour out naturally and unconsciously. The prolonged and rapid repetition of holy
texts in mystical and occult contexts—tarbiyyah, the Tijāniyy wird, and occult wirds—is
explicitly geared toward transforming one’s experience and perceptions. Its potentially
transformative effects on QurO ānic students, and its role in preparing them for these other
practices of religious knowledge, should not be underestimated.
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As liminal figures who devote their ascetic lives to pronouncing the Word of God,
QurO ān students are sacred and bring barakah to those who give them alms. The student
body of a daara may be called upon to perform a jàng kaamil, or a group QurO ān recita-
tion, held before a religious meeting or in honor of a patron’s deceased relative, and the
teacher will often receive a monetary gift for such appearances. The presence of the stu-
dents and their invoking the word of God together is indispensable to any successful and
blessed large religious gathering. While sacred, QurO ān students can also be untouch-
able, especially taalibes who live away from home, who may be filthy, disease-ridden,
malnourished, and without any local social ties beyond the school. Yet despite the highly
politicized and exaggerated stereotypes (discussed below), the actual condition of QurO ān
students varies widely.
Like QurO ān students, the teachers themselves may occupy a somewhat liminal so-
cial position, simultaneously marginal and pillars of the community. Despite bourgeois
depictions of QurO ān teachers as an exploitative class, nearly all of those I met, unless
they had some second source of income, were extremely poor. Younger teachers were
nearly as transient as the students, seldom occupying the same situation for more than a
couple years at a time. While not all are occult specialists, many are sought out for their
knowledge in making amulets from QurO ānic verses and other objects, and many QurO ān
specialists are known as having a close relationship with the dangerous world of jinnes.
This association with occult powers often accompanies a certain degree of respectful fear.
Yet their knowledge of God’s word often makes them not marginal but central to com-
munity activities. Many of those who have settled in a village are imams, muqaddams,
or master teachers with a large school and are counted among the place’s notables. Like
taalibes, QurO ān teachers do not form a distinct socio-economic class or share a collective
status. Rather, their status and economic condition depend on their personal abilities,
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social relations, and stage in life.
The practice of sending boys to a remote school where they live by begging is com-
monly described as a hallmark of Senegalese QurO ānic study. Interviews with elders sug-
gested that the practice was widespread, but not universal, during the early decades of
the century. Our survey (which covered both Taalibe Baay and non-Taalibe Baay schools)
showed that this practice remains widespread but applies to a minority of students. Eigh-
teen percent of male students reported by schools in and around Kaolack resided in the
school. Teachers uniformly reported that these students came primarily from villages in
Western Saalum (around Kaolack). Only ten percent of all surveyed schools reported that
all students lived in the school, and half of the schools reported at least some students
residing in them. In these schools with resident students, just under a third of the total
number of students lived in the school, while two fifths were boys who lived with their
families, and just over a quarter were girls, all of whom lived with their families. In ad-
dition to students living in the school, some students and teachers we interviewed had
studied away from home but had lived with relatives instead of boarding. Those who live
with their parents or relatives are not mendicant and generally live in somewhat more
comfortable conditions than those living in the school.
Students who live with a family outside the daara are expected to pay a monthly
inscription fee, usually between 500 and 1,500 francs28 and often there is an additional
yearly fee between 2,500 and 10,000 francs, plus a small sum (between 50 and 100 francs)
to be paid every Wednesday for the school’s daily costs. (As money dissipates quickly,
teachers explained, it is helpful to have several different payment cycles to meet immedi-
ate and long-term needs.) Teachers consistently reported that many students’ failure to
pay their monthly fee posed a serious challenge to the school’s viability. Most said that
28 In 2004, 500 francs was equivalent to around $1 USA.
206
although this was a problem they did not expel non-paying students, although several
teachers said that if they knew a student’s family was in a position to pay and did not,
they would expel the student. This system of payment differentiates daaras from majlis,
which usually do not require monetary payment. In rural daaras, students sometimes
work the teacher’s fields in lieu of paying for their studies.
Overall, our survey counted twice as many boys as girls studying the QurO ān. The
greater number of boys probably indicates not that significantly fewer girls enter QurO ānic
study—girls in this area who have never studied the QurO ān are rare—but that boys tend
to stay in school around twice as long while girls are removed to contribute to domestic
work. Teachers reported that one fifth of students, including three times as many boys as
girls, concurrently studied French at another school.
These statistics are not intended to reflect all QurO ānic schools in Senegal but simply
to bring into the same lens what we observed in the subset of QurO ānic schools that we
visited. Being conducted primarily in an urban environment during the rainy season and
through networks of specialists established in Kaolack, we probably underrepresented
semi-itinerant schools that would have established themselves in rural areas to farm. Such
schools intern all students and thus only cater to boys. I believe study at such schools to
be far less prevalent among Taalibe Baay than among the broader Senegalese population.
The goal of QurO ānic study is to memorize the QurO ān. Most teachers report that their
students begin around the age of seven. In Arabic-speaking parts of Mauritania, I was
told that they may begin somewhat earlier. QurO ān teachers describe several stages that
children go through, and children are often divided into groups based on these stages.
During the “bāO ” stage, abbreviated from the first two letters of the Arabic alphabet,
O alif bāO , students learn the names and pronunciation of each individual letter. Many
Wolof speaking schools teach a Wolofized version of the Arabic alphabet in which several
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letters are assimilated to a single Wolof phoneme and are given a Wolof name.29 During
the second stage, “ijj,” they learn to read isolated words.30 The third stage, “dawal”
(“reading”) involves reading whole phrases and sentences. After this comes several stages
of memorization distinguished by their content and not by the kind of activity they entail.
A student who has memorized each part of the QurO ān is said to “mokkal” (to master)
the QurO ān. Memorizing each part separately does not make one a h.āfiz., however, but
rather reciting the entire QurO ān together, which may require more than one cycle of
memorization. One who has recited all from memory before qualified witnesses is said
to “tari” (“recite”) the QurO ān and is considered a h.āfiz..31 One who completes this usually
receives a diploma (shahādah) signed by an important leader who witnessed the recitation
or at least its end. Only a small minority of QurO ān students go through this entire
process. A student who has come this far will likely advance to the study of xam-xam. It
is also possible to advance to xam-xam without having memorized the whole QurO ān or
while one finishes memorizing the QurO ān. These are alternatives for ambitious students
who find that memorization process to take too long.
Varieties of informal QurO ānic school
QurO ānic schools take innumerable forms despite methods that are almost universally
shared. They range from informal arrangements that almost resemble individual tutor-
ing to large schools where three hundred students recite their lessons in the same large
cement-block room to instruction in modern classroom settings.
29 For example, the Arabic letter mı̄m is renamed miimara. The letters that I transliterate as th, dh, z, s, s.,
and z. are all pronounced s; h and c (c ayn) are assimilated to h; h., gh, kh, and q tend to be assimilated; and
so on. This assimilation results in several Arabic letter names sounding the same, necessitating new Wolof
names that distinguish the letters.
30 At
this stage, if a sequence of words is to be read, the case ending of each word is pronounced but the
words are not joined together with hamzat was.l.
31 The
term tari thus has two meanings: to recite in the common sense and to recite the entire QurO ān from
memory. H
. āfiz. means “one who memorizes” or “one who preserves.”
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At their most informal, daaras and majlis involve only a handful of students, operate
for no more than an hour or two a day, and materialize and dematerialize according to
teachers’ and students’ needs and schedules. They may exist for only months at a time
and may only be known to close relatives and acquaintances of the teacher and students.
A fuzzy line separates a small informal school and individual tutoring, and there is no
way of counting these schools and their students, as their numbers vary from week to
week. These small schools often supplement study at other schools, and even the teacher
may study elsewhere as well.
Xureysi, a student around twenty years old whom I often visited, had come to Me-
dina Baay from a Saalum-Saalum village to study at the El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niass Islamic
Institute in Saam. While he studied there and lived with a maternal cousin’s family,
he studied concurrently in a large majlis/daara just outside Medina Baay. At the same
time, he taught a ten-year-old relative and several of this boy’s young friends the QurO ān
and an elementary fiqh text. This “school” was among the smallest and most informal I
encountered and lasted only for several months.
Xureysi had numerous contacts among the aspiring Arabic teachers in the area and
helped me conduct around twenty surveys at various schools around Kaolack. Some of
these schools had hundreds of students while others were little more organized than his
own and resembled study groups or tutoring sessions. One of these smaller schools in
Saam, founded two years previously, was only slightly larger and less evanescent than
Xureysi’s. Like his own school, everyone at this school was a student, including the
teachers. Held in the unfinished cement-block house of an absentee owner, the school’s
teachers were three young men in their early twenties who taught five younger children
the QurO ān. These three “teachers” studied the Islamic disciplines with a teacher, a thirty-
year-old who studied concurrently at the El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niass Islamic Institute. Their
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own teacher would sometimes come briefly for their lesson, or they would visit him at
his family’s house. During the day they would review their own lessons alongside their
students, who would interrupt their study periodically to be given or to recite their lesson.
The QurO ān students had come from Saalum villages and subsisted through begging
(yelwaan).
We also visited a larger school that reported fifty male students (fifteen of whom live
in the school) and twenty females. We could not verify the number of students, who
formed small groups through the house instead of occupying a single area as in most
informal schools. Despite its greater number of students, I would have thought the house
an unoccupied building if not led to it. Like the smaller and more transitory school
mentioned above, this school occupied the unfinished cement-block house of an absentee
benefactor. The school had been founded three years previously, in 2001, by several
Saalum-Saalum students who had just finished their studies in the Bawol town of Jurbel.
None of its six teachers are past their early twenties and all still eagerly study in their
spare time. Before long, their benefactor will almost certainly either save enough money
to finish the house and inhabit it or sell it to someone else, so the school cannot continue
for long in its present form. Furthermore, as all the teachers are young and unsettled, it
seems unlikely that they will continue together in the same school for long. The school
offers the QurO ān as well as the more advanced Islamic disciplines. All the girls study
the QurO ān, whereas one fifth of the boys study xam-xam and earn their keep by helping
teach the younger students the QurO ān. The fifteen resident QurO ān students, who come
from villages surrounding Kaolack, pay no fixed fee, supporting themselves and paying
for their schooling through yelwaan. The rest live and eat with their families in Kaolack
and pay the school 1000 francs per month.
Patron-sponsored daaras
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Many of the QurO ān teachers I interviewed started their teaching careers working for a
private patron in whose house they taught and who directly paid either all or part of
their salary. A young teacher who has just finished studying usually does not own a
home in which to set up a practice of teaching, and many teachers are at the mercy of
patrons for several years before they become permanent teachers or move on to some
other kind of work. Those who can teach in their parents’ home (often because their
father was a teacher and there is already a space for teaching) are at an advantage. A
patron organizes a small and impermanent daara in his own home where his children
and relatives’ children can study. The teacher may take a few other paying students to
augment his or her salary. These appointments have several common characteristics: the
patron pays very little, possibly providing room and board, and students are too few
for enrollment fees to contribute significantly; the teacher is usually single and either
has recently finished his studies or still pursues them part-time; the teacher will stay
from anywhere from a few months to a couple years, and rarely more, for not only is
the school impermanent but the teacher always looks out for something better. These
schools’ transitoriness does not detract from their importance, as they are very common
parts of teachers’ career trajectories and of many children’s studies. Ammat Bittéy, whose
story I discuss in the following chapter, began his career teaching at two such schools
successively, establishing relationships that continue to shape his work today. Teaching
at these schools were steps toward establishing himself as the permanent teacher at his
family’s school. As opposed to permanent schools in a teacher’s home or formal schools,
all teachers in the patron-sponsored schools I have encountered have been men. They
correspond to a stage in a young man’s life during which he goes away from home to
establish himself through work.
A QurO ān teacher I interviewed in a Njolofeen village, in his early thirties, had come
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from a nearby village to teach a handful of students in a villager’s compound. He empha-
sized twice during the interview that his situation was temporary and that he planned to
move back to his family’s village to teach. He had come to this village just the year be-
fore, and before that he had taught in another village for just two years. His elder brother
had taken over his father’s school, so he had to go out on his own to establish himself.
Although he is also a muqaddam, he does not give wird or tarbiyyah in this village but
defers to the village’s muqaddam. When I remarked that this pattern of spending no more
than a year or two in each teaching post seemed widespread, he answered that it had
partly to do with the fact that when you first move into a village, people fear you and pay
their dues, but they soon become familiar with you and become lax about paying, and
the teacher’s situation becomes untenable. (This may also explain why so many teachers
seek work in villages where they are relatively unknown.) This problem of non-paying
students, along with other financial woes, came up in nearly every interview I had with
QurO ān teachers, who were nearly unanimous in blaming the collapse of agriculture in
recent years for parents’ inability to pay.
Teaching for a patron. Jibril Jóob is a student in Medina Baay in his early twenties
who began his QurO ānic studies at the school of Baay Ñas’s right-hand man Sëriñ Alliw
Siise and, after Sëriñ Alliw’s death, divided his time between studying at the El-Hadji
Abdulaay Niass Islamic Institute and several majlis in Medina Baay. His own father,
although neither well off nor a religious specialist, is a close friend of Sëriñ Alliw’s son,
Imam Hasan Siise, and has therefore had opportunies to travel with the Imam and his
brothers and become well known among disciples. A year ago, Jibril finished his studies
at the Islamic Institute and began to divide his time between studying at a prominent
majlis during the evening and teaching during the daytime at a private house in Saam,
where he taught six and later ten children. After less than a year of teaching in that
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house, a grandson of Baay Ñas asked him to teach a group of around twenty children in
his house. Jibril tells me it is unlikely that he will continue long as a QurO ān teacher. He is
not sure what he wants to do later in life, but he wants to pursue a university education in
an Arabic- or English-speaking country. He is intensely curious and has studied massage
and gymnastics as well and thinks about opening a gym.
Some patron-sponsored schools may last more than a generation, but teachers at these
schools are still typically young and only a little less transient than those in the smaller
patron-sponsored schools. A more permanent patron-sponsored school may include chil-
dren and relatives of the patron, but they are far outnumbered by other children, as these
schools are more open to the public and are not maintained specifically for a particular
group of children. Rather, the patron is typically a religious leader or some other promi-
nent community member who, for one reason or another, wants to have a school in his
house. The teacher is either directly paid by fees or is paid by a combination of fees and a
contribution from the patron, which may be irregular, although a general monthly salary
is often agreed upon. These schools usually have a dedicated place in the house where
teaching takes place.
Thirty-year-old Allaaji Caam now teaches at one such school in Medina Baay, the school
of Ibrayima Caam, his somewhat distant relative who died in the 1980s. Ibrayima Caam’s
sons now administer the school but are too busy with other activities to teach there and
so, since their father’s death, have hired an outside teacher to keep the school alive. Allaaji
Caam has taught at the school for three years so far, before which he taught in a one-room
formal Arabic school in a Saalum-Saalum village for six years (where he was by far the
school’s longest lasting teacher). Along the same street are several other QurO ānic schools
and at least three well known majlis.
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Allaaji’s daara departs from most nearby informal daaras in several respects, although
his departure is by no means unique. Part of the difference comes from his training, and
part comes from his experience as a teacher in a formal Arabic elementary school. Raised
in a Saalum-Saalum village near the Gambian border, Allaaji studied at a Gambian school
that used the H O

. afs. Qur ānic recitation, dominant in the Middle East and increasingly
common in West African urban areas where some teachers have brought it back from the
Middle East.32 Although he is more comfortable teaching H

. afs., all but four of his students
read from tattered Warsh texts, mostly because students use whatever text they find, and
Warsh is far more readily available in Senegal. Also, as in formal QurO ānic schools, Allaaji
Caam’s students read from copies of the QurO ān instead of copying verses onto a wooden
tablet. Like teachers of formal schools, he sometimes teaches his students practical lessons
in Islamic practice in addition to individual memorization. He has abandoned the harsh
physical discipline that has long characterized QurO ānic schools in the area. He shows
me a whip made of a thin rubber tube that he uses to whip disobedient students but says
he rarely uses it. His students all live with nearby families, so they bring him monthly
fees and eat with their families rather than beg.
I pass by the school nearly every day and interact with Allaaji Caam regularly, and
I have told him several times that I will come visit his class. I finally visit the school
and am introduced by Ibrayima Caam’s son, the patron of the school and a collaborator
in my research project. I hoped to slip in inconspicuously to observe Allaaji Caam’s
ordinary teaching routine, but Ibrayima Caam’s son introduces me to the students with
great fanfare as a great man and a great researcher who is working hard for the sake
of their future (he refers indirectly to my project of archiving Taalibe Baay history and
32 The Warsh recitation, the first to be introduced to North and West Africa and still by far the most preva-
lent, follows different orthographic, pronunciation, and calligraphic rules. I have never found a teacher to
express an ideological preference between the two recitations despite some important differences in pronun-
ciation rules and some minor semantic differences.
214
culture for future generations).
Treating my visit as a momentous occasion, they ask me to make an address to the
students, and I briefly tell them what I’m doing and encourage them to study hard,
then I tell the teacher they may resume their activities. Still wide-eyed and silent, the
students’ eyes remain glued on me after I finish talking. Allaaji Caam tells the confused
children to go ahead and study, and he turns to his own passage and starts reading to
himself. (He is one of the few QurO ān teachers I know who has not received certification
for memorization—he relies on his credentials as a formal school teacher to compensate.)
He interrupts his reading after a minute and orders the still-staring students to return to
their lessons, which they gradually do loudly and with enthusiasm (I am convinced with
greater energy than usual). A few mumble indistinctly, apparently unable to concentrate.
Children are arranged by sex and age. The youngest chilren—the O alif bāO students
from around five to seven years old, who look a bit lost and unused to this environment—
sit on the front bench, the boys toward the door, the girls at the far end. Only one has
an instructional tool of any kind—a small plastic-framed blackboard with nothing legible
written on it. The girls in this group are slightly older than the boys, who seem to have
been sent more to get used to the environment and to be kept busy than to learn anything.
A couple girls at the end of the bench are slightly older than the rest, around seven, and
have apparently begun to move beyond O alif bāO . They are the only small children to
do more than sit. They sway back and forth in rhythm as children do when they recite,
except that they do not recite anything. After several minutes, Allaaji orders them to
recite, and they begin to chant the day’s phrase—“Khalaqa ’l-O insāna”33 —maintaining the
same rocking rhythm. After a couple minutes they drop off and go back to quietly
rocking.
33 “He created Man.” From QurO ān 96:2 (S). This is one of the first sūrahs a student learns, being among
the short sūrahs toward the end of the QurO ān and the first sūrah revealed to Muh.ammad.
215
On the second bench, the girls between seven and ten recite their lessons, most with
gusto but one or two mumbling indistinctly and apparently not actually reciting anything
in particular. On a perpendicular bench against the street-side wall sit the oldest girls,
up to about twelve years old. Behind the two front rows are three benches of boys, again
with small ones sitting at the front and older ones sitting at the back. This arrangement
appears to reverse the common arrangement of placing higher status (older and male)
at the front. The situation here calls instead for the older students to study their lessons
independently and come to him when ready to recite their lesson, allowing the younger
students to remain close to their teacher to be taught as a group to be supervised more
closely.
For the first twenty minutes of my visit, there is practically no interaction between
students and teacher. All review their respective lessons more or less independently,
including the teacher (except a couple of the little girls who recite in unison). Then a
twelve-year-old girl from the side bench approaches Allaaji, lowering herself between the
side of his plastic chair and the street-side wall, facing the door (the opposite direction
from Allaaji). Thus, she does not directly face him but is directly beside him, where he
can hear her recitation without facing her directly. She crouches in a deferential position,
one foot flat on the ground with the knee up, the other foot behind with the knee lowered,
arms crossed in front over her raised knee, eyes cast humbly to the ground. One hand
holds a fragment of a printed QurO ān where she cannot look at it. She says quietly and a
little nervously that she is ready to recite. He tells her to go ahead, and she quickly runs
through her lesson, just loud enough for him to hear clearly but muted enough to avoid
being overbearing. He listens carefully and stops her at one point and has her repeat,
then corrects a pronunciation, but on the whole she seems to have done well, and he
nods and tells her to go back and move on to the next passage. Five minutes later, a boy
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presents himself and recites his lesson, and several other boys and girls do the same over
the following minutes, all taking the same deferential position. Nearly all the students I
saw approach the teacher were from the older age group, above ten years old.
During the rainy season, classes cease and Allaaji Caam returns to his Saalum-Saalum
village, where his wife lives with his father’s family. Some of his students are also sent
to live with relatives in the countryside, where they will help weed peanut and millet
fields and may even learn to guide a plough horse. Allaaji brings any money he has
saved from his teaching to buy peanut seeds, fertilizer, and other inputs, looking for
loans from relatives for whatever he cannot afford. Toward the end of the rainy season,
he increasingly feels the weight of his family responsibilities and it becomes doubtful that
he will be able to return to the school. Ibrayima Caam’s sons begin looking for another
young teacher to keep their father’s school going.
Permanent daaras associated with a teacher or family
Usually larger than patron-sponsored schools are those associated with a teacher or fam-
ily and held in a house, usually that of the teacher. These are the most conspicuous and
well known daaras. Perhaps the defining characteristic of these schools is that they are in-
tended to be permanent and are run directly by the teacher and not a patron. In Medina
Baay, these schools usually have far more students than the patron-sponsored schools,
often between one and three hundred. Outside religious centers like Medina Baay, they
usually have fewer than a hundred students but are still larger than patron-sponsored
schools. These schools are also relatively permanent, lasting the career of the teacher and
often continuing with the teacher’s son and grandson. When the school’s founder dies, if
the school is to continue, the family typically elects a son or another qualified relative of
the founder to take over. I know of no case where a non-relative was taken as a permanent
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successor. Alternatively, as the examples above show, if no son is available to succeed his
father, the school may take the form of a patron-sponsored school, hiring a young and
impermanent teacher to take over.
These schools’ permanence and size have several consequences. Most importantly,
they last long enough to allow a cohort of students to study the QurO ān from beginning
to end and often to continue as assistant teachers as they study xam-xam. Thus, many of
these schools function as both daaras and majlis. The most well known schools establish
a reputation beyond the immediate neighborhood, drawing students from surrounding
villages and, occasionally, across Senegambia and even abroad. Students who come from
other areas typically live in the school and live by begging. As in Western universities,
where undergraduate students must pay tuition while graduate students often earn their
keep as assistant teachers, QurO ān students pay fees or turn over proceeds from begging
while xam-xam students do not pay but may assist in teaching instead. Advanced stu-
dent/teachers may even receive some small monetary compensation and eat with the
teacher. Schools with over seventy students may have at least one paid, full-time teacher
working under the schoolmaster. Such a teacher is often a graduate of the school and, like
the student assistants, may continue his or her studies part time. Thus, there are many
gradations between the youngest student studying O alif-bāO and the schoolmaster. As-
sistant teachers generally start with the ambition of becoming schoolmasters, but many
leave first to seek more remunerative occupations. To continue as teachers, those who
continue must either succeed their own schoolmaster, which usually only happens if one
is related to the schoolmaster, or establish their own school. Those who establish their
own school often do so in a village other than their own, looking to see where qualified
teachers are needed.
These permanent schools are also often associated with muqaddams and occult special-
218
ists. In this case, advanced students who establish a close relationship with the teacher
may become proficient not only in textual knowledge but also in mystical and occult
knowledge, which they will be given varying levels of authorization to practice. Before
textual and mystical specializations became distinct, it was far more typical than it is
today for a person to become a muqaddam of the same teacher he or she studied with.
Mystical and occult education may flow rather seamlessly into textual education. When
the teacher receives requests to make occult cures, he or she may assign a student to write
a QurO ānic verse hundreds of times on white paper for use in an amulet (téere) or potion
(saafara). The student thus becomes an apprentice in the occult uses of the QurO ān.
The school of a muqaddam may also be part of a zāwiyah, or the meeting place (usu-
ally held in a leader’s house) of a S.ūfı̄ community. The teacher in such a case is often
responsible not only for teaching students of the school but also for addressing the larger
body of disciples, giving public lessons, and delivering the tafsı̄r each afternoon during
the month of Ramad.ān. An advanced student may take a leading role in the daayira (local
religious association) associated with the teacher, addressing the assembly and organiz-
ing weekly activities. Such schools run by muqaddams are numerous in Medina Baay and
other neighborhoods of Kaolack. They are also common in Njolofeen villages throughout
Western Saalum.
The next chapter will discuss the lives and work of several teachers at permanent
schools, some of them muqaddams.
5.4.2 Studying the Islamic disciplines in majlis
A majlis is an informal school where the Islamic disciplines (xam-xam, c ulūm) are taught.
As shown above, often daara and majlis are combined in the same school. In that case,
the school is usually called a daara, and “majlis” is only applied when talking specifi-
cally about the minority of students who study the Islamic disciplines. Many teachers
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surveyed, for example, when asked what kind of school it was, responded: “here there
is a daara and there is a majlis. More commonly, however, the term “majlis” is reserved
for a school where a single shaykh teaches texts in Islamic and Arabic subjects to older
students who have either memorized the QurO ān or studied it for a long time and decided
to move on. As opposed to a large daara where assistant teachers may perform much of
the daily QurO ānic teaching, it is often the shaykh alone who teaches the majlis. In a very
large majlis, such as that of Sheex Omar Ture discussed in the next chapter, even advanced
subjects may be taught by several assistant teachers, but this is not typical.
The orality of textual studies. Omar, Ibra, and Ndey,34 all around sixteen years old,
recently received their diplomas for memorizing the QurO ān in a large ceremony presided
by Maahi Ñas, one of Baay Ñas’s elder sons and director of the El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niasse
Islamic Institute in Saam. Ndey finished her memorization last year but postponed her
ceremony so she could combine it with the other two and several others into one larger
event. Since the ceremony, Omar and Ibra have been assisting their teacher, Ammat
Bittéy, in teaching nearly a hundred younger students the QurO ān in his daara. Ndey has
been studying at the El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niass Islamic Institute since the beginning of the
school year and only occasionally assists in teaching the younger girls at Ammat Bittéy’s
QurO ānic school. Omar and Ibra continue to receive daily lessons from Ammat Bittéy in
xam-xam, or Islamic and Arabic disciplines.
After they send the QurO ān students home at the end of the day, I accompany Ammat
Bittéy to his house (the school is held at his uncle’s house) and Omar and Ibra soon rejoin
us there for their evening lesson. Ammat Bittéy sits in a plastic chair across the room
from the door while I sit on his bed, and Omar and Ibra kneel on their prayer rugs before
their teacher. Although they are close to their teacher and sometimes converse with him
34 The names in all narratives in this chapter, aside from some central leaders, are pseudonyms.
220
casually, during the lesson they show the attitudes proper to a student, speaking softly
when called upon and looking downward.
They are studying Al-O Akhd.ariyy, the verse text on Islamic practice (fiqh) that students
most often study near the end of or following their QurO ānic studies. Today’s lesson
concerns the passage on pronouncing QurO ān verses during prayer. The students have
copied the text into their notebooks and read along as their teacher reads it. The text is
written in rajaz, the simple, sing-song meter most commonly used in pedagogical texts.
But the meter is unrecognizable, as the teacher alternates each Arabic word or phrase with
its Wolof equivalent,35 giving students the original text and its translation simultaneously.
The students listen intently, as tomorrow they will be expected to recite not only the
Arabic but the Arabic interspersed with the Wolof.
Bittéy first reads through the entire lesson without explanation, then goes back and
reads each line separately, this time explaining and giving examples. One line, for exam-
ple, specifies what one should do during prayer if one cannot remember the verse one
is to recite. He explains that it is permitted to read from a copy of the QurO ān as one
prays if one would otherwise be unable to pronounce the prayer. He even stands up at
one point to demonstrate prayer scenarios that would or would not invalidate the prayer.
For example, he begins reciting a verse as if in prayer, then acts as if he has forgotten the
verse, picks up the QurO ān, and reads the remainder of the verse. This is permitted, he
explains, and is preferable to a faulty recitation. After his explanation and demonstration,
he makes sure the students know the gloss of each Arabic phrase and has them read the
passage, similarly interspersing the glosses. At a few points, he has to remind one or
35 That is, the translation is woven into the text and not provided afterwards, such that the first sūrah of the
QurO ān, if taught in English, would be read “Bismi: In the name of; Allāh: God; Ar-rah.māni: the merciful;
Ar-rah.ı̄mi: the compassionate; Al-h.amdu: Praise; li-’Llāhi: to God; Rabbi: Lord; Al-c ālamı̄na: the worlds,”
etc. This method of recitation is not common in informal QurO ānic schools but is sometimes used in formal
QurO ānic schools.
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both of them of the Wolof gloss, and occasionally he even has to explain the meaning of
the Wolof gloss. This is a lesson not only in Islamic law and Arabic but in the specialized
Wolof vocabulary of Islam.
The lesson lasts no more than a half hour, after which he dismisses the students
until the following morning. He then shows me a cassette he has just recorded that
explains one of Baay Ñas’s earliest yet best known writings, Rūh. al-O adab (“The spirit of
propriety”).36 The cassette’s method of instruction resembles the lesson he just gave the
students: he reads the original text, gives its word-for-word Wolof gloss, and expounds
on it in colloquial Wolof. But his recorded lesson differs from his private teaching in that
it follows the norms for public exegesis, speaking on a limited number of melodic pitches
and translating each line fully instead of word-by-word. (Baay Ñas can still be heard
on numerous cassettes teaching publicly in this way, and his sons and muqaddams give
their public lessons in the same manner.) Bittéy says he began recording these cassettes
as an aid for students and relatives in memorizing and understanding the text through
their own efforts. In an effort to publicize Baay Ñas’s teachings (which he and other
Taalibe Baay leaders tell me are widely misunderstood), he will also take several copies
to markets in Kaolack and Dakar, where he hopes Taalibe Baay cassette dealers will sell a
few copies. He tells me teaching the broader public is part of his teaching mission.
In some ways, instruction in the majlis is continuous to that of the daara. As in the
daara, the teacher gives a student or a small group of students a short lesson concerning
a particular text. In both cases, the student sits and repeats the lesson individually until
he or she has memorized it and then repeats it back to the teacher, who then makes
necessary corrections and decides whether the student is ready to move on to the next
36 The term O adab can be translated “good manners” or “proper behavior” as well. It also means “literature”
and “education.”
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lesson.
There are some important differences between daara and majlis instruction. As majlis
students are older, they are assumed to be self-disciplined enough to study the lesson
on their own and therefore need not spend the bulk of the day sitting in a group and
supervised by an authority figure as they memorize their lesson. The actual time spent
with the teacher in the school, then, tends to occupy a short part of the day. Some students
take lessons simultaneously at two majlis run by scholars with different specializations,
learning, for example, grammar (nah.w) at one and fiqh at the other. Because the teacher
does not devote his or her full time to majlis teaching, he or she does not expect to make
money from it and does not charge students. Nearly all majlis teachers I have known
have made their living in some other way, whether religious (teaching QurO ān or working
as imam or muqaddam) or non-religious (farming, commerce). Although students may
reciprocate, for example by working in the teacher’s fields or helping teach the QurO ān
to younger students, majlis typically do not have fees as daaras do. Teaching advanced
students in much of Senegambia and Mauritania is generally understood to be a service
not requiring remuneration, and no student is to be turned down.
A particularly salient difference between QurO ānic and more advanced studies is that
in addition to memorizing the text, majlis students now learn the translation and expla-
nation of what they are memorizing. As the above story demonstrates, the lesson often
involves three main components: the Arabic text; the Wolof gloss; and a detailed oral
explanation (sharh.) of the text’s meaning. This technique differentiates majlis not only
from QurO ānic teaching but from teaching in formal schools, where verbal instruction
and texts are in the same language (French or Arabic). The consequences of this method
on linguistic competence will be discussed below.
Much of what is transmitted in majlis is outside the text. Receiving a text directly from
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a teacher is important not only because of the spiritual authority and barakah that comes
from the teacher but also because the text itself is in many cases a rhymed mnemonic
for information it does not actually include. It is not just the text that is transmitted
but also the explanation (sharh.), without which the text itself may be incomprehensible.
Even when two schools use the same text, they may use very different sharh.s that come
from different traditions. In Mauritania, the verse texts (matn) are often published along
with the sharh. of a particular scholar, and some sharh.s are known as masterpieces that
attain their own status as classics. These published versions do not visually resemble the
manuscripts they come from, as manuscripts often do not present sharh. as a linear text
but as little bits of text spiraling, sideways and upside-down, around a few lines of verse
from the matn at the center of each page. I have seen sharh.s written in Arabized Wolof in
Senegal, but I have found them to be much more often transmitted orally, either through
a personal lesson in a majlis or through a public speech or cassette.
For example, a commonly taught text37 on the biography of Muh.ammad (sı̄rah), states
Muh.ammad’s ancestry only as a long acronym of 22 letters, each of which stands for a
different ancestor’s name. The same text encodes years in the cryptic Arabic system that
represents numbers alphabetically, in both cases assuming that a teacher will explain how
the meaning is to be derived from the mnemonic code. Episodes in Muh.ammad’s life are
mentioned briefly, with a few names of key figures and places but without clarifying the
story line. The author assumes a teacher who can fill in the details either from having
learned the same text or other texts, and students are assumed to need no help remem-
bering broad story lines but to need more help with lists of names and chronological
successions.
Thus, a teacher’s public role in expounding on texts to an audience largely illiterate
37 The text is Qurratu ’l-O Absār: Fı̄ Sı̄rati ’n-Nabiyyi ’l-Mukhtār (The Eye’s Delight: On the Life of the Chosen
.
Prophet), by c Abd al-c Azı̄z al-Lamat.iyy.
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in Arabic is largely continuous with his or her role as a teacher of xam-xam. Not only
is orality central to transmitting knowledge in the absence of a text, but even textual
knowledge depends on an oral component, as the verse texts used in informal schools
are written with the assumption that they will be learned in a particular setting and that
they therefore can count on much of the information being transmitted orally.
A student’s transition from daara to majlis is often subtle. Advanced QurO ān students
gradually take on responsibilities teaching and disciplining younger students and assist-
ing the teacher in copying verses of the QurO ān for clients’ occult cures. Even before
completing the QurO ān, a student may choose to join the evening xam-xam lessons. Upon
memorizing the QurO ān, students have several options: they may decide to continue
studying and assistant teaching in the same school; they may go to a dedicated majlis to
study with a shaykh; or they may study at a formal institute. Some combine more than
one of these.
Moving from daara to majlis. Just a month ago, Xaliil Caam, a fourteen-year-old stu-
dent at a large daara in Medina Baay, recited the QurO ān from memory in a certification
ceremony (tari), after seven years of QurO ānic study. As a Njolofeen, he is related to many
religious specialists, and his teacher and his mother are relatives, but none of his close
relatives are religious specialists. Most of Xaliil’s many older siblings studied in the pub-
lic Francophone system, one of his older brothers earning a doctorate in France. But most
of his brothers left school before finishing high school to work in commerce, and most of
his sisters did not study past elementary school. His only sibling to pursue an extended
Islamic education is his older brother, Maalig, who memorized the QurO ān several years
ago and is now an assistant teacher at the same school.
In the final year before memorizing the QurO ān, he showed an interest in further
Islamic studies and his teacher let him join the evening xam-xam lessons. Each day af-
225
ter he memorized his QurO ān lesson, he would attend the short lesson and copy the
day’s passage into his notebook, memorizing it that night at home. The first text he
learned there was the introductory fiqh text Al-O akhd.ariyy, a verse text that emphasizes
basic Islamic practice, such as prayer and fasting. At the same time, at twice the youngest
students’ age, he naturally took on more responsibilities for maintaining order and dis-
cipline, sometimes being assigned to watch over the younger students when the teacher
had to go out.
After certifying his full recitation of the QurO ān, his family raised around 50,000 CFA
($100) to give the teacher (a comparable gift is commonly given in Senegambia and Mau-
ritania). As the family did not have sufficient money to organize a whole celebration and
butcher a sheep on his behalf, they combined his celebration with a naming ceremony for
his older sister’s child. After his memorization, he joined his older brother Maalig as an
assistant teacher, taking charge of a small group of younger QurO ān students during the
day and continuing to study xam-xam in the evening.
Both Xaliil and Maalig may soon have enough experience to take a first job as private
QurO ān teachers, or they could continue to study for a few years while assistant teaching,
preparing to open their own independent schools. Yet it is unclear whether they will
become teachers. Xaliil still seems fascinated with learning, and his mother strongly
encourages him to study. She sometimes takes him with her to visit Medina Baay leaders
who are somehow related to her, and they sometimes give both her and Xaliil small
financial contributions to encourage him to stay in school. Although he has never studied
Arabic conversation, he has picked up enough practical Arabic through memorizing texts
that he enjoys trying to converse with me in Arabic. When I have had a problem, he has
been able to tell me which QurO ānic verse to repeat to solve it.
With four more years of experience, Maalig has tasted the exhaustion of teaching and
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has seen how his teacher struggles to make ends meet. Although his teacher occasionaly
pays him, the pay is both sporadic and small, and he depends financially on his older
siblings, as his aging father no longer works. As the family has faced increasing financial
difficulties, it becomes increasingly likely that their parents might pressure them to seek
more remunerative work. Maalig now talks about working in his older brother’s shop in
Dakar. But he also feels some obligation to his teacher, who depends on his assistance
even though he probably could not increase his pay.
5.4.3 Consequences of informal instruction
The methods used in informal schools have several notable consequences. Perhaps most
importantly, in several ways, informal schools attune students to the bāt.in aspects of
religious knowledge and its cultivation and to relationships of apprenticeship that extend
far beyond the school. They teach not only texts but the attitudes of discipleship and an
experience of the divine and the occult.
Many criticize daaras as ineffective because they teach memorization and not under-
standing of the QurO ān or Arabic literacy. Yet daaras have some important effects that are
invisible to formal educational standards. They familiarize students with Arabic phono-
logical patterns and written Arabic letters, facilitating later study of Arabic. Because the
vast majority in the Kaolack Region study in these schools and learn the Arabic alphabet,
whereas only a minority of them study at Francophone schools, a far greater number
can read Arabized (O ac jamiyy) Wolof than can read Romanized Wolof or French. Very
few people study Arabized Wolof as such, but after several years of copying and recit-
ing Arabic verses, many people end up with a practical ability to spell out and decipher
Wolof words written in Arabic script, although few use these literacy skills regularly. By
this measure QurO ānic schools must be considered the single most important factor in
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Senegalese literacy, although state statistics spectacularly under-represent the impact of
Islamic schools on literacy.38
Those who continue their studies in a majlis end up learning Arabic not through
immersion, as is done in formal schools, but through memorizing a text and its literal
Wolof gloss. Whereas national Francophone schools have as a primary objective to create
a populace fluent in a single national language, majlis do not directly teach Arabic as
a language of communication. Rather, the purpose is to transform the student into a
repository of the literal texts and the knowledge in them.
Gloss-based learning has two notable effects on students’ linguistic competence. First,
many years are required before a student can communicate fluently in Arabic. After years
of verbally repeating texts along with their gloss, students internalize the patterns and
tend to speak a highly literary Arabic, yet with a distinctive Senegalese pronunciation.
Second, whereas Francophone state schools tend to reduce students’ Wolof lexicon by
banishing Wolof from the classroom, learning a wide vocabulary of Arabic words, each
with its Wolof gloss significantly increases students’ Wolof lexicon. Aadi Faal, director of
several Wolof literacy programs in Saalum and hosts of a weekly Wolof-preservation radio
program on Radio Kaolack (the regional branch of Radio et Télévision du Sénégal), tells
me that his best sources for arcane Wolof vocabulary are “arabisants,” or those who study
38 For example, the 1988 Census (République du Sénégal 1993) reports that 63.1% of males over 15 are
illiterate, while 28.6% are literate in French, 6.5% in Arabic, 0.3% in national languages (such as Wolof and
Pulaar), and 1.5% in other languages. For females over 15: 82.1% are illiterate and 15.6% are literate in
French, 1.2% in Arabic, 0.2% in national languages, and 0.9% in other languages. Anyone who has visited
a Senegalese village will likely wonder at these figures. They total only 100%, assuming that everyone is
illiterate or literate in precisely one language. The fact that French is listed first suggests (although we
have no way of knowing) that French was the first language inquired about and that surveyors did not
inquire about other languages if a person reported literacy in French. Also, because most QurO ānic schools
do not actively teach writing in Wolof, most who can read Arabized Wolof do so passively and have little
experience writing it, so they are not counted as literate. When I visited villages and distributed documents
describing my research in Arabic, French, English, and Romanized Wolof, villagers repeatedly encouraged
me to translate it into Arabized Wolof, assuring me that it would reach a much larger audience than these
other languages. It is unlikely that anyone would have encouraged me to translate anything into a language
only intelligible to 0.3% of the population.
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in informal Arabic schools. He tells me that, along with griots (géwal), religious scholars
are known as the ones who can speak the purest Wolof, meaning that they possess a
broad lexicon relatively free of French words.
One might hypothesize that this effect on individuals’ Wolof linguistic competence
discernably affects preserving, expanding, and enriching the Wolof lexicon. The impact of
Francophone education on the Wolof lexicon is well known, as words tend to be absorbed
directly as cognates or adapted according to regular morphological rules.39 The impact
of Arabic education on broader linguistic patterns is less known and little studied, as
Arabic concepts are usually glossed and are only recognizable by those who have studied
both the texts in which they occur and their Wolof gloss. Where one might expect to
find an extensive Arabic lexicon of Islamic terms in Wolof, one finds instead terms with
no etymological connection to Arabic but that have taken on new meanings in Islamic
contexts. Many basic Arabic and Islamic terms—the letters of the Arabic alphabet, the
names of the months and holidays, God, and even “Muslim” (“Jullit”) and prayer (“julli”)
have Wolof names unrelated to the Arabic.
In short, informal schools do many things that formal schools do not do, and hence
many who teach or study in formal schools continue to participate in informal schools
as well, believing that formal schools cannot replicate everything learned in informal
schools. For example, informal schools offer moral training through apprenticeship to a
master teacher. Advanced students not only learn religious texts not available in formal
schools but may be exposed to occult and mystical knowledge and develop long-term
relationships with influential teachers.
39 In
addition to the many well known French cognates in Wolof, the French origin of many non-cognate
words is still evident. For example, mbalit (“trash”) is the residual form of bale, from balayer (“to sweep”),
and hence literally means “sweepings.” Scholars believe that gerte (“peanut”) comes from grain de terre
(“ground seed”). Although transformed, these words still enter the language as cognates and not as glosses
derived from pre-existing roots, so their French origin is more easily discerned.
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5.5 Formal schools and the rationalization of religious knowledge?
Since independence, formal schools have become increasingly common in both urban
areas and the countryside. As Donna Perry mentions (2004), many parents favor local,
formal schools for numerous reasons, such as that they allow boys to stay in the village
and to work the family fields and that they see the modern age calling for less harshness
than previous time periods.
Although formal schools are a “modern” institution, with governing boards, budgets,
and pedagogy more closely resembling Western or Arab schools, they do not necessarily
look any more modern than informal schools. In rural areas, the Arabic school is usually
made of millet stalks and is rebuilt each year after the rains destroy it. One school I visited
in Saalum had raised money for years and finally bought a plot and cement blocks to
build a more permanent structure. The Arabic schools that dot the countryside typically
offer only elementary education and send a few top students to urban Islamic institutes
for secondary education.
Although one might not guess from their external appearance, many of these schools
are part of an umbrella organization, sometimes governed by a major muqaddam, and are
designated as feeder schools for a particular urban Islamic institute. For example, the
Institut Islamique El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niass in Saam, now directed by Baay’s son Maahi,
and Abdulaay Wilaan’s institute in Kafrin each have dozens of one-room elementary
schools whose teachers are selected by the central management of the institute and then
sent to the village. There are other “federations” of formal schools, such as H
. arakatu
’n-Nujūmi ’l-O Islāmiyyah (“Movement of Islamic Stars”), an organization founded by the
eccentric Medina Baay archivist Seydinaa Baabakar Caam, better known as “Haraka.”
During the 1980s and early 1990s, his federation opened over fifty schools throughout
Saalum and Bawol, but all but one (in the Saalum-Saalum village of Kër Yoro Xoja) have
230
closed down, he says due to declining agricultural revenues.
Most formal primary Arabic schools generally have only one teacher for all levels,
and larger ones sometimes have one teacher for every two levels (hence, three teachers
for six grades). Students who wish to continue at the secondary level must move to
a town that has a larger “institute” (mac had), which typically offers both primary and
secondary instruction. Not all schools are clearly formal or informal, as many schools
combine ancient verse texts with modern texts. When studying religious texts, formal
schools I have frequented continued to learn verse texts in the same way as informal
schools, alternating each Arabic word with a Wolof word.
A notable consequence of formal schools is that exoteric and esoteric knowledge are
no longer transmitted along the same channels. Teachers become functionaries of the
parents’ organizations and not masters like teachers in traditional schools. Students are
not said to be studying with a particular teacher but rather at a particular school. In rural
areas, village councils are only able to raise a small stipend for the teacher, usually a
recent graduate of an Arabic institute in his early twenties. Consequently, most teachers I
spoke with moved from village to village, spending no more than a year or two teaching
in each. However passionate about and dedicated to their work, most were considering
a more remunerative career that would allow them to settle down and support a family.
Most informal teachers are not much better off financially but they are more integrated
into the community, often own their own home, have much more ownership over their
teaching, and are therefore willing and able to put up with the low income.
The consequences of this situation are multiple: students do not develop a long-term
relationship of apprenticeship and discipleship with a senior teacher; although usually a
member of the same S.ūfı̄ order, the teacher typically specializes strictly in textual knowl-
edge; and teaching methods that closely resemble methods of S.ūfı̄ tarbiyyah, such as the
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repetition of texts, the physical arrangement of teacher and student, and association of
spiritual blessing and authority with the material taught, are diminished or eliminated.
In sum, whereas informal Arabic schooling has in many times and places been inextri-
cable from esoteric knowledge transmission, in formal schools textual knowledge has a
strong tendency to appear as its own specialization and its exoteric side is isolated and
highlighted. Nonetheless, pedagogical methods are not radically distinct, and the educa-
tional habitus formed in informal QurO ānic schooling penetrates formal schooling. Many
students and teachers exposed to years of QurO ānic study approach even studies in the
Francophone school much as they approached the QurO ān: students sit at home with their
French text, which they have copied from the board into their notebooks much in the way
that they copied their QurO ānic lessons, repeating the French text many times out loud to
commit it to memory, sometimes even rocking back and forth and reciting it more or less
on pitch as they would recite the QurO ān.
Despite formal schools’ relatively more rationalized mode of learning and their sep-
aration of textual from mystical and occult knowledge transmission, I do not consider
formal schools organized at the village level in predominantly Taalibe Baay areas to re-
flect a shift to a “modern” point of view that values textual education for its own sake.
These schools have become most prominent mostly in areas where majlis have not been
prominent, for example in Saalum-Saalum and Bawol-Bawol villages without families
with a long tradition of textual education. Villagers organize such a school because, in
order to provide an Islamic education for their children, they must take the matter into
their own hands and organize a school at the village level rather than wait for a teacher to
set up an informal school independently. The most effective and inexpensive way to do
this is either to hire a young teacher through a village council or to appeal to an external
federation to organize a school. In Njolofeen villages where informal schools have been
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instituted since their foundation, formal schools are much less prevalent and majlis still
predominate. There are numerous other reasons for organizing formal schools, for exam-
ple, that they keep boys at home where they may contribute to farming as they study and
that they are set up in ways that permit more girls to study in them (Perry 2004), yet in
any event in Senegal they are for the most part independent of reform movements and
are organized by those most actively involved in S.ūfı̄ activities.
5.5.1 State involvement in formal Islamic schools
It would be too easy to assume, considering recent changes in educational policy in Sene-
gal, that the state’s estimation of Arabic education has changed. The Senegalese public
school system is closely patterned after the Francophone system, which, like all other
Senegalese public services, is officially secular. Several recent moves have countered this
republican tendency. Over the years, an increasing number of public schools have begun
to offer Arabic language instruction alongside English, Spanish, and German. Like nearly
all public schools throughout Islamic areas in Senegal, all public schools in Kaolack now
offer Arabic instruction.40 Since 2002, a more startling change has occurred: Arabic teach-
ers are now allowed to give Islamic religious instruction. Also in 2002, the state began a
pilot program of establishing public Franco-Arabic schools within the physical confines
of already existing public Francophone schools. This is an extension of the decades-long
policy of supporting private schools that meet the qualifications to be recognized as ef-
fective “Franco-Arabic” schools. Such schools are allowed to offer religious subjects but
must also meet state standards in teaching French, mathematics, and sciences.
As it has incorporated Arabic and Islamic education into its public schools, the local,
regional, and national Inspection des Ecoles offices began two decades ago to hire Ara-
bic specialists as “inspectors,” or teacher evaluators and curriculum planners, subjecting
40 Interview with officials at the Kaolack Inspection des écoles.
233
Arabic education to the same standards applied to instruction in other subjects. Many
of these Arabic inspectors studied in a combination of informal majlis, private secondary
Arabic schools, and Arabic universities abroad. These changes show that the state is in-
creasingly taking Arabic and Islamic education seriously. Yet it is not clear that official
attitudes toward Arabic and Islamic education have become more positive; rather, offi-
cials working at the Inspection des Ecoles clearly explained to me that officials have felt
compelled to make these compromises in order to make a foreign system palatable to a
population committed to Islamic education. They say the problem has been especially
acute in Bawol, where many parents positively distrust Francophone schools. The aim
of incorporating Arabic and Islamic instruction into public education, according to the
general directors of the Inspection des écoles, is not to promote but to co-opt and regulate
Islamic education in order to promote Francophone education. This attitude does not
necessarily apply to the inspectors specializing in Arabic instruction, most of whom got
their start in the informal majlis system of Senegal. As one might expect, they tend to
take Arabic education much more seriously in its own right.
I interviewed several officials at the Inspection des écoles for the city of Kaolack (there
are also regional and national offices), the government office responsible for supervising
and planning public education. I found a marked contrast in attitudes between offi-
cials educated in the Francophone system and those educated in the Arabic system; all
were devout Muslims but they had contrasting experiences of and attitudes toward re-
ligious education. These differences corresponded to their educational background: all
had studied QurO ān in informal schools, but those overseeing Arabic education had all
studied in informal schools as well as formal universities abroad and therefore showed
far more sympathy toward informal schools. Those educated in the Francophone sys-
tem uniformly described informal schools as a problem to be fixed through formalizing
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schools.
The state defines four categories of schools with regards to public support: (1) public
state schools, which in the past have all been French but that now tentatively include a
handful of very small Franco-Arabic schools; (2) publicly funded private schools, which
include secular Francophone and religiously oriented Franco-Arabic schools; (3) publicly
recognized private schools, which receive no state funding but have "authorization to
open" (authorisation d’ouverture, O idhn li-’l-fath.); and (4) private schools that do not have
state authorization.
Arabic and Islamic education in public schools in Kaolack
According to officials at the Kaolack City Inspection des écoles, there are 38 public ele-
mentary schools in Kaolack, 8 middle schools (collèges or instituts), and two high schools
(lycées), all of which have at least one Arabic teacher. Arabic instruction in public schools
is not new, but up until twenty years ago the government had no system of controlling
Arabic education as none of the inspectors specialized in Arabic. Twenty years ago they
began hiring Arabic specialists, who selected and evaluated teachers based on exami-
nations in the same way that they select and evaluate teachers in other subjects. These
specialists have typically been educated in informal schools but had continued their stud-
ies at Arab universities abroad. They also implemented a program in Arabic teacher
training, first in Thies and now in Kaolack.
In the 2002-2003 academic year, several major changes were introduced. Arabic teach-
ers in public schools were for the first time permitted to teach religious subjects such
as religious practice, h.adı̄th, and the history of Islam. This change recognized the fact
that people in Senegal do not tend to study Arabic for the same reasons that they study
English or Spanish. Arabic study for most people is inconceivable without a religious
component, and if the government is trying to induce parents to send their children to
235
Francophone schools instead of Arabic schools, teaching Arabic is clearly not enough.
One inspector in charge of Francophone education told me that many parents in rural
areas do not trust Francophone schools and believe they spoil (yaq) their children. Many
children combine QurO ānic study on afternoons and weekends with attending Franco-
phone schools on weekdays, although some Arabic schools have arisen that combine
QurO ānic study with secular subjects in Arabic, thus providing a religious and secular
combination within a single school. Planners have been forced to make several conces-
sions to convince parents that by sending their children to public schools they are not
neglecting religious education. The goal, this inspector told me, is to enroll as many chil-
dren as possible in the public schools so official planners can supervise and regulate their
education rather than leaving them to study in schools whose quality is not controlled by
the state.
The more radical change was to institute several small, fully public Franco-Arabic
schools in all regions of Senegal, with the highest concentration in the regions of Thies
(Cees) and Diourbel (Jurbel), where the state has had the most difficult time convincing
parents to send their children to public schools. (I have heard from other Arabic teachers
that these are the areas with the highest demand for Arabic schools and with the most
distrust of Francophone schools.) The program started with one year, and the plan is
to introduce a new class of students each year until the first class of students is in their
senior year of high school. The curriculum divides time equally between French and
Arabic, offering for example 14 hours instruction each in Arabic and French per week. A
similar system was introduced at the same time and at a more limited scale dividing time
between instruction in French and national languages.
Publicly funded Franco-Arabic schools
The inspectors listed four publicly funded Franco-Arabic schools in Kaolack: Al-Mac had
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al-O Islāmiyy al-H c

. ājj Abd Allāh Nyās (Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas Islamic Institute), founded by
Baay Ñas, who considered it to be a continuation of the school founded by his father and
therefore named it after him; Al-Mac had al-O Islāmiyy al-O Ifrı̄qiyy al-O Amrı̄kiyy (African Amer-
ican Islamic Institute) founded by Shaykh Hasan Siise with collaboration from American
disciples; Al-Mac had al-O Islāmiyy O Abū Bakr as.-S.iddı̄q (O Abū Bakr as.-S.iddı̄q Islamic Insti-
tute), more commonly called Mac had al-Fallāh. because it is affiliated with the orthodox
Fallāh. movement; and the Mac had al-O Azhar li-’d-Dirāsāt al-O Islāmiyyah (The Azhar Institute
for Islamic Studies), founded by Murtada Mbàkke, a son of Shaykh Ahmadu Bàmba. The
latter also has branches in Thiès (home of its largest branch), Ziguinchor, Tambacounda,
Louga, and Dakar, and the inspectors say it offers a very high quality of education and
graduates highly competent teachers and workers. These all started as private Islamic
schools and have since implemented the conditions requisite to being considered an offi-
cially recognized Franco Arabic school.
5.5.2 S.ūfı̄ participation in Islamic institutes
Formal schools are no more the domain of anti-S.ūfı̄ reformers or republican state officials
than they are of S.ūfı̄ muqaddams. Neither are they indicative of a traditional/modern or
rural/urban divide, as formal schools are as prominent in rural areas as they are in urban
areas. It is rare to find a major muqaddams or textual specialist who has not studied at
both informal and formal schools, and several muqaddams run large Islamic institutes and
networks of rural formal schools designed to prepare village children to study at these
schools. study at formal schools is as much a part of any textual specialist’s For example,
Baay Ñas himself founded the El-Hadj Abdoulaye Niass Islamic Institute in Medina Baay
(later moved to Saam to allow for expansion) and dozens of tiny, rural elementary schools
designed to prepare village children for secondary education in the Institute. After Baay
Ñas’s death, his son Naziiru directed the Institute and its network of village schools, and
237
another son of Baay, Maahi, took over after Naziiru’s death in 1995.
Abdulaay Wilaan, a muqaddam based in the eastern Saalum-Saalum town of Kafrin, has
founded two secondary institutes, one in Kafrin and one across the border in Gambia, and
a similar network of village elementary schools. Among Taalibe Baay, Abdulaay Wilaan’s
Saalum-Saalum followers have a reputation of unorthodoxy. Among other things, they
often accompany their dhikrs with drumming and dancing, a combination that Medina
Baay leaders have condemned as heterodox. Abdulaay Wilaan does not dispute this judg-
ment, yet he permits drumming and dancing, not wanting to alienate recently-Islamized
disciples. His formal schools seem an indirect answer to the question of Islamization:
those who cultivate the habits becoming of a good Muslim through Islamic schooling
will naturally show proper Islamic behavior.
Taalibe Baay are not the only S.ūfı̄s active in formal Islamic education. Sëriñ Murta-
laa Mbàkke, the son of of the Murid order’s founder, Aamadu Bàmba Mbàkke, founded
a nation-wide network of formal Islamic institutes called Mac had al-O Azhar, named after
the university and secondary school network in Cairo where many Senegalese religious
specialists have been educated. The main branch of the Institute is in Thiès, with a large
branch in Kaolack. Officials at the Inspection des Ecoles in Kaolack told me that in their
view the Al-O Azhar Institute in Kaolack has few rivals in producing highly competent
teachers. Murids historically have a reputation for taking far less interest in textual reli-
gious education among rank-and-file disciples than Tijāniyys, although numerous Murid
and Tijāniyy leaders told me that Murids have seen a major resurgence in textual educa-
tion in the past generation.
Three of the four Islamic institutes in Kaolack that receive government funding are af-
filiated with S.ūfı̄ groups. The fourth is the Mac had O Abū Bakr as.-S.iddı̄q, commonly known
as Falāh. because it was founded by the neo-orthodox movement of that name. Girls who
238
study there are required to veil and to fasten it in the orthodox style (carefully tucked
around the ears, as is done in North Africa and Egypt) as opposed to the style Senegalese
women use during religious activities such as praying. The Institute complex includes a
Friday mosque, which made headlines in 2003 when the Institute invited Imam Mamour
Fall, a Kaolack native recently deported from Italy for publicly supporting Osama bin
Laden and terrorism, to give the Friday speech (khut.bah).
Despite the Falāh. Institute’s political and ideological associations, the vast majority of
its students are local children from staunch S.ūfı̄ families. I knew several young people
from prominent Taalibe Baay families in Medina Baay who studied there, and while I
heard many praise the quality of teaching there, I never heard any suggestion that the
school was indoctrinating children against Sufism. One student of the Institute with
whom I often spoke, the son of an Arabic teacher in Medina Baay, studied fiqh texts in
the afternoon with a well known majlis teacher in Medina Baay. A well known teacher in
Medina Baay (Ammat Bittéy, whose story is told in the following chapter) studied at the
Falāh. Institute, but dropped out after two months, citing not ideological differences but
the low class to which they assigned him. A grandson and muqaddam of Aamadu Bàmba
Mbàkke I knew in Mauritania who wanted a rigorous Islamic education decided to study
in Thiès at the Institute run by the c Ibādu ’r-Rah.mān movement, another neo-orthodox,
Salafiyy movement. He became a close friend of the school’s directors, and they even
visited him at the yearly Màggal celebration in the Murid holy city of Tuubaa. This Murid
muqaddam clearly described this educational path as a necessary step to his becoming an
effective Murid leader.
As the narratives in the next chapter further illustrate, formal schools are part of the
educational trajectory of many muqaddams and informal school teachers. It is uncommon,
in fact, to find a successful religious specialist who has not studied in one or more formal
239
institutes.
5.6 Conclusion
This chapter has examined the techniques and spaces of Islamic education among Taalibe
Baay, showing how these techniques are part of broader repertoires of religious self-
cultivation and practice. The kinds of repetition and bodily and spatial practices found
in informal textual education are also found in mystical and occult practices, as are the
relations of apprenticeship and transmission of authority. I have focused in this chapter
on textual knowledge, whose importance and prevalence scholars of Islam in Senegal
have neglected. While Taalibe Baay tend to name the broad distribution of mystical
knowledge as their most distinctive trait, religious authority rests significantly on textual
knowledge, and even those who are not textual specialists must cultivate a knowledge
of texts indirectly through learning orally from textual specialists. The field of textual
knowledge is a broad field of study that calls for far greater attention than it has received.
Maahi Siise, son of Sërin Alliw Siise, told me that if he could characterize Baay Ñas
in a word, that word would be “educator.” The textual knowledge that this chapter has
discussed is central to Taalibe Baay projects and self-understanding, but it it is not textual
knowledge but mystical knowledge of God that most Taalibe Baay consider their most
distinctive attribute. The next chapter looks at how Taalibe Baay understand mystical
knowledge of God as the principal diacritic of their community.
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Chapter 6
Divine Knowledge: S.ūfı̄ Specialists,

Disciples, and Tarbiyyah
6.1 Tarbiyyah: The muqaddam as educator
The muqaddam, Sheex Jóob, sits on a mat in his courtyard, surrounded by a handful of
young disciples (taalibes) in their teens, who sit in roughly equal women’s and men’s
sections. Jóob, a wiry and energetic man in his early fifties, adeptly plays his role of
authority figure while interacting amicably and even humorously with his mostly high-
school aged disciples. The weekly daayira meeting will not begin for another two hours, a
little before sundown, when the sun’s choking heat will have diminished. Yet around ten
disciples have trickled in over the course of the afternoon, some to receive the Tijāniyy
wird or tarbiyyah or to continue their spiritual education (sayr), and others simply to enjoy
the relaxed company of their peers and spiritual mentor. One boy has brought his school
notebook into which he has copied today’s geography lesson, which he mouths with the
same pitch, rhythmic cadence, and rocking motion he has learned in QurO ānic school
(daara). A slightly older disciple, one of the leaders, hits up several others for change
to buy tea, sugar, and mint from the corner store, which he then brews slowly over a
charcoal brazier, pouring each person a small, foamy glass, starting with the muqaddam,
who defers to me, their guest who is joining them for the first time. The disciples alternate
between casual chat and chanting the “dhikr,” or mention of God, which typically entails
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Joseph Hill Chapter 6. Divine Knowledge
repetition of “Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh” (“There is no God but Allāh”) and simply “Allāh.”
Two young women, one around fifteen years old and the other slightly older, enter
the courtyard, shed their sandals at the mat’s edge, and kneel tentatively at the far end of
the women’s section. Like the other women, they have covered their heads and shoulders
with scarves they reserve for religious occasions.1 After a few minutes, the two women
move discreetly across the mat to the edge of the men’s section next to Sheex Jóob, and
the older of the two young women greets him quietly and explains that her companion
would like to receive the wird and tarbiyyah.
Sheex Jóob nods and unceremoniously, recites the short, first sūrah of the QurO ān (the
fātih.ah), and begins to explain the wird’s conditions. Like many muqaddams, Sheex Jóob
does not give the wird selectively or apply a set of preconditions, and he does not obligate
the person to follow up with him after receiving it. The wird is a serious obligation but
one that disciples are responsible for maintaining, and for most disciples it is a prelude
for tarbiyyah, which initiates a much more personal interaction with the muqaddam and
his community of disciples.
Sheex Jóob tells the young woman that she must heed the wird’s obligations and never
renounce them. He lists the five pillars of Islam, telling her that she must follow them
and that she must also honor and respect her parents and must never mix the Tijāniyy
wird with another wird (in other words, she is not to become a disciple of or ritually visit
[ziyārah] a non-Tijāniyy shaykh).2 She is to pronounce the wird morning and afternoon
each day and never abandon it. The new disciple nods in agreement with each condition
he lists, and he proceeds to explain the contents of the wird, which includes the opening
1 Although many male and female leaders insist that their female disciples cover themselves at all times,
few Taalibe Baay women cover themselves outside of explicitly religious activities, and a woman who covers
herself (móolu) constantly, especially in Middle-Eastern fashion, may be assumed to belong to an anti-S.ūfı̄
neo-orthodox movement such as the c Ibādu ’r-Rah.mān.
2 Thisis often cited as a difference between the Tijāniyy path and many others, which allow a person to
have a relationship of spiritual tutelage with shaykhs from different S.ūfı̄ orders.
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sūrah from the QurO ān; a hundred repetitions of O astaghfiru ’Llāh (“I seek forgiveness
from God”); a hundred repetitions of the S.alāt al-Fātih., or prayer on Muh.ammad; and a
hundred repetitions of Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh, “There is no God but Allāh.”3 Sheex Jóob asks
the new disciple if she can read, and she says yes, she’s studied French, so he tells a more
advanced disciple to transliterate the parts of the wird on notebook paper using French
phonetics. The new disciple folds up the piece of paper and she and her companion leave
after agreeing to attend tonight’s daayira meeting.
Bestowing and explaining the wird has probably taken no more than five minutes,
considerably less time than the new initiate will need to perform it each day. Bestowing
the wird is straightforward enough that Sheex Jóob has given limited O ijāzahs, or written
authorization, to two of his more advanced disciples to give the wird in his stead whenever
he is not present. One of these disciples is in his final year at the public Francophone high
school and the other is a student at the Arabic Institute.
Tarbiyyah, on the other hand, is a much longer and more specialized activity usu-
ally lasting from two to four intensive weeks, depending on how quickly the disciple
attains fath., the spiritual opening through which Divine Knowledge can occur. Although
their O ijāzahs technically make Sheex Jóob’s two advanced pupils muqaddams,4 yet the
word muqaddam among Taalibe Baay is usually reserved for those who, like Sheex Jóob,
perform tarbiyyah. Another term for such a muqaddam is shaykh murabbı̄, or “educating
shaykh.”5 The disciples who receive the wird from these older disciples must wait to
3 For
a more detailed explanation of the wird, see http://medinabaay.dyndns.org/Medina/photos/
PhotoDocuments/Tijani Wird/.
4 The word muqaddam, the passive participle of qaddama (“to hand over,” “to send forth”), means “one
who is sent forth.” Hence, it refers not to the founder of a spiritual lineage (the one who does the sending) but
to those appointed by the lineage founder or by subsequent muqaddams. The feminine form is muqaddamah,
although for simplicity’s sake I use a single form for both in English.
5 Murabbı̄
(“educator”) is the active participle of the verb rabbā (“to educate” or “to rear”), while tarbiyyah
(“education,” “upbringing”) is the nominal form of the same verb.
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receive their tarbiyyah from Sheex Jóob, who has given tarbiyyah to hundreds of Medina
Baay residents, many of them on referrals from Baay Ñas’s sons, whose travels and other
activities prevent them from initiating a large number of people.
Sheex Jóob tells two disciples to fetch two others from inside the house. A minute
later, the two reappear, each with an initiate’s arm slung over his shoulder, the initiates’
bodies hanging limp. The two initiates, one a boy and one a girl, feverishly sob “Lā O ilāha
O illā ’Llāh.” The disciple carrying the boy struggles to the mat and seats his charge next to
the muqaddam, who quizzes him. The initiate painfully punctuates his dhikrs with short
answers:
Jóob: Where is Abdulaay [the initiate’s name]?
Abdulaay: There is no Abdulaay. Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh . . .
Jóob: Where is Sheex Jóob?
Abdulaay: There is no Sheex Jóob.
Jóob: Where are your mother and your father?
Abdulaay: There is no mother and father. There is only God. Lā O ilāha O illā
’Llāh . . .
Onlookers smile knowingly—all daayira members have presumably been in this state—
and Jóob looks at me as if to see if the radical effects of tarbiyyah have duly impressed me.
The girl, meanwhile, has not made it so far, dropping face-down in the sand on her way
to the mat, continuing her convulsive recitations. Jóob calls the same two disciples who
brought these two out, telling them to lead the girl back into the house. The boy, on the
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other hand, remains seated, his back resting against the wall and his head hanging limp,
continuing to repeat Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh quietly but feverishly, and the rest return to their
banter.
I soon take my leave and return shortly before sundown, finding the evening’s meeting
underway. Around forty high school-aged disciples on the same mats chanting the dhikr,
divided into roughly equal sections of men and women, and a few more trickle in as
the meeting progresses. After a few minutes, the daayira’ secretary, who is finishing his
last year in high school, welcomes me and gives a short speech in French explaining
how the daayira works, and I accept his invitation to become a member and to pay my
membership dues, which I do after the meeting. (I am certainly the only member who
has not undergone tarbiyyah.)
I have come hoping simply to observe a typical meeting, but they have dropped their
ordinary program to give me a special welcome into their daayira and to answer some
of the questions they imagine my research addresses. Following the secretary’s speech,
the Sheex Jóob tells the disciples to “sikkar [chant the name of God] a little.” After just a
minute, he interrupts, saying “al-h.amdu li-’Llāh” (“praise be to God”), and the disciples’
chanting tapers off at this cue. The muqaddam addresses me, explaining the importance
of tarbiyyah, although I suspect he speaks for the young people’s benefit at least as much
as for mine:
We thank God, who alone is God in His Divinity, and who is with no one in
his Divinity. We welcome you, as you join us in our companionship and as you
visit us, to be one with us. Our companionship is nothing but God. . . . How
do we live? How do we join together in order to be one? It is the doorway that
you just heard us saying—that is, the men say Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh, the women
say Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh, the elders say Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh—this is what sticks us
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together.
Our ‘doorway to Baay’ [that is, the leader he reports too, one of Baay Ñas’s
sons] has taken away the obstacle that stood between us. For when I face
you I know what I am, but when I am alone in my room, I don’t know what
I am. Our doorway to Baay taught me who I am when I’m alone in my
room. So our whole companionship is God. In God we join together, God we
worship, in God we trust, on God we lean. God alone keeps us company. God
is what interests us. . . . We welcome you, and pray that God will give you
the knowledge you seek. For if you would worship God, you should know
Him before you worship him. For God said: you should know Him before
worshipping Him. If we do not know Him, how can we worship Him?6 So
we are at the doorway of obtaining knowledge of God. . . . God alone is God,
and He [alone] is God in his Divinity. If everything here is here, it is God that
is here. If everything here ceases to be, it is God that remains.
...
On the path we are on [the T.arı̄qah Tijāniyyah], everyone must go forward
with discipline (yar). . . . You must discipline (yar) your hand; you must disci-
pline everything in your being—your eye, your sight, your hearing. You must
discipline what is seen and what is unseen. To whom will you show your
discipline? Not Jóob [the speaker’s name], who you’ll leave here when you
go to America. Not Ndey Xadi here, who will leave you here when she goes
to Caameen [her village]. So how will you be disciplined, and to whom will
you show your discipline? [The answer is] bāt.in. When you are on your own,
and you’re not with anything, God, who is never absent, sees you. Even if you
6 This is a reference to an oft-cited verse from the QurO ān.
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don’t see him, he sees you.
After his speech, the daayira returned to chanting the dhikr for another hour.
I attended this meeting shortly after beginning my initial research in Medina Baay during
the summer of 2001. Only when I revisited Sheex Jóob’s speech much later, after having
heard many Taalibe Baay address the same points he addressed, did I begin to see how
it expressed the relationship between Divine Knowledge, authority, and community, and
between tarbiyyah and a disciple’s moral agency. Sheex Jóob describes his personal leader,
a son of Baay Ñas, as an educator who taught him to know God and himself through
the disciplines of tarbiyyah. This son of Baay did not simply teach him something but
remains his “doorway to Baay”—in other words, this knowledge depends on an ongoing
relationship with this shaykh. In turn, it is Sheex Jóob’s role to give disciples who come
to him the same education.
He describes this education as a process of disciplining (yar) one’s senses and bodily
tendencies to be properly attuned to God and His will. The term “yar” is commonly
glossed as “to educate” (or as a noun, “education”) although one might also translate it
as “to discipline” or “to rear,” and it is distinct from “to teach” in some subject.7 A well-
behaved person is described as yaru (educated, disciplined), and a badly-behaved person
is said to lack yar. “Yar” also designates the whip that many QurO ānic teachers consider
indispensable to forming young students’ character. Yar is often used as a gloss for the
Arabic word tarbiyyah (verb: rabbā), having a similar meaning of education, discipline,
and upbringing. Both yar and tarbiyyah, then, tend to imply shaping the submissive
inductee into a new kind of person through sometimes severe discipline. Although I
sometimes use the common gloss “education” for both terms, it is important to remember
7 “To teach” (a person a subject) is designated by the word jàngal (Arabic: darrasa, c allama).
247
that these terms emphasize character formation and discipline (as “éducation” sometimes
does) and do not imply academic training as the English “education” often does.
A key to Divine Knowledge, Sheex Jóob explains, is the phrase Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh,
one of the phrases whose pronouncement is known as dhikr, or “mentioning God,” and
disciples meet at least once a week after their tarbiyyah to perform dhikr (Wolof: sikkar)
to deepen their experience of Divine Knowledge. The phrase’s importance lies both in
understanding its meaning and in the physical act of repeating it. Central to tarbiyyah
is this phrase’s implication that everything emanates from and is therefore not separate
from a single creator. Yet it is not simply the phrase’s meaning but its physical, sustained
repetition, along with several other phrases, for weeks at a time during one’s tarbiyyah that
leads to fath., or the spiritual opening that makes Divine Knowledge possible. Taalibe Baay
say that the act of repeating the dhikr purifies the heart of all evil intent and prepares it to
know God. Sheex Jóob hints at this effect, saying that pronouncing the dhikr brings men
and women, young and old, into a single community. He goes on to say that discipline—
yar, which in this case implies a tarbiyyah consisting largely of repeating the dhikr)—affects
one’s moral conduct by making one constantly aware of God.
Thus, Divine Knowledge is not an end in itself but is said to lead to self-understand-
ing, harmony with others, and more perfect worship of God. Sheex Jóob’s phrase, “Even
if you don’t see him, he sees you,” derives from a h.adı̄th, or account of the sayings and
actions of Muh.ammad, that is often cited in Taalibe Baay circles. In this account, the
angel Jibrı̄l asks Muh.ammad to define three terms: O islām (submission), O ı̄mān (belief),
and O ih.sān (excellence). Muh.ammad answers that O islām is to adhere to the five pillars of
Islam; O ı̄mān is to believe in God and His angels, books, messengers, decree, and the last
day; and O ih.sān is “that you worship Allah as if you saw Him, for if you don’t see Him
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truly He sees you.”8
Taalibe Baay leaders often cite this passage to highlight the importance of supple-
menting adherence to the pillars of Islam (the first of these three levels) with a pursuit
of excellence through Divine Knowledge. Divine Knowledge, Sheex Jóob explains, is a
prerequisite to worshipping God fully and truly knowing oneself and one’s fellow peo-
ple. To worship God “as if you saw Him,” one must know the nature of the God one
worships. Excellence (O ih.sān) depends on an overwhelming and sustained awareness of
God, which compels a person to the best behavior and true self-understanding regardless
of the situation. The behavior and self-understanding of someone unaware of God, Sheex
Jóob says, is at the mercy of others. Such a person will change in response to others’
judgments and lose self-awareness altogether when away from others’ prying eyes. One
muqaddam in Dakar explained to me that someone whose tarbiyyah is successful can do
no evil, because he or she is constantly aware of God’s immanence. The problem, she
told me, is that many people’s tarbiyyah is not fully successful, leading them to be self-
confident beyond their actual level of spiritual development.
These Taalibe Baay teachings are composed of elements found in other S.ūfı̄ tendencies.
They are developed theoretically in the works of numerous Islamic thinkers, such as
the twelfth-century Andalusian S.ūfı̄ philosopher Ibn c Arabiyy and Al-Ghazāliyy and are
mentioned in poetry of mystics such as Būs.ayriyy and earlier Tijāniyy writers. What
is unusual about the Taalibe Baay movement is that it has popularized the search for
mystical knowledge and mystical union with God and has created an environment in
which these philosophical ideas become reworked and embedded in practical situations
by perhaps millions of non-specialists. Baay Ñas’s followers hold that his particularity is
not simply in attaining for himself knowledge no one else had but in making this unique
8 Citation: c Umar by way of Muslim. Although this is the most oft-cited version, other versions of the
same story place O ı̄mān before O islām.
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knowledge available to anyone who sought it. His technique of mystical education and
the “secret” (mbóot) of which he held the key promised to allow any seeker to attain
a mystical knowledge of God in a relatively short period of time without becoming a
specialist. As Chapter 7 discusses, this fact has the paradoxical effect of both radically
democratizing S.ūfı̄ knowledge and concentrating all religious authority at the apex of
a spiritual hierarchy—the unique “doorway” to Divine Knowledge, Baay Ñas and by
extension his official representatives.
This chapter does not attempt to discuss the long traditions of Islamic theology or
scholarly S.ūfı̄ conceptions of Divine experience and knowledge. Rather, it discusses
ethnographically how such ideas have been filtered into particular social environments
and applied in concrete situations, usually by people with no training in S.ūfı̄ philosophy.
Sheex Jóob, who has no textual training himself, explains that the importance of tarbiyyah
is in its effects on an individual’s self-cultivation as a moral subject and on community
integration. I show that tarbiyyah and the practices surrounding it form a fundamen-
tal element of Taalibe Baay solidarity and expansion. It is not only an important part
of their self-imagination and sense of distinction but, more materially, a means through
which people of different social and cultural backgrounds cultivate shared dispositions
and discursive practices.
Communities of disciples in different countries have come to emphasize tarbiyyah to
different degrees. Senegambian disciples tend to invoke it very often in private and
public speech as a marker of their community. In some (but not all) Mauritanian disciple
communities it is practiced discreetly, treated as a highly personal matter not prerequisite
to being considered a disciple or a member of a community. Ousmane Kane (2003b)
suggests that in Nigeria it has likewise become less important as a public marker of
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belonging.9 In Senegambia at least, disciples almost universally invoke tarbiyyah and the
resulting Divine Knowledge as the primary diacritic of belonging to the global Taalibe
Baay movement.
Young people from Senegambian Taalibe Baay families typically visit a muqaddam
such as Sheex Jóob to request tarbiyyah in their mid teens. During this time, tarbiyyah
often functions simultaneously as an initiation into a daayira of other recent initiates.10
Although most initiates to tarbiyyah are young, some disciples I met in Mauritania insisted
that it is preferable to wait until adulthood, when one can better comprehend tarbiyyah’s
full import, and several muqaddams I spoke with in Dakar joined the movement as adults.
On the other hand, one muqaddam in Medina Baay told me the contrary, saying that youth
is an appropriate age because young people are more open to the experience and tend to
go through the process more quickly.
If the muqaddam deems the disciple ready, the disciple begins a process typically last-
ing two weeks or more during which he or she will spend hours each day repeating
sacred formulas in conjunction with receiving instruction from the muqaddam. The mu-
qaddam tells the disciple to go home and recite the S.alāt al-Fātih. several thousand times
and to return the following day for further instructions. The disciple will then receive
further explanations and formulas from the muqaddam and will end by pronouncing Lā
O ilāha O illā ’Llāh non-stop until he or she attains fath. (“opening”), when an experience of
9 Ousmane Kane (2003b) has notes that although originally an important marker among Nigerian disciples
in Kano generating much controversy, tarbiyyah has in recent years become more discreet and possibly less
common. My interviews in these communities in Mauritania have suggested that Divine Knowledge retains
importance for many members of these communities, although tarbiyyah is seen as a personal and private
decision, and some who consider themselves disciples of Baay Ñas told me they consider their tarbiyyah to
be a long-term education and have never sought to undergo a formalized process of spiritual education as is
nearly universal among Senegambian disciples.
10 Most Taalibe Baay daayiras consist of predominantly young people who have recently undergone tar-
biyyah. This is one difference between Taalibe Baay and other Senegalese Tijāniyys, whose daayiras are more
dominated by older people. This is because many Taalibe Baay daayiras are specifically integrated into the
tarbiyyah process. See Chapter 8.
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Divine Knowledge becomes possible. I have witnessed the elements I have mentioned
here, although many particulars are carried out in private and cannot be discussed with
outsiders.
Although many disciples continue to attend work or school, they often lose all interest
in mundane activities such as socializing, eating, sleeping, and studying. One muqaddam
explained to me that their love of God overshadows their interest in everything else. Dis-
ciples often become highly disoriented and socially disconnected at this time, staring into
space and apparently oblivious of their surroundings. Their peers and elders may tease
them with impunity, although someone undergoing tarbiyyah is also a sublime reminder
of the power of Divine Knowledge. Such an altered state, in which the soul is said to be
progressing to a higher station (maqām) is called a h.āl (“state,” aal). The terms maqām
and h.āl are among the terms from ancient S.ūfı̄ philosophy in terms of which Taalibe Baay
understand their own religious experiences and the behavior of others. In Taalibe Baay
contexts, a h.āl is marked by temporary disconnection from one’s environment, loss of
conscious control over one’s movements, and erratic shrieks, yells, and leaps. Because of
this altered state of mind and behavior, those who have undergone tarbiyyah sometimes
refer to themselves with ironic relish as “dof” (“crazy”). (Opponents of Taalibe Baay have
sometimes described them in the same terms, but with less irony.)
I have sometimes heard a disciple ask another where or when he or she “saw God”
(or “knew God”). While some describe this claim as heretical—no one can see God—it is
used in at least two bāt.in senses. One is related to the QurO ānic verse that says that God
is greater than everything yet fits in the believer’s heart. One muqaddam admonished me
to stop relying solely on my eyes and my mind and to “see with the eyes of the heart.” If
one sees with the heart, where God can dwell if it is pure enough, one can therefore see
God. The other bāt.in sense results from the initiate’s realization that everything one sees
252
is God, he or she sees God in everything, even though one cannot see all of God at once.
When I asked one muqaddam in Dakar how often he sees God, he told me all the time.
Another, in a village in Saalum, explained that a sign that God can be seen everywhere
is that even the Arabic characters from name of God are a universal form seen in every
object (he gave me examples including the human hand, the human form, and trees).
When I mentioned the idea of seeing God to a son of Baay Ñas, however, he responded
that seeing God is impossible and that whoever tells me they see God is mistaken. (See
the discussion on paradox in Chapter 1 for my discussion of this claim.) Yet it seems
that he was referring to the z.āhir sense of seeing God as one sees a person or object. Like
many higher placed muqaddams, this leader is extremely reticent about mystical teachings
with outsiders and usually expresses religious beliefs in purely z.āhir language that any
orthodox Muslim would accept.
6.2 Rethinking Islamic Specialists
Approaching muqaddams as specialists and educators in a field of knowledge differs sig-
nificantly from dominant scholarly approaches to Islam in Senegal, which tend to treat
them as charismatic fouders or routinized successors of “brotherhood” organizations.
While S.ūfı̄ leaders’ centrality to Senegalese life has never eluded Western scholars or
colonial administrators, their role as practitioners and teachers of specialized religious
knowledge has remained relatively unexamined. Instead, writers have focused on how
their influence over a large population of disciples (the “brotherhood”) makes them a
formidable political and economic force. The current preoccupation with the political
and economic implications of Islam in Senegal has a long genealogy and is rooted in the
colonial and post-colonial state’s efforts to domesticate Islamic leaders’ influence. Early
French administrators understood S.ūfı̄ leaders and their followers to pose at the same
time their greatest threat and, if cooperative, potentially their greatest tool in “pacifying”
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the population and turning it to profit (mettre en valeur). These administrators produced a
large body of published and unpublished materials to document these groups’ activities
and their implications for administration. The most prolific of these colonial officials,
Paul Marty, wrote volumes on Islam throughout French West Africa, noting that Islamic
leaders were typically QurO ān teachers and often gauging their importance in terms of
number of students. Yet his evaluation of each hinged solely on the leader’s potential
challenge or help to the French administration, and his failure to take seriously forms of
Islamic knowledge has characterized subsequent studies in the area.
Debates in Western circles remain focused on the political and economic implications
of Islamic movements, particularly on the question of how religious power structures ar-
ticulate with the secular nation state and on the role of disciples and religious leaders as
political and economic actors. Scholars have primarily disagreed on the political ratio-
nality of leaders and disciples, some (Behrman 1970; Creevey 1996) portraying disciples
as blind followers stuck in a pre-modern, anti-liberal irrationality and others (Villalon
1995) countering this view through accounting for religious activities in terms of ratio-
nal political and economic action. Meanwhile, Islam as religious practice, belief, and
a knowledge tradition remains largely unexamined. Religious leaders’ roles as organic
intellectuals and nodes in a vast network of knowledge production remain practically
invisible.11 Compounding this academic tendency to overlook religious experience and
knowledge, researchers of Islam in Senegal have typically drawn their empirical examples
and theoretical models from the Murid order, often treating it as the paradigmatic case
of a mode of social and political organization called “Senegalese Islam.” Although the
Murid order counts only around a quarter of the Senegalese population, it has long been
11 One study that goes against this trend is Islam Noir by Vincent Monteil (1980), an administrator’s son
and convert to Islam. As a Sorbonne professor of Arabic, Monteil wrote about the specificities of Islamic
belief and practice in West Africa and studied broader S.ūfı̄ intellectual traditions as well.
254
the most politically and economically salient Islamic group in Senegal while focusing far
less than the Tijāniyy order on knowledge production.
Among Taalibe Baay, leaders are constantly evaluated and ranked based on their pub-
lic speaking abilities, their knowledge in various domains, and their efficacy as organiz-
ers. This is not to say that the barakah (barke) or Divine blessing ascribed to major saints
and their children are irrelevant, but that this barakah is generally seen not as self-con-
tained but as linked to the leader’s knowledge. The ability to recognize an effective and
knowledgeable leader depends on shared repertoires of perception and discourse learned
through a disciple’s own religious education. Thus, both leadership and discipleship de-
pend on educational activities such as tarbiyyah, large religious meetings (conferences),
and Gàmmus through which such shared practices, discourses, and experiences are culti-
vated.
When Taalibe Baay speak of religious knowledge, they most often mean not raw in-
formation but a complex of experiences, behaviors, and discourses that one cultivates
through various practices, relations, and institutions of education. Through sometimes
ascetic religious education, beginning with arduous QurO ānic study and continuing with
disciplinary techniques of tarbiyyah and attending various kinds of meetings, a religious
apprentice is said to develop the proper social behavior of a believer and a deep sense of
the sublime nature of God. Education serves not only to fashion the self into the subject
of a particular moral order but to realize this ideal moral order through communal ac-
tion. This project, which aims to harmonize individual dispositions with Divine norms
and a larger moral order, may appear to resemble the mutually constitutive relationship
Bourdieu describes between an individual’s habitus, larger social structures, and norms.
Bourdieu dismantles the Kantian notion that what harmonizes the subjective and the uni-
versal are fundamental metaphysical principles of reason, ethics, and aesthetics, arguing
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that the perceived universality of such principles arises from practical dispositions shaped
through minute and repeated daily practices and social interactions.12 Through ground-
ing larger social relations and norms in embodied dispositions harmonized with fields of
social interaction, Bourdieu offers a useful starting point for theorizing the relationships
between embodied religious knowledge and a larger moral order.
Although Bourdieu’s insistence on the centrality of practice both in embodying and
reproducing norms and perceptions deeply informs my approach to Taalibe Baay reli-
gious practice, subjectivity and agency in his model are mere reflections of the order they
reproduce, despite subjective perceptions of agency. Others have questioned some aspects
of Bourdieu’s framework: the rigidity of his “objective structures” (de Certeau 1984), his
privileging of the reproduction rather than the productive possibilities of practice, and his
tying habitus primarily to class, capital, and conditions “reducible to distributions of eco-
nomic and political power” (Hirschkind 2001). Especially in studies of religious practice,
overemphasis on structural and economistic dimensions while bracketing practitioners’
own explanations, experiences, and goals leads to misrecognition of what religious prac-
tice is all about for participants. Taking religious explanations seriously is particularly
important when discussing movements whose members explicitly describe themselves as
involved in projects aiming to transform the self and society through religious discipline.
For those involved in such movements, the self and the body are not simply objects pas-
sively inscribed by anonymous social structures but are objects and media of intentional
transformations. Unmooring habitus from overdetermined and deterministic models of
agency opens up the possibility that work on the habitus might become a tool of both
subjective and social change.
12 This critique of residual Kantian metaphysics—perhaps most explicit in Distinction (1984), whose sub-
title, A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, is a clear jab at Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1793)—is implicit
throughout much of Bourdieu’s work.
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Several anthropologists (for example Asad 1993; Mahmood 2005; Hirschkind 2001)
have shown how religious practitioners fashion themselves as religious subjects through
embodied disciplinary techniques. These analyses echo Foucault’s concepts of “technolo-
gies of the self” (1997c) and “hermeneutics of the self” (1997b), techniques by which
subjects constitute themselves and their experience as intelligible and malleable objects.
The self can become an object of strategic disciplinary operations, which set in place new
norms and social relations while partially reproducing existing ones.
Whereas many observers have tended to treat Islamic education in Senegambia as
conservative,13 practitioners tend to understand themselves not as reproducing or reestab-
lishing an old order but as creating a new one. As Sheex Jóob illustrates in his speech
(see page 245, Taalibe Baay public speeches and daily conversation repeatedly affirm that
disciplining the body, purifying the heart, and cultivating a personal experience of God
will lead to a society in harmony with itself and with God. Through participating in
religious education, especially tarbiyyah and various collective chanting practices (such as
dhikr), Taalibe Baay aim to transform themselves as individuals and as a community into
spiritual beings who see “with the eyes of the heart” (or “with the eyes of the spirit”), as
some leaders have said.
Taalibe Baay devote significant time and resources to cultivating religious knowledge
and often speak of ecstatic Divine Knowledge in particular as the defining characteristic
of being Taalibe Baay. A focus on knowledge production shows those engaging in reli-
gious work to be more than charismatic holy men at the center of a political or economic
network. Rather, they are specialists with particular credentials and capabilities working
among a community of disciples who themselves have more or less training in practicing
and recognizing the same forms of knowledge.
13 See Perry (2004) for a discussion on prevalent views and interventions regarding QurO ānic schools in
Senegal.
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6.3 Becoming a S.ūfı̄ specialist
Being a muqaddam is not a career-path that one can choose or inherit, although one’s
choices and genealogy may decisively impact one’s chances of becoming one. While one
can actively cultivate the requisite knowledge and social relations, to ask for or openly
aspire to an appointment as muqaddam is widely considered inappropriate. When I have
asked students at Islamic schools if they hoped to be muqaddams, they have answered,
visibly embarrassed, that they had no aspirations and sought knowledge simply for love
of learning. Among Taalibe Baay, muqaddams do not form a sharply defined clerical class
or endogamous group as many writers on Islam in Senegal have described (Coulon 1981;
Copans 1980). They come from diverse social and cultural backgrounds and engage in
all kinds of economic activities. Certain families have a long history of involvement in
religious education and specialization, for example the Njolofeen families and the Siise
and Ture families among the Saalum-Saalum. Yet as the Taalibe Baay movement has
expanded, it has drawn into it people from predominantly non-Muslim or non-specialist
communities, and prominent disciples among these communities have represented the
movement as muqaddams and have often gone on to receive an Islamic education and set
up informal schools.
Until recently, specialization in all three domains of religious knowledge typically
went together: the village imam was very often the muqaddam, the Islamic school teacher,
and the occult specialist. This is still the case in many villages. As the Taalibe Baay
movement’s membership has exploded, so has the need for many muqaddams to initiate
new members into the group. At the same time, textual specialization has become its
own specialization and has shifted somewhat from the houses of muqaddams to formal
schools or to informal schools of people who have only textual credentials. Whereas
only a handful of men throughout Senegal had any kind of O ijāzah in the Tijāniyy order
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during the nineteenth century, muqaddams scattered throughout Senegal’s villages and
urban neighborhoods today lead thousands of daayiras of young people who meet weekly.
Most Taalibe Baay muqaddams I met are neither textual specialists nor the children of
religious specialists, especially in Dakar, where the movement has spread independently
of established religious families found in villages. Not only have O ijāzahs proliferated and
been independent of textual study but a large proportion of them, my interviews with
muqaddams suggest, are unlimited appointments (O ijāzah mut.laqah). Even major leaders
of the Tijāniyyah during the nineteenth century did not hold such appointments before
visiting Fās, where they received these appointments directly from the order’s central
leadership.
The distinction between muqaddams and lay disciples is not always a sharp one. Taal-
ibe Baay muqaddams can be divided into three categories. First, and perhaps most nu-
merous, are those who hold O ijāzahs yet seldom if ever perform functions specific to their
appointment. The fact that they possess O ijāzahs is little known, and instead they devote
themselves to other kinds of work and often play an important although lay role in their
daayira. I interviewed several Arabic teachers who had O ijāzahs but had never given the
wird, and I heard of several women who had received O ijāzahs from Baay or his closest
muqaddams but who kept their appointment secret. Second, and most numerous among
those who engage in religious activities such as leading daayiras and giving tarbiyyah,
are those who do so only part-time and depend primarily on income from non-religious
work—many are traders, farmers, tailors, or teachers. In rural areas, many muqaddams
run informal Islamic schools and farm, and in Dakar most practicing muqaddams I met
work primarily in commerce, teaching, management, tailoring, or in the government-
funded Institut Islamique de Dakar or in other official functions. Third, and by far the
least numerous, are those prominent muqaddams whose financial resources or religious
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offerings (hadiyyah) from disciples allow them to devote themselves full-time to religious
work. Thus, not only is being a muqaddam is not a career choice, but in most cases is it
not even one’s primary occupation.
The narratives below complicate some pervasive assumptions in the academic liter-
ature about muqaddams (generally classified as “marabouts,” which designates anyone
with a religious or spiritual function). Although it is true that many adult sons of the
most prominent muqaddams have an O ijāzah regardless of their moral character or level
of religious knowledge, becoming a recognized muqaddam usually (and ideally) requires
a long period of apprenticeship and some demonstration of high moral character and
religious knowledge. Increasingly, experience and discursive competence may suffice de-
spite one’s lack of textual knowledge. The qualifications and social relations required
are differentially available depending on one’s background but are neither automatically
avialable nor completely unavailable to any given social category, including women. In
the Taalibe Baay movement in Senegambia—and this may be a relatively new and local-
ized phenomenon—there is a burgeoning number of young muqaddam, many of whom
obtained their O ijāzah through active participation in a daayira and who now actively and
successfully promote discipleship of Baay Ñas, especially in urban areas. Although a
handful of the most prominent muqaddams are of the këru diine (families of founders of
the great S.ūfı̄ lineages), the vast majority are of a diversity of backgrounds.
Part of my insistence on treating the religious specializations differently is an effort
to nuance a long discussion on “marabouts” in West and North Africa. This is a cat-
egory that collapses many kinds of religious specialists under a foreign category. The
term “marabout” is the standard gloss of the Wolof term “sëriñ,” a term with many uses
but that does not designate any clear analytical category. Sëriñ often designates anyone
who engages in any kind of religious or magical work, be it teaching the QurO ān, leading
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prayer, writing theological books in Arabic, making amulets, or exorcising jinns. The term
can apply to Muslims or non-Muslims, although during the nineteenth-century jihads it
came to designate all those allied with the Muslim faction.14 “Sëriñ” is also the standard
term used to address a male stranger, somewhat like “sir” in English.15 “Sëriñ work”
(“liggéeyu sëriñ”) often refers to the occult work of making amulets (téeré, gàllaaj) and
potions (saafara) and is sometimes used pejoratively, as most respected religious leaders
only do such activities discreetly and do not advertise them. It suffices to say that, al-
though sëriñ is a Wolof term that can be glossed with the French term marabout, it is not
a useful category to designate any specific kind of specialist or religious work. There are
many other terms and descriptions that are more precise and less heavy with colonial im-
plications. Although a single person may specialize in many kinds of religious work, one
must learn all these specializations separately, and it is important to maintain distinctions
between the specializations.
One important point from these stories is that muqaddams’ contrasting life trajectories
and educations affect their social and religious functions. Although officially all muqad-
dam are given this status by their O ijāzah, which is of two kinds (limited [muqayyad] and
absolute [mut.laqah], often called O it.lāq), and most muqaddams who claim the title have
the latter, disciples recognize different muqaddams to be at different levels (maqām) and
to have different areas of expertise. Therefore, one’s qualifications do not come simply
from one’s diploma, but from a large number of factors that influence one’s social and
religious capital. Mystical apprenticeship is often, but not always, bound up with other
kinds of apprenticeship. Some of these factors will become clear in the narratives that
14 The two sides were synechdocally called after their most prominent representatives: sëriñs and ceddo
(the king’s warriors).
15 It is usually used with the definite article: “sëriñ bi” (“sir”). Its female equivalent is “soxna si,” which
can variably mean “wife,” “Ma’am,” or a spiritually powerful woman.
261
follow. I will reserve discussion of some of the main points until after each narrative.
Seeing nothing but God. Baabakar Caam is Senegal’s most prominent Taalibe Baay
chanter and is an important muqaddam and informal school teacher in his own right.
The two narratives I present here, his own and that of another muqaddam, Naata Njaay,
differ in how they relate his educational history, but it would seem that the events Njaay
describes here occurred between the QurO ānic study that Baabakar Caam describes and
his study with Sëriñ Omar Faati Jàllo Ñas. Naata Njaay describes his experiences with
Baabakar Caam as he is interviewed on Gambian radio:
I’ll tell you a little about his history, about Baabakar’s history, the Baabakar
Caam, who, you hear, is the Baabakar of Sëriñ Omar Faati Jàllo [Ñas, his
teacher]. People think, you hear me, that all he can do is sit at a table and
praise Baay. . . . No! There is an altogether different matter. Baabakar has
three gratitudes.16 He thanks Baay; he thanks Baay Makewe Jaw, who first
taught him; and he thanks Sëriñ Omar Faati Jàllo. . . .
He is a person who, everything he prays to God for will be accepted. So
let no one think that all he can do, you hear me, is sit at a table singing ‘Fa-
hādhihı̄ salāmun’ [a famous song praising Baay] and praise Baay—that’s the
least of what he can do.
They brought Baabakar to Tayba Mbittéyeen [also called Mbittéyeen Abdu,
a Njolofeen village],17 where I was at the time, and Baay Makewe took him in
charge. Baay Makewe was a blind man who had great blessing (barke). . . . In
1957, I did my tarbiyyah, in 1957 I knew God. As for Baabakar, during the next
year, 1958, he did his tarbiyyah and knew God. After I knew God—and at that
16 Stating
Baabakar Caam’s spiritual power in terms of gratitude seems to emphasize that this power comes
from these other sources and not from Baabakar himself.
17 See Chapter 2 for the history of Tayba Mbittéyeen and other Njolofeen villages.
262
time we were young—I would climb on his back, you hear me, and he would
say ‘Naata, get off me!’ and I would say ‘no, God is on your back. . . . the one
He climbs on can’t tell Him to get off, so don’t tell me that again.’ After this,
you hear me, he struggled and even though I was a little stronger than him he
knocked me off.
The next year, in ‘58, he did his tarbiyyah. That day when he did his tar-
biyyah, arriving [at the state of fath.], and after they brought him back down, or
thought he had come down, they came to my room. . . . We started chanting
a dhikr, and Baabakar pounded his chest, yelled out. I said wait, let me see if
he’s thirsty or not, and I went to my mother’s water jug, you hear me, and
dipped out a bowl full of water, which must have contained ten liters. I came
and gave it to him, and Baabakar drank it instantly. I dipped out another, and
he drank it instantly. They told me ‘you’re going to kill him!’ He said: ‘Naata,
bring me the whole jug to drink! Bring me the sea to drink! Bring me the sea,
bring me the well to drink!’18
So, Baabakar, when he does a gàmmu [mawlid, celebration of the Prophet’s
birth], he does it in a h.āl [altered state of mystical experience]. . . . I tell you,
the names of God and prayers that Baabakar received from Baay Makewe Jaw,
which Baay gave Baay Makewe Jaw directly, what he received is astonishing.
As soon as Baay Makewe Jaw passed away, [Baabakar Caam] got up and
went to Omar Faati Jàllo. . . . That’s why I say that, here in Gambia, everyone
who, you hear me I say, has a need, whether it be a material need or an illness,
18 This story may be a variation on another story that Baabakar Caam tells not of himself but of Baay.
During his interview with us, he told a story (in less detail than Njaay’s story) that he says happened during
Baay’s visit to JoosoN during which the JoosoN dhikr was first chanted. Baay went into a state (h.āl) and asked
for a pitcher of water, then two, then three, then said that he would drink the whole sea.
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he’s a sea19 of Allaaji Ibrayima Ñas [Baay]. Whoever stands beneath Baabakar
Caam with a need, take out your possessions and give them to him, have
him pray for you to God, who will accept it, because of the gratitudes that
he accompanied—gratitude for Baay Makewe Jaw, gratitude, you hear me, for
Sëriñ Omar Faati Jàllo, and the source that he spent himself completely for
[Baay], yes. . . . Let’s appreciate him, visit (siyaare, ziyārah) him, and know that
if your station with God is lacking, visit him, and he’ll bring you to the level
of the midday sun.
When Baabakar Caam was born, few might have predicted that he would become not
only one of the Taalibe Baay movement’s most famous muqaddams and Islamic school
teachers, but also their principal chanter (sikkarkat).20 I spoke with Baabakar Caam dur-
ing one of his visits to Medina Baay after an MBHSRC member spotted him at Friday
prayer and offered to accompany me to visit him. Around 65 years old, Baabakar Caam’s
blind eyes are almost always closed and cast downward, but his powerful voice, gravelly
from decades of intense chanting, public speaking, and school teaching, still displays the
wide range of pitch, volume, and stylized expression that one expects of public speakers
in Senegal.21 When Baabakar Caam was seven, the imam of the local Friday mosque
enouraged Baabakar’s father, a Séeréer-speaking fisherman (Ñoominka) who had con-
19 This
is an unusual expression that may be related to the idea of inundation (Fayd.ah) of Divine grace and
knowledge.
20 Thisstory is based on an interview conducted on September 24, 2004 in Medina Baay, Kaolack. I was
accompanied by Abdu Salaam Caam, a member of the Medina Baay Social an Historical Research Committee,
who transcribed the interview. Because Baabakar Caam’s story is well known and he gave us permission to
use his name, I use his real name.
21 JudithIrvine (1974) has written about the distinction between “noble” (géer) and “griot” (géwal) speech
in Senegal, noting that even non-griots tend to use the stylized speech patterns associated with griots when
speaking in public, although to do so to excess may lead to the same social stigma applied to griots. In
religious public speaking, I would add, speakers may use highly stylized speech without any negative impact
on their social standing. It is no shame to be the géwal of God, His Prophet, or His saints, and non-géwal
chanters and speakers often explicitly describe themselves as such.
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verted to Islam not long before Baabakar was born, to send his son away to study the
QurO ān. This was no light suggestion considering that they were relatively new converts
and Baabakar was blind. They sent Baabakar to study with the imam’s son, who lived
in the Jaleñ neighborhood of Kawlax, less than two kilometers away from the Taalibe
Baay capital of Medina Baay. Although the imam adhered to the Tiwaawan branch of
the Tijāniyyah, his son (Baabakar’s teacher) was a Taalibe Baay and would take Baabakar
along with him to Medina Baay for the major religious events and to visit leaders there.
Baabakar says he studied the QurO ān for 10 years at this school, subsisting like most
other QurO ān students by begging from door to door for food and for pocket change to
support his teacher, Baabakar Caam says,
I packed up and went to a scholar called Sëriñ Omar Faati Jàllo [Ñas],22 a
great Muqaddam of the Fayd.ah [Baay Ñas’s movement].23 Sëriñ Omar Faati
Jàllo was living in his ancestral village, Ñaseen Waalo—that’s where I studied
Islamic disciplines (xam-xam), as well as the QurO ān and the poetry (qas.ı̄dah)
of Baay.
Omar Faati Jàllo was a close relative of Baay Ñas and an adopted brother of Baay’s mother,
Asta Jànqa, so he was very close to Baay and one of the most active muqaddams in spread-
ing the Fayd.ah among Baabakar Caam’s fellow Ñoominka. And, like Baabakar Caam, he
was blind but taught both blind and seeing students. In addition to being a well known
teacher and muqaddam, Omar Faati Jàllo also happened to be the principal chanter at the
movement’s major events, and Baabakar Caam soon became his protégé. I asked him
22 In Wolof-speaking parts of Senegal, a person’s name is often composed of one’s first name, one’s mother’s
name, and one’s father’s family name. Hence, Omar Faati Jàllo’s mother’s name was Faati Jàllo, and Baay
Ñas as a child was called “Ibra Asta” after his mother, Asta (c ĀO ishatu) Jànqa.
23 Heleaves out the phase mentioned above when Caam studied in Tayba Mbittéyeen, which would have
occurred between these two.
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how Omar Faati Jàllo taught him, and he answered:
He would teach me ‘directly’ (mubāsharatan) by hand. He is like me [blind] but
whenever Baay would write a book, [Baay] would read it to him, and he [Omar
Faati Jàllo] then would sing it back—both poetry and books of knowledge.
Baay taught all this to him, but he told him: . . . as I teach, you only need to
listen, because learning is only hearing. It is not the eyes that see learning—
it is the heart that knows it. So he [Omar Faati] flourished (sax: sprouted) on
that. Whenever Baay taught [publicly], he was present, and whenever [Baay]
interpreted (firi) the QurO ān [usually during Ramad.ān], he was present, and
[Baay] would teach him books personally, so he could have knowledge. And
the way they taught him is also the way he taught me.
Baabakar Caam says that despite his teacher’s blindness, when a seeing student recited
incorrectly, Omar Faati Jàllo would point to the relevant passage in the book and say “it’s
not like that—look at the book—it’s like this.”
Baabakar Caam spent 20 years with Omar Faati Jàllo Ñas in the village of Ñaseen
Waalo studying the Islamic disciplines and learning the arts of chanting the dhikr and the
poems of Baay and delivering the gàmmu narrative. He says of Omar Faati Jàllo: “He was
the gàmmu speaker [gàmmukat] of the community, and wherever there was a gàmmu, Baay
would delegate him to gàmmu there.” Omar Faati Jàllo’s most conspicuous job of the year
was to lead the chanting troupe at the annual Medina Gàmmu, where Baay Ñas himself
was the gàmmukat. Baabakar Caam eventually graduated from the chorus of awukats to
become one of the leaders of Omar Faati Jàllo’s troupe, and he eventually was assigned
to stand in for his teacher whenever he was unable to attend.
On one occasion when Baabakar accompanied his teacher to Medina to chant at the
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Great Medina Gàmmu, his teacher had him chant some poetry before the meeting, hoping
that Baay would hear him. Indeed, Baabakar Caam recounts, Baay did hear him and sent
for Baabakar. Baay asked him who his teacher was, and he answered Omar Faati Jàllo.
Baay told him: “Stay with him and don’t leave him: your matter (sa mbir) will only be
realized at his hands.” He then told his sons Haadi (d. 2005) and Allaaji Abdulaay (d.
2001), with whom Baabakar Caam would collaborate most closely, “May you all love him
and may you respect him and help him, for his time will come, and his sun will rise. It is
for your sakes that he has just mentioned the name of the Prophet of God, Muhammad
[through chanting]. You bring together the one who names the Prophet [the chanter]
with the one who can praise the Prophet [his sons, through the gàmmu narrative]. . . . You
will love and respect him, especially you, Muh.ammad al-Hādı̄ . . . and go with him to
the gàmmus.” Thereafter, wherever Haadi did a gàmmu Baabakar Caam was the chanter
(woykat).
Thus, according to Baabakar’s narrative, Baay had already decided at this first en-
counter that Baabakar would succeed Omar Faati Jàllo as the principal gàmmu chanter.
Baay also counseled Baabakar concerning his teacher: “‘Stay with him as he stayed with
me, and if you stay with him and don’t leave him, everything he got from me you will
get from him.’ I followed that counsel, and wherever you saw him you saw me, until he
could no longer go everywhere and he delegated me to go on his behalf.” It is significant
that Baabakar Caam describes Baay’s knowledge and accompanying spiritual power as
flowing directly and in full to his teacher and from there to Baabakar himself.
By around 1970, after 20 years as Omar Faati Jàllo’s student and companion, Baabakar
had begun to take over many of his teacher’s public functions. His teacher had earlier
given him an O ijāzah muqayyad, the limited authority to induct people into the order.
Muqaddams often give this kind of O ijāzah today to an advanced disciple to delegate certain
267
responsibilities. But at this point he gave Baabakar Caam an O ijāzah mut.laqah, which was
later reinforced by a second one from Baay’s son Haadi. After these two decades, he says,
Omar Faati Jàllo “perceived that I was ready to go and sent me off, telling me: ‘Don’t
go to Sum [his remote natal village] because this age will certainly need you. Go to
Pasi, because Pasi is a route international and if Dakar needs you, you’ll go there, and if
Bànjul (Gambia) needs you, you’ll go there, and you’ll be able to go anywhere else that
needs you in the country.”24 Only after more than three decades of apprenticeship did
he finally marry and begin to have his own disciples and students, setting up a QurO ānic
school (daara) and an Arabic school (majlis). Although he delegates the QurO ānic teaching
in his house to two other teachers, he himself takes care of teaching the older students
the Islamic disciplines (xam-xam). The three Taalibe Baay daayiras in Pasi are all under his
religious leadership, as are numerous other daayiras in other towns around Senegambia,
many of them concentrated in the islands of the Saalum River Delta among his fellow
Ñoominka.
Baay’s guarantee that Baabakar Caam would receive “everything” Baay had given
Omar Faati Jàllo is a crucial part of his success. Doubtless, his rise to prominence and his
selection by Baay have much to do with his uncanny abilities in chanting, memorizing
volumes of poetry and scholarly texts, and public speaking, but it is equally certain that
he could not have attained his central position in the Taalibe Baay community without
this direct mystical connection to Baay. (I discuss this connection between knowledge
and authority in Chapter 7.) At several points in his narrative he emphasizes that Omar
Faati Jàllo Ñas received everything Baay had, whether his own books, the subjects he
taught in his school, or his mystical knowledge, and that Omar Faati Jàllo transmitted
24 “Country” translates the Wolof word péey (from French “pays”), used in the Taalibe Baay context not to
reference a nation-state but rather the Taalibe Baay community as a whole.
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this all to him. Learning a poem by Baay through picking up a book and reading it is
essentially a different process from receiving it from Baay’s hands, in which case it is not
simply information that is tranmitted but the saintly author’s barke (barakah). His claim
to have received Baay’s knowledge and barke is broadly accepted, as Baay Ñas personally
endorsed him as a chanter, muqaddam, and teacher. Thus, Naata Njaay can attribute to
him the same kind of powerful barke attributed to Baay Ñas even though he is the son of
a convert to Islam and not of Baay Ñas. In a disciple’s eyes, it is indeed Baabakar Caam’s
knowledge that distinguishes him. Baay’s barke is not something that is then added to
this knowledge but is a constitutive part of it. The inseparability of spiritual attributes
such as barke from religious knowledge is fundamental and may account to a large degree
for the fact that many outsiders do not recognize it as knowledge.
In addition to his learning and his relationship with Baay and one of Baay’s major
representatives, it would not be a stretch to postulate that at least part of Baabakar Caam’s
exceptional spiritual status may be tied to his blindness. As I explained above, many
tarbiyyah initiates describe themselves as having “seen God,”25 learning to see with the
eyes of the heart and soul and seeing that everything in existence is in its deepest sense
God. The apparent (z.āhir) disappears and all that is left to see is the underlying, hidden
(bāt.in) reality. Baabakar Caam, however, has never seen anything that is not bāt.in, and
what is “apparent” (z.āhir) does not appear to him.
In many ways, this story is typical of how any given young person becomes a major
muqaddam. Most start out as young children moving away from home and living with a
sëriñ daara to memorize the QurO ān for several years. The early life of those who become
muqaddams is no different from the vast majority of Senegalese Muslim children, male and
female. Like many Senegalese boys, Baabakar Caam earned his living from begging door-
25 Although one son of Baay, apparently to forestall the kinds of orthodox literal misinterpretation Tijāniyys
often get from neo-orthodox reformers, told me that’s ridiculous, no one sees God.
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to-door for scraps of food when he studied the QurO ān. There is no official application or
selection process to continue one’s studies indefinitely, and teachers and muqaddams do
not overtly favor children of religious specialist over other children, although becoming
a religious specialist often takes years of thankless study and families of non-religious
specialists usually withdraw their children from these schools to have them work or study
something more likely to be economically remunerative. Those most likely to succeed are
those who have a close relationship with their teacher or other religious leaders, either
by blood or by personal attributes that draw a teacher’s attention. Thus, both a student’s
personal qualities and relationship to a shaykh are important factors in his or her success
as a religious specialist, and these two are mutually reinforcing: a student is likely to
succeed because of a relationship with a shaykh, and the shaykh may single them out
because he or she sees them as particularly gifted. Both seem to have been important in
the case of Baabakar Caam.
Not all teachers are muqaddams, and even if one’s teacher is a muqaddam there is no
rule that a student must be part of the same S.ūfı̄ adherence. This means that one might
study with a teacher purely for the textual knowledge (xam-xam) without any expectation
of S.ūfı̄ education and much less of obtaining an O ijāzah. Yet when one’s teacher is also
a muqaddam, one may choose to become the shaykh’s disciple as well as student. At
a certain point, such a teacher may single out a student he or she considers to have a
particularly high level of devotion and competence to give them an O ijāzah, which the
student may or may not practice upon completing their studies. Based on my interviews,
I consider it likely that the great majority of those who have O ijāzahs rarely if ever use
them to give wird or tarbiyyah.
As in the case of Baabakar Caam, the initial O ijāzah is often muqayyad, the kind that is
often given primarily to allow a busy shaykh to delegate some of the initiatory work to
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his close disciples and to try his disciples with limited responsibility. If it is clear after a
period of practicing this limited O ijāzah that its bearer has attained a high level of spiritual
mastery in S.ūfı̄ knowledge (which is distinct from the book knowledge one may learn
from the same teacher) and could hold his or her own as an independent muqaddam, the
teacher may give the student an O ijāzah mut.laqah, which permits its bearer to initiate an
unlimited number of disciples and muqaddams as well. Having such an O ijāzah makes one
an attractive candidate to be a village’s imam because one will be able to oversee both
routine religious activities of the village and S.ūfı̄ initiation.
Although early Tijāniyy muqaddams were invariably textual specialists as well, an
increasing number of muqaddams have no textual education beyond the basic QurO ānic
education that nearly all Muslim children in Senegal receive. Although it is probably
impossible to become a major and independent leader in the movement without a strong
textual background, most Taalibe Baay muqaddams today do not have such an education.
Rather, these muqaddams’ reputations as leaders relies on their ability to guide initiates in
the mystical matters of religion and to advise them in practical matters. Although such
leaders can become socially prominent and command a large number of disciples, they
rarely attain the status of general and public leaders of the movement as a whole because
they neither establish schools nor have the qualifications to become well known public
speakers. They are mostly known as specialists in inducting youth into the Tijāniyy order
through giving them wird and tarbiyyah. Most female muqaddams fall into this category,
having little chance to complete an Islamic education before marrying or being required
by their families to take on household responsibilities. Women are further limited in
that they are not typically invited to speak at public events even if they are reputed
scholars. Yet the most prominent female muqaddams equal the most popular male shaykhs
in numbers of initiates. As is the case outside religious settings as well, women play a
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vital and yet often publicly invisible role in the order’s social reproduction and expansion.
Muqaddam as spiritual mother. Such is the case of Xadi ÑaN.26 The daughter of a
prominent trader in Dakar and not a member of a family of religious specialists, she has
since become one of the movement’s major muqaddams in Dakar with regards to initiating
young people into the order. She has founded a large daayira and is also considered the
“mother” of the Federation of student daayiras. In her mid-40s, her attitude is soft-spoken
and demure in the presence of unrelated men and always wears a headscarf, which is
typical of female religious leaders but not of Senegalese women in general. Despite the
humble attitude she projects, she has an imposing presence and speaks her mind directly
and unequivocally. I visited her with several students from the MBHSRC, one of whom
she knew from the University, and a younger male muqaddam who plays an active role in
her daayira presented us and our project.
She did not undergo tarbiyyah until an adult, unlike most people from Taalibe Baay
families who do so while in their teens. Before this, while on a routine work-related
visit to a business manager in Kaolack she had experienced a h.āl, an ecstatic state of
consciousness that Taalibe Baay usually associate with tarbiyyah. They had somehow
been led to talk about God, and her interlocutor assumed by her behavior and way of
speaking that she was an c ārif, or one who possesses an advanced knowledge of God,
and he asked her if she was a Taalibe Baay. She first said yes but then clarified that
technically she was only a “sympathizer” because she hadn’t done her tarbiyyah yet. She
suddenly felt a strong desire to undergo tarbiyyah as soon as possible and talked to an
uncle, a muqaddam but one who does not typically give tarbiyyah. He volunteered to put
her in contact with a muqaddam to give her tarbiyyah, but he was suddenly called to travel
abroad. Desperate in her hunger to know God, she began to cry incessantly, and a friend
26 The names of people involved in this narrative are pseudonyms. This is based on two interviews with
Xadi ÑaN, one in 2004 and one in 2005, both with members of the MBHSRC.
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asked her what the matter was. Her friend immediately brought her to a muqaddam for
her tarbiyyah.
As she had hoped, during the tarbiyyah she experienced her fath., yet she still was not
satisfied and felt compelled to go further in her knowledge of God. Again to her dismay,
just as she was gaining spiritual momentum, this shaykh also went abroad, so her friend
then took her to another muqaddam, Haadi Ba, to continue her spiritual quest. She tells us
that she began pronouncing the S.alāt al-Fātih. first 5,000 times a day, then 10,000, 20,000,
30,000, and finally 50,000 times a day. She stayed in seclusion (khalwah) and entered a
state where she was constantly feverish and she lost all sense of time or self. Giving up
all other activities for “five years—maybe even seven”—she could not keep track—she
was beyond the reach to her husband and children, sleeping on the floor and not having
the presence of mind to eat, sleep, or visit the bathroom sometimes for days at a time. Her
husband complained that he no longer had a wife, and she could no longer love anything
but God, so they divorced, and she continued in this state for some time.
Haadi Ba, satisfied that she had shown a high level of spiritual knowledge, decided to
recognize publicly the level she had attained by giving her an O ijāzah. He explained that
he was not thereby giving her something she did not have but only recognizing something
she had attained on her own, just as c Abd Allāh wuld al-H O c
. ājj, the Idaw ali shaykh had
done in giving Baay Ñas an O ijāzah when he realized his importance. She considered the
O ijāzah an encouragement but put it away and continued on her spiritual quest without
aspiring to use it. She still declined to give others tarbiyyah because, although she had
attained a certain level of divine knowledge herself, leading others was more perilous
and she was afraid of spiritually ruining people. And there was still much about herself
that was “mixed up” (jaxasoo) and needed to be “fixed” (réglé) first.
Tarbiyyah, she cautions, is dangerous if not done correctly, like high voltage on appli-
273
ances designed for low voltage. One must carefully guide the initiate along the spiritual
path, giving them no more than the level of spiritual secrets that they can handle. If edu-
cated correctly, a person comes to know God truly and is incapable of doing harm. One
educated incorrectly, however, may come to have a sense of self-satisfaction for having
the secrets while being internally corrupt and potentially harmful to oneself and others.
Another muqaddam from Jolof helped her to “fix” herself, and when he passed away soon
thereafter his son continued to instruct her. Not only did he help her fix herself, but they
also taught her how to administer tarbiyyah in a positive way.
Because of the dangers of incorrectly implemented tarbiyyah, she has developed a sys-
tem for training more experienced disciples to help new ones to make sure their education
goes well and that initiates become productive members of society. She says that the most
fragile time for a person is directly after their fath., which is when they are most vul-
nerable to becoming spoiled or spoiling others (yàq walla yàqu). So she has given O ijāzah
muqayyad to two young men in the daayira, for the moment only giving them permission
to give wird and not tarbiyyah. They, as well as some of the disciples who do not have
any O ijāzah, are responsible for looking out for newer disciples. Every Wednesday, the
daayira has an adjustment (réglage) meeting where she and daayira leaders discuss how to
“fix” new initiates. Through this system she has given tarbiyyah to over 130 people in her
house, 40 of them women.
I asked her if there are obstacles to being a woman muqaddam, which is typically
a man’s job and is reserved exclusively for men in other S.ūfı̄ groups in Senegal. Do
people tell her this is not a woman’s job? Never, she answers, and male muqaddams even
bring her disciples to train quite regularly because they can see that she does a good job.
She later admitted that over the years it has happened that a male muqaddam has held
back some of the deepest secrets because of her being a woman, but she has always found
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someone who did not have the same reservations. She recalled Baay Ñas’s response when
asked whether he would give important secrets concerning God to women: in matters
of divine knowledge, “a man is a man and a woman is a man,”27 hence they are the
same. She explained that women’s equality to men in Islam with regards to knowledge
is exemplified in Muh.ammad’s wife c ĀO isha, who worked as a jurist and a doctor, and
of whom Muh.ammad said that she possessed half of all knowledge. In fact, her being
a woman allowed her to play a particular role, in that women who could not tell their
problems to Muh.ammad could tell her their problems.
According to Xadi ÑaN, it is not only women’s equality in knowledge that makes them
appropriate spiritual guides; more particularly, women’s motherly inclinations make
them merciful and naturally good at teaching and guiding young people. Muh.ammad
said that women are the first school in life. Children are born in a hut (néeg: hut or room),
then they move to the courtyard (ëtt), and then to the street (mbedd). That is, they mi-
grate gradually from the private to the public sphere.28 Young people need the nurturing
and guidance of women. Because men who will later influence society at large are under
the tutelage of women during their formative stages, one woman can make 1,000 men
succeed, just as one woman can spoil 1,000 men.
During the process of tarbiyyah, Xadi ÑaN continues, this capacity to nurture is essen-
tial, because the most delicate and dangerous time for disciples is right after they have
27 “Su dee góor la, góor la, su dee jigéen la, góor la.” The word góor (man) is often used figuratively
for someone who works hard or does an impressive job, so one might understand a second meaning of
“a man [with knowledge of God] is an impressive worker, and so is a woman” (implying that it is one’s
accomplishments that matter).
28 These three domains are commonly used in Wolof as symbols of spheres of privacy and publicness: the
room or hut (néeg) corresponds to the sphere of the intimate and private; the courtyard (ëtt) corresponds
to what is particular but neither confidential nor of public interest; and the street (mbedd) corresponds to
the public sphere or the sphere of general interest. Thus, women are private, the extended, mixed family
of the courtyard are quasi-private, and men are public. Archivist Haraka Caam divides the documents in
his archive according to these three categories, turning these nouns into adjectives by adding the Arabic
relational suffix and case endings (with a hint of humor): néegiyyatun, confidential documents shown only
to those directly concerned; ëttiyyatun, documents of interest to particular people but not confidential; and
mbeddiyyatun, documents of general interest.
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their fath.. At this stage they are very much like newborns, and the muqaddam is a parent
in the bāt.in who must protect his or her spiritual progeny. One does not give birth and
throw the baby away, she says; the same should apply to tarbiyyah.29
As a woman, she can address important issues that men are generally unable or
unwilling to address. She has special meetings for women in which she discusses the
dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and other women’s health issues. When she
teaches women what Islam has to say about these issues, not only is it easier for her to
talk about these issues but the women are much more likely to heed her counsel than
that of a man whom they may not believe to understand their situation. Islam, she says,
“fights for women’s rights,” and when it came it prohibited rampant female infanticide and
the practice of leaving women out of inheritances. Women should compete with men in
knowledge, but not in “wearing jeans or smoking cigarettes and marijuana.” She explains
to her disciples that the teaching that women should always cover themselves30 is not an
infringement on their freedom: on the contrary, it is against slavery, which is the origin
of nudity. Under slavery, slave masters would parade their naked slaves in front of their
guests for their entertainment, and today women voluntarily parade themselves nearly
naked in fashion shows and on the streets. She says her daughters and female disciples
cover themselves as she recommends. Whatever influence she has in this area is likely
to stem largely from her credibility as a woman in being able to demonstrate what she
29 The parallel between physical birth and the spiritual birth of tarbiyyah becomes more vivid when we
remember that physical birth in Senegal is generally considered to be not only physically but spiritually
vulnerable, which is why, according to many, one does not utter a baby’s name before the protective naming
ceremony (ngénte) a week after the baby’s birth. Naming the baby would give evil spirits an handle to attack
the baby. Similarly, circumcision throughout Senegambia is also considered to be a very fragile time when
the same spirits attempt to carry away the spirit of the initiate, as masked dances performed at the time of
the rite illustrate. It is perhaps little surprise, then, that tarbiyyah, which also represents such a liminal phase
in which the initiate no longer has a name or identity, is similarly seen as dangerous. But here the agent of
danger is different: it is not other spirits that will attack but the spirit of the disciple him- or herself that will
be ruined by being broken down and not put back together properly.
30 Mālikiyyfiqh, which is dominant in the region, recommends that women cover their whole body except
their face and the palms of their hands when in public or with non-relatives.
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preaches.
She says her spiritual journey has been difficult at times, especially at first when it
prevented her from taking on her family responsibilities and prompted many people to
speak ill of her behind her back. Yet those who initially criticized her, including her first
husband, now say that this journey was ultimately a good thing. She has since remarried
a successful engineer and had more children.
Xadi ÑaN is, of course, an exception to the classical examples of major muqaddam,
male representatives of long lines of muqaddams. She is a woman from a lay family and
did not even go through tarbiyyah or actively take part in Taalibe Baay religious activities
until adulthood. Still, she had certain factors working to her advantage. Her father was
very well off, she says, having a large herd of cattle and houses that he rented out, so she
had a family to fall back on when her first marriage failed and she could not rely on her
husband to provide for her. A woman in seclusion who was incapable of fulfilling the
duties of a housewife or seeking work elsewhere would normally have difficulties making
ends meet before having built up a base of disciples. Having family support during this
time could have been a deciding factor. Now that her life is more stable, she is married to
a prominent architectural engineer and therefore has few financial risks to devoting her
life to religious activities.
She describes her trajectory as something involuntary that overtook her and prevented
her from fulfilling her obligations. She did not choose to go into seclusion (khalwah), but
rather was incapable of taking control of herself. She describes her prolonged spiritual
education as an exercise not simply in coming to know God but in managing this knowl-
edge to be integrated back into society in a positive way. Still, as involuntary this self-
unmaking and self-remaking may have felt, one may wonder if someone less sure of
ongoing sustenance would be open to allow themselves to be carried away thus.
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Xadi ÑaN’s reflections on the advantages of women as spiritual guides seem to rep-
resent the views of many of the male leaders of the Taalibe Baay movement in Senegal,
who encourage young people to frequent female muqaddams for their tarbiyyah. Because
Senegalese disciples go through tarbiyyah at a relatively young age, it makes sense for
them to go to women, who, as Xadi ÑaN suggests, specialize in dealing with younger
people who have not yet entered the public part of their life. The work of female muqad-
dams rarely extends beyond such education of young people into more public roles such
as speaking or chanting. Female QurO ān and Arabic teachers also nearly always only
teach young children, women, or their own relatives, but a woman teaching an unrelated
man or giving public lessons is, in my experience, unheard of. I was unaware of female
Taalibe Baay muqaddams in Mauritania and other West African countries,31 which may
be partly explained by the fact that tarbiyyah in many other countries areas, even among
disciples of Baay Ñas, is not considered to be a rite of passage for young people but a
personal endeavor that one feels compelled to do later in life (as Xadi ÑaN did herself).
Thus, although female Taalibe Baay muqaddams like Xadi ÑaN complicate the generally
accepted picture that religious leaders in West Africa are necessarily men, their role re-
mains largely confined to a quasi-domestic, private structural place generally assigned to
women. To use Xadi ÑaN’s terminology, their role of personally guiding young people
corresponds to the inside or private domains of the hut (néeg) and the courtyard (ëtt) and
not the outside or public domain of the street (mbedd), which is handled by male religious
leaders.
This is not to say that female muqaddams like Xadi ÑaN are not respected or influential.
Although she is not an elder, disciples of all ages treat her with much the same deference
31 An exception is Ummu Xayri Ñas, a daughter of Baay who is said to have thousands of female disciples
in Niger.
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that they would treat a male muqaddam or an elder. Still, the role she is expected to play,
regardless of the level of respect, is circumscribed by the roles that women are accustomed
to playing and that others are accustomed to seeing them in.
Mamadu Njaay has become a well known Taalibe Baay chanter. Daayiras regularly invite
him to lead chants at their weekly meetings around Dakar, and he has released several
cassettes in which he and his troupe praise and recount narratives about Baay Ñas and
members of his family. Now in his mid-thirties, he received an O ijāzah muqayyad (in this
case, one permitting him to initiate an unlimited number of people and to appoint twelve
muqaddams) around two years ago from a follower of Baay’s Haal-Pulaar companion
Cerno Asan Dem. This has allowed him to set up his own daayira, which counts several
dozen young men and women to whom he has given tarbiyyah. I interviewed him with
Alliyun Sekk, a member of the MBHSRC, in his room in a Dakar suburb.
Although a well known chanter and daayira leader, he lives a humble lifestyle, renting
a small room in a family house and sleeping on a small mattress on the floor. He is mild-
mannered, soft-spoken, and self-deprecating, describing himself as ineloquent and having
a bad voice, thus giving Baay credit for his repute as a speaker and a chanter. He has
covered his walls with photographs of Baay Ñas and Cerno Asan Dem. He says people
at the chant meetings he attends offer to lodge him for free, but he chooses to rely on
himself and God only. He says he is satisfied with his current situation. As we interview
him, we can hear his daayira across the street chanting the waz.ı̄fah in the courtyard of an
informal Arabic school whose owner allows them to meet there on evenings and Fridays.
So despite his lack of money, he has succeeded in setting up a small zāwiyah where he
and his disciples can perform all the Tijāniyy rites and where he can give tarbiyyah.
I begin recording and ask him to tell us about his life, and he begins with a formal
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Arabic and Wolof introduction as one might begin a speech at a religious meeting.32 Then
he narrates his life story. He was born to a Séeréer father and a Wolof mother in a Séeréer
village near Kaolack. His father died soon after he was born, so his family sent him
to be raised by his mother’s father and brother in a neighboring village. He came to
Kaolack to study at the high school and would attend Friday prayer in Medina. He was
deeply impressed with the knowledge of Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima and Sheex Hasan
Siise, visible in the fact that they could speak at length without ever looking at papers as
other leaders did. He was not a Taalibe Baay but he enjoyed joining the young people as
they chanted dhikrs as they accompanied Baay’s son Allaaji Abdulaay to his house after
prayer. He learned of weekend sikkar meetings and began to attend, even leading them
sometimes. Yet he had not received wird or tarbiyyah at this point and was therefore,
according to some definitions, still not a disciple.
He explains how he was introduced to the idea of tarbiyyah:
I began to go to sikkars all the time, to the point that a guy came up to me one
day and said: “I have the impression that you’re a Taalibe Baay.” I said “yes,
that’s what I hope to be.” He said: “Have you had tarbiyyah?” I said: “What’s
tarbiyyah?” He said: “Knowing God.” I said: “Oh, I haven’t done that yet. I
haven’t even taken the Tijāniyy wird. I just love Baay deeply and have for a
long time.” He said: “Well, if you want to be a true Taalibe Baay, you have to
know God.” I said: “All right, so what do I do to know God?” He said: “I can
take you to Muhammadul Haadi [Baay’s son] or Baay [Omar] Màlle Caam,
Baay’s fortieth disciple.”
32 This introduction begins with “O Ac ūdhu bi-’Llāhi min ash-Shayt.āni ’r-rajı̄m” (“I take refuge in God from
the accursed Satan”) and continues with the opening sūrah of the QurO ān (the Fātih.ah) and the S . alāt al-Fātih..
He follows this Arabic introduction with a Wolof thanks to Muh.ammad, Shaykh at-Tijāniyy, and Shaykh
Al-H O
. ājj Ibrāhı̄m Ñas and welcomes me by name, saying that my project is part of the “work of Baay.”
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They set up a time for the young man to take him to see one of these muqaddams, but
the man did not come on time, and Mamadu Njaay was so hurried to know God that he
set off on his own to see Omar Màlle Caam. In preparation, he had bought prayer beads
and a big notebook to write down whatever it was that he was to learn about God. The
shaykh received him, and he explained that he wanted to be a Taalibe Baay. The shaykh
answered “then you must have tarbiyyah.” Mamadu answered: “Yes, indeed, tarbiyyah is
what I’ve come for.” So the shaykh “gave [him] a number,” meaning that that was the
number of prayer formulas he was to recite. Mamadu waited for the shaykh to continue
teaching him about God, but he said no more. So Mamadu asked, “So this is all?” The
shaykh answered: “What, is it not enough? Do you not know that everything you need is
in this. It is enough” Mamadu answered, “I just didn’t know that’s how it worked. I just
thought there was more to it than that.” The shaykh told him: “Go, when the time comes,
I’ll give it to you.” He received his tarbiyyah and knew God. He told Omar Màlle Caam a
dream that he had: a snake came down from the seventh heaven and tried to attack him,
but it could not touch him. Omar Màlle told him this dream meant that many enemies
would try in vain to harm him.
Soon after finishing tarbiyyah, he returned to his village and began to organize sikkar
meetings and spread the word of Baay. But it was not easy—he quotes the Wolof adage
“eating honey and hardships go hand in hand.”33 His relatives ordered him to cease
participating in Taalibe Baay events, and his uncle gave him an ultimatum, saying that
if he attended the gàmmu in a neighboring village, he would expel Mamadu from the
house. Mamadu went to the meeting and was kicked out of his house. He returned to
Kaolack for a short period and then came to seek work in Dakar.
While in Dakar he began to attend sikkar meetings and became well known as a chant
33 “Lekk lem ak fatantoo ñoo ànd.” One must endure bee stings to enjoy the sweetness of honey.
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leader. Several daayiras invited him to lead their chants on a weekly basis and would
collect small amounts of money to compensate him.
When he visited Medina Baay, he made the acquaintance of the family and followers
of Cerno Asan Dem, and one of Dem’s muqaddams gave him a limited O ijāzah. He began
to produce cassettes in 1999, and his reputation spread quickly among Taalibe Baay, who
bought his cassettes in large numbers. (It is unclear that he made much profit from the
cassettes, or if he did he likely gave the profits to Baay’s family.)
With an O ijāzah and a reputation for speaking and chanting, he quickly drew a crowd
of young people around him in Dakar’s suburbs. Most of his followers are young Fuu-
tanke (Tukulóor, or Haal-Pulaar from the Senegal River Valley), a sizeable minority are
Séeréer like himself, and a smaller number are Wolof. (He says he considers himself
somewhere between Séeréer and Wolof, with mixed parents.)
Mamadu Njaay exemplifies a growing number of urban muqaddams who have no schol-
arly training in Islam but are recognized as leaders in the movement due to other personal
traits. Mamadu Njaay’s case illustrates several important points about the Fayd.ah’s spread
in Dakar. The muqaddams who are most directly responsible for the Fayd.ah’s rapid spread
in Dakar are increasingly from non-Taalibe Baay, non-Njolofeen, and non-clerical family
backgrounds. Their specialization is entirely in mystical knowledge, and they rely on
other leaders or, in some cases, their own disciples, for any textual specialization they
might need. Second, many are from Saalum and encounter the movement while living
near Medina Baay but subsequently draw disciples predominantly from other ethnicities
and regions. Thus, people from Saalum have migrated to other regions and brought the
Fayd.ah to people from other regions (mostly Fuuta and Siin in Mamadu Njaay’s case).
Third, in every case I know, these leaders depend not on their role as muqaddam for their
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primary income but on some other work. Mamadu Njaay is one of the few who devote
most of their time to religious activities, and he makes a modest income through his
chanting activities (which is not strictly a muqaddam’s job).
What is striking is that among Taalibe Baay, being a muqaddam has become its own
specialization apart from textual and occult specialization due to the significant demand
for leaders qualified to give tarbiyyah. Most muqaddams in Dakar and other areas where
the movement is growing quickly are of non-specialist background and do not have spe-
cialized occult of textual knowledge. Their status as muqaddams depends solely on the
recognition that they have attained a certain level of spiritual knowledge and are capable
of training others in the same kind of knowledge and, in many cases, speaking publicly.
Any ability to speak publicly about religious doctrines or Islamic law comes not from
studying such things in books but by attending meetings where such things are discussed
and through cultivating a personal relationship with a leader who is a textual specialist.
Thus, these muqaddams are all attached to specialists, such as Cerno Asan Dem’s family,
who are known as specialists in all domains of religious knowledge.
6.4 Conclusion
Through examining how Taalibe Baay describe their search for Divine Knowledge, this
chapter has aimed to lend nuance to approaches to mystical Islamic authority in West
Africa. Islamic authority is not simply a matter of disciples allying themselves with a
charismatic leader who acts as a vague source of barakah or social capital. Rather, for
many disciples, adherence to a S.ūfı̄ order is a quest for knowledge and self-cultivation,
and their evaluation of a leader depends on their perception of this leader’s ability to
fulfill their quest. Successful leaders are to a large extent those who are recognized as
having a high degree of knowledge, and this evaluation depends on shared schemes of
perception among both leaders and disciples cultivated through educational activities.
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Divine Knowledge, as Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 will discuss, is the basis of which Taalibe
Baay construct spaces of authority and community largely independent of spaces of state
authority.
When Taalibe Baay speak of the Tijāniyy “Fayd.ah” or “Flood,” the object they gen-
erally understand to do this flooding is Divine Knowledge. Thus, experience of Divine
Knowledge is the primary diacritic of the Taalibe Baay movement, or Fayd.ah, for many
disciples. Knowing God, as Sheex Jóob explained, is a matter of disciplining one’s body
and soul and is part of the effort to cultivate correct behavior and to become a pious
Muslim subject. This discipline and resulting knowledge is the aim of the tarbiyyah pro-
cess and subsequent participation in religious meetings. The movement’s leaders often
say that such knowledge cannot be learned in books but must be learned through direct
personal experience through the guidance of a shaykh or muqaddam.
Divine Knowledge, then, does not spread of its own accord or through individuals
coming to know it independently but through the mediation of muqaddams. It is not
solely a matter of self-discipline—something that can be understood entirely as a “tech-
nology of the self” (Foucault 1997c)—but is at the same time an ongoing relationship of
authority between the disciple and Baay. The examples in this chapter, in which muqad-
dams’ knowledge has depended on an ongoing relationship with a more central leader,
show that authority is a constitutive part of Divine Knowledge. A teacher is necessary
not only as a source of guidance but as an ongoing connection to a network of authority.
This chapter has focused primarily on how an individual’s tarbiyyah serves as a door-
way into disciplehood of Baay Ñas. Yet an individual’s self-cultivation is only one dimen-
sion of apprenticeship in Divine Knowledge. The importance of Divine Knowledge in the
Taalibe Baay movement can only be understood when we understand religious authority
and community as constitutive dimensions of such knowledge. Chapter 7 will discuss
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the paradoxes of discipleship that are central to the Taalibe Baay movement’s governance
and expansion. Chapter 8 will discuss how Divine Knowledge is not only part of an
individual’s spiritual quest but is also an initiation into a community of social solidarity.
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Part III
Authority and Community

Chapter 7
Webs of Authority: The Shaykh,

Muqaddams, and Disciples
7.1 Introduction: Authority, knowledge, and barakah
Although Senegal’s post-colonial state and many scholars tend to approach the Taalibe
Baay as a corporate group, often understood as a “Senegalese Islamic brotherhood” (see
Chapter 4), this dissertation approaches them fundamentally as a vast network of people
tracing their spiritual genealogies to Baay Ñas (see Chapter 9). Several kinds of religious
specialists, most notably muqaddams, form the nodes around which this network of dis-
ciples is organized. As Chapters 5 through 6 discussed, the Fayd.ah is primarily defined
in terms of the transmission and practice of religious knowledge. Religious knowledge,
whether mystical, occult, or textual, is generally transmitted from teacher to student,
resulting in an extended spiritual genealogy or network. Direct apprenticeship to a spe-
cialist is important not for the specialist’s technical knowledge but also for the authority
the specialist has received to transmit that knowledge. This authority is understood not
simply as a fact of social recognition but as a constitutive part of knowledge itself and a
source of Divine blessing or barakah.
This Divine blessing can be transmitted in numerous ways, but among disciples of
Baay Ñas it is most strongly associated with the transmission of knowledge through
relations of textual, mystical, or occult apprenticeship. To say that someone has a high
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Joseph Hill Chapter 7. Webs of Authority
degree of religious knowledge is nearly synonymous with saying that the person has
received significant religious authority, not because one is a precondition for or index of
the other but because they are mutually constitutive. Authority is not simply a matter of
social sanction but is understood to render knowledge transmissible and effective. One
who pronounces the formulas repeated during tarbiyyah without receiving these formulas
from a muqaddam of Baay Ñas will not attain Divine Knowledge despite the intrinsic
merit and blessing these formulas contain. One who receives such knowledge through
apprenticeship to a muqaddam cannot transmit this knowledge to another unless set apart
as a muqaddam. Likewise, occult cures are generally seen as ineffectual when practiced
by someone unauthorized. Even religious texts like the QurO ān are “received” much in
the same way that occult and mystical formulas are received.
On one level, religious authority can be understood in terms of symbolic capital and
performative speech acts. Bourdieu treats Weber’s conception of “charismatic authority”
as synonymous with “symbolic capital” (1991, 1990), as a charismatic leader’s capacity
to lead arises from social recognition of this role. Religious authority can similarly be
understood as the power to name or designate that John Austin describes as a “felicity
condition” of a performative speech act (Austin 1962). For example, an O ijāzah from a
recognized authority is the condition whereby a muqaddam may effectively appoint other
muqaddams. According to such analytical conceptions of religious authority, it is easy to
understand why nearly all religious specialists in Senegal seek certification through the
highest possible representative of a handful of well known “religious houses” (këru diine).
Although the idea of symbolic capital helps conceptualize how religious authority
is socially constituted, it is important not to neglect phenomenological perceptions and
religious beliefs that also play a crucial role in the constitution of religious authority. Phe-
nomenologically, religious authority is not a social fact of but a spiritual and metaphysical
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attribute that is transmitted and embodied. It originates in God, comes to reside in some-
one or something, and is then exercised and transmitted through specific rules. It cannot
arise sui generis or by fiat but rather is always rooted in a Divine genealogy. In Islamic
contexts, especially in North and West Africa (Geertz 1968; Gellner 1981), what I term
authority is often associated with barakah (barke).
The most literal gloss of barakah is “blessing,” although it takes on complex conno-
tations and is therefore translated variably as “charisma” (Robinson 1991), “grace” (Bop
2005) and “aura” (Roberts and Roberts 2002). It is often associated with a saint and can
be transmitted through contact with anything associated with the saint, including me-
chanically reproduced portraits, as in the well known case of the Murid order in Senegal
(Roberts and Roberts 2002). Rendering barakah as “aura” departs from its literal Arabic
meaning but aims to express its emanation from a holy person. To maintain the Ara-
bic meaning, I gloss it as “blessing,” although these other translations express important
aspects of it. Barakah emanates from God and is then transmitted through a chain of
recipients, showing itself most strongly in the person who acts as a conduit for Divine
blessing. It is often assumed to fade through generations of transmission, and those seek-
ing barakah therefore tend to seek the most direct connection to the source possible. In
Sufism, the transmission of barakah, religious knowledge, and religious authority are of-
ten inseparable and to a large extent indistinguishable, although barakah is only part of
what I describe as religious authority.
One consequence of closely identifying religious knowledge and authority with bara-
kah is that religious authority tends to be concentrated around a single pole and source of
Divine blessing. Some observers (for example Behrman 1970) have described the concen-
tration of barakah in the hands of saints and their direct descendants as a concentration
of near absolute power in the hands of a small group of religious leaders over the mass
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of disciples. Others (for example Villalon 1995) have played down the spiritual beliefs
about barakah, instead emphasizing the material benefits and political consequences of
rallying around religious leaders. I argue that religious beliefs, especially the belief in
saints as a source of barakah, profoundly affect disciples’ daily practices and discourses,
although these beliefs have subtle and paradoxical effects, being used to promote both
profound submission to leaders and independence from them. While disciples may asso-
ciate barakah with a single saint, it would be simplistic to assume an effective monopoly
on barakah.
Religious authority, knowledge, experience, and barakah are not equally available to
everyone, yet no one completely controls the many avenues for appropriating a saint’s
barakah. The fact that barakah can be obtained through photographs and audio cassettes
implies that, at least to a degree, its reproduction and distribution is out of the hands
of any hierarchy. The fact that religious knowledge that is subsequently accepted as
legitimate is very often given in dreams likewise suggests that even those who see a single
leader as their source of barakah, knowledge, and authority recognize multiple kinds of
relationships with that leader (see Chapter 8). At the same time, although one can obtain
knowledge through mystical channels, one cannot be recognized as a muqaddam without
a written O ijāzah from a living authority. Religious authority among Taalibe Baay depends
on the continuous and paradoxical play between the unipolar nature of religious authority
associated with a leader and his official representatives and the fact that the movement
makes charismatic experience, knowledge, and blessing available to everyone.
Thus, religious authority in the Taalibe Baay movement paradoxically shows both pro-
foundly hierarchical and profoundly egalitarian tendencies. It is simultaneously charis-
matic and routinized, both centralized and diffuse. The charismatic founder is physi-
cally absent but mystically present; he is simultaneously represented indirectly by a rou-
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tinized leadership and represents himself directly through sustained appearances through
dreams and visions to lay disciples. The Fayd.ah concentrates all religious authority in a
single source, Baay, who acts as an absolute node of religious knowledge. One can only
realize Divine Knowledge through entering into a permanent relationship of discipleship
with Baay through his representatives. Baay’s absolute authority, knowledge, and barakah
have been transmitted to his official representatives, who stand atop a strict hierarchy
over various muqaddams and rank-and-file disciples. Yet the factor that disciples most
often describe as drawing them to the movement is the Fayd.ah’s promise to bring Divine
Knowledge to all who seek it, taking the most rarefied religious knowledge to the masses.
The main effect of this knowledge is to make disciples realize that all distinctions are illu-
sory. Many are led to the Fayd.ah through unmediated dreams and mystical experiences.
Every disciple has direct access to Baay’s charisma, and many report learning mystical
secrets directly from Baay.
I argue that this paradox of religious authority profoundly shapes the Taalibe Baay
movement and underlies its growth and dynamism. That is, the movement’s ability to
expand and attract new adherents while maintaining some internal coherence depends
on its simultaneous routinization and reproduction of charisma. In discussing religious
authority among Taalibe Baay, I rethink the spatial and temporal frameworks in which
such concepts as charisma and routinization (Weber 1978) and liminality and structure
(Turner 1969) have heretofore been understood. I see these pairs as including principles
that are not spatially, temporally, or rationally opposed but can be simultaneous, mutually
constitutive, and mutually reinforcing. This chapter builds on the critique in Chapter 5 of
the spatializing and temporalizing metaphors often applied to rationality and religious
knowledge. I argue that people have multiple ways of understanding and practicing
authority, for example approaching authority as charismatic and as routinized at the
291
same time.
Taalibe Baay make explicit and relate multiple understandings of authority through
the language of z.āhir and bāt.in, which is deeply rooted in their techniques of cultivat-
ing religious knowledge. Their mystical practices lead simultaneously to the perceived
erasure of distinctions and an orientation of submission to the muqaddam and to Baay as
religious authorities. These contrasting attitudes of indistinction and submission corre-
spond to practical repertoires through which the Taalibe Baay form both a hierarchized
network of authority and a community of disciples who describe themselves as mysti-
cally one. Either of these tendencies may predominate in a given context, but Taalibe
Baay religious discourse tends to invoke both simultaneously. It would be simplistic to
say that the discourse of equality is a false consciousness that masks the privilege of the
central leaders; rather, which of these tendencies serves the other is highly contextual and
is constantly renegotiated.
Charisma is not the opposite or negation of structure but something that can be used
to uphold or undermine structure. Taalibe Baay often describe religious knowledge and
authority in terms of electricity, as something that flows from a source through connec-
tors to its final destination. Like electricity, charisma animates or destroys everything it
touches, sometimes aligning everything magnetically along one source and sometimes
appearing in unexpected places through underground cables. What Weber describes as
particular to charismatic authority is that it resides in its holder rather than in a code
that allows for the delegation of its administrator to an authority. When charisma is then
transmitted to another authority figure, it is necessary to choose a system whereby this
authority is transmitted, and the irony of charisma for Weber is that its transmission leads
inevitably to the kind of routinized structure that charisma replaced.
The religious authority that I describe originates in a charismatic moment and is trans-
292
mitted from generation to generation in an often predictable fashion, but what differen-
tiates my approach from Weber’s is that I believe that aspects of charismatic authority
are in fact transmitted and can reside in multiple localities rather than being perpetu-
ated through codification and institutional routinization alone. The continued existence
of barakah is an indication that charisma survives through multiple generations of trans-
mission, even if the originary moment is often described as more spiritually powerful
than subsequent generations. Charisma is routinized and maintained simultaneously. Its
authorized representatives and doctrines are perpetuated through a centralized, more or
less routinized structure whose persistence does not directly depend on continued charis-
matic manifestations, yet it also continues to reside in multiple points of charisma (e.g.,
through manifestations of Divine Knowledge, barakah, and dreams) potentially outside
the centralized structure.
The term “authority” here does not directly gloss an emic category but expresses a
principle of symbolic and spiritual legitimacy, transmission, and efficacy associated with
knowledge. This principle is suggested (although not glossed) in various circumstances
by various terms. Many religious activities require seeking permission (ndiggal,1 O idhn)
from a qualified person. Authorization to represent a shaykh as a muqaddam is called
an O ijāzah. To practice an occult secret, one must not simply know the secret but must
“receive” the secret. Prayer formulas and wirds likewise often require authorization or
at least are believed to be more effective with authorization. Other religious activities—
opening a school, organizing a month-long tafsı̄r lesson, building or opening a mosque,
founding a daayira, and organizing a large night-time religious meeting (conference)—
1 Theword “ndiggal” can also designate an order from a religious leader, but this is not the primary
usage and may have arisen to euphemize the compulsory nature of a leader’s order. Western literature
on Senegalese Islam has most commonly used this meaning, especially in connection to Murid contexts
where “ndiggal” often has political implications. I have not often encountered this usage among Taalibe Baay,
however.
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also require authorization from the highest relevant authority.
Authority is a constitutive dimension of religious community yet appears paradox-
ically opposed to it in that authority involves inherently asymmetrical relationships in
which knowledge and charismatic authority radiate from an absolute central authority
to a large periphery, while the community made possible by this religious knowledge
and authority emphasizes the dissolution of all distinctions, entities, and hierarchies. Al-
though this paradox seems to be rooted in the contrasting truths of z.āhir and bāt.in men-
tioned in the introduction, it is not clear that authority is an entirely z.āhir term, as it is all
about the transmission of the mystical side of knowledge (as the non-mystical, z.āhir side
does not explicitly depend on authority for its transmission). Might one argue that au-
thority is the z.āhir side of the bāt.in itself, and that these two terms therefore include each
other recursively? In this case, these terms designate not an absolute distinction between
two separate spheres but two principles inherent in all things, including themselves. That
is, even the bāt.in truths that negate structure depend on structure to be transmitted,
and this structure negates itself through fulfilling its purpose (like the philosophical lad-
der that Wittgenstein describes building and then kicking out from underneath us when
we’ve attained our goal).
Thus, one finds a wide variety of views of hierarchy among Taalibe Baay, some say-
ing that they do not perceive any hierarchy at all and that they feel free to do anything
without asking permission of anyone, and others (or the same people in different circum-
stances) saying that they will undertake nothing without permission of their moral leader.
In truth, religious leaders do not rule with the iron authority that scholars such as Behr-
man (1970) describe, and yet outsiders observing disciples’ apparently slavish devotion
have often come to such a conclusion. The relationship between someone closer to the
center of the authority network and someone further out might be described in terms sim-
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ilar to what Scott (Scott 1976) calls “moral economy,” that is an asymmetrical relationship
of reciprocal obligations. In this case, disciples are not involuntarily indentured without
recourse but are to a degree free to choose which (if any) leader to associate themselves
to and to what degree. Of course, in determining the nature of one’s engagement to a
religious leader, one must consider the consequences of one’s level of engagement on
one’s social standing and a number of other factors. Although cultivating the reputa-
tion of a devoted disciple sometimes carries important political and economic benefits as
many scholars have pointed out, discipleship involves a great deal more than a pursuit of
economic interest or political clout.
It is important not to underestimate the importance of affect in determining the na-
ture and level of one’s engagement. The voluminous devotional poetry by Taalibe Baay
leaders and scholars, which is similar to poetry of other S.ūfı̄s, describes profound de-
votion to and love for the Prophet and to subsequent religious figures. Most of Baay
Ñas’s poetry praises Muh.ammad, whereas subsequent Taalibe Baay poetry has praised
Muh.ammad, Baay Ñas, and other religious figures. Participants in chant meetings often
similarly demonstrate their profound love for Baay Ñas and sometimes other leaders, and
many justify obedience or material giving to a leader in terms of their deep love for that
leader rather than in terms of obligation or repayment. This is not to say that all acts of
devotion are unproblematic expressions of love, but that relationships between teachers
and students are often imbued with deep affective bonds, and also that one’s legitimacy
as a disciple or leader is related to one’s performance of love for a shaykh or Muh.ammad.
This chapter focuses primarily on one side of the paradox of authority: the hierarchical
tendency of religious authority to link all disciples into a network with Baay at its center.
Chapter 8, “Community, Divine Knowledge, and Mystical Presence,” emphasizes the
other side of this paradox: the role of Divine Knowledge brought by this authority as the
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ground of a community of “knowers” (c ārif ) without distinction. Disciples are multiply
connected to Baay, both through specialists tracing their chain of authority to Baay and
through a direct connection to Baay’s mystical presence. Every disciple receives tarbiyyah
at the hands of a muqaddam, who plays the role of the shaykh murabbı̄, at least on the
z.āhir level. Yet all are said to be literal disciples of Baay, who is mystically present during
this education and who is therefore the direct shaykh murabbı̄ of all disciples in a bāt.in
sense. Either or both of these relations of discipleship can be emphasized depending on
the circumstance. Regardless of which relation is foregrounded, the contrary tendency is
always implicitly present.
I begin my discussion of religious authority with a discussion of principles of trans-
mission of religious knowledge common to mystical, occult, and textual knowledge.
I argue that the general principle of knowledge transmission—that one is authorized
to transmit only specific articles of knowledge received directly from someone else—
is superceded in an absolute authority such as Baay Ñas. Baay Ñas’s authority and
knowledge—and by extension that of his official representatives—differs in kind from that
of ordinary religious specialists. My next section discusses z.āhir and bāt.in approaches to
successorship (khilāfah) and the resulting ambiguity often surrounding it. I discuss several
cases in which successorship has been unclear, paying particular attention to the question
of Baay’s succession, surrounding which there is still much disagreement. Rather than
frame this question as a political disagreement over who was the community’s leader,
it has been framed in terms of biological inheritance as opposed to the transmission of
deeper secrets and spiritual gifts. The question of successorship is deeply rooted in com-
peting and complementary notions of religious authority.
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7.2 Absolute authority versus specific authority
S.ūfı̄ authority and occult knowledge: a Ñoominka muqaddam. Compared to many
Ñoominka2 families in the islands of the Saalum River Delta, Mustafaa Jaañ’s family
is relatively well established as a Muslim family.3 Although nearly all Ñoominka are
Muslim now, during Jaañ’s childhood many were not, and his family played an important
role in bringing people into Islam and teaching them how to fulfill ritual obligations such
as prayer and the Ramad.ān fast. All his grandparents were Muslims and were members
of a small Tijāniyy minority, and both he and his father, Arfaan Jaañ, studied the QurO ān
at the oldest Ñoominka daara in the area.
Upon memorizing the QurO ān, his father continued to study Islamic disciplines (xam-
xam) in the nearby village of Faas in the 1930s, shortly after Baay Ñas had announced the
beginning of the Fayd.ah. Arfaan Jaañ’s teacher heard about Baay and went to visit him.
The teacher soon began to visit Baay often and was appointed a muqaddam before long.
Baay paid special attention to grooming leaders and teachers in Ñoominka areas, where
new Muslim communities needed strong leadership. Thereafter, Arfaan Jaañ’s teacher
would often send him as a messenger to Baay Ñas either to Medina Baay or, during the
rainy season, to Kóosi, where Baay Ñas farmed each year and where he first announced
the Fayd.ah.4 At the end of Arfaan Jaañ’s studies, upon recommendation from his teacher,
Baay Ñas himself appointed Jaañ a muqaddam while in Kóosi. Jaañ then returned to his
village and, after initiating members of his family into the order, began to receive many
Ñoominka disciples. He not only gave them mystical tarbiyyah but also taught them the
QurO ān and Islamic disciplines (xam-xam) and acted as the area’s Islamic legal expert and
2 Ñoominka are Séeréer-speakers who live on the banks and islands of the Saalum river and live primarily
by fishing. See Chapter 4.

3 This
narrative is based on an interview conducted and transcribed by Aamadu Njaay in 2004 for the Me-
dina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee. The name of the muqaddam used here is a pseudonym.
4 See Chapters 3 and 4.
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occult specialist. His leadership was instrumental in firmly implanting both Islam and
Baay Ñas’s movement in this part of the Saalum Delta.
Arfaan Jaañ then followed a pattern typical in areas where Islam is not firmly estab-
lished, moving with his family to several successive villages in the area where Islamic
education was scarce, in each one setting up a school to teach the QurO ān and Islamic
disciplines and giving tarbiyyah. When it seemed that there was a critical mass of Mus-
lims qualified to lead prayer and teach in the village, he would move to another village.
Mustafaa Jaañ studied with his father for some years in these villages and then moved
away from home for two years to finish his studies in another village. His father died in
one of these villages unexpectedly in 1974, shortly before Baay Ñas death in 1975.
Arfaan Jaañ’s passing left the family with a problem: after teaching all these people
and inducting so many people into the Tijāniyyah, the patriarch had left no muqaddam
among his children, so no one was prepared continue his work. Designated by the family
as his father’s successor (xalifa),5 Mustafaa Jaañ visited Omar Faati Jàllo Ñas, a relative
and muqaddam of Baay active in spreading the Fayd.ah among the Ñoominka at the time,
who wrote him an O ijāzah. Omar Faati Jàllo had become attached to the area through his
most outstanding student, another Ñoominka named Baabakar Caam.6
But even this O ijāzah did not suffice to enable Mustafaa Jaañ to continue where his
father had left off. His father had amassed a body of occult secrets but had never autho-
rized his children to use them. Soon after Baay Ñas’s death and after obtaining this first
O ijāzah, Mustafaa Jaañ gathered all the papers upon which his father’s secrets were writ-
ten and brought them to Medina Baay, asking a well known Arabic teacher and relative of
5 Although the term khalı̄fah (successor, xalifa) is most conspicuously used to refer to a major religious
leader, it often refers to the man designated as the representative of a family, usually the oldest descendent
of the family’s founder, regardless of whether he has been appointed to a religious office. See below.
6 See Baabakar Caam’s story (page 262 in Chapter 6).
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Baay Ñas to bring him to Sëriñ Alliw Siise, whom many saw as Baay Ñas’s successor and
the highest authority in Medina Baay. The teacher accompanied him to see Sëriñ Alliw,
who then gave him another O ijāzah as well as permission to use all his father’s secrets and
to continue all his father’s activities. Sëriñ Alliw “counseled [Jaañ] to be faithful and to
walk in the footsteps of [his] father.”
Mustafaa Jaañ again returned to Medina Baay after the death of Sëriñ Alliw in 1982 to
renew his allegiance to Baay Ñas’s xalifa, Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima Ñas, again accompa-
nied by a prominent teacher and religious leader from Medina. This renewal of allegiance
to a newly established authority is customary following the death of the previous author-
ity.7 He explained to Allaaji Abdulaay that he was his father’s khalı̄fah in their village.
Although Jaañ did not request an O ijāzah at the time, it is common for a leader to give the
muqaddam a new O ijāzah on such an occasion to transfer the muqaddam’s relationship with
the new leader. After Jaañ presented the khalı̄fah with the O ijāzah his father had received
from Baay Ñas and his own O ijāzahs, Allaaji Abdulaay took a sheet of paper and wrote
up another O ijāzah and sent him off “with much recommendation.” From that time on, he
has remained in his village and has concentrated on his religious work.
Successions of religious leaders very often bring disagreements and uncertainties, but in
most cases the leader has directly transmitted religious authority to at least one other
potential successor through authorizing them to practice occult secrets and bestowing
an O ijāzah. This did not happen in Mustafaa Jaañ’s case. By the time his father died,
Mustafaa Jaañ had become a proficient textual scholar, was familiar with the Tijāniyy
wirds and tarbiyyah, and apparently did not doubt his ability to practice the occult secrets
7 Jaañ’ssuccession of visits, first to Sëriñ Alliw Siise, and then to Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima Ñas, implies
that he recognized Sëriñ Alliw Siise as Medina Baay’s highest authority immediately following Baay Ñas’s
death and Allaaji Abulaay as the highest authority after Sëriñ Alliw Siise’s death. See Section 7.4 below
regarding the disagreement surrounding Baay’s successorship.
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his father had left behind. What he lacked was the authority to practice the knowledge
his father possessed, as his father had never explicitly transferred this authority to him.
It appears that seeking authorization to practice this knowledge was not simply a matter
of showing respect to the leaders of the religious community but was prerequisite to the
effective practice of this knowledge. Receiving knowledge from a particular channel of
authority is often said to unlock a hidden (bāt.in) potential that is unavailable to someone
without authority, even if the person is consciously aware of such potential.
For this reason receiving religious knowledge through networks of authority is often
described as receiving a “secret” (sirr). The term “secret” has several meanings. Some
religious knowledge, including certain mystical teachings, prayer formulas, and occult
cures, are considered “secret” in that they are carefully guarded from becoming public
knowledge. One should only transmit these secrets to someone who can be trusted to
understand them and to use them correctly. Religious specialists show varying degrees
of openhandedness with mystical doctrines and occult cures. Many leaders refuse to
discuss teachings on mystical unity that accompany tarbiyyah with outsiders, and certain
prayers and names of God are only given selectively. A woman muqaddam told me that
Baay’s muqaddam who appointed her felt that the deepest secrets of God must be kept
from women, but she learned these secrets nonetheless by interacting with muqaddams
who did not have such reservations. A friend of mine once used my computer to enter
and print out a prayer his leader had given him, but he insisted that I delete it from my
hard drive because it was a secret prayer given only to certain disciples. When I revealed
to a son of Alliw Siise that a teacher had given me certain secrets without reservation, his
reaction was to think the teacher had done so inappropriately and for money (which did
not seem to be the case—in my experience, the teacher was simply openhanded and had
few reservations about sharing his knowledge and material goods).
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The widespread use of the term “secret” among Taalibe Baay regarding mystical and
occult knowledge suggests parallels with the phenomenon of “secret societies” observed
by anthropologists around the world, for example, men’s societies in the Pacific Islands
(Tuzin 1997; Herdt 1994, 1998) and the Sande and Poro societies of West Africa (Murphy
1980; Fulton 1972; Jedrej 1976). As among these societies, secret knowledge among Taalibe
Baay is often cited as a diacritic of membership and of access to spiritual power. The
stations of mystical knowledge (maqām) resemble the grades of initiation of which “each
level is organized so as to obscure the next level” (Barth 1975). At the same time, levels
among Taalibe Baay are not clearly defined as “grade” classes whose members form their
own society, but rather, one’s collection of secrets and overall spiritual rank is a matter of
cultivating multiple personal relationships with specialists and receiving authorization to
practice a unique combination of secrets.
Furthermore, in many cases, Taalibe Baay use the term “secret” to refer less to the hid-
denness of the article of knowledge itself but to the hidden potential—the bāt.in attributes—
that reception of the secret through the proper authority reveals and unlocks. Thus, al-
though in many ways the secrets of tarbiyyah appear to resemble the secrets of initiation
into a secret society, they are not the kind of secret that could be simply revealed, thus
jeopardizing the society’s basis in secrecy (a process Tuzin describes in The Cassowary’s
Revenge (1997)). Many occult “secrets” are published in books, but most specialists deem
them more effective (or only effective) if received through a particular chain of authority.
The Tijāniyy wird, for example, is sometimes described as a “secret” of the order, and yet it
is widely published and publicly explained. What is secret—or hidden—is not the verbal
content of the wird but the mystical effects the wird has on the person who receives and
practices it. Tijāniyy apologetic literature euphemistically explains that the Tijāniyy wird
contains only phrases whose benefit is clearly explained in the QurO ān and Sunnah, and
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that pronouncing it would therefore benefit anyone. Yet strictly speaking, to pronounce
the same phrases is not to pronounce the Tijāniyy wird, which one must receive from the
proper authority to pronounce.
Likewise, Taalibe Baay often proclaim that one cannot fully know God through anyone
but Baay. This is not because Baay alone has stumbled onto this knowledge or that Taalibe
Baay intentionally keep knowledge from outsiders but because he was the only one to
whom the “secrets” of this knowledge were given in order to be distributed as widely
as possible given certain conditions. Again, the “secrets” Baay Ñas administers are not
bits of information or even techniques off limits to others but blessings and effects that
were given to Baay Ñas and to no one else. While Taalibe Baay do not publicize the exact
sequence of events involved in tarbiyyah, one can observe that, although it is described as
the transmission of a “secret,” most of the time is spent not transmitting information but
repeating phrases that any Tijāniyy knows (Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh, the S.alāt al-Fātih., etc.). One
might observe and copy all the steps of tarbiyyah outside the spiritual genealogy of Baay
Ñas, learning all the facts that a Taalibe Baay knows, yet still not “know” God, much less
have the authority to teach others. Secrets are indissociable from the authority to practice
them.
Typically, any religious specialist has the authority to teach and authorize exactly
those articles of knowledge, whether textual, occult, or S.ūfı̄, that he or she has received
from another specialist. A specialist’s stock of secrets grows throughout his or her life
through interactions with relatives and other specialists, and it is precisely these secrets
that the specialist can both practice and transmit to others. For example, Mustafaa Jaañ’s
father had amassed a stock of occult secrets, presumably both from his own father and
years of exchanging secrets with other specialists who had the authority to transmit each
of these secrets individually to him. Mustafaa Jaañ initially could not practice his father’s
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S.ūfı̄ teaching or his occult practice because neither his father nor anyone else had au-
thorized him to practice these secrets, even though he doubtless had enough technical
knowledge to be able to practice much of what his father had practiced. Omar Faati Jàllo
Ñas authorized him to give the Tijāniyy wird and tarbiyyah, after which he was able to
take over some of his father’s functions.
Ammat Bittéy, a QurO ān and Arabic teacher whom I often visited, spent much of his
time visiting other specialists to seek occult secrets, some of which used QurO ānic verses
while others used other texts (such as the hagiographic poetry of Būs.ayriyy) and others
had no explicit connection with Islam at all. On several occasions I saw him making
a saafara (potion) or some other kind of occult cure, and when I asked him to explain
it, he described precisely what he was doing, describing it as a “secret” (he used the
French word, although sometimes he uses the Arabic plural O asrār ). The first time, I
asked him if, now that I knew these cures, I could practice the cure as a non-Muslim even
though it involved verses from the QurO ān. He answered that the secret’s effectiveness
did not depend on adherence to Islam but on authorization to use them, and he thereby
authorized me to use them.
When I asked a son of Alliw Siise whether one can practice secrets for which one
has not personally received authorization (for example, that one has observed or read
about in books), the anecdote he gave as an answer gave potentially different implications
from those I have drawn from the story of Mustafaa Jaañ. He recounted that when one
muqaddam close to Baay had asked Baay if he could use secrets that he encountered
in books, Baay told him that it would be better to ask his permission first. The story
stopped short of affirming that the secrets would be ineffective without proper authority
and made explicit only that it is more respectful to seek one’s leader’s blessing first. This
story agrees with the ethos of asking one’s shaykh’s permission and blessing in all things.
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A Mauritanian muqaddam I spoke with implied to me that receiving authorization to
practice a secret is more than a matter of respect. When I showed the muqaddam a book I
had bought that explained in Arabized Wolof the uses of various verses of the QurO ān and
prayers, he told me that this book was useless because secrets can only be transmitted in
person, not through a written medium. Others in Senegal said that for the same reason,
Shaykh O Ah.mad as-Sukayrij in Fās did not send an O ijāzah with Maam Allaaji Abdulaay
Ñas to present to Allaaji Maalig Si in Tiwaawan but instead instructed him to write one
and to present it to Allaaji Maalig in person.8
One might argue, then, that there is some ambiguity over whether Mustafaa Jaañ
went to Medina to get Medina’s blessing (out of respect) or to get authorization required to
activate his father’s secrets. In practice, however, it is doubtful whether many disciples
distinguish rigorously between these two reasons, as it is precisely the blessing (barakah)
of founding leaders that reinforces and makes effective a given specialist’s knowledge.
That is, barakah can have connotations of both blessing as authorization and blessing as
benefit. Many disciples visit their shaykh to seek their blessing and permission before
embarking on any important task, whether religious or secular. I have often heard dis-
ciples describe the object of a visit to a leader as barkeelu (to seek blessing), regardless
of whether seeking authorization for any particular activity, and disciples often describe
this blessing, whether specific or general, as important to the success of their activities.
Thus, many disciples understand a visit (ziyārah, siyaare) to a leader to be simultaneously
a sign of deference and a source of barakah and success.
Seeking blessing and authorization is particularly important and even indispensible in
important religious activities, such as teaching, organizing religious events, or beginning
one’s religious studies. The printed invitations to large religious meetings (conferences
8 Disciples of Allaaji Maalig do not accept the account that Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas gave him an O ijāzah.
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and gàmmus) almost always list the name of the authority who authorized the event,
usually the publicly recognized Khalı̄fah of Baay Ñas (now Ahmadu Daam Ñas). This
implies that the organizers have personally sought an audience with the leader, during
which the leader has authorized the meeting and pronounced a prayer to ensure that
the event will go well. Those who organize month-long tafsı̄r (piri: interpretation of the
QurO ān) lessons during Ramad.ān consistently reported that they would seek the blessing
of the highest authority possible before each year’s lesson. Aaxibu Bittéy, a muqaddam
in Kaolack, implies that his yearly tafsı̄r lessons are doubly authorized, explaining that
his father and predecessor received a tafsı̄r O ijāzah directly from Baay, and Aaxibu Bittéy
renews his authorization to deliver tafsı̄rs each year. This authorization is crucial not only
for the legitimacy it bestows on these activities but for the added barakah it brings to them
and their participants.
Yet the blessing and authorization associated with transmitting and practicing reli-
gious knowledge, whether mystical, textual, or occult, is more specific than the blessing
sought for general activities. Each article of religious knowledge has a history (sanad)
going back to a source of authority. In some cases, for example in O ijāzahs and particu-
lar secrets of mystical knowledge (such as the Greatest Name of God, or O Ism Allāh al-
O ac zam), the whole chain of authority is made explicit. Many S.ūfı̄ prayer formulas and
.
practices go back to the founder of an order or of a major spiritual lineage, who received
the knowledge directly from a supernatural source (the Prophet Muh.ammad, the angel
Jibril, etc.). The words of a prayer transmitted by this founding figure may be identical
to a prayer transmitted in another S.ūfı̄ order, but the secrets unlocked through receiving
it through this chain of authority are considered to be unique to this chain. Many occult
secrets, however, are passed from specialist to specialist without any talk of their ulti-
mate origin, and occult specialists often consider their effectiveness and their immediate
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reception from a trusted source sufficient indication of their worth. Many of these more
ordinary secrets originate in non-Islamic contexts, and the body of these secrets and their
mode of transmission is significantly shared with non-Muslims. But an occult secret that
has passed through the hands of an important leader such as Baay is highly valued. The
essential point is that the authority to practice the secret does not stand outside of the ob-
ject that is known but is an essential part of it. To learn a prayer from a book is essentially
different from “receiving” it and its associated blessings and secrets through a particular
chain of authority.
The 18th-century story of Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy exemplifies this principle (see
Wright 2005). Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy, born in c Ayn Mād.ı̄ in what is now Algeria,
received many mystical secrets from shaykhs from a number of S.ūfı̄ orders in North
Africa and the Middle East and became especially associated with the Khalwatiyyah order
in Egypt. Through apprenticeship to living shaykhs, he had amassed a large amount of
exoteric and esoteric knowledge. According to Shaykh at-Tijāniyy’s account, Muh.ammad
visited him and instructed him to found a new order that was to supercede all other S.ūfı̄
orders and to be directly connected to the Prophet. Muh.ammad “gave” him the QurO ān,
which the Shaykh had memorized and had been authorized to teach years before, along
with a number of sacred formulas including the main wirds of the order—which similarly
involved formulas he had previously received from other shaykhs (Wright 2005). (The
S.alāt al-Fātih. is often described as a Tijāniyy prayer, but it apparently originates much
earlier and was only popularized through the Tijāniyyah.)
The purpose of “giving” the Shaykh these things was not to give him information,
as he apparently was given little information he did not already possess. Likewise, this
visitation would have been unnecessary if all shaykhs’ authority were equal, as Shaykh
at-Tijāniyy had already received authorization to use these formulas from other shaykhs.
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What sets Shaykh at-Tijāniyy apart is not bare knowledge of sacred books and formulas
or even authority to practice these things but the fact that he “received” these things di-
rectly from the Prophet with particular blessings attached. According to the book Jawāhir
al-Mac ānı̄, to receive a prayer formula through any of his muqaddams brings the same
blessing as from Shaykh at-Tijāniyy himself, but to receive the same formula through
someone not in his line does not.
Thus, the spiritual power associated with a prayer depends not only on the words of
the prayer itself but on the hands through which it has passed. Receiving a secret is a
ritual that involves one holder of the secret bestowing the secret (that is, the blessings
associated with a piece of knowledge) on another. Typically, any given specialist has
amassed a certain stock of secrets he or she is authorized to practice and transmit. One’s
authority to practice and teach typically depends largely on the quantity and source of
the knowledge one has amassed. A specialist who has received fourteen secrets has the
authority to pass on exactly these fourteen secrets and the blessings accompanying them,
and so on.
As each specialist receives his or her knowledge from multiple sources, and many
travel long distances to exchange knowledge and secrets with a wide variety of specialists,
this network is not a simple genealogy or hierarchy but a complex web. Mystical secrets
pertaining to S.ūfı̄ order can for the most part be traced back to the founder of an order or,
in the case of Baay’s disciples, to the founder of a spiritual lineage within that order. As
far as I can tell, it is rare for a Taalibe Baay mystical specialist to receive S.ūfı̄ secrets from
a non-Taalibe Baay specialist, even another Tijāniyy. This does not apply to occult secrets
and texts, which often have multiple genealogies extending beyond any single S.ūfı̄ group.
I knew occult specialists who regularly visited other specialists from other S.ūfı̄ orders to
exchange non-t.arı̄qah-specific occult secrets. Yet even secrets tracing back to Baay pass
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through multiple channels before a given specialist receives them.
According to this principle of ordinary knowledge transmission, before practicing his
father’s secrets, Mustafaa Jaañ would have had to track down someone who had the au-
thority to practice each of these secrets individually, which may have been no easier than
starting over from scratch. His solution to this problem demonstrates a less ordinary
principle of religious authority, which one might describe as that of sovereign religious
authority (Schmitt 2006; Agamben 1998), an authority that stands outside the ordinary
networks of transmission of particular secrets. This authority can authorize the use of any
secrets, regardless of whether the authorizing figure has personally received the secrets
in question. In the Taalibe Baay context, this absolute authority comes through Baay Ñas
and came to rest with his direct representatives, including Sëriñ Alliw Siise and Baay’s
senior sons, after his death. It concerns any religious knowledge, whether textual, S.ūfı̄,
or occult. Maahi Alliw Siise, a son of Alliw Siise and Baay Ñas’s daughter Faatumata
Zaaraa, confirmed to me that the authority to authorize any secret is a stipulation explic-
itly included in some leaders’ O ijāzahs.
Thus, whereas specialists generally act as nodes in a large network, transmitting the
knowledge and barakah they have received, a lineage founder’s authority does not depend
on having amassed a stock of texts and secrets but on a direct mystical link to the source of
these secrets, whether Baay Ñas or ultimately the Prophet. Because Baay Ñas’s knowledge
and authority is not considered to depend on reception from some other specialist, his
disciples function largely as their own spiritual lineage even though they are technically
part of the larger Tijāniyy order.
Some Taalibe Baay may object to the claim that Baay Ñas rather than Shaykh at-
Tijāniyy is their founding authority, for Baay Ñas did not found an order but simply
inherited the one Shaykh at-Tijāniyy had founded (or that Muh.ammad had founded
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through him). Those who wish to emphasize unity with other Tijāniyys very often play
down Taalibe Baay exceptionalism, and the absolute difference between them and other
Tijāniyys is much more strongly felt inside Senegal than in, for example, Mauritania and
Nigeria.9 Many Taalibe Baay leaders attempt to counteract outsiders’ inaccurate represen-
tations of Taalibe Baay as an independent order (t.arı̄qah, “confrérie,” “brotherhood”). Yet
daily speech and public religious discourses, as well as the writings of Baay Ñas himself,
make abundantly clear that leaders and lay disciples in Senegambia widely believe that
Baay Ñas occupies a unique place in the Tijāniyy .tarı̄qah as bringer of the Fayd.ah and that
his disciples have something that no other Tijāniyys possess.
Taalibe Baay are therefore significantly distinct from other Tijāniyys. Taalibe Baay
who want to reinvigorate their religious practice sometimes renew their wird with a Taal-
ibe Baay muqaddam, but I know of no case in a Taalibe Baay has renewed a wird with or
received an O ijāzah or other S.ūfı̄ secrets from a non-Taalibe Baay muqaddam. The many
non-Taalibe Baay who have renewed their wird with a Taalibe Baay muqaddam do so in
anticipation of taking tarbiyyah and of becoming a full-fledged Taalibe Baay. Baay’s disci-
ples consider him to possess all the secrets that other Tijāniyy shaykhs possess in addition
to other secrets and therefore tend to look exclusively to Baay and his representatives for
knowledge and leadership. Although disciples associated with various Taalibe Baay mu-
qaddams often share the same daayira, I know of only one daayira (in Dakar) that includes
Taalibe Baay and disciples of non-Taalibe Baay muqaddams, and participants in this group
acknowledged that is was extremely rare.
As founder of this spiritual lineage, Baay Ñas stands outside the routine rules of trans-
mission of knowledge and authority. All three fields of knowledge and their secrets are
unified under and guaranteed by one religious authority, Baay Ñas—and by extension
9 Ousmane Kane (2003b) describes Nigerian disciples as decreasing their emphasis on the particulars of
Baay Ñas’s tarbiyyah.
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his official representatives—whose authority relies not on his collected secrets but on a
direct connection with God, Muh.ammad, and Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy, the sources of
all religious knowledge and authority. Baay Ñas functions as a kind of reserve and foun-
tainhead of religious knowledge and authority, not simply a relatively more important
node. One might be tempted to conclude from this absolute authority that Baay Ñas’s
direct successors have a monopoly on religious knowledge and authority among Taalibe
Baay, able to validate or invalidate anyone’s knowledge and authority. In practice, as the
following chapter shows, this is not the case. Although certain people have the author-
ity to officiate the transmission of Baay’s knowledge, it can only be transmitted through
Baay’s mystical presence, which manifests itself in multiple ways and does not depend
solely on these central authorities.
7.3 Khalı̄fahs, Descendants, and other authorities
There is a constant tension between the assumption that Baay’s knowledge, authority, and
barakah were automatically transmitted to his children and the egalitarian view that these
things depend on one’s personal attributes independent of one’s father. Baay often made
pronouncements such as “My disciple is more my son than my son.”10 In keeping with
this pronouncement, Baay appointed his close disciple, Sëriñ Alliw Siise, as his khalı̄fah,
and told his sons to look up to Sëriñ Alliw as their shaykh. Yet in practice, Baay’s disciples
often treat his sons in a way that suggests a belief that they have inherited his barakah and
authority. Even among the sons of Sëriñ Alliw Siise, only the three who are sons of
Faatumata Zaaraa Ñas and therefore grandsons of Baay are well known public figures.
Descriptions of authority often characterize it as something like electricity that radiates
from a central source and is relayed to its beneficiaries through generations of religious
specialists. The implication of this metaphor is that knowledge and authority, although
10 This is from a letter one muqaddam showed me, although I have not yet located the exact reference.
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coming from a central source, do not dissipate as they radiate to the periphery, and thus
they are the same whether at the center and at the periphery. One can argue that this is
true in practice, as authority is transmitted in digital fashion; that is, one receives a dis-
creet permission to practice one or more particular pieces of knowledge, and one cannot
have partial authority in any given piece of knowledge. All muqaddams under Baay Ñas
have equal authority to give wird and tarbiyyah, and a wird is no more valid received from
Baay Ñas himself than from a little known muqaddam in Baay Ñas’s spiritual genealogy.
Despite the official doctrine that a secret transmitted by any two authorized people is
identical and that a specialist’s ability is determined solely by the knowledge and author-
ity received, some muqaddams have a huge degree of influence while others do not. The
degree of a muqaddam’s influence often is strongly related to the muqaddam’s relationship
to Baay Ñas. Given a group of muqaddams with a comparable level of religious knowledge
and personal abilities, their social standing within the movement can be significantly pre-
dicted based on the nature of their relationship with Baay Ñas and their seniority. That
is, senior sons of Baay Ñas tend to have the highest status, followed by Baay Ñas’s closest
associates, followed by these sons and associates’ children. In practice, other factors, such
as one’s learning, oratory skills, social connections, and leadership abilities, influence any
given leader’s prestige, and someone with a multiple relationship to Baay Ñas may have
a particularly high status.
For example, the current Imam of Medina Baay, Shaykh Hasan Siise, is clearly the
most well known of Medina Baay’s leaders. Although he is not a patrilineal descendant
of Baay Ñas, he has at least a triple relationship to Baay: his father, Sëriñ Alliw Siise,
was Baay’s closest follower and the one Baay designated as his successor (khalı̄fah); his
mother, Faatumata Zaaraa, is Baay Ñas’s oldest child; and (perhaps as a result of the
first two) he had cultivated a particularly close personal relationship to Baay during his
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lifetime and received a large degree of his knowledge directly from Baay. He supplements
his multiply defined relationship to Baay with a high level of learning, charisma, and a
particular status as international religious leader, which he has cultivated largely through
his own efforts.
Descendants of Baay have an automatic status independent of their personal knowlege
and abilities. For example, at the 2006 Bronx gàmmu I attended, the person delivering the
gàmmu narrative was a member of the family of the elder Sëriñ Daara Usmaan Njaay,
one of Baay Ñas’s close companions. Although he is the imam and QurO ān teacher of the
Bronx mosque and clearly the effective moral authority of the New York community of
disciples, a son and a grandson of Baay Ñas, both in their thirties and engaged primarily
in non-religious work, were given more prominent seats and treated as the guests of
honor. Baay Ñas’s son, who was younger than the grandson, was treated as the meeting’s
highest authority and invited to pronounce the main prayer formulas, seal the QurO ānic
recitation, and lead the morning prayer, all activities directly associated with bringing
barakah to the meeting. Toward the end of the meeting, the president of the daayira
circulated the room with a pillow case and a microphone and exhorted attendees to give
a generous donation as àddiya Baay (gift for Baay), which is always raised when a son
(and often a grandson) of Baay is present at a meeting. It was clear that, whatever each of
these men’s knowledge and leadership abilities, their status and association with barakah
were determined independently of competence and, instead, directly as a function of
generational proximity to Baay.
Thus, despite the official doctrine that receiving a wird from any muqaddam is equiva-
lent to receiving it from Baay or Shaykh at-Tijāniyy, there is a widespread, implicit belief
that barakah is more powerful as one approaches its source. Practices often index hier-
archies between muqaddams, with Baay’s sons given the most respect, followed by his
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grandsons and the sons of other leaders, followed by other muqaddams whose kin rela-
tionship to Baay is more distant.
Nonetheless, seniority in the “family” of disciples of Baay Ñas may not be as easy
to explain as this. It is true that one’s openly recognized social standing in a public
gathering is assigned according to one’s social proximity to Baay Ñas, the head of the
household, more than one’s personal attributes. This proximity automatically determines
one’s eligibility to receive certain kinds of offerings from the community of disciples. In
addition to the “àddiya Baay” raised for Baay’s descendants at meetings, large religious
meetings, siyaare (Ar.: ziyārah: “visit”), are held in Medina Baay twice per year to raise
money and agricultural produce for the family of Baay Ñas. Money raised at these meet-
ings is divided among all sons and daughters of Baay Ñas according to their seniority.
Similar siyaares are held in other areas for local leaders but are only pitched at these lead-
ers’ direct disciples and not at the whole community of Taalibe Baay. Thus, all disciples
act as disciples of all of Baay Ñas’s descendants but all do not act as disciples of local
leaders, regardless of a local leader’s personal qualifications.
Yet this seniority in the family of disciples does not clearly represent one’s standing as
a religious specialist, and the treatment of Baay Ñas’s family and the families of his close
associates may have more to do with longstanding practices of family continuity, seniority,
and vicarious respect for a departed leader than with conceptions of S.ūfı̄ knowledge and
authority. The disjunctures and slippages between genealogical succession and spiritual
succession have often become visible in cases of religious succession. When the head of a
household dies in this region, it is common to name one of his sons, typically the senior
son, as xalifa (Ar.: khalı̄fah or successor. This succession is typically automatic, as the xalifa
is not necessarily expected to be the most capable leader but is simply the senior member
of the family whose permission is sought on family matters. Out of respect for seniority,
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this member is often given special treatment in many issues and is always spoken of as the
moral authority, although younger family members may in practice take more important
roles depending on their educational, financial, and social situation. Respect for this
person often more clearly indexes respect for the place this person occupies—the place of
the departed leader—than recognition of the person’s inherent abilities or character.
Thus, although people often speak of the xalifa as if he were a ruler (as the Khalı̄fah
in early Islam was officially entitled “Ruler of the Believers” [“O Amı̄r al-MuO minı̄n”]), the
xalifa is very often not the dominant voice in making decisions and daily operations of
the family or corporate group. This has especially been the case under Baay Ñas’s current
xalifa, O Ah.mad Ñas (better known as Sëriñ Daam or Pàppa Daam), who has never had a
strong public presence like the other senior sons of Baay Ñas and who has been stricken
with serious illness almost since he assumed the post in 2001. It is still customary to refer
to him as the representative of the community and to seek his permission in everything,
although he has been almost absent from the public life of Medina Baay for some time.
Situations in which the official “xalifa” is not clearly the spiritual force and public face
of a family are perhaps more rule than exception. Ammat Bittéy took over his family’s
well known QurO ān school after the death of his teacher and uncle (he refers to his teacher
as his father, but he is in fact his biological father’s cousin) while in his early thirties. His
teacher was the head of his extended family, and his teacher’s younger brother is now
called the family xalifa, although Ammat Bittéy is clearly the ritual and spiritual leader of
the family. He leads the yearly QurO ānic recitation (jàng kaamil) in their family’s village
and, due to his outgoing and generous manner, plays a prominent role in the family.
Two sons of Sheex Omar Ture interviewed in this project run the two principal schools
Sheex Omar established. His oldest son, Allaaji Móodu Abiib Ture, runs the school and
zāwiyah in Ndóofaan, and another son, Ahmat Tiijaan Ture, runs the school and zāwiyah
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in Serekunda, Gambia. This is a large school where Sheex Omar taught until his death
and is therefore considered the principal of the two. The latter, although not the oldest,
says that after Sheex Omar’s death in 1996, “the family chose me because of my level
of scholarship and experience.”11 I have heard some residents of Medina Baay describe
Allaaji Móodu Abiib Ture as Sheex Omar’s xalifa, which is not surprising as he is the
oldest son and lives near Kaolack.
One muqaddam-teacher in Kaolack, Aaxibu Bittéy, described his older brother as his
father’s xalifa. When asked if his older brother was a muqaddam, he hesitated before fi-
nally affirming, as his brother does non-religious work and Aaxibu is responsible for all
religious functions. Aaxibu himself is the third son. Thus, sometimes xalifa refers auto-
matically to the oldest male of the family even if another son heads the family’s religious
functions, and at other times it refers to the person who takes over the father’s religious
functions. General perceptions of who is xalifa may therefore be unclear. The term simply
means “successor,” and in practice more than one person may inherit different aspects of
a patriarch’s role.
The term khalı̄fah has been used since the death of Muh.ammad in a more specialized
sense to designate a ruler of an Islamic state, in which case it is used interchangeably
with the expression “Prince of the Believers” (O Amı̄r al-MuO minı̄n). The term is often used
in Senegalese Islam with the same connotations of a ruler with a sovereign rank over a
religious community. It is therefore a political designation for the leader of a community
and not a religious designation for the heir of of spiritual power or secrets. The Sene-
galese media often depict each major religious obedience in Senegal as being headed by
a “Khalife Général,” in contradistinction to the many “Khalifes” in charge local religious
communities. S.ūfı̄ leaders outside Senegal have often designated a non-relative as their
11 Interview with Sheex Tiijaan Ture by Barham Sekk and Aamadu Njaay in Serekunda, August, 2004.
315
spiritual successor, also employing the term khalı̄fah, in which case the connotation is
similarly not seniority but as moral leader. For example, Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy ap-
pointed Sı̄dı̄ c Aliyy al-H

. arāzim as his successor (a fact that is often invoked as a parallel
with Baay Ñas, who appointed a non-relative of the same name).
In practice, even in the large religious obediences, the role of the xalifa may partake
of both the sovereign role of the “Prince of the Believers” of early Islam and that of the
senior son who may be no more than a figurehead. Although the xalifa is automatically
shown certain signs of deference by respect for seniority, he is not guaranteed to play a
more leading role than his siblings or even unrelated leaders. Furthermore, if a leader
designates a non-relative as spiritual successor (which would be called a khalı̄fah), the
leader’s family will, like any other family, almost automatically name its oldest son as
the family xalifa, independently of whether they accept the non-relative as the spiritual
successor. For example, Baabakar Caam quotes Baay Ñas as referring to him as Omar
Faati Jàllo Ñas’s khalı̄fah, in that he was to succeed him as the principal Taalibe Baay
chanter, whereas Omar Faati Jàllo’s oldest son is referred to as his khalı̄fah within his
household.
One might argue that this happened after Baay Ñas’s death (discussed below), as Baay
Ñas had designated Sëriñ Alliw Siise as his khalı̄fah but his sons treated Baay’s oldest son
Allaaji Abdulaay as the family’s xalifa. The Senegalese media and many disciples have
since that time spoken of Allaaji Abdulaay as Baay Ñas’s first xalifa, usually without
even recognizing the possibility of Sëriñ Alliw Siise being his xalifa. For them, a xalifa
is automatically the senior representative of a family, by definition Baay’s oldest son. To
a certain extent, one might understand the disagreement more as a disagreement (often
strategic) over the usage of “xalifa” than as a succession dispute. As both sides of this
issue were widely seen as legitimate, they soon reached a pragmatic entente in which
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both sides continued to play an important role and continued to refer to one or the other
as xalifa.
In short, there are several ways of describing a given leader’s status, and one’s reli-
gious authority is only partially assimilable to one’s social standing within the community
of Taalibe Baay. Many people, by virtue of their birth, occupy a social place defined by
convention rather than by their knowledge or ability, and this place is accompanied by
particular material privileges and public deference. At the same time, honoring such a
person is perceived more as honoring their ancestor or family than as a personal honor.
A disciple seeking a muqaddam from whom to learn the secrets of the order will likely
choose a leader based on a number of other factors, including the leader’s geographical
and social proximity to the disciple and his or her perceived level of knowledge, and I
have not found that this choice depends significantly on the leader’s social standing or
family heritage. That is, on a day-to-day level, the secrets of the order are treated to a large
extent much as the electricity metaphor depicts them, and there is little hierarchy in the
distribution of S.ūfı̄ secrets. Yet social standing depends not only on religious knowledge
but also on other factors, included one’s inherited or ascribed social position.
Thus, many muqaddams with the largest number of direct disciples (that is, people
having received tarbiyyah from them) have no close personal connection with a major
leader, and some are converts to Islam or are otherwise new to the Tijāniyy order. These
leaders perform much of the movement’s day-to-day leadership, religious instruction, and
occult work, and although they do not occupy an automatic place as representatives of a
prominent family, they can develop a high status based on their own level of knowledge
and role in religious activities. Still, these leaders receive àddiya (if at all) only from their
direct disciples and not from the general population of disciples as Baay Ñas’s children
do, and in fact they tend to take on the responsibility of collecting àddiya for Baay Ñas’s
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sons in many circumstances.
Thus, religious authority is a function of a combination of accumulation of knowledge
and other factors that affect one’s standing in the religious community, especially the
directness of one’s relationship to Baay Ñas. It is both egalitarian, in that the same secret
held by any two people is theoretically identical in its power, and hierarchical, in that
one’s influence and treatment rely strongly on one’s social proximity to the center of
religious authority. The hierarchical aspect can be traced back to a significant degree
to practices of inheritance deeply entrenched in the region in both religious and non-
religious contexts. There is a significant tension between the idea of biological inheritance
and the principle of digital transmission of secrets of religious knowledge.
7.4 Contested successorship: Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima and Sëriñ Alliw Siise
The ambiguity surrounding Baay’s succession exemplifies both the routinization and the
reproduction of Baay’s charisma. On one level, succession happened precisely as anyone
might have expected: as far as the state and many disciples were concerned, Baay’s
oldest son quietly and officially succeeded him to become the group’s leader. Yet at the
same time, some argue that Baay’s spiritual successor was his closest companion, Sëriñ
Alliw Siise, whom many quietly continued to treat as the movement’s spiritual leader.
The simultaneous concentration of religious authority in a unipolar hierarchy and the
distribution of charismatic authority across multiple centers and across the movement as
a whole continue to this day. The authority of central leaders depends on the Taalibe
Baay project to make Divine Knowledge available to all, entailing manifestations of the
movement’s original charisma throughout the movement’s membership through mystical
experiences and dreams that connect individual disciples directly with Baay. One of
the main arguments of this dissertation is that the Taalibe Baay movement’s spread has
depended on reproducing the movement’s original charisma across time and space while
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simultaneously maintaining a central leadership that takes a more or less routinized form.
Baay Ñas died in London on July 25, 197512 and was flown back and buried on the
28th at the Medina Baay zāwiyah, in a tomb next to the mosque.
The disagreement surrounding his successorship has been so quiet that one might
easily have the impression that there was no disagreement at all.13 The popular press and
public Taalibe Baay discourses unanimously describe Baay’s oldest son Allaaji Abdulaay
Ibrayima as succeeding his father, as has happened in all the other Senegalese religious
families. Most Senegalese disciples I spoke with agreed. Academic works and muqaddams
are divided: some name Allaaji Abdulaay as his successor while others name Sëriñ Alliw,
yet few mention any disagreement. The fact that two men are regularly named as Baay’s
khalı̄fah is often explained in the paradoxical language of z.āhir and bāt.in. While this
disagreement may appear to be a quiet power struggle between two families, the form it
takes says much more about how the movement is doubly constructed as one of several
national “Senegalese Islamic brotherhoods” and as a network of mystical S.ūfı̄ knowledge
and authority.
All agree that Baay Ñas explicitly designated his right-hand man, Sëriñ Alliw Siise,
through letters, poems, and his will as his successor despite the common practice of
naming the oldest qualified male descendant khalı̄fah. (This practice applies not only to
religious groups but to families and is therefore deeply ingrained.) Many insist that Sëriñ
12 The obituary in Le Soleil (30 July 1975) reports July 25. Ousmane Kane reports July 26 (1989) and July 25
(1996).
13 Some scholarly accounts report dissension after Baay’s death, but these accounts generally reflect con-
flations between Baay’s movement and the larger Ñaseen family and do not mention disagreements over
whether Allaaji Abdulaay or Sëriñ Alliw was to become the Khalı̄fah. For example, Piga reports: “After his
death in 1975, the Congregation of Grace [Piga’s translation of “Jamāc at al-Fayd.ah”] fell into a deep state of
confusion, to the point that two zawiye [sic.] appeared, that of el-Hajj Abdoulaye Niass khalifa and that of el-
Hajj Abdoulaye Niass Ibrahim.” In fact, however, these unaffiliated zāwiyahs resulted from the 1930 split after
the elder Allaaji Abdulaay’s death. Magassouba (1985) also says that Baay Ñas’s death “heavily penalized”
the “Niassène” branch, which then missed its chance to be united under the charismatic leadership of Baay’s
son “Ahmed Khalifa Niass” (actually Xalifa’s son). Like many commentators, Magassouba confuses the two
branches of the family and associates with Baay’s movement someone from a rival group who has never
been a Taalibe Baay.
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Alliw voluntarily gave up the successorship to Baay’s son Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima.14
known to disciples as “Pàppa Aas,”15 Others say this is a fiction and that Sëriñ Alliw
simply remained silent when Allaaji Abdulaay was suddenly proclaimed khalı̄fah. I am
unaware of anyone disputing that after Sëriñ Alliw’s death in 1982 Allaaji Abdulaay bore
the title of khalı̄fah. Yet Sëriñ Alliw Siise’s son Shaykh H

. asan succeeded his father as Imam
of the Medina Baay mosque and is often treated in practice as if he were the community’s
leader. The disagreement over the title of “Khalı̄fah” therefore only concerns the period
between 1975 and 1982, despite practical differences in which leader is treated as the
ultimate authority.
There was apparently no open succession dispute, and both sides would think it dis-
respectful to fight with the other—fighting with Baay’s blood is like fighting with Baay
himself, and fighting with his closest companion is little different. Any disagreement
must remain couched in terms of whose interpretation is z.āhir and whose is bāt.in. Pro-
ponents of each side generally hold that the other side is correct in some sense, although
each side maintains that their own view is correct in a deeper (more bāt.in) sense.
7.4.1 Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima (Pàppa Aas)
The public story, which Senegalese media and most disciples in Saalum accept without
controversy, is that Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima immediately became Baay’s successor on
Baay’s death. An article in Senegal’s national newspaper, Le Soleil, published an article
entitled “El Hadj Abdallah [:] Digne Successeur [Worthy Successor],” which describes Allaaji
14 Thechildren of Taalibe Baay leaders, especially those of Baay Ñas, are often expressed according to an
Arabic patronymic pattern instead of the Wolof matronymic pattern. Thus, Baay’s childhood name was
Ibra Asta but later he was known as Ibrayima Allaaji Abdulaay. The patronymic applies especially often to
Baay’s son Allaaji Abdulaay to differentiate him from his namesake grandfather, who is often called “Maam
(Grandfather) Allaaji Abdulaay.”
15 Aas is a Wolofization of the Arabic name Hājj. The soft j of the Mauritanian pronunciation becomes s in
.
Wolof and the h. is dropped.
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Abdulaay as “the current khalife of Medina Baye.”16 Subsequent newspaper articles and
widely circulated Taalibe Baay publications would designate Allaaji Abdulaay by the
same title. For example, an article in a newsletter published for circulation at the 1995
Medina Baay Gàmmu begins thus:
The first Khalife of Cheikh Al Islam [Baay] is El Hadj Abdoulaye Niass. In the
Khalifat since 1975, the date of his father’s passing, this oldest son continues
with joy the work and the mission of the founder of Médina-Baye El Hadj
Ibrahima Niass. Unanimity has surrounded this figure whose high Islamic
culture and vast erudition are known by all.17
One elder from a village near Kaolack who is a fervent admirer of Allaaji Abdulaay
defended this position. He related the story of how, near the end of Baay Ñas’s life, Baay
trembled and fell while delivering a Friday speech, and Allaaji Abdulaay stood forward
and took over where his father had left off. After the speech and prayer were over, Sëriñ
Alliw approached Allaaji Abdulaay, bowed down (jébbalu)18 and declared: “You are my
leader!” (Yaay sama sëriñ!)
The same elder recounts an oft-told story supporting the same point: after Baay Ñas’s
death, Sëriñ Alliw called Baay Ñas’s family to his room and read them Baay Ñas’s will
and then asked them if they accepted what Baay Ñas had decided. They all said yes.
Sëriñ Alliw said good (baax na) but announced that he deferred to Allaaji Abdulaay to be
16 Mamadou Cissé, Le Soleil, [1975]. (From Aadi Faal’s newspaper clippings. The date and page number
have been removed, so I have not yet determined the precise date.)
17 “Le Khalife El Hadj Abdoulaye Niass ou l’incarnation de l’idéal islamique,” Mohamed El Amin, Le
Régional, Monday, August 7, 1995.
18 Jébbaluis the act of bowing down and declaring submission, especially to a religious leader. It is officially
required of anyone wanting to become the disciple of a Murid shaykh, although it is not required or even
typical among Tijāniyys. For a Tijāniyy to jébbalu is an uncommon ritual display of utter dependence on
someone. Yet it cannot simply be interpreted as a clear index of actual social hierarchy. It is conceivable
that Sëriñ Alliw might jébbalu to Allaaji Abdulaay as a flesh-and-blood extension of Baay Ñas and for Allaaji
Abdulaay to jébbalu to him simultaneously as his father’s closest companion and designated spiritual heir.
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khalı̄fah. I asked why he would do this if he knew what Baay Ñas had ordered, and the
elder answered that Sëriñ Alliw knew that Baay Ñas’s true wish was that Allaaji Abdulaay
be khalı̄fah. Baay had foreseen this process, by which his sons would see the importance
of Sëriñ Alliw and Sëriñ Alliw would show his respect for Baay’s family. Waliyys, he
explained, often say black when they mean red, and one has to dig to understand their
deeper meaning. Thus, as the literal designee, Alliw Siise was the z.āhir candidate, but
as Baay’s true choice (which Alliw Siise implicitly knew), Allaaji Abdulaay was the bāt.in
candidate.
Those who hold the opposite point of view similarly use the paradoxical language of
z.āhir and bāt.in but reverse which point of view is which.
7.4.2 Sëriñ Alliw Siise
Several academic writers have expressed the view that Sëriñ Alliw did in fact succeed
Baay, and many of my informants also referred to him as such. For example, Leonardo
Villalon describes Baay’s “intentional efforts to break the pattern of direct inheritance,”
making “the surprise request that . . . El Hajj Alioune Cissé, should be named his xalifa.”
The succession did take place, but the pattern of inheritance was not broken, as
Baye Niasse’s eldest son continues to play a role as an important marabout,
[and] Alioune Cissé’s son, Hassan, inherited his father’s position after the el-
der Cissé’s death, and now rivals Niasse’s sons in maraboutic status. (1995:141)
It is important to clarify that while Hasan Siise “inherited his father’s position” as Imam
of the Medina Baay mosque after his father’s death in 1982, I have never heard anyone
claim that he inherited the title of khalı̄fah. Nonetheless, Villalon is right to say that Siise’s
status rivals that of Baay’s sons, as he is unquestionably the most high profile Taalibe Baay
leader both within Medina Baay and internationally. Many people treat him as Medina’s
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central authority despite his lacking the title of khalı̄fah. Baay’s designation does not seem
to be a “surprise request,” however, as he had referred to Alliw Siise as his khalı̄fah several
times as early as the 1930s.
Rather than list all the interviewees who casually referred to Alliw Siise as Baay’s
khalı̄fah, I will focus on several more explicit claims.19 Several of Sëriñ Alliw’s descen-
dants insisted that Sëriñ Alliw was unquestionably Baay’s khalı̄fah. In an interview, Sëriñ
Alliw’s son Sheex Siise cited from memory several documents from the 1930s to the 1970s,
including poems, letters, and Baay’s will, in which Baay explicitly called Alliw Siise his
khalı̄fah.20 Another son of Sëriñ Alliw told me that the event in which Sëriñ Alliw pre-
sumably abdicated the khilāfah is fictional, and that the only thing that matters is what
Baay himself said—“the rest is nothing but commentaries.”
Certain public pronouncements also support this view while not openly suggesting
any disagreement. In a speech during a conference dedicated to his father, Imam Hasan
Siise, Alliw Siise’s eldest son and current imam of Medina Baay, indirectly defends his
father’s unique relationship to Baay Ñas:
The white man [tubaab, i.e. colonial authorities] wrote: “whoever wants to
fight Baay must eliminate Sëriñ Alliw Siise first, then Baay, because he is the
one who publicizes Baay’s work to society.” . . . That shows that those two
beings were not two beings but are one being. . . . The Prophet and Seydinaa
Baabakar [Muh.ammad’s first khalı̄fah, O Abū Bakr] have no relation—they were
19 Many interviewees referred to Sëriñ Alliw as Baay’s successor, including Baay’s personal assistant (bëkk-
néeg) of many years, Jibril Sàmb, who described Sëriñ Alliw as Baay’s khalı̄fah and Ahmadu (Daam) Ñas as
Baay’s current khalı̄fah, agreeing with many others that the role had come back into the family of Baay.
20 First, Baay wrote Alliw Siise a letter in 1937 while on a trip to Dakar telling him that God had given
him great things and that he was O imām (leader) of the mosque and of the community and his khalı̄fah after
him (“khalı̄fatı̄ bac dı̄”). He mentioned three later letters in the 1960s and 1970s, one calling Alliw Siise his
khalı̄fah, another calling him the shaykh of Medina Baay and of Baay Ñas’s children, and another calling him
the khalı̄fah of Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy. Baay Ñas’s will reiterates that Alliw Siise is his khalı̄fah and his
children’s shaykh.
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only together in God. Likewise, Sëriñ Alliw and his sëriñ have no relation—
God alone brought them together. That relationship in God is stronger than a
blood relationship.21
This speech likens Alliw Siise’s relationship to Baay Ñas to O Abū Bakr’s relationship
to Muh.ammad, implicitly supporting the case that Alliw Siise could be Baay’s khalı̄fah
through a spiritual relationship despite the lack of blood relationship. Yet his speech
does not explicitly pronounce on who was Baay Ñas’s khalı̄fah.
In his documents for the round-table meeting in Alliw Siise’s honor, the Medina Baay
archivist Haraka Caam refers to Alliw Siise as “Servant of the O Ibrāhı̄miyy H

. ad.arah and
Khalı̄fah of Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy Sharı̄f without dissension and without dispute,”22
for as Baay Ñas was Shaykh at-Tijāniyy’s khalı̄fah and Alliw Siise was Baay’s khalı̄fah,
Alliw Siise was by extension O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy’s khalı̄fah. During an interview with
Haraka in 2001, he said:
When God decided to bring about the Fayd.ah, Sëriñ Alliw Siise was Baay’s
secretary, and he is the one Baay entrusted with all his secrets. When he
went—leaving the world—he made him his khalı̄fah in the mission that he had
undertaken. As God would have it, Sëriñ Alliw Siise, who is the father of
Hasan Siise, played his role well. When he left the world, Allaaji Abdulaay
replaced him in 1982, and he also worked very hard.
A prominent Mauritanian muqaddam of Baay Ñas similarly described Sëriñ Alliw as
Baay’s successor and said that when Sëriñ Alliw Siise died in 1982, Allaaji Abdulaay
took his place. I mentioned that some had told me that Sëriñ Alliw had given up the
21 Speech by Imam Hasan Siise at a conference dedicated to Sëriñ Alliw Siise in Medina Baay, 2006.
22 “bi-lā shiqāq wa-bi-lā nizāc ”
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position, and he emphatically responded that this was not the case: Sëriñ Alliw was
unquestionably Baay’s khalı̄fah, although he delegated some important responsibilities to
Allaaji Abdulaay, such as leading Friday prayer.
In addition to explicit statements, several narratives suggest that certain muqaddams
implicitly treated Alliw Siise as Medina’s moral authority after Baay Ñas’s death. One
is the narrative of the Ñoominka muqaddam Mustafaa Jaañ, told above, in which he tells
of addressing himself to Sëriñ Alliw Siise to obtain permission to continue his deceased
father’s religious work. He says: “After the death of Sëriñ Alliw Siise, I came back to
Medina Baay to see the khalı̄fah of Baay Ñas, Allaji Abdulaay Ñas, and I renewed my
allegiance to him.”23 The leader one chooses to visit for permission for such things is
generally the highest authority possible unless one already has personal connections with
another leader. Although one might feasibly visit any of several major leaders in Medina,
considering Jaañ’s relative lack of personal connections, it seems likely that he considered
Sëriñ Alliw Siise the highest authority. Following common practice, after this leader died
he renewed his allegiance with whomever had succeeded him as the highest authority, in
this case Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas. This is exactly the behavior one would expect assuming
that this muqaddam believed that Alliw Siise was the first khalı̄fah and Allaaji Abdulaay
the second.
Other muqaddams similarly followed this pattern of receiving an O ijāzah from Sëriñ
Alliw Siise between 1975 and 1982 and later renewing their O ijāzah with Allaaji Abdulaay.
A Saalum-Saalum muqaddam in Kër Yoro Xoja in eastern Saalum told me a similar story
of how, after receiving two limited O ijāzahs from local leaders, he stayed with Alliw Siise
for a week for mystical training whereupon he received an unlimited O ijāzah. Much later,
in 1990, Allaaji Abdulaay gave him another unlimited O ijāzah one day as he worked in
23 MBHSRC interview conducted by Aamadu Njaay.
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Allaaji Abdulaay’s fields.
Those who insist that Alliw Siise was Baay’s successor generally admit that Allaaji
Abdulaay is truly the khalı̄fah of Baay’s Ñaseen family, so those who call Allaaji Abdulaay
“khalı̄fah of the Ñaseens” are not strictly wrong. On the surface, then, they do not object to
calling Allaaji Abdulaay Baay’s “successor” if by successor one means the conventional
position of senior man of a family. It appears that Sëriñ Alliw was never interested
in political power and titles, which had no effect on anything he received from Baay
spiritually. For those who hold Sëriñ Alliw to be Baay’s successor, it would seem that
Baay Ñas had two successors—a z.āhir one who succeeded him publicly as his family’s
representative and a bāt.in one who inherited the secret of the Fayd.ah.
7.4.3 Mystical unity of opposites
Many people I spoke with insisted unequivocally that Allaaji Abdulaay or Alliw Siise was
on the deepest level Baay Ñas’s true successor yet believed that in the z.āhir, the other one
had a legitimate claim to the title as well. The disagreement in this perspective is not over
who is the khalı̄fah but over who is the apparent one and who is the mystical one. Both
sides have arguments for why their pick is the bāt.in successor and the other one is the
z.āhir one.
The most diplomatic account I heard was from Allaaji Abdulaay’s personal secretary,
Muh.ammad (Paab Maxmuut) Ñas. When he referred to Allaaji Abdulaay as Baay’s first
xalifa, I asked him how Allaaji Abdulaay ended up being Baay’s xalifa. Like many others,
he answered that although Baay had designated Sëriñ Alliw, Sëriñ Alliw had given the
role to Allaaji Abdulaay out of respect for Baay’s family. The fact that Sëriñ Alliw subse-
quently gave Allaaji Abdulaay his eldest daughter in marriage shows that they remained
on very good terms after that. The “reality,” he said with great gravity, was that “the
two were a single xalifa at once.” Although he used the French word, “reality” in Sufism
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(h.aqı̄qah) is used synonymously for the innermost (bāt.in) nature of things. He described
their unity as a great miracle: they were two men who “acted together as if a single per-
son” and a single xalifa. Allaaji Abdulaay asked for Sëriñ Alliw’s opinion before making
any decisions.
The question of Baay’s succession is one of many instances in which paradoxical language
serves to accommodate multiple, conflicting points of view. Even more importantly, the
contrasting ways in which people defend each point of view suggests larger disjunctures
between competing notions of what it means to be a khalı̄fah. Allaaji Abdulaay’s succes-
sion is often framed as the transmission of a public office recognized by national culture,
whereas Sëriñ Alliw’s succession is framed as the private transmission of a secret and is
indicated as much by subtle religious practices as by private conversation. These two ap-
proaches to authority exemplify the double role of the Fayd.ah as part of a national scene
of quasi-institutionalized “Islamic brotherhoods” and as a diffuse, transnational network
of religious knowledge and authority. Allaaji Abdulaay’s role as khalı̄fah is that of the
head and public representative of a corporate group comparable to other Islamic groups
in Senegal. Sëriñ Alliw never had this national role as representative of the movement
in the public and political sphere. Discourses characterizing Sëriñ Alliw as khalı̄fah re-
semble not so much discourses characterizing heads of other Senegalese Islamic groups
as discourses characterizing Baay as Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy’s khalı̄fah. That is, they
speak of him receiving a spiritual mantle that has nothing to do with the quasi-political
organization of publicly recognized Islamic “brotherhoods.”
The premise of Senegalese Islamic “brotherhoods” in national culture is that they are cor-
porate bodies whose hierarchy can be represented as an organizational chart and whose
succession follows predetermined rules. Although S.ūfı̄ leaders are almost always offi-
327
cially represented by their sons after their death, mystical succession does not necessarily
correspond to rules of biological succession. Many people who became Baay’s disciples
(for example, Emir c Abd Allāh Bayero) said they had been seeking Shaykh at-Tijāniyy’s
khalı̄fah, a question that on the surface they could easily settle by visiting Fās (or at other
times c Ayn Mād.ı̄) and asking for the official Khalı̄fah. But this is not the search for a pub-
lic representative—a role almost always taken by a shaykh’s oldest son—but for someone
who holds a secret and whose identity might not be known to anyone else. Within the
framework of Senegalese national culture, Allaaji Abdulaay was indisputably Baay Ñas’s
successor, as Islamic groups are always associated with a family. In the language of
Senegalese national culture, Allaaji Abdulaay’s role is that of Khalife Général or Grand Ma-
rabout, a role officially recognized by the state. This is not the conception of successorship
claimed for Sëriñ Alliw, whose role was never associated with a “Senegalese brother-
hood” but instead with a spiritual mantle or secret. I do not mean to say that Taalibe
Baay generally recognize Sëriñ Alliw as the spiritual successor and Allaaji Abdulaay as
the institutional one—the matter is not so clear-cut as this—but rather that people frame
claims of successorship in multiple different terms shaped more or less by conceptions of
mystical transmission and contrasting conceptions of institutionalized Islam.
It is significant that Shaykh H

. asan Siise, son of Sëriñ Alliw and Baay’s daughter Faa-
tumata Zaaraa, is the most prominent leader in Medina Baay and that many disciples
implicitly treat him as the movement’s highest authority. As Imam, he is the one disciples
most often pray behind and therefore encounter most routinely, and he also has a strong
presence throughout Senegambia and in many other countries, partly owing to his ed-
ucation in the United Kingdom and United States. Shaykh H

. asan has a large American
following, and followers from around the world gather at his house and school to teach
or study. He has set up an international NGO, the African American Islamic Institute,
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which grew out of the QurO ānic school he founded in in 1982, being incorporated in 1988
and since expanded beyond its role as a school to engage in broader public health and
educational projects. The fact that many people continue to view Shaykh H
. asan as the
highest authority in Medina Baay may suggest an implicit assumption that he has in-
herited the spiritual mantle that Sëriñ Alliw inherited from Baay, although I know of no
attempt to ascribe to him explicitly the title of Khalı̄fah. For example, when the disciples in
the Mauritanian village of Barayna, which is split between Taalibe Baay and non-Taalibe
Baay Tijāniyys, proposed building a second Friday mosque in the village, they appealed
to Sheex Hasan to write a fatwah pronouncing on whether this should be done.
At this point, then, succession has been officially routinized, Baay’s oldest surviving son
automatically being recognized as Khalı̄fah. Yet pragmatic acceptance of titles whose
importance is primarily political does not necessarily reflect more deeply held beliefs
concerning the inheritance of a spiritual mantle. Furthermore, as discussed above, al-
though the title of Khalı̄fah is often equated with a kind of sovereignty over a corporate
group, neither does a khalı̄fah usually have such influence nor do disciples form a cor-
porate group under a clearly defined leadership. The factors that lead to a person being
defined as Khalı̄fah are different from the factors that determine a person’s lived influence
and prestige.
This has been especially apparent since O Ah.mad (Daam) Ñas became Khalı̄fah in 2001. As
opposed to his more public predecessor Allaaji Abdulaay, Sëriñ Daam is a gentle and soft-
spoken man who has never had the strong public presence of Allaaji Abdulaay or some
of his younger siblings. Moreover, his fragile health since his appointment has forced
him to spend most of this time in treatment overseas or in convalescent confinement.
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Younger brothers such as Shaykh Tijāniyy24 and Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n (Baaba Lamin),
and a number of other leaders, have played a far more public role.
The idea that the spiritual khalı̄fah may be someone other than the publicly recognized
khalı̄fah is not uncommon in Sufism, especially in the Tijāniyyah. Since the nineteenth
century, several shaykhs, including Al-H c

. ājj Omar Taal, Abd Allāh wuld al-H
. ājj, and other
O Idawc ali muqaddams, had either claimed to be or admitted to aspiring to be the bringer
of the Fayd.ah, whom many assumed would be the spiritual heir or Khalı̄fah of Shaykh at-
Tijāniyy. Those who became disciples of Baay Ñas thus described him (as he described
himself) as Shaykh at-Tijāniyy’s khalı̄fah, although when I have asked his sons if Baay was
the Shaykh’s khalı̄fah, they have answered yes, but in a bāt.in sense. Thus, he claimed to
have inherited stewardship over the mystical secrets of the .tarı̄qah but did not claim a
political role of leadership over a corporate organization. In fact, I have heard numerous
Taalibe Baay muqaddams refer to a descendant of Shaykh at-Tijāniyy, the head of the
zāwiyah in the Shaykh’s birthplace of c Ayn Mād.ı̄ as the current Khalı̄fah of the Shaykh at-
Tijāniyy. These muqaddams clearly differentiate between inheriting a mystical secret and
becoming the public representative of a family, both of which are kinds of succession or
khilāfah.
The question of Baay’s successorship illustrates how the discourses and practices of z.āhir
and bāt.in serve to negotiate multiple points of view, allowing people to hold one view-
point while pragmatically accepting others. In this case, not everyone accepts the oppos-
ing viewpoint with equal good humor, and some privately express vociferous disagree-
ment with claims that one or the other was Baay’s khalı̄fah. Some disciples of the sons
of Sëriñ Alliw Siise speak resentfully of Allaaji Abdulaay’s assumption of the khilāfah
24 In Wolof he is called Sheex Tiijaan or, more commonly among disciples, Pàppa Sheex, although his
official name Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy O Ibrāhı̄m.
330
as a silent coup. Yet there has never been any open controversy, and both sides choose
to disengage from the question whenever possible, approaching the question as one of
z.āhir and bāt.in whenever pressed. As Chapters 2 through 4 show, accepting alternative
viewpoints is often a pragmatic answer to a situation that one has little hope of changing
and is not necessarily an expression of two deeply held beliefs. Accepting an alternative
point of view as a z.āhir truth often has the effect of acknowledging that truth while si-
multaneously minimizing it, exposing its superficiality when opposing it openly would
be impossible.
7.5 Conclusion: Mystical presence and routinized succession
Religious authority, I have argued, must be understood as arising simultaneously from so-
cial recognition of a person as leader (symbolic capital), personal attributes of leadership
and knowledge that lead disciples to seek out a leader, and the belief in a leader’s mysti-
cal attributes. Religious authority comes to be recognized and practiced due to multiple
kinds of phenomena, including a leader’s popular legitimacy due to leadership abilities
and education, the belief that the leader has inherited a father’s barakah or position, and
the possession of secrets that are not inherited but given ritually. Those holding up a
particular leader often draw on all three of these factors, lauding the leader’s personal
attributes, heritage, and reception of mystical knowledge from other leaders. But certain
claims of authority rely more or less on one or another of these. Some khalı̄fahs are figure-
heads who only occupy the position because of their senior status; others are not seniors
but are given the role due to their reputation as formidable spiritual leaders. Still other
religious specialists are not recognized as khalı̄fahs but nonetheless play a dominant role
in their family and religious community regardless of their title.
The multiple ways in which religious authority can be constituted and transmitted and
the multifaceted nature of authority itself often lead to situations in which more than one
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person can claim to be the ultimate authority without anyone openly objecting (despite
serious private disagreements). This situation recalls Roderick McIntosh’s description of
ancient cities of the Niger River Valley as “heterarchical,” except that multiple hierarchies
in this case describe not several neighboring groups but a single group occupying the
same religious center.
Ultimately, religious authority among Taalibe Baay is understood to be concentrated
in Baay, who acts as an absolute guarantor and source of authority, knowledge, and ba-
rakah (which are in practice inseparable) rather than a relatively more important node
in a network. His successors, especially his senior sons and the sons of Alliw Siise,
have taken over this role of absolute religious authority, as Mustafaa Jaañ’s story implies.
Despite competing claims over who currently bears Baay’s mantle, the basic pattern of
authority this chapter has emphasized is unipolar and hierarchical, centered around Baay
Ñas and his direct successors. Yet even this basic hierarchy is shot with paradox, for
although the official succession (khilāfah) has been thoroughly routinized, multiple prin-
ciples of successorship—notably biological inheritance and the S.ūfı̄ notion of transmission
of secrets—coexist. Even after Allaaji Abdulaay and Sëriñ Alliw, some have maintained
that yet other muqaddams unrelated to Baay inherited his mantle through secret transmis-
sion, although none of these claim to be the apparent (z.āhir) khalı̄fah.25 The uncertainty
over where Baay’s spiritual mantle lies suggests that the Fayd.ah’s charismatic roots persist
alongside the officially routinized khilāfah.
It is important to recall that both biological and non-biological claims of succession
are fundamentally based on the transmission of barakah and the mystical unity of the
one who transmits and the one who receives a secret. Although official transmission
25 Ihave heard claims that the O Idawc ali muqaddam Shaykh wuld al-Khayri is the current head of the
Fayd.ah, while some say that Al-H
. ājj wuld Mishri inherited Baay’s mantle. I have no clear indication, however,
that either of these muqaddams openly makes such a claim in the same sense that Baay openly declared
bringing the Fayd.ah.
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takes a routinized form, this does not mean that understandings of religious authority
have taken a rationalized. As I discuss in the next chapter, Baay’s sons are often said
to be mystically one with their father and to possess the secrets that he possessed, and
disciples justify their obeisance for Baay’s sake and not for his sons’ sake. Alliw Siise’s
supporters likewise say they uphold his successorship out of respect for Baay’s wishes
and because Baay transmitted to Alliw Siise everything he had. Therefore, both Baay’s
and Alliw Siise’s sons are seen as channels through which Baay and his barakah continue
to make themselves present.
Many social scientists have noted the centrality of barakah to conceptions of religious
authority and prestige in North and West Africa. This chapter’s discussion of religious
authority among Taalibe Baay suggests the importance of going beyond understanding
barakah as a general principle of spiritual power (“aura,” “grace” etc.) that exudes from
a saint to contiguous things and people. Examining how it is multiply constituted and
transmitted reveals that its trajectory is often disputed and complicated. Neither is it
sufficient to reduce the cultural and religious notion of barakah to a social construct such
as “symbolic capital.” It is important, rather, to keep in sight the genealogy of any par-
ticular instance of barakah in the Divine and role of barakah as a connection to the Divine
through a “doorway” such as Baay. In Taalibe Baay contexts, the transmission of bara-
kah is generally understood as indissociable from the transmission of various forms of
religious knowledge and authority. Knowledge itself is conceived as from God and as
oriented toward God, and barakah is not something attached to an article of knowledge,
a person, or a thing, but is a constitutive part of these things.
The paradoxical nature of barakah, religious authority, and knowledge will become
more clear in the next chapter, in which we will see that those considered the Baay’s heirs
do not have a monopoly over religious authority, which is rooted in barakah that is more or
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less mystically available to everyone. There is a routinized aspect of religious knowledge,
in that even a founder of a spiritual lineage almost always gains the recognition of existing
authorities through receiving a number of O ijāzahs before claiming something distinct, and
all muqaddams in the movement must be approved by at least one other muqaddam. At
the same time, the source of religious authority and knowledge, Baay, manifests himself
in numerous ways and makes himself available through numerous channels that no one
can control.
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Chapter 8
Community, Divine Knowledge, and

Mystical Presence
8.1 Mystical unity and centrifugal tendencies
The tree of Baay and his disciples. Tens of thousands of people have converged in the
village of Tayba Ñaseen for the yearly Gàmmu Tayba, also known as the Gàmmu Baay,1
which celebrates Baay Ñas’s birth and takes place in his natal village. Nearly every house
in Tayba hosts dozens, sometimes hundreds, of guests. Local daayiras have chartered
buses from all over Senegambia, many bringing along whole sacks of rice, goats, sheep,
and water for their dinner. The main meeting takes place through the night under a vast,
well-lit tent covering the village square (bayaal) between the large new mosque and the
house where Baay was born, although only a small fraction of the pilgrims fit inside the
tent. The tent’s festive atmosphere is enhanced with strings of colored lights, framed
photographs of Baay Ñas, and numerous cardboard signs bearing the names of countries:
“Nigeria,” “South Africa,” “China,” “Australia,” and so on. It is not clear that all countries
are represented, but all are said to contain communities of disciples. As usual, the bulk
of the attendees are Senegambian, but groups representing several other countries attend:
Mauritania, Nigeria, Mali, along with various individual attendees from other countries.
Baay Ñas’s son Maamun, having recently returned from several weeks in Nigeria, where
1 The Gàmmu at Tayba Ñaseen was held on September 24, 2004 and was transcribed by Sheex Baay Caam.
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Joseph Hill Chapter 8. Community, Divine Knowledge, and Mystical Presence
he presided over a huge Gàmmu celebration, gave a speech in which he called for the
unity of disciples around the world:
Then let us praise God . . . and make greater efforts, and be more united.
What Baay wants most from us is for us to come together and be united, for
us to love one another. I said it in Nigeria, and I’ll say it now. I had a rather
heated talk with the Hausas on the first day [of the Gàmmu events], but they
accepted it, God be praised, and said they would abandon it [the behavior
he had criticized]. . . . I told them: your first muqaddams and your khalı̄fahs
who have passed on and your fathers used to set up houses in Medina, but
you have abandoned it. If you think the little you have received from Baay is
enough that you no longer need Medina, I tell you that you are lost. Because
the tree is Baay and it sprouted in Medina—that’s the center of the Fayd.ah. . . .
Then I told them the parable that I will tell you so you can benefit from
it . . . : The tree and its roots are Baay; the leaves are we small disciples; the
large branches are we small muqaddams; the small branches are the khalı̄fahs.
In this example that I give you, I tell you that the leaves, if you pick them
now and set them down within 2 hours, if a fire approaches they will burn. If
you cut off a small branch, within 2 days if a fire approaches it burns. Large
branches, if cut off within 2 months at the longest it burns like tinder. So I say:
whoever strays from the trunk dies.
If your muqaddams would have you believe . . . that you should listen to
them, and that you should seek their permission to visit2 Baay, they’re cheating
you. Because whatever they have, they got it here, and they fear that you will
2 “Siyaare”(ziyārah): to visit, pay one’s respects to. In Sufism, a ziyārah is a ritual visit to a shaykh or a
shaykh’s tomb, often bringing a monetary or other kind of gift and seeking barakah. In the case of Baay, it
usually involves praying over his tomb and visiting his sons.
336
become like them. Whoever forbids you that, leave him there and go to Baay
and take from where he [the muqaddam] has taken. I say this to Senegal’s
muqaddams. There are many people now who go around, followed by 10 or
30 people who chant the dhikr for them, holding their shoes, who believe that
they are Baay. There is only one Baay, and no one will become him. There is
no second. He said it about the Prophet—that there is only one of him—and
he is the Prophet’s successor.
He warned that Baay will “leave behind” those who operate without acknowledging him
or without the authorization of their leader (sëriñ), referring to Baay Ñas’s and Alliw
Siise’s sons in Medina.
Following Sëriñ Maamun’s speech about the unique importance of Baay and the status
of all muqaddams and lay followers as mere disciples, the microphone is passed to a
delegation of 21 Malians who have come from Mopti and who likely have not understood
his Wolof address. The son of a muqaddam in Mopti joyfully chants an Arabic poem by
his late father and then a poem of his own, both dedicated to Baay Ñas, taking a total
of around fifteen minutes. He then passes microphone to a group of chanters from his
Mopti delegation, who begin to sing a poem in Arabic whose refrain, sung every other
line, praises the Malian muqaddam to whom they are attached.
A mere minute and a half into this chant, Sëriñ Maamun takes the microphone and
tells the chanters in Arabic: “Peace be upon you. Shaykh Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n [the
senior son of Baay present at the meeting] says may God bless you, lift you up, give you
health . . . you and all your loved ones.” He continues in Wolof: “The sëriñ [his elder
brother, Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n] says let’s turn it over to Baabakar Caam. The night is
Baay’s night.” He instructs Baabakar Caam to sing Baay’s poems in honor of Muh.ammad
337
but not to forget poems Baabakar Caam’s teacher, Omar Faati Jàllo Ñas, had composed
in Wolof in praise of Baay.
The rest of the meeting’s chants and speeches focus on Baay, Muh.ammad, and the
QurO ān. Within the space of a few minutes of this all-night meeting, I have seen in-
dications of both the centrifugal tendencies of this growing charismatic movement and
leaders’ attempts to reorient all loyalties to Baay. The Malians’ chants have brought to
this Baay-centered meeting the very exaltation of local muqaddams that Maamun has just
decried. Although his response is eminently tactful and discreet (to the point that many
who do not understand Arabic are unaware that anything has gone awry), he has almost
immediately steered the meeting back to the one thing that both unites all Taalibe Baay
and sets them apart from all others: Baay and his continued presence in their community.
The Taalibe Baay movement’s rapid spread through Senegal and abroad has had two
opposing consequences. First, the movement’s initial multi-cultural discipleship has ex-
panded to transnational and global dimensions, and to a certain degree disciples from
contrasting social and cultural backgrounds now share the same spaces and organiza-
tions. Medina Baay was a transnational religious center almost from the beginning, bring-
ing Mauritanian disciples since the 1930s and Nigerians since the 1940s, and since then
it has become increasingly international, as interactions and intermarriages between dis-
ciples of different socio-cultural backgrounds have become more frequent. Baay Ñas’s
multicultural discipleship emerged out of his father’s already multicultural discipleship
throughout Saalum, and the Fayd.ah’s international spread emerged out of networks of
Tijāniyy muqaddams that took shape throughout West Africa during the nineteenth cen-
tury. These pre-existing religious networks and the early adherence of several key Tijāniyy
leaders in West Africa provided a basis from which the Fayd.ah could rapidly expand
338
among non-Tijāniyys and non-Muslims. Medina Baay has become a global center, and
communities of disciples have been established around the world among Africans, Euro-
peans, and Americans.
At the same time, the Fayd.ah’s rapid spread, coupled with the increasing generational
distance between disciples and Baay, contributes to centrifugal tendencies as local muqad-
dams increasingly become the center of local communities’ activities. Over thirty years
after Baay’s death, the generational distance between Baay and rank-and-file disciples
increases, and the more tangible and generationally close local muqaddams often tend to
eclipse Baay and his official representatives as the central nodes around which religious
communities are organized. Individual muqaddams sometimes operate with significant
independence and are attributed with their own charismatic and miraculous qualities,
acting rather like founders of their own spiritual lineages with Baay as a more remote
spiritual ancestor. Even within Senegal, some leaders such as Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Sàll and
Daam Jóob (see below) have set up such self-contained operations that their projects
sometimes appear only marginally connected to Medina Baay. Many Nigerian muqad-
dams have become even more practically independent of Medina Baay, leaving their long
practice of attending Medina Baay’s Gàmmu and organizing their own gàmmus, especially
after air fares between Nigeria and Senegal increased significantly during the 1980s (Kane
1989).
The tendency of this grand genealogy to fragment as the generations multiply and
as the movement spreads geographically and culturally is present in Senegambia but is
particularly strong in other parts of the world, which are not only geographically further
from Medina Baay but where S.ūfı̄ affiliation is not assumed to correspond to a strong
cultural identity and quasi-political group belonging as it is in Senegal. Despite significant
interactions between Taalibe Baay religious elites, it is likely that many disciples attached
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to Baay’s muqaddams outside Senegambia have only a vague notion of any connection
to Baay. With no central bureaucracy, what sometimes appears as a global movement is
perhaps better described as a vast network of loosely connected muqaddams, disciples,
and daayiras who are more or less free to participate in the larger movement or to act
autonomously.
For many leaders such as Sëriñ Maamun, the solution to this generational gap is
to emphasize that, on a mystical level, all are disciples of Baay alone and not of these
local muqaddams. That is, there is only one spiritual generation between Baay and the
disciple, and anyone who tries to come between the disciple and Baay is “cheating” the
disciple. Hence, many Taalibe Baay leaders constantly focus public speeches on Baay as
the source of knowledge to counter the multi-focal tendencies of the Fayd.ah and to foster
an imagination of a single Taalibe Baay community. They present Baay’s metonymic
relationship to the Taalibe Baay community as not only symbolic but literal and mystical,
as he literally animates the religious knowledge and authority that unites all disciples
and that makes a true understanding of the idea of “unity” possible.
This view that individual muqaddams are essentially functionaries for delivering Baay’s
charisma is widespread among disciples (hence the overwhelmingly positive audience re-
action to the speech), although some muqaddams are often accused of paying it lip service.
When I mentioned certain prominent muqaddams’ names in Medina Baay, my interlocu-
tors would almost always tell me there was no point in talking to these people as they
did not know much and did not represent Baay. The muqaddams in question had many
disciples but were criticized because their disciples treated them as “sëriñs” or “shaykhs”
in their own right, a rank that belongs to Baay alone.
Yet to describe muqaddams as undifferentiated functionaries is not to say that their
roles have been cleansed of the charismatic. A muqaddam’s role is precisely to repro-
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duce charisma while acknowledging Baay as its source and refusing to take credit for
it. Emphasizing Baay as the source of knowledge and authority has the dual effect of
asserting a hierarchy capped by those closest to the source (Baay’s descendants and offi-
cials representatives), and of making Baay’s charisma available to everyone by saying that
muqaddams are mere disciples who guide other disciples to what Baay made available.
The previous chapter discussed how transmitting religious knowledge and authority
depends not only on technical knowledge but on an unbroken connection to Baay through
his living representatives. This model of knowledge and authority radiating from a center
tends to enforce hierarchical relations, as those closer to the source are generally assumed
to embody more barakah, knowledge, and authority than others. This hierarchical and
centralized transmission of Divine Knowledge appears at odds with other principles of-
ten articulated in Taalibe Baay religious discourse, for example that the Fayd.ah made
Divine Knowledge equally available to everyone and everything is God and that all dis-
tinctions are therefore illusory. These contrasting principles are commonly invoked, not
separately but often within the same phrase and in a mutually reinforcing way. Taalibe
Baay community is framed in terms of shared knowledge of God and everyone’s equal
connection to the source of that knowledge. At the same time, certain people metonymi-
cally represent this knowledge.
Both tendencies are conveyed simultaneously in one of the most common metaphors
describing the connectedness brought by Baay’s knowledge and authority, that of elec-
tricity, to which Xadi ÑaN’s story above (page 272) alluded: Baay Ñas is a power source
whose disciples are plugged in through the medium of his muqaddams, who are the
power lines. Disciples’ knowledge is nothing without Baay just as a television is noth-
ing without a power source. Yet once plugged in, all appliances have full access to the
current from the power source, no matter how far away from the center. When I accom-
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panied the spokesman of one of Baay Ñas’s sons to a gàmmu in a Saalum-Saalum village,
the spokesman apologized that Baay Ñas’s son could not come in person but said that
because he was authorized to represent Baay’s son, he connected them to Baay’s bless-
ing (barke) like an electric cord extending from Medina Baay. Such images emphasize that
Baay did not simply bequeath Divine Knowledge to his disciples; their Divine Knowledge
depends solely on his sustained mystical presence. Like electricity, this knowledge travels
through lines and can only be transmitted through a sustained and direct connection. In
general, like muqaddams, power lines are indispensable yet interchangeable.
As Chapter 7 discussed, the distribution of religious knowledge through chains of
authority has paradoxically hierarchizing and leveling implications. While Chapter 7
focused on the hierarchical aspects of religious authority and knowledge transmission,
this chapter focuses on how Divine Knowledge and the mystical presence of the source
of that knowledge, Baay Ñas, are invoked as a basis for community and equality. The
wide distribution of the means of achieving mystical experience among disciples has this
effect in two rather distinct ways. The first has to do with the dissolution of boundaries
and distinctions experienced through Divine Knowledge, which Taalibe Baay invoke in
framing themselves as a community of equals and in dealing with cultural differences.
The second has to do with multiple centers of charisma that challenge yet depend on the
centralized, somewhat routinized authority of Baay’s official representatives.
I first describe the activities of daayiras, the organizations in which religious knowl-
edge most concretely affects and is translated into daily practice. Through disciples’
tarbiyyah and subsequent religious education (sayr) through attending daayira meetings
and interacting with a muqaddam, Divine Knowledge comes to have a particular practi-
cal and social content and becomes the basis for social solidarity, identity, and projects.
Discourses on Divine Knowledge emphasize especially the fundamental unity of every-
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one and everything and the sense of profound social unity that is only possible through
experiencing God’s unity. While the formal process of tarbiyyah alone does not account
for a shared transnational or inter-cultural subjectivity or social cohesion, it is the basis
of longer-term processes of self-cultivation resulting in discursive, practical, and aesthetic
repertoires sometimes overshadowing significant cultural divides. However, as Chapter
9 discusses in more detail, although tarbiyyah facilitates transnational connections, it does
not in itself create a unified “global community” of disciples who know God.
In practice, shared religious knowledge does not annul cultural differences, conflicts
of interest, or differences of opinion. As previous chapters have shown, persistent dis-
junctures are often handled quietly through the paradoxical language of z.āhir and bāt.in.
Yet in many cases such compromises cannot prevent open confrontation, which occasions
the need for explicit reintegration. When cultural or other differences lead to a clash
that cannot be handled by allowing multiple points of view to coexist, unity is restored
through invoking the mystical presence of Baay Ñas, which simultaneously implies def-
erence to his living representatives and all disciples’ shared nature and equal access to
this mystical reality. Paradoxically, then, Baay’s mystical presence is the ground of both
deference and independence, hierarchy and equality.
While an unbroken link to Baay’s publicly recognized living representatives is a pre-
condition to accessing Baay’s knowledge and authority, knowledge and authority do not
depend on this link alone. Baay’s mystical presence, knowledge, and authority manifest
themselves through multiple channels, including dreams and visions, indirect and quasi-
independent chains of authority, and personal mystical experiences. Although the move-
ment has a centralized leadership and (at least publicly) routinized succession, as the last
chapter described, it is still significantly charismatic in that it is still largely defined in
terms of ecstatic mystical experiences and that there are multiple, unpredictable poles of
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charismatic experience that keep tendencies toward central hierarchy and routinization
in check. I finish the chapter, then, with examples of how Baay’s mystical presence and
knowledge appear outside the center of religious authority through dreams and other
means.
Taalibe Baay show how techniques of self-cultivation can underlie inter-cultural and
transnational practices and imaginations of community. That is, Taalibe Baay community
depends not solely on shared discourses or representations but on deeply embodied dis-
positions made possible through religious education. This chapter focuses on the role of
mystical education, which the Taalibe Baay movement has made widely available to its
general membership. It is important to remember that the networks and communities
of mystical knowledge that the Taalibe Baay movement has popularized were founded,
among other things, on cosmopolitanisms emerging from more longstanding Tijāniyy
networks of textual education (see Chapter 9). It is equally important to remember that
shared dispositions and discourses acquired through mystical educational activities are in
themselves only one ingredient in Taalibe Baay community. Nonetheless, while it would
be simplistic to adopt Taalibe Baay discourses linking Divine Knowledge and unity as
analytical representations of social cohesion, I argue that these discourses of unity do in-
deed accompany intentional transformations of the self through religious self-discipline
that contribute to new configurations of social cohesion. The wide distribution among
disciples of the tools of cultivating mystical experience result in a community in which
hierarchy, heterarchy (McIntosh 2005), and parity coexist, all vying with and mutually
reinforcing one another.
Although Medina Baay’s central leaders attempt (to an extent successfully) to bring
the Fayd.ah’s authority under a single leadership, the Fayd.ah’s knowledge and authority
has not been entirely routinized, and the charismatic side of knowledge and authority
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persists through Baay’s continued mystical presence among disciples around the world.
Although Baay’s official representatives in Medina Baay try, with varying success, to
bring disciples around the world under a central authority, they have no incentive to un-
dermine the multiple sites of charismatic manifestation, as profound mystical experiences
and occult power continue to drive the movement’s expansion and disciples’ loyalty to
it. These two tendencies—the hierarchy of the spiritual lineage represented in central
authority figures and everyone’s equality before God and their access to Baay’s barakah—
are invoked depending on the circumstances, and when one is invoked so is the other to
varying degrees.
8.2 Daayiras: Communities of divine knowledge
Dhikru ’Llāhi—“mentioning God” in a dhikr meeting. Medina Baay’s night air is awash
with chants from multiple daayiras’ weekly meetings amplified over loudspeakers. The
young members of one such daayira invited me to this week’s meeting, where I am now
headed through the sandy streets. From my shifting vantage point, the chants at times
compete in cacophony and at others blend in heavy polyphony, like waves that crash
against each other but mingle and combine to form a sea. After at least fifteen minutes
of walking, I am now beyond the cemetery and know I am close to my destination. The
sounds of a single meeting begin to drown out the others. I have not been told exactly
which house the meeting is to be held in—each week a different daayira member hosts
the meeting, and this week’s meeting is on the fringe of Medina Baay in an area I seldom
frequent—I have simply been told to walk beyond the cemetery east of the Medina Baay
mosque and then to follow the loudspeaker. The organizers have cranked the volume as
high as possible to announce the meeting’s location to daayira members, most of them
under twenty years old, and to other young people who may not yet have made other
weekend evening plans. The moonless night is dark enough that even had I been given
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precise directions I might not have found my way without the loudspeaker.
The giant, conical loudspeaker faces the street, tied prominently above the com-
pound’s cement lintel. The sound becomes painfully loud as I approach the entrance
but becomes slightly more tolerable as I pass into the courtyard, my ears still ringing.
The courtyard’s expansive center is decked with bright fluorescent lights and colorful
woven plastic mats procured especially for the occasion. Although I arrive over a half
hour after the official 9:30 starting time, I find only two other daayira members, both
of whom are busy organizing and appear to be residents of the house.3 I can now see
that the source of this deafening sound is not a lively meeting in progress but a famous
“sikkarkat” (dhikr chanter) recorded decades ago, his voice carried from a hand-held tape
player perched on a table through a microphone and amplifier to the loudspeaker atop
the lintel. Conversation is almost impossible against these loudspeakers, but I exchange
formal greetings with the women of the house, who are busy filling small plastic bags
with sweetened curdled milk as two boys heat teapots over several gas stoves. I can’t
hear their greetings, but I can read the standard greetings on their lips and I respond
appropriately and sit down on the mat.
Around 10:00, young people begin filtering in, having finished dinner, prepared them-
selves, and found their companions in neighboring houses. A few young women in their
late teens arrive first, one of whom is my neighbor, and they sit on the mat and try to
make conversation with me over the loudspeakers. Soon, two sikkarkats arrive. They are
guests invited specifically to do the chanting, and they will lead several young daayira
men . Another group of six young women arrives, all of them wearing colorful dresses
and covering their heads and shoulders with either white or pastel-colored scarves, not
3 Meetingtimes are often expressed in terms of the time of the prayer after which people are expected to
begin preparations for leaving for the meeting. That is, someone who says that a meeting starts at 9:00 often
means that after the 9:00 prayer, one eats dinner and gets ready, finally arriving at the meeting sometime
between 10:00 and 10:30.
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commonly worn for daily activities but required for religious activities, including meet-
ings, prayers, and wirds. Before there is much of a crowd, the sikkarkats decide that it is
time to start the meeting, knowing that many young people in the neighborhood who can
hear the loudspeaker are only waiting for the recording to be turned off and for the live
sikkaring to begin.
When a critical mass of around ten disciples has gathered, the main chant leader takes
the microphone and launches into a song in Wolof praising Baay Ñas. This song serves to
announce the impending beginning of the meeting, and a few minutes later, after a few
more young people have drifted in, he leads the assembly in chanting the Fātih.ah (the
first sūrah of the QurO ān), keeping on two tones, followed the S.alāt al-Fātih.,4 repeated
thrice in the broad, minor tones devised by Baay Ñas. As tonight’s crowd gradually takes
shape, women and men separate into separate sections, the chant leaders staying at the
center of the men’s section.
The leader, a confident and charismatic performer often invited to lead chants at var-
ious daayiras’ meetings, now launches directly into a longer memorized prayer in Arabic,
while the disciples stretch out their hands as if to catch the blessings brought by the
prayer, repeating “O amı̄n yā Rabbı̄” (“Amen oh Lord”) after each phrase, and when he
finishes, they put their hands to their faces and their hearts as if to wash the blessings
over themselves.
The chant leader begins with the first, drawn-out syllable of the dhikr, in this case the
phrase “Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh” (There is no god but Allāh):5 “Lā.” The circle of five or six
young men around him sway slightly forward with the sound of his voice, whose up-
4 See Chapter 6 for mention of the S.alāt al-Fātih..

5 The term “dhikr,” short for “dhikr Allāh” (mentioning God) can refer to any of the ninety-nine names of
God or other phrases that name God, especially Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh (“There is no God but Allāh”), Subh.āna
Allāh (“May God be glorified”), Al-h.amd li-’Llāh (“Praise be to God”), and so on. Many Muslims encourage
pronouncing these phrases as much as possible, as the QurO ān incites believers to mention God, and some
have become part of everyday speech.
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close richness is distorted through the loudspeaker. By the end of this first word, they
have swayed back again in slow unison.
The leader continues with the second word of the dhikr: “O ilāha,” jumping up a melan-
choly minor third and drawing out the long second syllable. The circle of chant leaders
sways forward slowly a second time, eyes cast downward, joining the leader in chant-
ing, and their swaying motion spreads to some of the young men immediately around
them. Some of the young people who have been greeting each other and talking amongst
themselves stop talking and begin to focus on the dhikr.
The leader finishes the first iteration of the dhikr with a certain insistence in his voice:
“O illā ’Llāh,” again drawing out the final long vowel, ending the phrase with a down-
turning melisma. The other leaders are audible from close range, but the microphone
only broadcasts the leader’s voice and sometimes that of the second leader at his side.
This whole iteration of the dhikr has filled around seven seconds. The circle of chant
leaders repeats the whole dhikr again in the same tempo but falling back to rest on the
tonic by the end.
After the second iteration, the leader extends the microphone to two men outside
the leaders’ circle, and the whole assembly of young people—the men beyond the chant
leaders’ circle (including myself) and the women in the adjoining women’s section—sings
the dhikr with the same melody and pace. The leader’s head hangs limp while the others
chant, his eyes closed as if sleeping through the audience’s response. Near the end of the
audience’s second iteration, he inhales and stirs slightly, and the leaders join the audience
in singing the final “O illā ’Llāh,” transitioning without a breath back to “Lā,” repeating the
dhikr twice with the other leaders in the same weighty melody and pace. The audience
joins them in the second O illā ’Llāh and then repeats the dhikr twice in the same fashion.
As long as the dhikr is repeated in this interlocked fashion, the phrase’s connotation of
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God’s indivisibility and continuity is embodied in the chant.
Like all the slow- and medium-paced Taalibe Baay dhikrs commonly chanted in Sene-
gal, the intonation is loosely based on Baay Ñas’s original “Kóosi” dhikr,6 but this one
is massively slow and somber. I attempt to chant along but consistently jump ahead of
the beat, unable to internalize such a slow tempo. The young people around me seem
to be well enough trained in this dhikr that they can chant the response in good timing,
although not all can sing on pitch.7
After twenty minutes of repeating variations on this melody at the same slow pace, the
mats have filled and the hosts are scrambling behind the scenes to borrow more mats from
neighbors to extend the seating area and to arrange to have enough tea for everyone. But
their scrambling seems nearly invisible to most attendees, engrossed in the chants. Many
sway slightly back and forth, covering an ear with one hand to hear their own pitch while
holding one finger in the air as if emphasizing the message of the dhikr: “There is no God
but Allāh.” While the audience chants the response and the microphone is broadcasting
members of the audience, the leader models more quietly the first few notes of the next
variation. The leaders join the audience again in “O illā ’Llāh” and then introduce the new
variation, which is slightly faster and higher pitched than the first.
A few minutes later, the leader introduces a new variation of the same intermediate
tempo, and then another. Many audience members are still swaying, some shaking their
index fingers as if emphasizing the dhikr’s message. Around a half hour into the chants,
the leaders introduce a faster dhikr, this time in a major key and consisting of the words:
“Allāhu Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh.” This dhikr increases progressively in speed, and after a few
6 Some chant leaders (sikkarkats) told me that Baay had composed all the dhikr melodies currently in use
among disciples, although Baabakar Caam credits Baay with the Kóosi dhikr, saying that disciples in JoosoN
and Mbooween spontaneously composed the melodies named after these villages, both based very closely
on Baay’s Kóosi dhikr.
7 Inthis dhikr, the response is simply the call repeated, whereas in some faster dhikrs the response is
actually a variation on the call or a complementary phrase.
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minutes, call and response are fused, everyone chanting at the same time and without
pause. At this point, some audience members are swaying intensely, their eyes closed,
and apparently oblivious to their surroundings.
After the assembly reaches a plateau, some continue to augment speed and intensity
individually, until they are frantically repeating “Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh” with almost unrec-
ognizable speed. A young man’s voice becomes progressively louder until he is yelling
the dhikr out of sync with the others. A young woman’s repetitions turn into loud shrieks,
and another yong woman bolts into the air and falls convulsively into the men’s section.
The rest of the assembly continues to chant while some of the men hold the young woman
down and pour water into her mouth. She continues to repeat the dhikr in quiet sobs and
gradually calms down. I notice that one young man has begun wandering around aim-
lessly, quietly repeating the dhikr, and two young men walk him out into the street to
calm him.
Such states of mind, called “h.āl” (aal), in which one is said to experience God directly,
are particularly visible during these moments of intense dhikr, although they can take
many different forms and be brought on by many different stimuli. They are most visible
among those currently undergoing or recently having finished tarbiyyah, and it is said
that more seasoned disciples experience the same Divine Knowledge but have the inner
spiritual strength to control its outward effects. Although the visibility of h.āl is a positive
sign that Divine Knowledge is working, an uncontrolled h.āl is a sign of weakness and is
potentially unsafe, so efforts are made to bring a person undergoing such a state back to
a normal frame of mind.
This commotion lasts for no longer than a minute or two, and the chant leader breaks
off chanting, and another leader begins chanting a poem by Baay Ñas in Arabic praising
Muh.ammad. After a few minutes of chanting without any strong rhythm, the poem
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takes on a rhythm and the other chant leaders and many others sing a refrain after each
line. For another hour, the chant leaders take turns interspersing various dhikr melodies,
Arabic poetry by Baay Ñas, and Wolof poetry praising Baay Ñas.
I notice during these poems that the two leaders represent two contrasting chanting
styles and likely come from contrasting social and educational backgrounds. The leader
who opened the meeting, wearing a dignified, white xaftaan (robe) and subtly embroi-
dered cap, sings almost exclusively in Arabic apart from his introductory Wolof song. His
demeanor is calm and scholarly. The other leader, wearing a blue xaftaan with extensive
gold embroidery, a red and white scarf, and a multicolored cap, exhibits a more animated
demeanor. His persona seems less that a religious scholar or S.ūfı̄ leader than that of a
griot: he deftly employs a wide range of dynamics tones and tempos to arouse the feel-
ings of the audience; his songs are all Wolof songs praising Baay Ñas; and he shakes
his index finger vehemently with every item of praise as if arguing in court. Toward the
end of the chanting, he performs a highly rhythmic song praising Baay Ñas,8 alternating
between recounting the events of Baay Ñas’s life and leading the attendees in a short and
catchy chorus. Whereas both he and the other leader have sat up until this point, this
chanter stands during this song to animate his song with bodily motions. The audience
reacts with approval, a few of them approaching him during the song and handing him
small tips as one would if a griot were praising one’s ancestors. Interspersed with the
Wolof lines are a few Arabic lines, during which he turned his gaze and his body lan-
guage to me, perhaps assuming that I was Arab. This chanter is likely of griot origin,
although it is not uncommon for a non-griot religious chanter to borrow the mannerisms
and genres of a griot to praise a religious leader.
Toward the end of the chanting, around half past midnight, Alliw Ñas, a grandson of
8 The song is one of the popular and recent Wolof praise songs by the eastern Saalum-Saalum sikkarkat
Ibrayima Ndaw.
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Baay Ñas in his mid-thirties, arrives. Several daayira leaders immediately arise and escort
him to a wooden bench on which they have placed a pillow. He sits for several minutes
as the assembly concludes nearly two hours of chanting. Although the meeting has only
involved young people to this point, several adult men attend the speech segment, which
lasts over an hour. During the speeches, it becomes apparent that such meetings are
not only weekend social activities for young people but are also momentous community
rituals even for those who do not participate directly in the chanting.
The master of the house speaks first, thanking the young people for blessing their
house with their chants and commending them for their uprightness and interest in re-
ligion. A QurO ānic and Arabic teacher opens his speech with a poetic introduction in
Arabic, following it with a speech in Wolof. His Arabic is highly poetic and literate, al-
though his pronunciation is distinctly Wolofized. He explains that this meeting has not
only been one of this daayira’s weekly meetings but has been coordinated to be part of a
larger day-long event honoring this QurO ān teacher’s deceased predecessor. The teacher
describes the day as one of great blessing (barke), having begun with a group QurO ānic
reading (wàcce kaamil) on the deceased teacher’s behalf. He thanks the youth and prays
for them by the blessing (barke) of the QurO ān and Baay. Following the teacher’s speech, a
muqaddam who teaches French at a public school offers a short speech, giving it in French
for my behalf, assuming that I do not understand Wolof or Arabic. The president of the
daayira, a high school student, follows with a short speech thanking the host family and
the leaders. As usual, the daayira’s muqaddam, a woman, is absent, and all speakers are
men.
As the daayira president moves to hand Baay’s grandson Alliw the microphone, the
sikkarkat whose mannerisms resemble those of a griot takes the microphone from him
and makes an impassioned plea for the young people to give their guest “àddiya Baay,”
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emphasizing that this is a gift for no one other than Baay himself. (Àddiya Baay is almost
always collected at meetings attended by Baay’s descendants.) As most attendees are
penniless high school students, it appears that he is unable to muster more than a couple
thousand francs. He hands Alliw the money and the microphone.
The audience becomes silent as Alliw sits, framing his speech with a moment of
composed silence. Baay has been present tonight, he begins. Although one does not see
Baay, he is present wherever there is knowledge of God. Audience members applaud by
snapping their fingers repeatedly, some yelling “Ñas!” Many people describe themselves
as disciples of this or that muqaddam, he continues, but this is not true. All Taalibe Baay
are literally disciples of Baay Ñas. He once heard a young man describe himself as a
disciple of Baay’s son Maahi, who had given the young man tarbiyyah. Maahi had swiftly
corrected him: Maahi had no disciples, and both he and the young man were disciples
of Baay. The speaker emphasizes this point: Baay is literally their guide and their teacher
and carries out their tarbiyyah, even if the muqaddam appears to do it in the z.āhir.
He continues to describe his uncle Maahi: he likes nothing but God—nothing! One
who sits with Maahi for a short period will end up losing interest in everything but God,
for one who sees that there is nothing but God can love nothing but God. This is what
makes a disciple of Baay, and this is what makes disciples of Baay love one another, for
they love God and realize that everything is God. This dhikr that they have pronounced is
the reason for their unity. He continues with numerous allusions to QurO ānic verses and
the sayings of Baay and other leaders, and members of the audience snap their fingers
and cry out appreciatively, although I am unequipped to grasp most of his allusions. The
meeting ends a little past two in the morning, and I walk through the silent, black night
with several daayira members who live near my house. I can still hear one or two distant
meetings in progress, but most of the meetings I heard on my way to this one have long
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finished.
The term “daayira” (from Arabic dāO irah: circle) can refer to any association of lay dis-
ciples, usually sharing the same maximal leader (such as Baay Ñas, Allaji Maalig Si, or
Ahmadu Bàmba), and often sharing a local muqaddam. Baay Ñas wrote a letter in 1957
instructing all his disciples to form daayiras and designating the totality of these daayiras
as “O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n” (“Supporters of the Faith”). However, many disciples are not officially
part of any given daayira, and no organizational structure effectively includes all Taalibe
Baay or all Taalibe Baay daayiras. Participation in a particular daayira is in most cases
a personal decision depending on geographical location, friends, and association with a
muqaddam. Membership in a daayira is not inherited or automatic, and one person may
participate in several daayiras, for example, one associated with one’s neighborhood, an-
other associated with one’s initiating muqaddam, and another associated with one’s school
or workplace.
Some daayiras comprise primarily disciples initiated by a particular muqaddam, while
in other cases disciples living in the same neighborhood choose a muqaddam who may
not have initiated any of them. For example, a daayira in Dakar reported that they had
been so impressed by a speech Abdu Wilaan of Kafrin had given while visiting Dakar
that they elected to make him their muqaddam. The daayira of the Valdiodio Ndiaye High
School in Kaolack has enlisted several muqaddams as spiritual guides, including Baay’s
son Munhamina, a son of Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima, and a son of one of Baay’s Maurita-
nian muqaddams. Their role is to speak at meetings and give the students advice, but most
students receive tarbiyyah elsewhere, and many continue to participate in daayiras where
they received tarbiyyah. In most cases, even where a daayira comprises disciples initiated
by a single muqaddam, the muqaddam leaves day-to-day administration to lay leaders.
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Although the term “daayira” is derived from Arabic, most daayiras’ official Arabic
names refer to them not as a dāO irah but as a “jamc iyyah” (community, organization) or,
less commonly, as a “maslak” (path)9 or some other Arabic term. Our surveys of daayiras
found that most daayiras shared a small number of names, such as Jamc iyyat al-muta-
massikı̄na bi-h.abli ’Llāh (Community of those who Hold to God’s Cord), Jamc iyyat O Ans.ār
ad-Dı̄n (Community of Defenders of the Faith, the name by which Baay Ñas designated
his whole community), and Jamc iyyat al-mutah.ābbı̄na fı̄ ’Llāh (Community of those who
Love One Another in God). Although few The word “daayira” is still used in common
parlance to refer to any kind of association of disciples, whether a group of ten teenagers
in a neighborhood or a group of thousands of disciples of a muqaddam spread over several
continents.
The most common usage of “daayira” among Taalibe Baay refers to a local associa-
tion of disciples who organize regular religious meetings. Some of these associations
also organize other projects and activities in areas such as economic development, educa-
tion, and health. The various S.ūfı̄ obediences in Senegal use the term daayira to describe
local religious associations, and the organizational genre is so common that even non-
S.ūfı̄ groups often organize themselves in the same way (Villalon 1995). Daayiras are reli-
giously oriented, although they have a lay leadership and take on a modern institutional
form, with officers designated by their French titles (président, vice-président, présidente de
la commission féminine, secrétaire, trésorier, etc.). Larger organizations consisting of multiple
daayiras are themselves often called daayiras, although they tend to refer to themselves as
“federations” (rābit.ah).
9 This designation seems to be particular to the organization of the late Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Sàll in Gé-
jawaay (discussed below) to differentiate local communities from the umbrella organization, itself called a
“jamc iyyah.”
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8.2.1 Youth daayiras
When I arrived in Medina Baay, I had attended functions of several daayiras in Dakar
and in Jolof composed primarily of adults. In Jolof I found that many people became
interested in organizing religious gatherings after they married and settled down. I was
therefore surprised that nearly all the Taalibe Baay daayiras I encountered in Medina
Baay were composed almost entirely of young people under thirty. These young peo-
ple organized and attended nearly all religious activities, especially the smaller, weekly
gatherings. Even larger religious conferences featuring well known senior sikkarkats and
speakers were often a youth daayira’s production. There are many kinds of Taalibe Baay
daayira, some of which have an exclusively adult membership and some of which have
a mixed membership. Yet nearly all daayiras I encountered in Medina Baay and most in
Dakar are organizations for young disciples who have recently undergone tarbiyyah. As
disciples marry and settle into family and careers, most gradually drop out of daayira
activities or seek a daayira specifically for adults.
Many young people from Taalibe Baay families receive tarbiyyah during their late teens
and thereupon join a daayira composed mostly of other young people who have recently
undergone tarbiyyah with the same muqaddam (see Chapter 6). Even daayiras in Dakar
composed primarily of new adherents to the Taalibe Baay movement are primarily com-
posed of young people, as most new adherents join during their youth, and young disci-
ples are most likely to continue to participate in the life of the daayira. Most muqaddams
I interviewed considered themselves to be primarily educators whose job was to help
young people stay on the straight path. Female muqaddams said they were particularly
suited to this task of education and nurturing.
Although many Islamic groups in Senegal have daayiras, this particular function of
acting as a youth community for newly initiated disciples seems to be particular to Taalibe
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Baay. Daayiras thus become an important part of young Taalibe Baay’s social life, and
many Taalibe Baay meet with their daayira several times a week for various activities and
even spend time at the muqaddam’s house or another daayira meeting place outside of
meeting times to engage in other activities. Many muqaddams’ houses become second
homes for young disciples.
For example, Sheex Jóob (introduced in Chapter 6) is a muqaddam in Medina Baay well
known as a youth leader, and one can nearly always find several of his young disciples
in his house. Although one of Medina Baay’s most well known muqaddams, Jóob lives
in relative poverty, his disciples being mostly penniless teens, and he gives most of what
they give him to the son of Baay Ñas who oversees him. His disciples take turns hosting
the daayira’s weekly dhikr meeting every Thursday evening from around 6:00 to 9:00.
Many daayiras hold their main weekly meetings on Thursday night (considered part of
Friday, the Islamic holy day), while others meet on Saturday or Sunday night in line with
the weekend of public French schools. These meetings usually begin (after the Fātih.ah
and S.alāt al-Fātih.) with a short speech, continue with dhikrs led by young daayira leaders,
and conclude with a speech by Sheex Jóob, who often comes midway through the dhikr
session.
Sheex Jóob’s daayira meets again on Friday afternoon after the mosque prayer for a
wàcce kaamil, a group QurO ānic reading in which each participant is given a segment of
the QurO ān, which he or she then reads simultaneously along with other participants who
read other segments. The goal is to read the QurO ān as many times as possible as a group
within a certain space of time, as reading the QurO ān in its entirety is associated with
great barke. After the Friday late afternoon prayer, members of the daayira walk together
to the mosque to participate in the h.ad.rat Jumuc āO , the Friday litany that is part of the
greater Tijāniyy wird. Daayiras that are not close to a Taalibe Baay zāwiyah with a mosque
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often hold the h.ad.rat Jumuc ah at the muqaddam’s house, which serves as the daayira’s
zāwiyah.
Saturday night around 10:00, the daayira members reconvene at Jóob’s house for a
short dhikr meeting followed by dog, short prayers pronounced individually as a group.
During the dog, Jóob or one of the senior daayira members calls out a phrase that the
members are to repeat a certain number of times. They are to signal having finished
repeating the phrase by pronouncing “Allāhu O akbar ” (God is Greatest). The person in
charge calculates the number of phrases to be repeated based on numerological rules,
dividing the total number, which itself has an alphabetic value of a holy word, by the
number of people present. Following the dog, the leader may give a short speech or bring
up matters of organization that need to be discussed.
Outside these official meeting times, disciples can often be found at Sheex Jóob’s
house for various purposes. Nearly every day at least one or two initiates are in the midst
of tarbiyyah or receiving the wird. Others sit in his courtyard to review the day’s lessons
from French school while they sit and drink tea with others, who come to socialize when
they have free time. This time of informal gathering is often a time for someone to try
out leading new dhikrs and to observe the leader giving wird or tarbiyyah.
Once each year, the daayira organizes a large all-night “conference” (conférence, muh.ā-
d.arah) to which they invite a well known Taalibe Baay speaker to give the main speech
on a given historical or religious topic. The conference features shorter speeches by other
scholar-leaders and chants of dhikr and poetry. The intended audience of this yearly con-
ference is not merely daayira members themselves but Medina Baay’s general population,
for whom the daayira organizes the conference. Members contribute funds and cook a
special dinner for many of the participants. Throughout the year, other daayiras organize
similar conferences in Medina Baay and neighboring villages, which members of Sheex
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Jóob’s daayira often attend as well. They also organize an annual meeting on the anniver-
sary of the daayira’s founding. It, too, is an all-night meeting of dhikr and speeches.
In addition to or as an alternative to conferences, many daayiras or groups of daayiras,
especially those associated with a particular village or neighborhood, organize an annual
gàmmu (mawlid). This meeting is held any time in the year other than the time of the
official Gàmmu, held on the 12th night of the month of Rabı̄c al-O Awwal, when Taalibe
Baay from around Senegambia and other parts of the world converge in Medina Baay.
Such events are held with the authorization of the highest authority possible, usually
Baay Ñas’s officially recognized khalı̄fah, and a prominent public speaker, usually a son
of Baay or a muqaddam closely associated with him (for example, Sëriñ Daara Usmaan
Njaay or Baabakar Caam), is invited to give the main gàmmu narrative. Like annual
conferences, these gàmmus are not held primarily for an audience of daayira members but
are occasions for Taalibe Baay from around the region to converge for a large community
event. When a gàmmu is happening in a Saalum village, vans and shared taxis are often
chartered either in Medina Baay or in downtown Kaolack to take young people to these
all-night events.
Thus, although most daayiras’ weekly activities serve primarily the young people who
make up their membership, the general population feels their effects, both through di-
rectly attending their occasional large meetings and through hearing their chants each
weekend. It is becoming increasingly common to amplify chants using a loudspeaker,
which not only lends the meeting a more dramatic effect for those who attend but broad-
casts the religious chants throughout Medina Baay. Local gàmmus sometimes attract hun-
dreds or thousands of disciples, most of them young people who come in buses chartered
by their daayiras.
Sheex Jóob’s daayira also has relationships with daayiras in other parts of Senegal.
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When members of a daayira in Jolof come to attend the yearly Medina Baay Gàmmu, Sheex
Jóob’s daayira hosts them, contributing money to buy food and offering them places to
stay, and the female members cook a meal for their guests.
In addition to chant meetings and larger conferences and gàmmus, many daayiras are
involved in various economic and educational activities. One small daayira of young
cobblers working in the Tilléen market in Dakar has established a credit system whereby
members contribute a small sum of money to lend to members in need to buy materials
for their work. Others organize “tontines,” whereby each member contributes a fixed sum
each month and one member is drawn by chance to give all contributions. This system
is based on the fact that saving enough money to invest in something remunerative is
very difficult and that one could do more by contributing a little at a time and receiving
a large sum at once. Whether a daayira in involved in such organized economic projects,
most daayiras informally raise money to buy medicine or other necessities for members in
need. On several occasions during daayira meetings in Medina Baay, leaders announced
that a member or a member’s relative was ill and asked members to contribute money to
buy medicine.
Youth daayiras in urban areas serve primarily to socialize new initiates following their
tarbiyyah and to allow them to continue their longer-term spiritual education, or sayr. Ini-
tiating new disciples often involves delegating certain responsibilities to senior members,
who may be given limited O ijāzahs and certain responsibilities in training their juniors.
Xadi ÑaN, as mentioned in Chapter 6, has developed a system whereby she keeps track
of the progress of each new initiate, delegating the responsibility of watching over new
initiates during their vulnerable first stages to senior disciples, themselves quite young.
She has given two of these disciples limited O ijāzahs allowing them to give wird but not
tarbiyyah. Sheex Jóob has given similar limited authority to two of his disciples, who give
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the wird when he is unavailable. I asked one of Sheex Jóob’s senior disciples, in his last
year of high school, if he wished to be a muqaddam himself, and he answered with some
embarrassment (many hesitate to comment on such wishes) that all the senior members
of that daayira would like to be muqaddams, but it is in God’s hands and no one asks for
it. Sheex Jóob himself seems not to see his position as ideal and implores me to help him
find work in the United States, saying his work in Senegal is important but that he barely
survives.
This particular kind of youth daayira composed of a particular muqaddam’s recent
initiates seems only to have become prominent since the late 1990s. Many muqaddams
report having given tarbiyyah for many years before their disciples founded a daayira in
the late 1990s or later. Disciples are usually credited with having requested permission
to form the daayira, usually seeking authorization from the son of Baay or other leader
in Medina Baay. Now, most active muqaddams I met, especially in Kaolack and Dakar,
oversee at least one daayira that meets in their house, and many oversaw multiple daayiras
throughout Senegal. Daayiras began as an urban phenomenon through which disciples in
a particular neighborhood organized their activities and have since spread to rural areas.
As the Taalibe Baay movement has grown in urban areas such as Dakar and Kaolack,
muqaddams’ work has become increasingly focused on initiating and subsequently guid-
ing large numbers of young disciples, and teaching texts and other religious tasks have
fallen to other specialists. Youth daayiras have emerged as a natural milieu in which large
numbers of young people interested in religion can learn about Islam, meet like-minded
youth, and organize various religious and secular activities.
Most daayiras include roughly equal numbers of men and women, and men and
women can occupy many leadership positions. In every case I was aware of, the presi-
dent was a male and an active female member was appointed either as vice-president or
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“president of the female commission” (présidente de la commission féminine). During the
organizational meeting of one youth daayira I attended, there was some discussion about
whether a woman, perceived by many to be the most active member, should be appointed
president. The muqaddam of this daayira is a woman but does not attend daayira meetings
or make any other public appearances (a role almost always reserved for men). As usual,
few women expressed an opinion and a consensus was reached based almost solely on
men’s arguments that it would make most sense to have a male president and a female
vice-president, representing both men and women in the leadership but reserving the
more public role for a man. I found that women rarely spoke up in daayira meetings in
Kaolack and other areas outside Dakar but that in Dakar, especially in the larger feder-
ations such as the O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n Federation and the Federation of Taalibe Baay Students
and Graduates, women were often outspoken and active in influencing decisions.
While a daayira may engage in numerous non-religious activities, its central activities
almost always remain the weekly chant sessions and other religious activities such as the
h.ad.rat al-jumuc āO on Friday and annual conferences. While tarbiyyah is a somewhat soli-
tary experience that requires leaving behind all social interaction to seek a deep, personal
experience of God, daayiras are where initiates continue to hone and increase their Di-
vine Knowledge through interaction with others. A new tarbiyyah initiate has undergone
a profound experiential transformation, yet he or she typically has little vocabulary to
speak of this transformation and has not developed mechanisms for translating it into
social action. Through a mixture of chants and speeches, disciples not only continue to
develop their mystical experiences but learn language through which they can interpret
this experience. Speeches in daayira meetings emphasize both the z.āhir and bāt.in impli-
cations of having gone through tarbiyyah. On the z.āhir side, mystical knowledge of God
is worthless if one does not adhere to the five pillars of Islam and seek to follow the
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example of the Prophet. On the bāt.in side, as Baay Ñas’s grandson Alliw emphasized in
the speech reported above, through tarbiyyah all disciples became mystically connected to
Baay, to God, and to each other, and the experience of losing the self in God is to translate
into social harmony and unity.
Seasoned daayira members react to such speeches appreciatively by snapping their fin-
gers and crying out their approval. Religious speech about Divine Knowledge is a speech
genre with its own aesthetic, and disciples who have long attended daayira meetings and
larger conferences are well equipped to evaluate a leader’s performance in talking about
Divine Knowledge. An ability to talk about secrets in such a way that one convinces
initiates of one’s knowledge of these secrets while refraining from revealing them to the
uninitiated is a highly appreciated art form. An ability to speak in paradoxes, such as the
fact that Baay is both present and absent, that one receives education through a muqaddam
but not through that muqaddam, and that nothing can be with God and yet everything is
God, is highly appreciated.
This aesthetic involves a recognition of the speaker’s words as expressing some deep
knowledge that only Taalibe Baay such as those present can understand and appreciate. In
Medina Baay, walking to and from daayira meetings in which one hears similar chants and
speeches being broadcast instills a recognition that other Taalibe Baay are experiencing
the same kind of knowledge. Such meetings are thus important not only in fostering a
sense of community among those present but in instilling a sense of sameness with people
not present. One of the chants interspersed with the dhikr at such meetings declares “Baay
is international, Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh,”10 evoking an image of disciples around the world
engaging in similar meetings. Taalibe Baay imaginations of community depend both on
the embodiment of religious experiences through mystical education and on discourses
10 “Baay Mooy international, Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh.”
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and observations leading a disciple to imagine others around the world as sharing a
similar experience through a similar connection to Baay.
Many disciples drop out of daayira activities as they mature, still attending larger
meetings but leaving the organization and attendance of regular meetings to young peo-
ple. This is particularly the case in daayiras that serve primarily as a community for new
tarbiyyah initiates. Others join adult daayiras with their peers. Ajaa Jaara Njaay, a female
muqaddam in Dakar, is the spiritual guide of two separate daayiras, one for young people
she has recently initiated and one for adults, some of whom she initiated and others who
came into the group through acquaintances. In this case, the daayiras fulfill quite different
functions, one offering a place for new and young initiates of a particular muqaddam to
become socialized into the life of a taalibe and the other for older disciples initiated by
various muqaddams to form a community of mutual help and sociality.
8.2.2 Federations and larger religious associations
Daayiras are organized into larger entities usually termed “federations” (rābit.ah). Their
activities are similar to smaller daayiras’ activities but are usually on a much larger scale
and are more periodic. Some federations have multiple economic, medical, and educa-
tional projects in which rank-and-file disciples participate routinely, while others come
into play only for large events like a large gàmmu or conference. At federation-level meet-
ings, one hears much the same kinds of chants and speeches that one hears at weekly
daayira meetings, except that chants and speeches are performed by well known leaders
to a much larger audience.
Federations’ activities are remain largely educational and ritual, and further projects
are framed as an implementation of religious principles. In many cases, federations play
a minimal role in the lives of rank-and-file disciples, yet federations that successfully
engage in non-religious activities are those most active in educational activities as well.
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It is through organizing large events in which religious disciples hone their religious
knowledge and experience and orient it toward the larger Taalibe Baay community that
disciples come to perceive themselves as having a stake in these larger projects. Thus,
while many daayira and federation activities are oriented toward non-religious projects,
the kind of solidarity and personal investment needed to carry out these projects depends
significantly on religious experiences cultivated through tarbiyyah and participation in
regular daayira activities.
The term daayira is often used loosely to refer to a religious association of nearly any
size or type, including organizations of thousands of members in multiple places. More
often, these larger organizations are called “Federations,” which may comprise either
a number of closely integrated local chapters associated with a single muqaddam or a
loose collection of independent daayiras with only occasional interaction. Some larger
organizations are involved in sizeable educational, economic, and other projects.
The organization affiliated with the late Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Sàll (d. 2006) can be de-
scribed as a federation of daayiras, although the organization’s leadership prefers “com-
munity” (jamc iyyah) to “federation” and “path” (maslak) to daayira. This federation,
Jamc iyyat as.-S.idq wa-’s.-S.ādiqı̄n (Community of Uprightness and the Upright), organizes
not only large religious events such as a yearly gàmmu and several large conferences
but also large-scale economic, educational, publishing, and medical projects. Their head-
quarters, Sàll’s compound in the Dakar suburb of Géjawaay, includes a health clinic, an
Arabic and QurO ānic school, and a Friday mosque. Sàll has dubbed this zāwiyah “Madı̄nat
al-Hudā” (The City of Divine Guidance).
Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Sàll’s father was a Saalum-Saalum Murid trader of Fuutanke roots
and his mother a daughter of a Saalum-Saalum Murid muqaddam. He received an O ijāzah
from Baay’s companion Cerno Hasan Dem and then moved to Dakar in the 1980s. His
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community of disciples remained relatively small until the late 1990s, when he became
the Taalibe Baay leader with by far the most direct disciples in the Dakar area. He claims
that Allaaji Abdulaay Ibrayima Ñas appointed him as the Fayd.ah’s representative in the
Dakar region,11 a claim that Medina Baay’s leaders deny. He has had enough influence
that many nonetheless take him at his word, although many in Medina Baay are uneasy
about his followers’ momentum and independence. Since his untimely death due to
illness in 2006, it is unclear to what extent his community will maintain this momentum.
His organization is known as one of the most affluent and educated Taalibe Baay or-
ganizations, being composed largely of university students, teachers, and professionals.
It is in a sense a highly organized federation of daayiras, which in his organization are
termed “maslak” (path). What differentiates his organization from most other federations,
however, is its extensive projects and sub-organizations at the top level. Sàll’s main focus
was education, but he and his disciples have also organized many medical and economic
projects. His followers publish a magazine and have published several books by their
leader. He gave public lessons to non-specialist disciples each Sunday at his compound
on various Islamic texts. These lessons were recorded and circulated among disciples.
When I visited him in 2004, he was teaching Jawāhir al-Mac ānı̄, the foundational text of
the Tijāniyyah, and books of h.adı̄th on alternate weeks. His compound also includes a
QurO ānic school and an Arabic school run by disciples. Both are held in a structure ad-
joining his house that was dedicated in January, 2004 as a Friday mosque. His house,
which includes several apartments on multiple floors organized around a central court-
yard, is a major headquarters for daayira activities. The courtyard functions as a mosque
for daily prayers, whereas the larger mosque next door is only used for Friday prayer and
serves as an Arabic and QurO ānic school during the rest of the week.
11 In an interview with him, he .
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In addition to these educational and religious activities, he and his followers have
had a hand in numerous economic and medical projects both in Dakar and throughout
Senegal. Across the street from his house, his disciples built a clinic in 2005 where pro-
fessionals (some disciples and some not) volunteer to offer healthcare at a significantly
reduced cost. At the “Women’s Social Center,” founded in 2005 out of earlier activities,
women teach each other income-generating activities such as fabric dyeing, catering, and
marketing. The women in the organization also coordinate cooking the food for the orga-
nization’s large religious events. There is also a “cultural store” (boutique culturelle) in the
same building as the health center, which sells books, photos, rosary beads, perfumes,
and audio and video cassettes. The store not only generates income for the organization
but distributes Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Sàll’s teachings through several media.12 Normally, the
shop contains all the cassettes of Ibrayima Sàll’s conference speeches and public lessons
on Islamic texts.
Sàll’s organization is one of a handful of Taalibe Baay organizations to include both
youth and adults in its leadership and active membership. He is also one of the few lead-
ers to invite women to speak at large meetings, although women’s speeches are usually
limited to topics such as the role of women in Islam, and some criticize him for witholding
certain mystical secrets from them.13
Sàll’s organization is one example of the many federations of Taalibe Baay daayiras.
Each federation has a son of Baay Ñas or another major Taalibe Baay leader as its spiritual
authority and also has a lay bureaucracy. In the Dakar area, all daayiras (including Shaykh
12 Members of the organization explained in November, 2005 that much of the merchandise and equipment,
including a computer they had used to copy compact discs, had been destroyed by floods. They were
currently in the process of rebuilding the shop, which had been closed.
13 There have been several forum discussions on the Internet in which Sàll has become the target of criticism
for saying that women should not have equal access to mystical secrets. Woman muqaddams told me that his
own mentor, Cerno Hasan Dem, appointed female muqaddams but considered certain of the more esoteric
secrets to be restricted to men. Other muqaddams, however, were willing to give such secrets.
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O Ibrāhı̄m Sàll’s organization) are officially expected to participate in the O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n
Federation. It bears the name of the organization that Baay Ñas instructed all his disciples
to form. Some have told me that the O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n Federation includes all Taalibe Baay
everywhere in the world as Baay Ñas prescribed, but the one based in Dakar only includes
daayiras in the Dakar area. All these daayiras collectively are under the guidance of Baay’s
son Baaba Lamin, who is Baay Ñas’s official khalı̄fah over the Dakar region. Yet many of
these daayiras are also associated with another leader, even if the O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n Federation
itself reports to Baaba Lamin.14
For the most part, the Federation’s activities are rather distant to most members of
local daayiras. The O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n Federation’s main role is to organize yearly activities for
the whole Taalibe Baay community, such as the yearly Gàmmu Baay near Baay’s house in
the neighborhood of Jëppël. It also raises money for various causes that affect Taalibe Baay
as a whole. While I was in Dakar in 2005, for example, the Federation collected money
from local daayiras to buy sugar, a symbolic gift during Ramad.ān15 to send to each of
Baay Ñas’s children. They also collected money to buy ceiling fans for the Medina Baay
mosque and were planning to turn Baay’s humble and run-down Jëppël house into a
religious center.
In addition to regional federations such as the Dakar-based O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n Federa-
tion, there are more geographically dispersed federations of daayiras associated with a
muqaddam. A daayira may form part of both a regional federation and a more geograph-
ically dispersed federation attached to the muqaddam. Daayiras throughout Senegambia
and abroad associated with Baay’s son Haadi form a federation. O Ibrāhı̄m Mah.mūd Ñas
14 According to Baay Ñas’s prescription, disciples in many areas are officially organized under some kind
of larger umbrella group called O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n, yet the Federation in Dakar is the only one with a strong and
stable central organization and that actively raises money and organizes larger events.
15 Agift often given during Ramad.ān is “Ramad.ān sugar” (sukkaru Koor), for which money sometimes
stands in.
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(known as Baay Tuuti), a nephew of Baay Ñas, oversees a federation counting member
daayiras in Kaolack, Dakar, Italy, France, and Belgium. There are many such federations,
yet for the most part rank-and-file daayira members do not play a direct role in them and
they do not play a significant role in daayiras’ daily activities.
Only a few large Taalibe Baay activities are organized above or outside the confines
of a particular daayira or federation. These include the annual Gàmmu and two Ziyārahs
of Medina Baay. The Medina Baay Gàmmu is a global event that daayiras take part in
organizing but that involves disciples from all over and is directly overseen by Medina
Baay’s leadership and receives material support from the state.
8.3 Divine Knowledge and cultural difference
Disciples of Baay Ñas often describe tarbiyyah as making possible a global community of
people who know God. Divine Knowledge, they say, unlocks the secret of the unity of all
things in God, allowing people to experience a level of unity not possible in any other way.
Whether or not one accepts as objectively true Taalibe Baay representations of the nature
of their experience, it is clear that disciples from contrasting cultures often recognize a
profound commonality that induces them to interact in cases where they probably would
not interact otherwise (see Chapter 9 for transnational examples).
Yet in practice, Taalibe Baay do not inhabit a single cultural milieu and are cross-
cut by multiple cultural and social differences. As socio-cultural integration is expressed
in terms of shared religious knowledge and mystical connection, so are socio-cultural
disjunctures often expressed as differentials in religious commitment. Persistent social
and cultural disjunctures are often both understood and handled through the language
of z.āhir and bāt.in. Although tarbiyyah is meant to bring about spontaneous unity, con-
stant work is required to maintain good relationships between disciples of contrasting
cultural backgrounds and differing interests. Although Taalibe Baay of otherwise con-
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trasting backgrounds—for example, Senegalese and Mauritanians—often tend to show
much more mutual respect and understanding than is typical of their non-Taalibe Baay
compatriots, increased interactions between people of different cultures increase oppor-
tunities for miscommunications and misunderstandings, and where mystical unity is not
spontaneously experienced, it is invoked discursively to overcome differences.
The multicultural nature of the Taalibe Baay movement is apparent not only in its
expansion outside Senegal but even in its spread through Saalum, itself a culturally di-
verse region. Many of the most salient cultural differences I encountered were between
Njolofeen in Western Saalum and certain Saalum-Saalum Wolof speakers of eastern Saa-
lum. Although some Saalum-Saalum families have practiced Islam for centuries and par-
ticipated in the nineteenth-century Islamic revolution, many others accepted Islam during
and after the revolution. Well into the twentieth century, the majority in many areas were
only marginally Muslim, and many retain customs that Njolofeen and other longer es-
tablished Muslims condemn. Many Njolofeen describe Saalum-Saalum as fanatical and
uncouth in their Islamic practice, whereas many Saalum-Saalum consider Njolofeen to be
both socially exclusive and of a lower blacksmith (tëgg) caste. In an environment where
religion provides a common language for talking about a nearly any aspect of life, dif-
ferences that an onlooker might see as fundamentally cultural are often understood as
differences in religious devotion or spiritual power.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, Njolofeen villages are mostly single-caste villages with-
out griots and musical instruments. Nightly chant meetings are free of instruments and
dancing and emphasize the slower chants. Many daayiras in Eastern Saalum are known
for lively, fast-paced sikkars accompanied by dancing and drums. In villages where sabar
dances have long been a popular form of nightly entertainment and a corps of griots
has been absorbed into the movement, adding religious chants to already existing mu-
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sical and dancing activities has been a natural move. Although Baay Ñas’s sons have
publicly forbidden mixing drums and dancing with sikkars, local muqaddams such as Ab-
dulaay Wilaan of Kafrin permit their disciples to continue the practice, explaining that
they found many of these disciples not practicing Islam at all and must content them-
selves with whatever progress they have made. Abdulaay Wilaan has established dozens
of small village schools and two Islamic institutes, one in Eastern Saalum and the other
south of the border in Gambia, implying that teaching people to understand Islam will
be more effective than ordering them to abandon certain practices. Medina Baay’s lead-
ers have apparently done nothing beyond making their position known. Muqaddams in
eastern Saalum must delicately balance their roles as representatives of Medina Baay, as
charismatic leaders in communities whose culture contrasts sharply with the dominant
Njolofeen culture, and as intermediaries through which political actors interact with the
agrarian population economically and politically.
Daam Jóob: cultural difference, mystical unity. One such Saalum-Saalum leader who
balances participating in the larger Taalibe Baay movement with his own local prestige
and his disciples’ cultural distinction from the main stream of Medina Baay is Daam
Jóob.16 He is a prominent young muqaddam, around 38 years old, from a village in eastern
Saalum where, he once told me, most people only began practicing Islam seriously within
his lifetime. He is famous beyond his years as an occult specialist of jinnes (jinn), witches
(dëmm, or soul-eaters), and other unseen problems. Although he is a muqaddam of Shaykh
Hasan Siise, he owes much of his renown to the occult knowledge he is said to have
inherited from his legendary father and through his relationships with jinnes.17 Thus, he
traces genealogies of knowledge through Medina Baay, through his father, and through
16 Names of participants in this narrative are pseudonyms.

17 Relationships
with jinnes are often cited as sources of occult knowledge and signs of a person with
formidable powers. See Chapter 3.
371
jinnes. His disciples, mostly Saalum-Saalum whose recent Islamization sets them apart
sharply from the majority Njolofeen population in Medina, have a reputation in Medina
of fanatical devotion to Daam Jóob at the expense of their loyalty to Baay, the larger
movement, and Islam.
From early in my stay in Medina Baay, I heard contrasting opinions of him. Many
Medina Baay residents question whether he is truly a Taalibe Baay or if he has become
too independent to be considered a “disciple.” His disciples, on the other hand, describe
him as the most knowledgeable living leader in the Fayd.ah and possessing spiritual gifts
that no other Taalibe Baay leader possesses. Despite Jóob’s reputation for formidable
occult abilities, and despite his disciples’ claims of his Arabic erudition (which some in
Medina Baay question), there is no Arabic school associated with him as there is with
nearly every other major muqaddam.
Mamadu, who shared a house with me and several high school students while he
studied at the El-Hadji Abdoulaye Niass Arabic Institute, is Daam Jóob’s close disciple
and told me that if I interview Jóob, he will give me valuable information that no one
else possesses. I attempted several times to visit Daam Jóob on my own during his short
stays at his Medina Baay house, but each time I was told that he was busy. Mamadu later
told me that his personal assistants (bëkk-néeg) had intentionally not let me in, saying that
they would have nothing to do with me, a hell-bound pagan, unless I converted.18 But
Mamadu was convinced that his leader was more open-minded than his assistants and
would be willing to arrange a meeting.
As the yearly gàmmu in Daam Jóob’s village approached, Mamadu telephoned his
sëriñ to make sure he would set aside time from his busy gàmmu schedule to speak with
18 Ihave encountered this attitude among several individuals who frequent leaders’ houses in Medina Baay,
although the leaders themselves have generally been much more welcoming and have avoided talk of hell-
fire.
372
me. Jóob promised to receive me. As we prepared to leave, I asked Mamadu whether
I should interview his leader in Arabic or Wolof, and Mamadu answered that it I could
interview him in any language I desired—Daam Jóob understands all languages. All
languages? I asked. Has he studied Arabic extensively? Of course, Mamadu answers—
he knows the Islamic disciplines better than anyone in Medina, including Baay Ñas’s
sons, and what is miraculous is that he God gave him unequalled knowledge in only a
short period of study. His close relationships to jinnes enables him to communicate in any
other language as well.19
When we arrived in Jóob’s village for the gàmmu, I could understand how many
disciples from Medina Baay might feel a sense of disjuncture here. The shared taxis and
buses left passengers in the central square, and we walked to Jóob’s house at the village’s
edge. Unlike Medina Baay, this village was founded long before Islam became a majority
religion, the religious leader’s house does not face the central square where the gàmmu
will take place. To reach Jóob’s compound, we crossed a loose log bridge over a gaping
chasm. Looming on the other side was Jóob’s compound, its mosque to the left and
a large modern two storey building to the right, a thatch-roofed hut anachronistically
protruding from its top. Daayiras filled the rooms and courtyard of his house, spilling
into the streets around it. Most were young, and some wore dreadlocks, colorful clothes,
and large pendants displaying Jóob’s or Baay’s picture—all common Murid Baay Faal
practices but seen by many Taalibe Baay as signs of fanaticism bordering on idolatry.
We pushed our way to the entrance of Jóob’s receiving room and the guards admitted
us, as Mamadu is one of Jóob’s closest disciples. Jóob received a series of people who
had come to visit (ziyārah) him, and Mamadu briefly presented me and we exchanged
19 Ibrought this claim up with other religious specialists, most of whom said it sounded like a gross
exaggeration. During one conversation, two religious specialists agreed that jinnes can make one fluent in
any language, but they agreed with others that this particular case was probably an exaggeration.
373
the standard formalities. After only a few short minutes, he announced that he would go
out to address the daayiras that had come from the neighboring villages for their annual
ziyārah.20
Daam Jóob exited and sat in the courtyard, and two disciples stood behind him keep-
ing him cool with large wooden fans. He delivered a fiery speech cautioning against
trusting Christians and Westerners, however nice they may seem. If sincere, a non-Mus-
lim’s (yéefir, kāfir ) sincere kindness counts for nothing in the end, he said, because all
are destined to hell (O ahl an-nār ) for rejecting the Prophet. Even worse, non-Muslims’
kindness is most often a hypocritical attempt to further their own interest against Islam.
(I asked his disciples afterwards to explain his statements, and they said he mostly meant
political leaders like George W. Bush. Yet they admitted that I, like all non-Muslims, had
a black spot of unbelief on my heart that theoretically guarantees me a spot in hell if I
do not convert, although in the end God does as He pleases.) He went on to describe
his amazement that many describe themselves as Taalibe Baay and do not practice the
five pillars of Islam, saying that claiming to be with Baay while doing things he preached
against is like saying one is in the car to Dakar while one is actually going to Tambaakun-
daa (the opposite direction).
Although the gàmmu proper would not begin until after midnight, as with most
gàmmus, afternoon of speeches and chants led up to it. Thousands filled the village’s
normally quiet streets, most of them Jóob’s disciples from Eastern Saalum, their ranks
supplemented with buses of Taalibe Baay from Medina Baay. A son of Alliw Siise and
several other Medina Baay notables appeared later that evening to speak at the night
meeting, and the gàmmu narrative itself, along with the chanting, was to be given by
Baabakar Caam.
20 Literally
“visit,” a ziyārah to a religious leader is either an informal courtesy visit or a formally organized
event in which local communities, daayiras, collect money or other goods to present their leader.
374
My friend Mamadu and Daam Jóob’s younger brothers, all currently students and
aspiring religious leaders, began the afternoon’s “conference” (a large public meeting,
sometimes held on its own and sometimes preceding a gàmmu), delivering religious
speeches under the large canvas pavilion in the village’s square. At first only a hand-
ful were present, but by around six o’clock, a crowd began to fill the tent’s one thousand
chairs. The young people’s speeches were cut short when Daam Jóob arrived in his large,
black four-wheel-drive truck, which surrounded by sikkar-ing disciples. A dreadlocked
man walked beside the truck, carrying a megaphone that emitted a loud siren sound,
overpowering the young people’s continuing speeches. When Jóob emerged from the
truck, the siren accompanied him to a large armchair in the center of the official seating.
The young people continued their speeches for around fifteen more minutes but were
definitively cut off when several political officials—including the sub-prefect over this part
of Eastern Saalum, the Department’s deputy (representative to the National Assembly),
and the mayor of the village—arrived in their cars. The man with the siren accompanied
these leaders to their armchairs next to Jóob. This part of the “conference,” shared by
many gàmmus, is when political leaders come to show their deference to religious lead-
ers, who in turn give counsel to political leaders. This is the part of the meeing, when
speeches steer away from deep religious doctrines to dwell on the formalities of political
relationships, that will be broadcast on national television. By this time, most of the tent’s
approximately one thousand chairs were filled, and dozens of children, forbidden from
attending the meeting, milled about beyond the steel poles around the tent’s perimeter.
Each government official spoke, extending the apology of the President of the Republic,
Abdulaay Wàdd, who had wished to come in person, and describing this gàmmu as an
important event that they would not want to miss.
After these speeches, the master of ceremonies attempted to hand Daam Jóob the
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microphone, but a man took it and began to chant a prayer in Arabic over Daam Jóob, and
four other men stood to join him. Daam Jóob then took the microphone and addressed the
political leaders (kilifay aada), exhorting them to speak to farmers to know their concerns.
He emphasized that farmers in Senegal face many difficulties and that those who help
God’s servants (i.e., people in general) will receive God’s help. His speech ended the
afternoon’s meeting, and the pavilion emptied until shortly before midnight.
Daam Jóob had told me he would send for me that night for my interview, and Ma-
madu and I visited several of his relatives’ houses. I asked Mamadu how Jóob would
locate me in the crowded village once the time for the interview came, and he said not to
worry—Daam Jóob would know not only where I was but what I was doing and whom
I was with. Unsure of this method, I suggested that we go to wait at Jóob’s house, and
Mamadu complied. This may not have facilitated the task of seeing him. His spacious
courtyard was so full of people seeking an audience that we had to fight our way slowly
through the crowd, and the doormen, who knew Mamadu, let us into the entryway lead-
ing to the sitting room. From here we waited our turn to be admitted to the overcrowded
sitting room, where Jóob sat in his armchair hearing guests one after the other. He got up
to retire to his room, and Mamadu and I exited to the courtyard. One of Jóob’s disciples
found me there and told me Jóob would now receive me in his room.
After welcoming me, Jóob spoke about tawh.ı̄d, the oneness of God, for around a half
hour, explaining how the characters of God’s name can be found everywhere as a sign
of God’s omnipresence.21 After his explanation, he asked if I had any questions, and
I introduced my research project. He said he welcomed me wholeheartedly so long as
I had not come to turn people against their religion. He explained that two German
Freemasons had come and offered him a lot of money to leave Islam, and both had died
21 His explanation is included in more detail in Chapter 6.
376
in car accidents after he pronounced prayers condemning them. But this would not be
necessary if I had come in peace.22
A few months after the gàmmu in Daam Jóob’s village, I heard that after the Friday
prayer there had been a fight at the mosque. Some young men from Medina Baay de-
scribed the situation to me: as Daam Jóob was leaving the mosque with a large entourage
who were sikkar-ing loudly behind him, some of his disciples walked ahead of him and
attempted to clear a path for him. One man blocked their way, continuing to tick prayer
formulas off on his prayer beads, and Daam Jóob’s disciples ordered him to move. Ac-
cording to these young men, when he ignored them and remained seated, Daam Jóob’s
disciples grabbed the man and started beating him. The man turned out to be one of the
younger sons of Baay Ñas whom the disciples likely did not recognize. (Some insisted
that they must have known who he was, making the act especially offensive.)
Later that day, as word spread through Medina about this “attack on Baay Ñas’s
family,” outraged Medina residents came and seriously damaged Daam Jóob’s house and
four-wheel-drive truck. Daam Jóob and his disciples returned to his village that night,
soon sold the house, and for months neither he nor his disciples dared show themselves
in Medina, including my friend Mamadu. The following week, Mamadu (whom several
of our mutual acquaintances had described as one of the instigators) returned briefly and
surreptitiously to Medina Baay and told me a very different version of events. I told him
I had heard there were problems, and he affirmed that there were problems but went no
further. I prodded him, and he answered that when the disciples of Daam Jóob had asked
the son of Baay Ñas politely to move, he had become angry and yelled at them, although
Mamadu insists that no violence took place at the mosque. That night, he says, the son
22 AlthoughI commonly faced speculation that I was a spy working for the United States government,
several muqaddams seemed more concerned that I might be working as part of an anti-Islamic Freemason
conspiracy.
377
of Baay Ñas appeared at Daam Jóob’s house with friends and they attacked Daam Jóob
and his younger brother. Jóob’s disciples had wanted to defend their leader but he had
ordered them to forbear and not to strike back. But, as people in Medina love stories,
the incorrect version quickly spread, and the son of Baay Ñas and others damaged one
of Jóob’s cars beyond repair and another significantly, also causing the roof to cave in.
I told Mamadu’s version to a Njolofeen high school student from Medina also sharing
a house with me, who answered that although he had not witnessed the event he was
sure that Mamadu’s version was grossly twisted, and that the son of Baay Ñas, whom he
knows well, had not lifted a finger against Daam Jóob or his disciples. Clearly they had
beat the son of Baay Ñas, who had been treated at the hospital for an injury above his
eye. I said that I hoped that Mamadu was not involved, and my friend (also a friend of
Mamadu) told me that Mamadu had been the first to strike. In any case, most Medina
Baay residents I spoke with were convinced that Daam Jóob’s followers were solely to
blame and had shown that they were “impolite” (reew) and lacked discipline (yar).
For eight months, Daam Jóob and his most of disciples did not return to Medina
Baay. Mamadu came back discreetly to visit relatives for a day but soon returned to
another village where he was studying, returning six months later in October. Yet this
situation was unacceptable for both the Medina Baay leadership and Daam Jóob and
his followers. Daam Jóob’s legitimacy as a teacher of mystical knowledge depended on
Medina’s legitimating support, and Medina Baay’s leadership needed him represent the
movement to a large rural constituency. He had to be restored to the community of
disciples but he first had to demonstrate that he accepted his place as a disciple.
In December, 2004, Daam Jóob hosted a large religious meeting in his village and
invited the son of Baay Ñas who had been involved in the conflict to come and speak.
Several buses and cars packed with Medina Baay notables and several daayiras associated
378
with them trekked from Kaolack to Jóob’s village. Daam Jóob received the guests in his
sitting room before the meeting and briefly addressed them. He indexed his discipleship
to the “family of Baay”—represented synechdochally by Baay’s son—by sitting on the
floor and seating Baay Ñas’s son in an armchair. He said:23
The fact that the family of Baay has come here today to give us a speech about
God is a momentous act of unity for God. Because, you know how the world
is today—if he were following the world he would never dream of coming
here. But God is all he sees, God is all he experiences, and God is all he finds
here too. All he finds here are his disciples and his loved ones . . . who have
nothing to offer him but peace. They place everything they have in his arms
and tell him that he has come home to his family. . . . We are listening to you—
wherever you point us, that’s where we go; whatever you say, that’s how it is;
whatever you want, that’s how it will be.
Later, during the meeting in the public square, other speakers similarly expressed
their subordination to him as a mystical embodiment of Baay. Daam Jóob’s younger
brother declared: “one might say that a son of Baay did not come here today, but rather
Baay himself came.” It is common to say that Baay himself is attending a meeting (as
Alliw Ñas in the daayira meeting described above), not meaning that he is looking on in
spirit, but that his family, or the community of disciples, are mystically one with Baay.
This speech makes clear that while perhaps everyone and everything is mystically one
with Baay and with God, Baay’s family is more one with him than anyone else (recalling
George Orwell’s [1946] quip that some are more equal than others). That is, while all are
part of the tree and have access to Baay’s knowledge and barakah, some are closer to the
23 These details come from Aadi Faal, who attended and transcribed the meeting.
379
trunk than others. Structure and anti-structure, communitas and society, are co-present
in a unity structured by authority.
Like many muqaddams, Daam Jóob had built considerable influence in his area of
eastern Saalum with relatively little visible deference to Medina Baay. He relied primar-
ily on his reputation as a formidable occult specialist and less on textual knowledge or
on connections to Medina Baay than many other well known muqaddams do. He was not
compelled to display public deference to Baay’s family until a major rupture occurred
that jeopardized his standing in the movement and the sustained spiritual authority that
comes through Baay’s representatives. Still, muqaddams who act independently in this
way are often viewed with suspicion by disciples in Medina Baay, who say that these mu-
qaddams are taking for themselves a lofty position that belongs to Baay. Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m
Sàll, discussed above, is another example of a muqaddam whose independence from Me-
dina Baay draws much criticism.
Jóob’s acts of deference can be understood in part as strategies to maintain symbolic
legitimacy by submitting himself to the legitimate authority. Yet for participants, it had
not only a symbolic but a mystical effect: his religious authority depends not only on
recognition but on the continued flow of Baay’s barakah and authority through his repre-
sentatives.
Like Daam Jóob, many muqaddams operate in relative independence of Medina Baay’s
central leadership and do not usually feel a central hierarchy weighing heavily on them.
To maintain their legitimacy and spiritual authority, it is sometimes necessary to show
some sort of obeisance to Baay’s descendants and other living representatives, for exam-
ple through financial contributions or through giving them the seat of honor at a meeting.
Yet from day to day, it is possible to operate quite independently, as did Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m
380
Sàll and Daam Jóob. Jóob was only compelled to make a public display of subordination
when this equilibrium of engagement and disengagement was upset and his indepen-
dence and authority challenged. In this way, his obeisance to Medina Baay somewhat
resembles Medina Baay’s obeisance to secular authority through selective and pragmatic
engagement.
8.4 Mystical presence through dreams
Despite its central authorities who have officially inherited Baay’s mantle, the Taalibe Baay
movement continues to have multiple centers of charisma, which are usually marked by
the continued direct mystical presence of Baay. Baay’s successors’ apparent monopoly on
Baay’s absolute religious authority and the trademark of Divine Knowledge has not rou-
tinized away the movement’s original charisma. Baay manifests himself to many people
in many ways without the authorization of any central authority. In theory, Baay made
his charisma available to any of his disciples, although one’s ability to claim knowledge
and authority from Baay depends on recognition of one’s claims as legitimate.
One of the main ways in which Baay’s mystical presence continues to be felt is through
dreams. Dreams are widely known in Islamic societies as sources of knowledge, whether
among S.ūfı̄s or Salafiyys (see Ewing 1990, 1994, 1997; Rasanayagam 2006; Edgar 2004,
2002; Green 2004). Islam is generally said to recognize three kinds of dreams: dreams
from the devil (Shayt.ān), dreams that have no outside origin, and “true dreams,” which
come from God and reveal something. Mystics often describe encounters with saints
through dreams as a primary source of their knowledge. For example, Al-H c

. ājj Umar
Taal lists receiving the secret of the Greatest Name of God from several sources, includ-
ing living shaykhs and deceased ones who appeared to him in dreams. Al-H c
. ājj Umar
Taal’s biographer Shaykh Musaa Kamara, who was too young to have known Al-H
. ājj
c Umar personally, says Al-H c
. ājj Umar taught him much about his life through dream
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apparitions. I cannot begin to scratch the surface of dream apparitions here, but these
examples suggest this widespread phenomenon of dreams as a source of mystical and
factual knowledge.
Many Taalibe Baay describe Baay and other religious figures as having personally
guided them to him through true dreams. Several people in Medina Baay expressed
astonishment when I said I had never dreamed of Baay, and when I asked why this
surprised them they said that everyone who encounters Baay dreams about him. Dreams
are prominent in the narratives even of those of a non-Islamic background. For example,
a muqaddam in Dakar of Catholic, Cape Verdean origin says his father was brought into
Islam through a dream in which Ahmadu Bàmba appeared and told him that the truth
he sought was in Islam, and he subsequently went to a grandson of Ahmadu Bàmba and
converted. This muqaddam himself had a dream before becoming a Taalibe Baay in which
Baay appeared to him and told him to bring him two mats, which his father interpreted to
be the muqaddam and his brother, who first became Taalibe Baay in the family. A French
disciple living in Mauritania says Jesus appeared to both him and his mother, telling them
to convert to Islam, and they subsequently were led to a village in Mauritania and became
disciples of a Mauritanian muqaddam.
Dreams serve not only to lead people to Islam or into the movement but can also
be a source of mystical knowledge. A direct mystical connection to Baay can be a way
to establish a more direct connection partially circumventing official hierarchies. Mataar
Siise, a muqaddam in his mid-thirties in Dakar, is famous for having recruited a group
of popular musicians into the Taalibe Baay movement and has a large following among
urban youth. A Saalum-Saalum from a family of disciples of Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, he is
the first to become Taalibe Baay. He says that Baay began to appear to him when he a
young boy, perhaps as young as six years old, and has appeared to him regularly since
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then. He recalls that when he first saw Baay in his dream, Baay appeared to have very
large eyes, and he was afraid. Baay Ñas approached him and touched his forehead, and
he suddenly woke up with a headache. At he time he had no idea who Baay Ñas was or
whether the apparition had been dream or reality, and his father was astonished to hear
about the dream. At the time he didn’t know whether it was a dream or reality. I asked
him when Baay Ñas last came to him, to which he answered that Baay had appeared the
night before. Although he received an O ijāzah from a senior son of Baay Ñas, he says he
learned everything he knows directly from Baay Ñas through dreams.
Although it is necessary for all muqaddams to hold an O ijāzah from a living authority,
an O ijāzah is sometimes explained as a recognition of knowledge one already has rather
than indicating the transmission of knowledge from the authority. Thus, in many cases
religious knowledge is understood to have a genealogy outside transmission by living
humans even if this knowledge cannot be practiced without a signs of recognition of
this knowledge (the O ijāzah). A claim to receiving knowledge independently of a partic-
ular hierarchy—either through dreams or through living source further afield (yet rarely
through individual discovery)—can be invoked to place someone outside that hierarchy
socially.
The claim to direct knowledge through dreams can thus have an effect similar to that
of Baay Ñas and Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas receiving O ijāzahs and instruction from outside
the Tijāniyy authorities then in Senegal, bolstering their independence from hierarchies
of transmission. While this muqaddam pays respect due to the Baay Ñas’s official rep-
resentatives, he operates rather independently and has probably thousands of followers
who see him as an important leader in his own right. Yet aside from his own follow-
ers and his notoriety for attracting some high profile icons of popular culture, It is not
clear that many of Medina Baay’s leaders recognize him as an important authority in the
383
movement. Although his claims to independent access to Baay’s knowledge have not met
open challenges (many see it as inappropriate to challenge someone’s knowledge openly),
neither do they seem to be generally accepted among Taalibe Baay.
8.5 Conclusion
This chapter has discussed how the distribution of the techniques of producing religious
knowledge among disciples works against the centralization and routinization of knowl-
edge and authority. It does this through two principal means, both of which involve
accessing Baay’s mystical presence and religious knowledge directly outside the official
channels of representation.
First, muqaddams and other disciples access knowledge from multiple sources, includ-
ing not only official channels but also dreams, jinnes, and non-central human spiritual
genealogies, circumventing current central authority and maintaining the unpredictabil-
ity of charisma. Religious knowledge and authority thus manifest themselves in multiple
centers simultaneously. Although these multiple centers relate to one another through a
language of hierarchy under a central leadership, this engagement with central author-
ity often takes the form of a z.āhir accommodation of a status quo while maintaining a
bāt.in reality of disengagement from a central hierarchy. This disengagement depends on
asserting genealogies of knowledge and legitimacy that do not pass through the center
of the hierarchy, either through a direct connection to Baay (as in Mataar Siise’s case),
through occult knowledge received through jinnes and other sources (as in Daam Jóob’s
case), or through claims of a previous appointment that preempts and overrides subse-
quent appointments (as in Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Sàll’s case). All these ways of establishing
quasi-autonomous spheres of knowledge and authority recognize Baay as the source and
guarantor of knowledge and authority but do not recognize any monopoly on Baay.
The second effect of Taalibe Baay distribution of mystical knowledge and experience
384
involves the principle that Divine Knowledge nullifies all distinctions and leads to an
undifferentiated community of disciples. This effect arises not simply from discourses
on the nature of God but from particular techniques of cultivating ecstatic experience
through which disciples remake themselves as members of a community of knowers of
God. Disciples describe their experiences as leading to an erasure of all distinctions and
a profound sense of unity. While this experience of unity does not directly translate
into social unity or equality, it allows people from multiple cultural backgrounds at least
to imagine themselves as members of a single community and to address continuing
differences through the language of mystical unity and Baay’s mystical presence in his
community.
What is striking about the Taalibe Baay movement is its project to reproduce ecstatic
experience across cultural and geographical boundaries, globalizing charismatic experi-
ence. While the reproduction of unpredictable charismatic experience outside the central
hierarchy may seem to challenge that hierarchy, it is precisely this effervescence writ
large that continues to draw adherents to the movement. I attribute the Taalibe Baay
movement’s steady growth and its relative stability despite its lack of a rationalized bu-
reaucracy to its ability to maintain and reproduce its original charisma and the ideals of
unity and equality that accompany it while simultaneously maintaining strong hierarchi-
cal tendencies.
The veneration of members of Baay Ñas’s family, although often symbolic and far
from equating absolute social control, guarantees a perpetually present proxy for Baay
and his metonymic representation of the whole community of disciples, preventing the
fragmentation that occurs when medial leaders take on a maximal role. At the same time,
the movement has shown considerable flexibility in adapting to local conditions, allowing
local leaders to act both as Baay’s functionaries and as charismatic leaders in their own
385
right. This is accomplished through attributing continued charisma to Baay’s mystical
presence. In most cases, religious knowledge and authority is attributed with a genealogy
going through Baay, although this genealogy can take many paths, whether through
leaders not directly associated with the movement’s center or through more mystical
means such as dreams and visions. The Taalibe Baay movement has not been completely
successful in resisting the fragmentation that comes from too many centers of authority
or the routinization of charisma that comes from the elimination of unpredictability and
the rationalization of religious authority. Yet when either of these tendencies threatens
to obscure the movement’s dynamism or unity, Taalibe Baay actors have often acted to
restore the paradoxical balance of charisma and routine.
The Taalibe Baay community thus suggests a reevaluation of several widespread aca-
demic assumptions. One is that modernity entails the inexorable processes of rational-
ization and routinization. Another related assumption is that globalization entails only
things such as discourses or capital which can easily be understood to “flow,” “hop,” or
otherwise circulate.
The Taalibe Baay movement’s ability to resist fragmentation depends on a certain de-
gree of routinization to prevent succession disputes and new charismatic offshoots. Yet I
argue that the routinization of Taalibe Baay religious authority is highly paradoxical and
is inseparable from the reproduction of charismatic experience. Taalibe Baay globaliza-
tion and the trans-cultural relationships between disciples depend on the reproduction
of charisma through micro-practical techniques of cultivating an embodied experience of
the Divine. Thus, understanding religious globalization entails going beyond thinking in
terms of circulation of discourses and goods and focusing on the embodiment of reper-
toires of practice, discourse, and experience through processes of religious education. As
Saba Mahmood (2005) has argued, we must take seriously the body’s use not only as a
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symbol but as a medium and an object of disciplinary techniques of self cultivation.
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Chapter 9
“Baay is International”:
Cosmopolitan Networks of
Knowledge and Charisma
9.1 Introduction
The Fayd.ah arose from transnational Islamic networks and has from its inception been
involved in producing transnational networks of discipleship. As Chapter 4 discussed,
Taalibe Baay were “transnational” long before they were “national.” That is to say, their
networks of religious authority extended throughout West Africa long before Taalibe Baay
were counted among the major Senegalese “Islamic brotherhoods” through establishing
regular relations with Senegalese state actors and the Senegalese national media. Scholars
have long postulated that the movement’s extension abroad had to do with its failure
to establish itself at home, a failure usually explained in terms of Baay Ñas’s alleged
blacksmith status (see Chapters 2 and 4). Indeed, I see a relationship, albeit a different
one, between Taalibe Baay expansion abroad and its lower profile at home. Considering
their numbers, Taalibe Baay have long been conspicuously absent from the national scene,
partly due to leaders’ widespread mistrust toward secular authority and partly due to
the reproduction and institutionalization of disjunctures dating back to the nineteenth-
century jihads (see Chapter 3).
This long disengagement from state politics has shaped the Fayd.ah’s emergence as
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Joseph Hill Chapter 9. “Baay is International”
a vast yet diffuse network of specialists and spiritual apprentices focused primarily on
cultivating knowledge (see Chapters 5 and 6). This preoccupation with relations of ap-
prenticeship and mystical experience largely outside the confines of the Senegalese state-
Islam complex does not lessen the Taalibe Baay’s political importance. Rather, it suggests
a different (although no less political) relationship with state power, as they produce
spaces of religious governance significantly independent of state actors. Whereas from
the post-colonial state’s point of view the Taalibe Baay have been irrelevant, from many
Taalibe Baay’s point of view the state has been irrelevant. They have continued the long-
established Njolofeen practice of organizing themselves around religious leaders, defining
moral authority and allegiance in terms of religious knowledge. This detachment from
the secular state corresponds to an imagination—which Baay taught from the Fayd.ah’s
beginning—that the project of teaching Divine Knowledge inherently transcends any ge-
ographical area. The Fayd.ah thus began as a globalizing project, and its principal medium
of globalization has been the embodied cultivation of religious—especially mystical—
knowledge.
This chapter is a preliminary attempt to conceptualize the Taalibe Baay as a globalizing
network that extends autonomous spaces of religious authority across national borders
through religious apprenticeship. I argue for the need to take seriously the productive
roles of the body, the self, and disciplinary practices as means of globalizing regimes of
knowledge and authority. Recognizing the importance of techniques of cultivating reli-
gious selves is indispensable to an attempt to break out of the dialectic of “modernized
religion” (or “religion as alternative modernity”) versus “responses to modernization”
that has entrapped contemporary scholarship on the global “resurgence of religion” (see
the Introduction). Understanding religion as a discursive intervention into modernity pre-
supposes that religion is essentially a commentary on modernity. Approaching religious
389
practice as, at least in part, a technology of the self with no predetermined discursive
intervention allows the possibility of understanding religion as both engaged and disen-
gaged, part of and autonomous from modernity, and subject to yet outside state authority,
part of identity formation yet not tied to a particular identity. The imaginaries typically
used to describe global processes—circulating discourses, instrumental alliances, global
social movements, transnational identity formation, transnational corporate institutions—
fail to capture the globalizing Taalibe Baay project. With no explicitly shared identity or
overarching corporate structure, Taalibe Baay are connected by common relationships to
religious leaders and by shared dispositions and discourses learned through spiritual ed-
ucation. Identity and social belonging do not come bundled with discipleship around the
world but vary considerably depending on the circumstance.
9.2 Global Taalibe Baay Networks
During my first weeks in Medina Baay in 2001, I quickly came to experience Medina Baay
as a global religious center, especially when I frequented Medina’s south-west corner,
where the mosque and many muqaddams’ houses are located. I met numerous Americans,
Nigerians, Mauritanians, and Ghanaians, most of them young people who had come to
study or work with Medina Baay’s leaders. The houses of Baay Ñas’s and Alliw Siise’s
sons were particularly full of foreigners, some coming and going and others living with
them for years at a time to study or work. Many of Baay’s sons have taken wives from the
daughters of Baay’s muqaddams from across West Africa, and most of Baay’s daughters
no longer live in Medina Baay, having married foreign muqaddams. Many leaders in Me-
dina have at least one young Nigerian man, often the son of a prominent foreign disciple,
living in their house and offering khidmah (service) by working as the shaykh’s personal
assistant (bëkk-néeg), often while studying at a formal or informal school in preparation
for becoming a religious specialist. Nigerians were more numerous in Medina Baay dur-
390
ing and directly following Baay Ñas’s life (Kane 1989), but they have recently become
increasingly independent of Medina Baay. In their stead, a growing number of American
youth, most of them African Americans from Atlanta, Detroit, and New York, study at
the African American Islamic Institute, and several American families own homes in or
near Medina Baay where they live during part or all of the year.
Yet despite all the talk of a global Taalibe Baay “movement” or “community,” I was
surprised to find that notions of discipleship changed significantly as I spoke to disciples
of different cultural backgrounds. Working with Senegalese disciples, I had begun to
take for granted that what made one a disciple and a member of this community was
undergoing tarbiyyah, which allowed one to receive the knowledge that sets Taalibe Baay
apart from all others. For most Senegalese disciples, tarbiyyah is not only a personal
education but an induction into the global community of those who know God. Yet
Americans and other non-Senegalese generally spoke of tarbiyyah much less frequently it
at all, many saying they were unfamiliar with it or were not interested in receiving it. The
notion of a “Taalibe Baay” (or equivalent) identity seemed nearly absent among many
non-Senegalese disciples. Yet even those who did not match my previous definition of a
disciple tended to consider themselves serious disciples.
As I followed networks of discipleship from Medina Baay to Mauritania and the
United States, I found the different points in these networks intimately connected and
always somewhat familiar and yet in some ways fundamentally different. Baay Ñas was,
as they say, “international,” yet he and his community did not look the same everywhere
I found them. Although I had conceived my research as the study of a transnational Is-
lamic group or movement, I found that not only were this group’s boundaries fuzzy and
multiply defined but that it may not be useful to define it as a “group” at all. Whereas
Senegambian disciples gave me the impression of a strong group identity and common
391
attachment to Medina Baay’s central leadership, encounters with non-Senegambian disci-
ples revealed different conceptions of discipleship and dashed any notion I had had of a
pervasive Taalibe Baay identity or encompassing group structure. Taalibe Baay networks
of authority and knowledge, all connected to one another and to Baay, are at the same
time enmeshed in many non-Taalibe Baay networks of Islamic cosmopolitanisms, poli-
tics, and economic solidarity, which shape what it means to be Taalibe Baay in different
contexts.
Rather than approach Taalibe Baay as an analytical category or as a discrete identity
or corporate group, I approach the Taalibe Baay as a network—of muqaddams, disciples,
daayiras, schools, relations of authority, and techniques of cultivating knowledge. Taalibe
Baay often act as participants in a “global movement” (and I sometimes describe them as
such), yet Taalibe Baay networks as a whole do not add up to a single global movement.
Taalibe Baay of various cultures enact and imagine Taalibe Baay community, yet there
is nothing like a global Taalibe Baay community. Taalibe Baay relate to one another
hierarchically, yet it would be futile to attempt to map a Taalibe Baay hierarchy. Rather,
Taalibe Baay from multiple cultural milieus form extended networks connected to one
another and to Baay, recognizing one another as co-disciples, sharing various projects,
and participating in the same social spaces without forming any larger entity or identity.
Taalibe Baay are globalizing, yet what they are globalizing is not any single religious
culture, identity, or organizational structure. Whereas many anthropologists of globaliza-
tion have described local populations’ creative responses to larger, impersonal processes,
this chapter looks at how Taalibe Baay are not a local response to global processes but are
a global process themselves. Micro/macro and local/global distinctions are not useful in
talking about transnational networks (Latour 1993). Not only is the local always translocal
and even global (Wolf 1982; Mintz 1985; Piot 1999; Hutchinson 1996), but grand abstrac-
392
tions such as “modernity,” “globalization,” and “neo-liberalism” are always localized and
internally differentiated (Ong 1999; Gaonkar 2001; Hefner 1998).
One of the challenges of anthropologies of globalization has been reconciling ethnog-
raphy’s up-close approach (the “micro”) with global processes beyond any ethnographic
site (the “macro”). Many anthropologists have looked beyond social groupings long used
in Anthropology—“village,” “ethnic group,” “culture,” “community,” “movement” or
“class”—eschewing the micro/macro distinction often assumed by ethnographic studies.
Communities are increasingly “fragmented and interrelated,” their cultural norms “both
local and global” (Clarke 2004:3). Any given person moves between multiple places, com-
munities, and cultural identities, and any given place, community, or identity is hybrid.
Many anthropologists have thus shifted from studying territories or discrete groups to
studying connections between diverse people and places. The object of such analysis is a
“network,” whose horizon is determined not by its intrinsic structure but, at least in part,
by the researcher’s own peregrinations through it. Thinking in networks has allowed
anthropologists to “cut across more conventional units of analysis” (Hannerz 1992a:40),
studying not a pre-defined object but relations between people and things that do not fit
any particular category.
Some current anthropological usages of the term “network” are related to yet funda-
mentally distinct from the “social networks” studied by sociologists and urban anthro-
pologists (Barnes 1954, 1968; Bott 1957; Boissevain and Mitchell 1973). “Social networks”
have most often been understood as something like “a set of ties linking social system
members across social categories and bounded groups” (Wellman 1983:158). Their basic
building blocks are the diadic or triadic ties between individuals who interact face-to-face.
Social networks proved a particularly useful unit of analysis for anthropology in places
where urbanization or migration led to sustained social relationships spanning villages,
393
towns, institutions, and cultures (for example, Bott 1957). Some, however, have criticized
social network analysts’ tendencies to fixate on micro-relationships without addressing
macro-processes that shape individual relationships (Boissevain 1979).
Scholars of globalization such as Hannerz (1996, 1992a, 1992b) have extended the con-
cept of “social networks” to translocal and transnational social networks beyond the face-
to-face, “ego-centered” networks studied by social network analysts. For Hannerz, “cul-
ture” has always belonged to social networks, not territories—an increasingly unavoidable
fact as networks are increasingly deterritorialized (Hannerz 1992b:40). He criticizes pre-
vious social network studies for limiting themselves to face-to-face encounters and losing
sight of extended social networks. Hannerz describes the global ecumene as a “network
of networks” (1992b).
Other usages of “networks,” most notably Bruno Latour’s, break more definitively
with social network analysis, unmooring networks not only from any particular scale
but from the purely social. For Latour (1993), networks are are conjunctures of various
kinds of phenomena inexpressible in terms of a single scale or kind. The “actors” in such
a network are not just people but the other elements (places, discourses, technologies)
that impinge on a situation. Latour’s approach came to be known as “actor-network
theory,” although Latour has repeatedly quipped that he sees four problems with this
formulation—its three constituent words and the hyphen (Latour 1999). As the word
“network” has gathered associations (for example, free flows of information through the
Internet and mutual support groups) contrary to this sense, Latour has even questioned
the possibility of recovering the term “network.” He suggests that his conception is closer
to Deleuze and Guattari’s “rhizome” (1987), with neither center nor periphery but instead
constantly mutating middles (Latour 1999).
Despite its common associations, many anthropologists have found “network” to be
394
an apt description of the translocal phenomena they encounter. Like Latour, they eschew
both the idea of “social networks” of face-to-face social interaction and more popular
conceptions of free-flows of information. Also working against “social networks” defini-
tions, Annalise Riles defines networks as “a set of institutions, knowledge practices, and
artifacts thereof that internally generate the effects of their own reality by reflecting on
themselves” (Riles 2000:3). Kamari Clarke describes Oyotunji African Village in South
Carolina as representing “a regionally diverse, transnational network of people and prac-
tices within and outside the nation” (2004:11). An ethnography of this village involved
accompanying villagers to Nigeria as well as studying the relationship of villagers and
their practices to other Yoruba-based religious formations in other parts of the world.
Riles notes that one of the most interesting aspects of contemporary network theory is
that the analytical tool and the phenomenon observed are no longer distinct: “The power
of the Network now inheres in a recursive confluence between the networks observed in
the world (cyborgs, NGO networks) and the Network as analytical tool.” Latour’s the-
ory, she argues, is both an exposition of powerful analytical connections and “a theory
about the ‘actual’ nature of relationships” and about the relationship between these two
relationships, between data and people, between theory and practice (Riles 2000:65). It
is perhaps this connection between theory and practice that has led both scholars and
participants in networks to embrace the term with enthusiasm.1 As networks are “plu-
ralistic” and “open” to connecting multiple kinds of phenomena and people (Hannerz
1992b), they allow both anthropologists and participants in networks to deal with flux
1 Many practitioners who invoke the term use it in a way that suggests openness, egalitarianism, and
intentional collaboration not suggested by Latour’s usage. David Graeber describes numerous radical groups
as taking a loose “network” rather than a hierarchical structure (2002). Riles quotes a definition from the
literature of one organization: “A ‘Network’ is a group of people who have a common interest and link
together to share information, skills, ideas, and resources. A ‘Network’ can be large or small. It can link
individuals to each other, inviduals to small groups, small groups to large groups and so on. No matter
what the size all networks have one common theme—SHARING!” (Riles 2000:25) While such definitions
differ from Latour’s and Riles’s, they similarly show a link between theorizing and practicing relationships.
395
and diversity and to mobilize connections and disconnections.
For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), the “rhizome” has no boundary and is constantly
making and remaking itself. Rather than core and periphery, it has plateaus, each of
which is in the middle of something. Likewise, a network’s horizon is not determined
by the nature of the network alone but by one’s own movement through it and one’s
engagement with it. The only way to study a network is to become part of it in some way.
A network cannot be entirely mapped—not because it is too large or complicated but
because its shifting horizon does not preexist the one who talks about it and is different
for anyone else who participates in it. Just as a view from a skyscraper does not sum up
all the ways of walking the city, no bird’s-eye view allows one to “see the whole” of a
network (de Certeau 1984). One viewpoint’s middle is another’s edge, and the researcher
only brings to light a particular set of many possible connections.
Although networks are fundamentally composed of connections, tracing the connec-
tions does not suffice to explain how and why these connections come to be. These
connections arise from alliances made for multiple and often contradictory purposes
but that often depend on particular techniques by which actors in a network are culti-
vated and mutually recognized. According to Wittgenstein, to recognize multiple things
as belonging together usually implies not some consistently shared attribute but fuzzy
“family resemblances,” or “a complicated network [Netz] of similarities, overlapping and
criss-crossing” (Wittgenstein 1953:27, §66). At least in part, Taalibe Baay recognize Taal-
ibe Baay spaces (as I did) according to such networks of similarities. Such similarities
are not simply found but are consciously and painstakingly produced, to a large extent
through religious education. In addition to recognizing shared traits or family resem-
blances, Taalibe Baay are connected and recognize one another through relations of au-
thority. It is impossible to define an objective category of Taalibe Baay or to locate a
396
corporate group or identity that includes all Taalibe Baay; rather, one identifies Taalibe
Baay through following networks of people connected to each other and to Baay, noting
networks of similarities and transcontinental relationships but not general rules. Even
within these networks, who is a Taalibe Baay is not always clear-cut, as membership is
multiply defined even within the same context.
This discussion of Taalibe Baay globalization rethinks several questions about how we
understand globalization. First, if “globalization” presupposes the verb “to globalize,”
what is the subject of this verb? We often tend to imagine globalization as the extension
of large institutions and infrastructures and the relatively instantaneous flow (or “hop”—
see Ferguson 2005) of symbolic or material resources (discourses, images, capital, labor,
raw materials, and commodities). The subject of the verb “to globalize” is thus gen-
erally implied to be the larger institutions and processes—ultimately, the “automaton”
(Castells 2000) of global capitalism. Individual actors in their various localities, on the
other hand, are broadly described as “localizing” global discourses, commodities, and
processes. Thus, institutions and flows appear active with regards to the global, whereas
people and culture are active with regards to the local. Anthropologists have shown that
globalization does not imply passive social actors, as people show their agency through
creatively “localizing” the global. I treat Taalibe Baay as actively involved in globalizing
projects. The medium of this religious globalization is the cultivation of the body and the
self through the disciplines of religious education. As Saba Mahmood (2005) has argued,
we must take seriously the body’s use not only as a symbol but as a medium and an
object of disciplinary techniques of self cultivation.
I understand the process of Taalibe Baay globalizing as the production of a cosmopoli-
tanism, or the networked production across socio-cultural and geographical divides of
protocols of interaction and repertoires of discourse and practice. Diouf characterizes
397
the transnational Murid community as a “vernacular cosmopolitanism” (2000), yet if cos-
mopolitanism always concerns a socio-historically situated network, all cosmopolitanisms
would seem to be “vernacular.”2 It is crucial to recognize that, as a cosmopolitanism, the
Taalibe Baay are neither a corporate group nor an identity nor a culture, and inclusion in
it does not exclude commitment to more locally circumscribed networks or participation
in other cosmopolitanisms. Cosmopolitanism—literally, “citizenship of the world”—of-
ten implies a meeting of more or less equal minds on a culturally neutral ground through
an ethos of “openness.” Yet cosmopolitan relations are embedded in translocal regimes
of authority and truth. Any given practice of “openness” (Hannerz 1996; Georg Gadamer
1960) is not a universal ethos but a set of learned, embodied dispositions cultivated in
relation to particular networks and relations of authority.
A second question this chapter addresses, related to the previous question of what
globalizes, concerns the reproduction and the globalizability of the charismatic and spir-
itual. Again, techniques of cultivating the self are essential to such a project. In Chap-
ter 5, I problematized Weber’s (Weber 1978) teleology of routinization of charisma and
the increasing rationalization accompanying increasing scale. Taalibe Baay globalization
challenges widespread habits of thought associating the global with rationalized insti-
tutions and the local with the charismatic, the creative, and the spiritual. This habit is
associated with the spatial and temporal mappings of charisma and the uncanny to the
“liminal” (“that which is betwixt and between”), meaning either temporary moments be-
tween states of structured routine or spaces of charisma in a rationalized landscape (the
foundational texts for these models, as discussed in the Introduction to this dissertation,
2 Also, Diouf’s notion of cosmopolitanism seems somewhat different from my own—for Diouf, Murid cos-
mopolitanism consists less of including people from many cultural backgrounds into the same cosmopolitan
network than of orienting people of the same cultural background toward working in many countries around
the world. I do not consider my own notion more valid than his but find the cross-cultural definition more
useful in the Taalibe Baay case.
398
are Weber 1978 and Turner 1969). Taalibe Baay globalization depends fundamentally
on cultivating the dispositions of charismatic experience and authority among disciples
around the world. I argue that this does not involve the routinized production of a false
sense of charisma; rather, it involves producing charismatic leaders and mystical experi-
ence in multiple places while relating all these charismatic leaders to larger Taalibe Baay
networks through Baay’s mystical presence. Although certain Taalibe Baay institutional
structures have arisen in urban areas to represent the body of disciples to state institu-
tions and the media, on the whole, the millions of Taalibe Baay around the world have
never been organized under a bureaucratic structure.
To characterize the globalization of this religious network and its forms of knowledge,
we must abandon associating the “local” with the micro, the bodily, and the immediate,
while associating the “global” with the macro, the aggregate, and the mediated. To speak
of “localization” in this context would assume an abstract global movement and concrete
local manifestations. This opposition is irrelevant to Taalibe Baay globalization, which
is indistinguishable from their localization. What is “global” about Taalibe Baay is not
any overarching organizational infrastructure or identity to which local people belong.
Rather, it is the immediate the local itself that is global: social interactions with disciples
of other countries; large meetings at which disciples from different cultures experience
and perform a sense of cultural unity; narratives and imaginations of co-disciples around
the world. Any attempt to map a global Taalibe Baay network into which local Taalibe
Baay can be fitted would be an academic exercise, as it would refer to a macro-entity that
is not necessarily part of any disciple’s self-understanding. The networks that disciples
themselves experience are global yet immediate, not corresponding to a larger network
“out there.”
To ask about “globalizing Islam” is fundamentally different from the question ad-
399
dressed in Olivier Roy’s book Globalized Islam (2004). The most obvious difference is
the active and not the passive participle, which conceives of Islam as from the beginning
tending towards transnationalism and globalization. Muslims selectively and strategically
mobilize global transformations rather than simply responding to them. “Globalized Is-
lam,” Roy says, concerns how Muslims’ approach to Islam is “reshaped by globalisation,
westernization and the impact of living as a minority” (2004:ix). The social and authority
structures and the cultural norms that once enforced Islamic practice unself-consciously,
Roy argues, have broken down, and Islam has been “objectified” (Eickelman and Piscatori
1996) and redefined as an individual practice. Roy describes many ways in which Islam
has been secularized, for example taking on the institutional structures of Western or
Christian organizations (churches, NGOs, lobbying and public relations councils). Even
globalized S.ūfı̄ groups, which Roy describes uniformly as “neo-brotherhoods,” have lit-
tle to do with “Sufism as such” but are predominantly new-age cults that offer a sense
of community to marginalized people whose “communal ties have been broken” (222).
The modern shaykh is more a “modern guru than a traditional Sufi master” who keeps
in touch with devotees through modern communication technologies and who produces
prolific pamphlets. Roy describes the Tijāniyyah associated with Shaykh Hasan Siise as
more orthodox than the more new-age S.ūfı̄ groups and credits it with creating “a ‘Black’
transatlantic identity” that previous Panafrican projects failed to create (226).
One could easily come to all these conclusions regarding the Taalibe Baay through
looking at the kinds of print and on-line media upon which Roy relies. However, to
conclude after examining the institutional form and public discourses of global religious
organizations that global religion consists of these institutional forms and public dis-
courses tells us more about one’s sources and methods than it does about global religion.
It is no shock that Muslims, including Taalibe Baay, have learned to address practical
400
realities wherever they live through forming organizations and speaking a language rec-
ognized by state and civil society actors. Roy’s “globalized Islam” is many cases identical
to “localizing Islam,” as Muslims pragmatically mobilize their religious resources and
knowledge of hegemonic secular institutions. Yet to assume that participation in such
institutional and discursive fields implies a shift to a secularized orientation implies that
a group’s public discourse unproblematically represents its religious orientation and that
its institutional structure is synonymous with lived relations of authority and religious
experience. These assumptions are similar to the asumption mentioned in Chapter 5 that
formalized education implies an epistemic shift away from mystical thinking. That is, all
assume a single epistemic orientation or institutional structure and ignore the possibility
that religious actors can engage pragmatically in hegemonic discursive and institutional
fields while simultaneously cultivating religious spaces and alliances invisible to anyone
looking at official literature. Shaykh Hasan Siise’s disciples (see below) have organized a
large NGO that has ongoing relationships with United Nations bodies and frames itself in
terms of current development language, yet this says little about the practices of spiritual
apprenticeship only visible to those involved.
The study of religious globalization requires ethnographic techniques that look closely
at relations of apprenticeship and co-discipleship, not simply public discourses that tend
to be framed in neutral terms that outsiders can understand. Put one way, public dis-
courses tend to have a z.āhir quality while bāt.in discourses and practices are reserved for
spaces visible only to those participating in a particular religious network. I do not mean
to advocate the ideology that z.āhir discourses are not as profoundly true as bāt.in dis-
courses. Yet an approach that only looks at publicly available discourses is necessarily
one-sided, especially where practitioners consciously identify different premises of action
and discourse that are not equally publicized.
401
9.3 Roots of Taalibe Baay cosmopolitanism
By 1940, within a decade after announcing the Fayd.ah—nearly three decades after Bourne
introduced the term “transnational” to American public discourse (1916)—Taalibe Baay
networks had already extended across West Africa. Baay Ñas was already the Tijāniyy
leader with the highest international profile (although not the highest profile in Sene-
gal), winning over numerous disciples in Mauritania and Nigeria. From the 1950s to the
1970s, Baay Ñas’s role throughout most of the Islamic world was framed as an “Islamic”
leader, not as a Tijāniyy leader. (Likewise, his grandson Shaykh Hasan Siise participates
in numerous international organizations in his capacity as an Islamic leader.) Taalibe
Baay cosmopolitanisms arose out of and remain part of much more longstanding and
widespread Islamic cosmopolitanisms.
Before Baay Ñas announced the Fayd.ah, a transnational network of Tijāniyy muqad-
dams throughout North and West Africa was already in place. This Tijāniyy network itself
emerged from much older networks arising from pilgrimage to Makkah and S.ūfı̄ appren-
ticeship. The pilgrimage to Makkah had long been an opportunity for Islamic scholars
from North and West African to visit other scholars, and a pilgrimage often took a year
or more. Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy founded the order after having been raised and
educated in c Ayn Mād.ı̄ (now in Algeria), studied with shaykhs from numerous S.ūfı̄ or-
ders in Fās (Morocco), and visited shaykhs in Egypt, what is now Saudi Arabia, the Hijāz,
Algeria, and Tunisia. The S.ūfı̄ order he was most strongly associated with directly before
founding his own was the Khalwatiyyah, founded in Turkey and strongly represented in
Egypt and other parts of North Africa (see Wright 2005:29–34. The Tijāniyyah, then, was
born out of a longstanding Islamic elite cosmopolitanism stretching across North Africa
and the Middle East.
Al-H c
. ājj Umar Taal, the mid-eighteenth-century Fuutanke cleric from the Senegal
402
River Valley most responsible for introducing the Tijāniyyah to sub-Saharan Africa, also
took part in translocal Islamic elite networks. During his early career he was associated
with a network of Pulaar speaking clerics (most of them Qādiriyy) stretching across the
Sudan. A formative time in Al-H c

. ājj Umar’s life was his two-and-a-half-year pilgrimage
to Makkah, during which he received mystical education and was appointed the Tijāniyy
khalı̄fah over Western Sudan. Al-H c

. ājj Umar took nine years (from 1831 to 1840) to re-
turn home from this pilgrimage, spending six of those years in the Sokoto Caliphate, the
revolutionary Islamic state founded by the Qādiriyy cleric Usmaan dan Fodio. He estab-
lished a close relationship with Usmaan’s son and then Khalı̄fah, Muh.ammad Bello, and
established communities of Tijāniyy disciples, setting the stage for the Tijāniyyah’s later
growth in Northern Nigeria. On his way home, Al-H c

. ājj Umar went on to visit the other
Pulaar-speaking Qādiriyy Islamic revolutionary state of Hamdallaahi, which he would
later attack and annex under the pretext that they had deviated from “true” Islam. Al-
H c
. ājj Umar established himself in Fuuta Jallon (now in Guinea) in 1840 and in 1852, after
building up the requisite alliances, he began a jihad that would unite much of what is
now eastern Senegal, Guinea, and southern Mali under an Islamic empire (see Robinson
1985 for a detailed account). Thus, Al-H c

. ājj Umar’s empire spanning several contempo-
rary states was rooted in much larger networks of religious authority spanning north to
Morocco and east to the Arabian peninsula.
Although the revolutionary Islamic states founded by Al-H c

. ājj Umar and his contem-
porary Màbba Jaxu Ba did not long outlast their founders, these leaders established the
Tijāniyyah firmly throughout West Africa. A major effect of establishing the same .tarı̄qah
in multiple West African countries was to establish a geographically dispersed network
of religious elite. These elites visited each other through ongoing tours, and some inter-
married and sent their children to study with each other. Although such relations were
403
not unheard of among Islamic elite not sharing the same .tarı̄qah, sharing a .tarı̄qah led to
particularly frequent tours among Tijāniyy leaders from different countries, especially of
shaykhs from Mauritania and Morocco visiting shaykhs in Sub-Saharan Africa who con-
sidered their guests sharı̄fs and therefore subsidized their visits with gifts collected from
their disciples. Colonial authorities commonly decried the interference of Mauritanian
Tijāniyy shaykhs in colonial affairs, describing these Mauritanian leaders as schemers who
visited Senegal only to collect hadiyyah from Senegalese peasants.3 Although such visits
from Mauritanian and Moroccan Tijāniyy shaykhs still involve collection of hadiyyah from
disciples to present to the visiting leader, local accounts attach minimal importance to
the material aspect and instead describe these visits as occasions to transmit knowledge
and solidify religious bonds. (For example, see the narratives concerning Baay and c Abd
Allāh wuld Al-H

. ājj in Chapter 4.)
In short, the Tijāniyyah arose out of longstanding transnational networks and almost
immediately gave rise to a transnational network of muqaddams, which by the second half
of the nineteenth century was mostly located in Morocco and in a band from Senegal to
Northern Nigeria. I have seen little indication, however, of sustained relationships be-
tween Nigerian and Senegalese Tijāniyys before Baay’s time. Transnational relationships
seem to have been centered on the T

. arı̄qah’s places of origin, Morocco and Algeria, as it
was primarily the descendants of Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy and other Moroccan and
Algerian sharı̄fs who visited both the Western Sudan and Northern Nigeria. These tours
continue to this day, yet ties of discipleship in many parts of West Africa have reoriented
toward Baay and his successors.
3 The colonial archives are rife with letters complaining that shaykhs from Mauritania and other neighbor-
ing countries were causing trouble. Officials often took measures to ban them from entering Senegal (for
example, a letter by Paul Marty, 10 June 1915 calling attention to the entry of previously banned shaykhs and
calling for tighter border controls [ANS G-13-67, Politique musulmane et activites des marabouts, 1906-17]).
See Seesemann (2004) for more on the specific relationships between Tijāniyy shaykhs from Mauritania and
the family of Allaaji Abdulaay.
404
9.4 Cosmopolitanisms and multiple imaginations of community
In 2003, I accompanied Al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri and several of his disciples to the resting
place of Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy in Fās, Morocco. Al-H

. ājj and his disciples (who
included Arabs and Fulbe) met an African-American at the Tijāniyy Zāwiyah who had
been initiated in New York by a Senegalese muqaddam of Baay Ñas and invited him to
join them for the rest of the trip. The young man spoke a modicum of Arabic, and for
the most part I would translate between him and the others. Soon after they brought
him to the apartment where we lodged, he began to tell one of Al-H

. ājj’s disciples of his
experiences in New York and mentioned his tarbiyyah. The disciple of Al-H
. ājj mentioned
some of the key words pronounced during tarbiyyah involving Baay Ñas, and the two
stopped speaking and embraced each other as if they were long-lost brothers. They
quickly became close friends, and the Mauritanian disciple told me how the American
exemplified the qualities of a disciple of Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m. The Mac t.a Mulāna group
invited him to come to Mac t.a Mulāna to have his young child educated there.
Naata Njaay, a Siñi-Siñi muqaddam who had a hand in spreading the Fayd.ah in New
York, describes his tours through West Africa in a widely distributed interview on Radio
Gambia. He tells of eminent muqaddams in Mali receiving him like a king. He reports
that when he protested that he was a minor disciple compared to his host, an eminent
muqaddam, the muqaddam replied that the simple fact that Njaay had come from Medina
Baay where the Fayd.ah sprouted was reason enough to lift him up. Similarly, ordinary
Senegalese disciples who visit Arab muqaddams in Mauritania are often given a lavish re-
ception, partly in recognition of their connection to Baay’s homeland. For many disciples
outside of Senegal, Baay’s barakah lives on not only in his immediate kin but in those
who walk the ground Baay walked. The enthusiasm with which such pronouncements
are made suffices to suggest that many disciples approach disciples of other cultures with
405
an attitude, at least in an abstract sense, of joy and openness. Whether this abstract open-
ness translates into a practical ability to get along depends on disciples’ understanding of
and ability to handle each other’s cultural differences.
Taalibe Baay of different countries often converge in the same spaces—leaders’ houses,
mosques, large meetings, Gàmmus, and so on—despite the fact that there is no widely
agreed-upon definition of what a Taalibe Baay is and not even a group name used by
people from different countries. People associated with Taalibe Baay networks in each of
the places discussed in this chapter have contrasting conceptions of what it means to be
a disciple. Moreover, most lay disciples from different local communities do not interact
closely with disciples from other countries. Only elite men and their daughters, who
are exchanged in marriage between religious elite families, routinely interact closely with
foreign counterparts. A look at multiple sites of discipleship highlights the fact that there
is no “global Taalibe Baay movement” understood in a significantly similar way among
different groups of disciples. Yet these groups of disciples are deeply linked in many
ways despite not sharing a common group identity, and even if they do not interact with
one another routinely, the idea that they all partake of the same knowledge and form a
transnational community powerfully affects how disciples understand themselves.
For the main stream of Senegambian disciples, becoming Taalibe Baay generally in-
volves undergoing tarbiyyah, which inducts one into the community of people who know
God (see Chapter 6). As adherence to an “Islamic group” is important to many Sene-
galese people’s identity, “Taalibe Baay” is sometimes used in a much broader sense to
designate anyone who considers Baay and his representatives as opposed to alternative
leaders to be their primary religious authority, whether or not one has formally joined
the S.ūfı̄ order by taking the wird. According to this more general definition, almost all
Senegalese Muslims can be considered either Taalibe Baay, Murids, Qādiriyy, or disci-
406
ples of any of several Tijāniyy branches (Allaaji Maalig Si, Allaaji Abdulaay Ñas, and
other). Many Senegalese who do not “adhere” (whatever that may mean) to one of these
S.ūfı̄ groups are not unmarked “Muslims” but are adherents to neo-orthodox, anti-S.ūfı̄
movements like c Ibādu ’r-Rah.mān, Falāh., and (to a lesser extent) Jamāc at at-Tablı̄gh.4
Many Senegambian disciples’ understanding of their religious identity is profoundly
shaped by the process by which Senegalese citizens have been defined as above all sub-
jects of a religious order—a “brotherhood”—and only as citizens through that order.5
Although Islamic groups’ political integration into the state is not as clear in Gambia as it
is in Senegal, MBHSRC research in Gambia suggests that the same cultural conceptions of
discipleship are prevalent in Gambia and that the state participates in Gambian religious
events in the same ways that it participates in Senegalese events.6
The conception of “Taalibe Baay” as a group identity including a discrete number of
people around the world thus seems to be most prevalent in Senegal, where several other
such identities exist. In countries where discipleship has not become synonymous with
cultural belonging and a quasi-political order, discipleship tends to be a more personal
matter that is defined in private and on a case-by-case basis. Many American, European,
and Mauritanian disciples (or students, as many do not refer to themselves as disciples)
consider the shaykh to be a spiritual guide but do not see taking the wird or tarbiyyah to be
prerequisite to following a shaykh. Others take these things but see them as part of their
4 The first two of these groups consider themselves “Islamists” in the tradition of the Salafiyys (often called
Wahhābiyys), in that they ultimately aim to establish an Islamic state, even if by peaceful means. The latter
is a proselyting reform movement that aims to “convert” individuals to what it considers to be an original
version of Islam without an overt political program.
5 See Chapter 4 for a discussion of how the Taalibe Baay have defined themselves as a “brotherhood” in
relation to the Senegalese state and other Islamic groups.
6 Conferences reported by MBHSRC researchers show Gambian officials present at major meetings as
they are in Senegalese meetings. Many muqaddams in Gambia are from Senegal or have the same family
as Senegalese disciples, and some villages (for example, the Njolofeen village Caameen Kër Baay Daam)
were founded by emigrants from Senegal. There are few cultural or other barriers between Senegalese and
Gambian disciples.
407
personal spiritual development and not as initiations to a movement. In Senegambia,
tarbiyyah became the primary diacritic of Taalibe Baay cultural identity, serving as their
“value added” in a national relgious field already saturated with saints. Such diacritics
have been far less important where discipleship, cultural identity, and citizenship are not
so closely intertwined.
9.4.1 A role reversal: Mauritanian shaykhs become disciples
Nearly two years after my initial research in Medina Baay, I returned to Medina Baay in
June, 2003 to arrange to study Arabic for six months in a yet-to-be-determined Maurita-
nian Arab village. As I asked a number of acquaintances for ideas of where to study, the
village of Mac t.a Mulāna somehow stood out in my mind, although all I knew about the
village before going there was that it was said to be a Taalibe Baay village founded by
one of Baay Ñas’s muqaddams, and that several French disciples were associated with the
village. Baay’s son Maahi, the director of Baay’s Islamic Institute in Saam, wrote a letter
of introduction to the village head, Al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri, and I took a string of shared
taxis to Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott. Maahi gave me contact information for another
muqaddam of Baay in Nouakchott, Tirmı̄dhı̄ wuld c Abd Allāh, who was receiving other
guests from Medina Baay when I arrived. Tirmı̄dhı̄’s son drove me to the Mac t.a Mulāna
road station in the Baghdād neighborhood of Nouakchott. I was fortunate during this
first trip to Mac t.a Mulāna that there was still a space available inside one of the four-
wheel drive trucks, and I sat next to a university student from the village and attempted
to converse with him in Arabic. During subsequent trips, I would sit in the back of a
pickup truck, atop a heap of rice and potato sacks with thirty other passengers, clutching
a rice sack with one hand and the shoulder of the man next to me with the other.
The student sat with me in Al-H

. ājj’s receiving room on the carpeted floor—not for
a lack of couches—until Al-H

. ājj appeared. Al-H
. ājj sat me on the central couch next
408
to him and I presented him with Maahi’s note and explained my business in Arabic.
He assumed correctly that we might speak more freely in French, explaining that he
spoke passable French, having studied at the University of Dakar and received numerous
French people in the village. Al-H

. ājj was unlike any muqaddam I had met—he brimmed
with enthusiasm, and as I spoke with him I had the impression that we had known each
other for a long time and that I was extremely important to him. I would later learn
that this is how he approaches most people, fellow Mauritanians and foreigners, and
that several European aid workers had converted to Islam after meeting him. He gave
me two options—I could study alongside the other students without paying anything, as
students in the region had done for centuries, or I could do as some other Westerners had
done and hire one of the village’s teachers as a private tutor. Knowing that my time was
limited, I chose the latter option. The former option would have been far more useful for
participant observation, but I chose the latter, wanting to learn as much Arabic as possible
in this short period.
As I rested in Al-H
. ājj’s courtyard, three young men, all grandsons of Baay Ñas, came
in to do their ablutions for the sundown prayer. They conversed in Wolof, and I joined
them and talked with them about mutual acquaintances in Medina Baay. Each had lived
in Mac t.a Mulāna for several years but still visited their families in Medina Baay at least
once or twice a year. That evening, Al-H

. ājj summoned several people whom he wanted
me to meet to a special dinner atop his roof. Among them were a French carpenter
who had converted and settled in the village, a grandson of Ahmadu Bàmba Mbàkke
who was studying in the village, a Mauritanian poetry teacher, two students from Niger,
a muqaddam of Al-H
. ājj visiting from Nouakchott, and the director of an NGO closely
associated with Mac t.a Mulāna.
During the remainder of my time in Mac t.a Mulāna I would eat lunch and dinner at
409
Al-H
. ājj’s house. I would share a plate sometimes with a group of students supported by
Al-H
. ājj, sometimes with Al-H
. ājj and the day’s guests, and sometimes with a combination
of the two. In any case, the group I ate with usually included men of at least four nation-
alities (women ate in a different part of the house), and sometimes many more. During six
months in this desert village, I met people from every inhabited continent, including over
twenty Spaniards who moved into the village toward the end of my stay. The village’s
Islamic schools, including over forty QurO ānic schools and a more centralized informal Is-
lamic school (mah.z.ara), drew students from Senegal, Gambia, Niger, Nigeria, Spain, Mali,
Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Guinea, and Indonesia. Several students are not
clearly Senegalese or Mauritanian, descendants of Baay Ñas and other leaders who have
one Mauritanian parent and divide their time between Senegal and Mauritania. During
my stay, the village received other visitors from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany,
Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Brazil, and
nearly every country in West and North Africa. Few of these foreigners live permanently
in Mac t.a Mulāna—most return home after visiting for days or months or studying there
for several years. Only one of the French disciples lives in the village, the rest having
moved away to work in NGOs and private companies, as the village offers few work op-
portunities aside from teaching and running corner stores. I know of only one Senegalese
disciple who is building his own house in the village; the rest of the Senegalese I met
were students and construction workers brought in temporarily to work on expanding
the mosque.
The cosmopolitan connections I witnessed in Mac t.a Mulāna have roots in longstand-
ing networks between Senegalese and Mauritanian religious elites existing well before
Baay Ñas. Despite deep cultural differences and racial ideologies, the two countries share
a cosmopolitan clerical culture that allows a religious elite from one country to feel at
410
home visiting religious specialists from the other country (see Robinson 2000b on the
“Senegalo-Mauritanian zone”). Most disciples have relatively little exposure to this cleri-
cal culture, yet without it it would be difficult to imagine “white” Mauritanians from the
most illustrious clerical sharı̄f families coming to follow Baay Ñas. This is not to say that
such a move was uncontroversial—the adherence of Mauritanian shaykhs to the Fayd.ah oc-
casioned bitter disputes that still simmer today—yet despite ideologies of race and caste
that led many Mauritanians to see Baay Ñas as someone of low status, a shared ritual
and scholarly language and significantly shared habits allowed certain Mauritanians to
recognize Baay Ñas as someone of high culture despite claims of his inherent inferiority.
Although Nigerian and Senegalese Tijāniyy leaders had had significantly less interac-
tion since the time of Al-H c

. ājj Umar, the clerical culture of Senegambia and Mauritania
was part of a broader Islamic clerical culture that developed as Tijāniyy leaders visited
the holy lands during pilgrimage. The practical repertoires of apprenticeship, material
exchange, and more subtle aspects of life (such as eating, drinking, and greeting) were
similar among S.ūfı̄ groups around the world due to translocal interactions and clerics’
appeal to the h.adı̄th as a guide to daily conduct.
Within the first decade of the Fayd.ah, several Mauritanian O Idawc ali muqaddams rec-
ognized Baay as the long-awaited bringer of the Fayd.ah. This recognition was a startling
accomplishment for several reasons. First, the O Iawc ali were the ones who brought the
Tijāniyy order to West Africa and were therefore widely perceived (and perceived them-
selves) as its stewards and as closer to its source than those to whom they had given
it. Second, O Idawc ali7 were recognized as sharı̄fs of high status, whereas Senegalese had
long been a source of slaves for Mauritanian Arabs. Third, Mauritanian Arabs, especially
7O Idawc aliis the local pronunciation of c Alawiyy, or descendants of c Aliyy, usually implying through his
wife, Fāt.imah, daughter of the prophet. All of those claiming direct descendance from Muh.ammad do so
through Fāt.imah, as she is his only child to have children, although Fāt.imah was not c Aliyy’s only wife.
411
highly literate and orthodox people from clerical (zwāya) tribes such as the O Idawc ali, tend
to see Senegalese Muslims as historically new to Islam, illiterate in religious matters, and
lacking in orthopraxy. As native Arabic speakers, they typically see themselves as bet-
ter able to understand and apply Arabic texts that are the foundation of their religion.8
Seesemann reports that some O Idawc ali also believed Baay Ñas to be of lower blacksmith
(tëgg) status and opposed vehemently those who followed him and especially opposed
his marriage to the daughter of one of his disciples (2004). It is difficult to imagine follow-
ing a black Senegalese shaykh to be politically advantageous for an aspiring Mauritanian
cleric from an old Tijāniyy family.
Sharing a leader has led Senegalese and Mauritanian disciples less to overcome cul-
tural differences than to learn to live together in spite of these differences. Differences
between Mauritanian Arabs and Senegalese are especially salient with regards to the
segregation, dress, and behavior of women. Mauritanian Arab women wrap themselves
almost entirely with a long cloth (mulc afa), leaving only their faces and palms exposed,
whereas most Senegalese women cover their heads only after they are married, when they
cover their hair but not their entire nead and neck. Senegalese women typically only veil
themselves completely when performing religious rituals such as prayer, wird, ziyārah, or
attending group meetings. Senegalese women and men often sit in the same spaces, only
segregating into different sections of the same room during religious activities or at lead-
ers’ houses, whereas Mauritanian men and women tend to occupy completely separate
spaces both in the home and in many social situations. In Mac t.a Mulāna, the women’s
section of public meetings was generally several meters behind the men’s section. I have
observed Mauritanians shake their heads disapprovingly when they have seen Senegalese
8I have often heard Mauritanian disciples make such generalizations about Senegalese and then add that,
of course, Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m Ñas is an exception. For their part, Senegalese are often no less judgmental:
Mauritanian Arabs, they say are racist, uptight about following a lot of rules, uncivilized Bedouins, and so
forth.
412
women and men sitting too close together. Several Senegalese in Medina Baay told me
that such segregation rules were not a requirement of Islam, but that perhaps they were
appropriate for Arab men, who have difficulty controlling their passions and therefore
need to be separated from women. Senegalese youths in Mac t.a Mulāna sometimes com-
plained that Mauritanian women were dirty, relieving themselves in front of everyone in
the sand and not washing themselves afterwards as required by Islamic law.
Once as I sat in a Mauritanian muqaddam’s courtyard in Medina Baay, a Senegalese
woman entered and sat across the courtyard from the men hoping to meet the muqaddam
as she might do in a Senegalese leader’s house. The men told her in broken Wolof that
this was a men’s place and she would have to go to the women’s place (another court-
yard). The irate woman, apparently assuming that they thought her unworthy to see the
muqaddam, answered that women were as good as men, and that they should thank God
for women as a woman had given birth to the Prophet and to them. They tried to explain
that it was not a matter of disrespect but shortly gave up and did not try to force her
to leave. The practical norms for approaching a shaykh in this case were similar enough
that both sides assumed such norms existed yet different enough that they disagreed
upon who was following the norms correctly. As Mauritanian and Senegalese disciples
have come to share certain spaces of religious practice, they have learned to live with and
overcome certain differences while reinforcing stereotypes when significant differences
remain. When a group of disciples from St-Louis in the north of Senegal visited Mac t.a
Mulāna, Al-H
. ājj wuld Mishri gave a speech at the mosque after the afternoon prayer
in which he urged his Mauritanian disciples to be tolerant of Senegalese disciples’ differ-
ences, saying that the Senegalese were more urbanized (mutah.ād.ir —sometimes translated
as “civilized”) and modernized than Mauritanian disciples but that their Islam was just
as sincere.
413
Despite popular prejudices and significant cultural differences, a transnational, cos-
mopolitan culture has minimized culture shock and prejudices between members of cleri-
cal families. A Mauritanian shaykh visiting a Senegalese shaykh will find relatively familiar
practices of sex segregation and propriety as well as significant similarities in architecture,
eating habits, and furniture. I found that religious leaders’ houses in Senegal and Mau-
ritania were furnished and laid out almost identically, with sofas lining the walls of their
receiving room and with separate spaces for men and women. Meals were served in an
identical fashion, with plates set along a cloth laid out over the carpet. Everyone’s hands
are washed before and after the meal by a junior or servant carrying a watering can, soap
and a basin. Whereas many people in Senegal, especially men who have gone to French
school, eat with a spoon, Islamic leaders rarely use spoons and only offer them to Western
guests, justifying their preference with quotes from h.adı̄th. Still, religious leaders from
both countries remain part of their local cultural milieu and accommodate the practices of
their followers. Senegalese religious leaders tend to allow and even prefer a less strict sex
segregation, with men and women sitting different sections of the same receiving room
instead of sitting in two separate receiving rooms.
Considering that O Idawc ali shaykhs had been in contact with Allaaji Abdulaay and
other Senegalese shaykhs since the late nineteenth century, it is not surprising that some
of them did not perceive a radical cultural gulf between themselves and leaders such as
Baay Ñas, whatever they thought of the Senegalese people in general and whatever other
Mauritanians thought of their associations. Also, at the same time, a number of O Idawc ali
and other Mauritanian sharı̄fs became disciples of Ahmadu Bàmba Mbàkke, although few
remained attached to the family after his death.9
9 My Arabic teacher, c Abd Allāh al-c Atı̄q, in Mac t.a Mulāna of the O Āb.ayri tribe (considered a splinter of
the O Idawc ali),
told me of an uncle who had become a disciple of Ahmadu Bàmba around the turn of the
century. He explained that many other Arabs of clerical families had similarly become his disciples, although
he knew of none who persisted after Ahmadu Bàmba’s death. He showed me a poem his uncle had written
414
The first O Idawc ali disciple of Baay Ñas was Muh.ammad an-Nah.wi (d. 2002), then
in his early twenties, who came to see Baay Ñas near the beginning of the Fayd.ah dur-
ing the early 1930s and immediately decided to follow him.10 He told members of other
Tijāniyy clerical families that he had found the long-awaited bringer of the Fayd.ah, and
although they hesitated to believe him, one of them, Manna Abba, finally decided to see
Baay for himself. When Baay heard his name—he was named after two eminent Mau-
ritanian shaykhs of the order—Baay told Manna Abba “you are my two shaykhs” (“O anta
shaykhānı̄”). Manna Abba asked Baay to give him tarbiyyah, and he soon became a mu-
qaddam (Seesemann 2004:81). He was thenceforth known as Shaykhānı̄, even publishing
under the name. Shaykhānı̄ was a direct descendant of Muh.ammad al-H

. āfiz., who had
first brought the Tijāniyyah to the area, and his advocacy of Baay as bringer of the Fayd.ah
therefore carried much weight but was also highly controversial, as many saw the mani-
festations of Divine Knowledge as highly eccentric and also objected to following a black
man.
After this, several other members of prominent O Idawc ali Tijāniyy families recognized
Baay as the bringer of the Fayd.ah, but the movement did not become a widespread pop-
ular phenomenon until Mishri, the son of c Abd Allād wuld al-H O
. ājj, received an ijāzah
in 1947 and began gathering a following both in Trārza (where most O Idawc ali live) and
to the north in O Ādrār.11 Mishri had met Baay twenty years earlier in 1927, when he
visited Lewna Ñaseen with his father,12 but after his textual studies he studied Sufism
in which he speaks of reversing the direction of offerings (hadiyyah) from sharı̄f to the Senegalese shaykh. He
also showed me a manuscript copy of a pedagogical Arabic grammar book authored by Ahmadu Bàmba.
So Cheikh Abdoulaye Dièye may be correct to note that Ahmadu Bàmba was the first Senegalese shaykh to
have Mauritanian Arab disciples, although Baay Ñas’s Mauritanian disciples remained loyal to him and his
representatives even after his death.
10 This sequence of events is based on Seesemann (2004).
11 This chronology is based on interviews with Al-H c
. ājj wuld Mishri in Ma t.a Mulāna, 2004.
12 This apparently would have been several years after the incident when his father is said to have recog-
nized Baay’s mission
415
with a representative of a leading Mauritanian Tijāniyy branch.13 According Mishri’s son
Al-H
. ājj, a dream of the Prophet and Baay Ñas convinced him that he would benefit more
from going to see Baay Ñas. In 1937, Mishri went to Kaolack and renewed his wird with
Baay, and he received tarbiyyah later the same year. Yet he would only be appointed a
muqaddam ten years later, after which he would become one of Baay’s closest friends and
most important representatives.
Beginning in 1958, many of these heretofore nomadic shaykhs founded villages ded-
icated to Islamic education. Prior to that time, there were few settled villages in the area
aside from Butilimit, an administrative town and Qādiriyy religious center,14 and cen-
ters of learning moved with the nomads’ camps. Mishri was the first to settle, founding a
village in a place called Mac t.a Mulāna15 and designating it a village school. Other muqad-
dams founded similar villages dedicated to education within a few kilometers of Mac t.a
Mulāna.
In 1978, three years after Mishri died, many Mac t.a Mulāna residents left with Shaykh
wuld al-Khayri, a disciple of Mishri whom many insisted was his khalı̄fah, and founded
the nearby village of Bubakkar. Shaykh wuld al-Khayri has won over a vast following
throughout Senegal, especially among Pulaar speakers. I was often surprised to find
disciples of Shaykh wuld al-Khayri scattered across Saalum and Dakar. This is a double
reversal, Senegalese following a Mauritanian disciple of a Senegalese shaykh appointed
by Mauritanian and Moroccan shaykhs. In Mac t.a Mulāna, Mishri and his son Al-H
. ājj
13 Muhammad al-O Amı̄n wuld Baddi, who gave Baay an O ijāzah in 1935
.
14 Butilimit is the center of a branch of the Qādiriyyah founded by the nineteenth-century leader Shaykh
Sı̄diyā, whose family possess a large library of Islamic texts.
15 A Hassāniyyah contraction of Mac tā Mawlānā, meaning “Gift from God.” According to al-Hājj wuld
. . .
Mishri, the village was named after a well dug on the site by the French for another tribe under the mistaken
notion that the land was controlled by the other tribe. When the O Idawc ali insisted that they controlled the
land, the French gave it to them and gave it its name, saying it was an unexpected gift from God. Many
villages in the area are named after wells, as they are important landmarks in nomadic areas and are very
often the site where villages are founded.
416
have gathered multiple Arab tribes into the same community, including Zwāya clerics
and Banı̄ H
. assān (formerly known as warriors) from further north. Young people come
from around the world to study and settle there.
In Mac t.a Mulāna, I had the impression that a formalized stage of tarbiyyah was not
a diacritic of discipleship as it was in Senegal, although most adults had received the
wird from Al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri. Those who had received tarbiyyah tended to do so well
into their adulthood and not as teens. Very few people who had undergone tarbiyyah
spoke about it spontaneously, tending to view it as a personal decision not to be spoken
of with others. When a middle-aged woman from Mac t.a Mulāna spoke with a young
Mauritanian man in his early twenties in Medina Baay who mentioned that he felt that
he had lost touch with his Tijāniyy roots and was considering asking for tarbiyyah, the
woman answered that there was no hurry as he was still young. One should be well
settled with one’s life, she said, before going through tarbiyyah, so one can truly appreciate
its significance. Soon after this, I asked a son of Alliw Siise if it was true that one should
wait until one is older before undergoind tarbiyyah, to which he answered that young
people are more responsive to tarbiyyah and know God more quickly, so it is probably
preferable to receive it when one is younger.
Another devoted disciple in Mac t.a Mulāna told me he had received the wird and con-
sidered that he received all the secrets of the Tijāniyyah that he needed through repeating
it every day. I asked him if he had considered undergoing tarbiyyah, and he said he con-
siders his tarbiyyah to be ongoing and not to be an event that happens at a single time. I
was uncertain if he was unfamiliar with how tarbiyyah was typically done among Sene-
galese disciples or whether he had somehow been led consciously to choose a different
method. When I asked a well known QurO ān teacher in Mac t.a Mulāna if he had received
tarbiyyah, he answered emphatically that that was for people with a very high spiritual
417
level and that his was still very low. He practices the wird every day and is considered a
highly literate and pious disciple. I asked him if he considers Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m to be his
shaykh, to which he replied yes, because Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m understood Islamic law better
than anyone else.
A European convert I met in Mauritania told me that he likewise had never undergone
a formalized tarbiyyah process but that he had experienced fath., the goal of tarbiyyah,
during a dream, and that it was very different from what he had expected. When I
mentioned that many Senegalese say one must undergo a specific tarbiyyah process to
experience fath., he replied that many people go through this process and think their
spiritual development is over, thinking tarbiyyah is an end in itself. He said that there
are many different kinds of tarbiyyah, and that a disciple does not ask for it but rather
a shaykh decides if the disciple is ready to receive it. He has received his own kind of
tarbiyyah, although he has not done what Senegalese disciples usually mean when they
describe it.
I asked a prominent disciple of Al-H c

. ājj why people in Ma t.a Mulāna generally don’t
talk about tarbiyyah and often tell me they have not had it. He answered that tarbiyyah
in Senegal has become a formalized process, whereas Al-H

. ājj gives tarbiyyah to villagers
in myriad and subtle way just through being with them every day. He does it through
his daily lessons after the afternoon prayer and through many secret ways one would
not even observe. This is why people show signs of h.āl when Al-H
. ājj comes and goes.
According to this disciple, Divine Knowledge is no less important for most disciples in
Mac t.a Mulāna than it is for members of Taalibe Baay communities in Senegal, yet there
is no rite of passage that marks a person as a Taalibe Baay. I asked another teacher
the same question, and he answered differently. He said knowledge of God was much
more common during Baay Ñas’s day and that some who undergo tarbiyyah now do not
418
experience fath.. He has the impression that some who claim to have experienced fath.
have not.
Because many Mauritanians, including Al-H

. ājj, hesitate to talk about mystical knowl-
edge at all, I found it much more difficult to develop a clear picture of the proportion
of people in Mac t.a Mulāna who have undergone a formalized tarbiyyah process. What
is clear is that, while Mac t.a Mulāna is clearly a predominantly Tijāniyy village and most
residents, men and women, pronounce their wird every day, tarbiyyah is not commonly
seen as a doorway to membership in a community of disciples as it is in many Senegalese
Taalibe Baay communities.
Despite differences in how disciples define themselves, Mauritanian disciples in Mac t.a
Mulāna show their connection to Baay Ñas in multiple ways. Instead of calling Baay by
his Wolof nickname, Mauritanian disciples call him “Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m” or, perhaps as
often, simply “Shaykh,” reserving this title for him alone.16 Many describe themselves
as “tilmı̄dh ash-Shaykh” (“Disciple of the Shaykh”) again emphasizing that this title is re-
served for Baay alone. Each night after the evening prayer, men gather in the mosque
and chant dhikrs and the poetry of Baay Ñas, amplified over loudspeakers and audible
throughout the village. The tones on which they chant the dhikr are particularly Maurita-
nian, based on a plaintive hemitonic pentatonic scale, yet some are Mauritanian versions
of the same melodies sung in Medina Baay. During Ramad.ān, when many Senegalese
communities organize daily tafsı̄r lessons, villagers come in droves to the mosque or Al-
H
. ājj’s house each day after the afternoon prayer to listen to cassettes of Baay Ñas deliver-
ing his tafsı̄r in Arabic. When children of Baay Ñas come to the village, they are welcomed
with a large celebration including drumming and chanting, and villagers raise a signif-
16 Mauritaniansdo not use last names, so instead of calling Baay’s children by first and last name, they
usually use the Mauritanian patronymic system, hence “Al-H c
. ājj Abd Allāh wuld Shaykh” or “Maryam mint
Shaykh,” using the title “Shaykh” as an unambiguous nickname for Baay.
419
icant monetary gift (hadiyyah) for them. When representatives of other major Tijāniyy
zāwiyahs in Morocco or Algeria have visited the village, they have been received lavishly
but privately in Al-H

. ājj’s home, and neighborhood heads have gathered a financial con-
tribution for them as is customary for sharı̄fs. Many villagers travel to Medina Baay twice
each year for the Gàmmu and for the Laylat al-Qadr (“the night of destiny,” toward the
end of Ramad.ān, said to be the night on which the first sūrah of the QurO ān was revealed
to Muh.ammad).17 While in Mac t.a Mulāna, Al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri distributes large sums of
money to Medina Baay’s poor and to members of Baay Ñas’s family. He often returns to
Mac t.a Mulāna accompanied by several Medina Baay youths, most of them grandchildren
of Baay Ñas, who will study at the village’s informal Islamic school.
Studying in Mac t.a Mulāna or comparable Taalibe Baay village in Mauritania has be-
come an almost obligatory rite of passage for grandsons of Baay Ñas, many of whom
eventually study at Arab universities such as Al-O Azhar in Cairo. Taking these young
people in charge is part of the hadiyyah that muqaddams like Al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri and
their disciples offer the family of Baay. Like most informal schools in Senegal and Mauri-
tania, these schools provide instruction and board to students at no charge, whether the
students are children of important leaders or not, but most students who travel abroad
to study at such schools are children of religious specialists. Baay considered it impor-
tant for his children to receive an education from native Arabic speakers in order to
learn to distinguish subtle phonemes that Senegalese teachers typically assimilate in their
Wolofized Arabic phonemics. Sending children to grow up among the Bedouins of the
desert is sometimes compared to the example of the Prophet, who was sent from the
17 The actual date of Laylat al-Qadr is said to be unknown but is believed to be during the last ten days of
Ramad.ān. It is marked on the eve of the 27th of Ramad.ān, which is only a convention, and many religious
specialists insist that this night should be called “Laylat al Khatmi” (“Night of sealing”) because the month’s
QurO ānic recitation at the superogatory prayers (nāfilah) is completed and “sealed” with a special prayer on
the agreed-upon night.
420
city (Makkah) to grow up with Bedouins. This practice is common among Mauritani-
ans as well, and most of the outside students in Mac t.a Mulāna are sent from the city
by Mauritanian parents. Many see education in the desert as not only a more effective
way of memorizing the QurO ān but also a more wholesome and austere environment for
character formation than the corrupt city.
In addition to sending many children to study in Mauritania, Baay and his children
have brought numerous Mauritanian teachers to Senegal. Baay enlisted the Mauritanian
disciple Muh.ammad ar-Rabbāniyy to teach his children in a QurO ānic school next to his
house in Medina Baay, and Rabbāniyy and his descendants since then have led the nāfilah,
the nightly superogatory prayers during Ramad.ān over the course of which the whole
QurO ān is read. Numerous Mauritanian teachers from these same communities have also
been enlisted to teach at Medina Baay’s two Islamic institutes, the Al-H c
. ājj Abd Allāh
Ñas Islamic Institute founded by Baay Ñas and the African American Islamic Institute
founded by his grandson Sheex Hasan Siise.
Because tarbiyyah is not generally considered a public part of a person’s identity
among the disciples I knew in Mac t.a Mulāna, it cannot serve as a diacritic of commu-
nity as it often does in Senegal. Additionally, significant cultural differences (including
Mauritanians’ strong preference to keep marriages within the tribe and among very close
relatives) have prevented any kind of close social integration. Yet Mauritanian disciples
tend to have a strong attachment to the person of Baay and an accompanying willingness
to interact with Senegalese disciples in certain capacities. Mac t.a Mulāna always supports
a significant population of Senegalese students, most of them Taalibe Baay, and Mau-
ritanian and Senegalese religious specialists visit one another regularly. The village also
hosted several Murid students while I lived there. Social interaction mostly occurs among
elites, yet this does not mean that lay disciples do not have a sense of connectedness but
421
rather that they leave most of the interaction to their leaders.
9.4.2 An Emir and millions in Nigeria
A number of scholars have approached the history and political implications of the Fayd.ah
in Nigeria (often called the Reformed Tijāniyyah in that context), including Ousmane
Kane (2003b, 1987, 1989), John Paden (1973), Christopher Gray (1998), and Mervyn His-
kett (1980). This is not the place for an in-depth look at the movement in Nigeria, but sev-
eral points are essential to understanding the Fayd.ah as a global network. The existence of
millions of disciples in Nigeria and its neighbors profoundly influences how Senegalese
Taalibe Baay understand themselves. Taalibe Baay are a minority within Senegal and are
politically and economically overshadowed by the Murids and Tijāniyys associated with
Allaaji Maalig Si. The idea that Taalibe Baay are actually far more numerous than any
other Islamic group in Senegal enables imaginations of a religious community that dwarfs
the groups that are more prominent in Senegal.
The Tijāniyyah in Northern Nigeria is most prominent among Hausa, whereas the
Qādiriyyah is more prominent among the Fulani, who are more associated with the
Sokoto Caliphate. The Fayd.ah has more recently become prominent in certain Yoruba
areas, especially Ibadan (Paden 1973). Soon after the Fayd.ah began, as many key Mau-
ritanian shaykhs began to accept his claims, Baay Ñas had a breakthrough that would
ultimately bring him a following far greater following than in Senegambia and Mauri-
tania combined. While Baay was on his first pilgrimage in 1937, according to a 1969
interview with the journalist Jean-Claude Froelich, the Emir (ruler) of the state of Kano,
Nigeria, c Abd Allāh Bayero, sent Baay a note requesting a meeting outside the Prophet’s
tomb in Madı̄nah. The Emir’s note explained that he had had three wishes since he was
a child: to be Emir, to go on pilgrimage, and to meet in Makkah the Khalı̄fah of Shaykh
at-Tijāniyy and to renew his wird with him. Baay was the Tijāniyy leader he had been led
422
to.18 According to the same interview, the Emir and his ministers were appointed muqad-
dams during the same trip, presumably after having received tarbiyyah and the necessary
secrets, and groups of Nigerians soon began to visit Baay in Kaolack. In 1944, Baay visited
Nigeria, where he personally inducted many people into the Tijāniyyah, renewed the wird
of many others, and appointed many of the leading Tijāniyy leaders as his muqaddams.
Kane (1989:29) reports credible informants who say he also visited Kano briefly after his
pilgrimage in 1937, although it was in 1944 that Baay Ñas made his grand entrance into
Nigeria and was, according to many accounts, given a more than royal reception.
According to Kane (1989), when Baay Ñas arrived in Nigeria in 1944, the Tijāniyyah
there was divided into two main branches, one founded by Umar Madabo (the Mad-
abawa branch) and one founded by Shaykh Muh.ammad Salga (the Salgawa branch).
Shaykh Salga had recently died, leaving several important and relatively young represen-
tatives but no clear central authority. The Salgawa leaders met Baay through the Emir
and renewed their wird with him. The Madabo considered Baay’s methods of tarbiyyah
heterodox and split definitively from the Salgawa, which went on to expand dramatically
beyond the Tijāniyy population and into neighboring countries. Despite the appointment
of khalı̄fahs in Nigeria, such as Emir Sanusi in 1963 and later the businessman Isiaku Ra-
biu, disciples of Baay Ñas have never been effectively united under a single leader. Rather,
individual muqaddams maintain direct relationships with sons and other representatives
of Baay Ñas, especially Shaykh Tijāniyy Ñas, Makki Ñas, and the Mauritanian muqaddam
Hādı̄ wuld Sayyid of Tumbuyc ali and his current successor Shaykh Tijāniyy. The current
khalı̄fah in Nigeria is Isyaka Rabiu, whom several Medina Baay notables have told me was
appointed more because of his considerable wealth and consequent ability to organize
large manifestations than for his reputation for erudition.
18 Froelich’s report on the interview is reproduced in full in Niass 1997:43–48.
423
Because of its prominence as well as its coincidence with widespread anti-S.ūfı̄ cur-
rents practically non-existent in Senegal, the movement associated with Baay Ñas in
Nigeria has attracted much more controversy there than it has in Senegal and Mau-
ritania. The Tijāniyyah, particularly Baay Ñas’s branch, has drawn a disproportionate
degree of polemical attacks.19 The best known of these attacks among the international
Taalibe Baay leadership was a biography written by T.āhir Maygariyy (1979), himself a
disaffected former disciple who had since become allied with the Wahhābiyy-inspired
O Izālah 20 movement. This biography prompted a swift reaction from some of Baay’s Mau-
ritanian muqaddams, most famously Al-H c

. ājj wuld Mishri and Abd Allāh wuld Jayjuba
(see Kane 1989). Kane (2003b) reports that more recently, perhaps as a result of the contro-
versy, disciples have downplayed tarbiyyah, at least publicly, and that Baay Ñas’s disciples
appear far less distinct from other Tijāniyys than previously. Downplaying tarbiyyah can
be seen as a response both to charges of heterodoxy from anti-S.ūfı̄s and as an attempt to
minimize differences between S.ūfı̄s.
During Baay’s lifetime, Medina Baay residents say, Nigerian muqaddams and their
followers did as Mauritanians do today, owning houses and visiting regularly or even
settling quasi-permanently. Ousmane Kane (1989) estimates that after the movement was
consolidated in Nigeria in 1950 until 1986, four to five thousand Nigerians would visit
Medina Baay yearly for the Gàmmu. Nearly all of them managed to recover or exceed
the costs of travelling through engaging in commerce during the festivities. After the
cost of air travel from Nigeria quadrupled and Nigerian currency was devalued in 1986,
Kane remarks, the number of pilgrims decreased to a thousand. The Gàmmus I have
19 The perennial objects of attack are the S

. alāt al-Fātih., the prayer central to many Tijāniyy litanies but
that post-dates Muh.ammad and is therefore considered an innovation; the esteem with which Baay and
other Tijāniyy leaders are held, which opponents equate to shirk, or associating something with God; and
statements that can be understood as claims to be God.
20 Themovement’s full name is Jamāc at O izālat al-bidc ah wa-O iqāmat as-Sunnah (Organization for removal
of heresy and for the establishment of the Sunnah), better known in Hausa as “Yan Izala.”
424
attended since 2001 have attracted mostly muqaddams and their immediate entourage,
not chartered planes full of rank-and-file disciples. Nigerans and other West Africans still
have an ongoing presence in Medina Baay, but nearly all of them are young men who have
come individually to perform service (khidmah) for a major leader, often while studying,
and most plan to return home before too long. Very few Nigerians above their thirties
live in Medina Baay, and I have never met any female Nigerians in Medina Baay, although
I have met one daughter of a Mauritanian muqaddam in New York who was married to
a son of Baay Ñas, and I have heard of groups of disciples flying in for the Gàmmu.
Large groups of Nigerian disciples and muqaddams in Medina Baay are an uncommon
sight, but their decreased presence in Medina Baay does not mean that the movement has
subsided or that Baay Ñas has lost his relevance in other parts of West Africa. Rather,
these communities of disciples have become more functionally autonomous from Medina
Baay, and their connection to Medina Baay more often comes through the visits of Baay’s
children to Nigeria than through Nigerians’ visits to Medina Baay.21
During the two months I spent in Medina Baay and Dakar in 2005, I was unable
to meet with many of Baay’s sons and daughters for most of the time as they were in
Nigeria for the large Gàmmu (Mawlid) celebration, and several of them stayed for at least
a month or two. Significant parts of the Gàmmu and related events, especially where
the sons of Baay Ñas spoke in Wolof and were translated into Hausa, were televised on
Senegalese television. Senegalese disciples watched in awe and wondered why they had
been incapable of organizing anything as orderly and beautiful in Senegal. Some of Baay
Ñas’s sons turned this trip to Nigeria into a more general tour of communities of disciples
throughout Africa. Xureysi Ñas told me of his trip to Sudan.
Makki Ñas told me of his trip to Niger, where he visited his sister, Ummul Xayri
21 See Chapter 8 for Baay Ñas’s son Maamun’s response to this independence.
425
Ñas, who was married to the late Hausa muqaddam, Abu Bakr Kiota (d. 2004), the main
representative of the Fayd.ah in Niger. Ummul Xayri herself has a large and vibrant or-
ganization of female disciples (Jamc iyyay Nāsirāt ad-Dı̄n)22 in Kiota, Niamey, and other
parts of Niger who successfully organize educational, health, and agricultural projects.23
Because he has a Nigerien wife and a sister in Niger, Makki is the son of Baay who has
the strongest presence in Niger.
From Nigeria, the Fayd.ah has spread to numerous other countries across Africa. Ac-
cording to Seesemann (2000a), the Fayd.ah (which he says is known as Tarbiyyah in Sudan)
has recruited the majority of Tijāniyys in Darfur and has attracted many previously unaf-
filiated to any S.ūfı̄ movement. The movement, Seesemann says, was the object of heated
controversy during the 1970s and 1980s and has since lost some of its momentum due
partly to internal controversies.
Because I have never conducted research in Nigeria, I can provide no ethnographic
data about how disciples conceive of themselves in relation to a larger Taalibe Baay com-
munity or movement. What I have observed is the effect of the Fayd.ah becoming such
a phenomenon in Nigeria on how Senegalese Taalibe Baay conceive of themselves as a
relatively small and marginalized religious minority in Senegal. The existence of millions
of Nigerian disciples allows Taalibe Baay to conceive of themselves as members of a reli-
gious community far larger than any other S.ūfı̄ group in Senegal. Some of these disciples,
although not the thousands that were reported before the mid-1980s, continue to come to
the Medina Baay Gàmmu each year. During my first Gàmmu in Medina Baay, the father
of my host was lodging a group of Nigerian disciples in the courtyard of his house, and
22 This is simply the feminine form of O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n.

23 One of my collaborators, Mamadou Lassekhar Ba, has written a manuscript on Ummul Xayri that he
intends to publish. Ummul Xayri’s activities are also described in a research summary by Pearl Robinson,
“Islam and Female Empowerment among the Tijaniyya in Niger,” available at http://ase.tufts.edu/polsci/
faculty/robinson/niger.pdf.
426
the family sacrificed a bull to feed the family and all their guests. Taalibe Baay from
different points in the network have few opportunities to act and imagine themselves as
sharing something, and among the few opportunities are the gàmmus held in Senegal and
Nigeria.
9.4.3 Americans in Medina Baay
The most international part of Medina Baay is undoubtedly the house of the Imam,
Shaykh Hasan Siise, and the area directly around it. Shaykh Hasan, often called simply
“Imaam” or “Imaam Asan” among Senegalese disciples.24 Shaykh Hasan is the oldest
grandson of Baay Ñas (the oldest child of his oldest daughter, Faatumata Zaaraa, al-
though not the oldest child of Alliw Siise) and is often treated as the highest authority
in Medina Baay although he does not carry the public title of khalı̄fah. His multiple links
to Baay—his oldest grandson, son of his closest disciple and designated spiritual suc-
cessor, and a close personal companion of Baay—give him an extremely high profile and
direct access to Baay’s barakah. Additionally, his extensive education at home and abroad,
including a master’s degree from London School of Economics and the beginning of a
Ph.D. program at Northwestern, have prepared him to act as the primary representative
of Baay Ñas to the world at large.
In addition to the West Africans who visit the senior sons of Baay Ñas, Siise receives
a large number of American Muslims, many of whom stay either in his house or in the
dormitory associated with his school and NGO, the African American Islamic Institute.
His house is often buzzing with American students, most of them in their teens and
twenties and some well under ten years old. Most of the American students I spoke with
were second-generation African-American Muslims, although some of the older ones (in
24 “Imaam” (as opposed to “imaam bi”—“the imam”) is a nickname of the same kind as “Xalifa” for Baay’s
oldest brother and “Sheex” for Shaykh Tijāniyy—that is, it is treated as a name in itself and is bestowed
officially as a name on people named after the bearer, unambiguously referring to a single person and not a
to class of people.
427
their twenties and above) were themselves converts. A small handful were white Ameri-
cans. Several American Muslim families have settled permanently in and around Medina
Baay, mostly in Saam to the northwest and Medina Mbàbba to the south. Several young
American men have married women from Medina Baay, often in marriages arranged by
the Imam, either settling with them in Kaolack or returning with them to the United
States. I became aware that Shaykh Hasan is Medina Baay’s uncontested representative
to English speakers when I visited the new Khalı̄fah, Sëriñ Daam Ñas, shortly after arriv-
ing in 2001. The khalı̄fah welcomed me and told me that I should address my questions
to Shaykh Hasan, who is responsible for receiving Americans. He called the Imam and
recommended that he receive me.
Unfortunately, I had much less contact with Shaykh Hasan Siise and the students and
disciples associated with him than I had originally hoped. I received the Imam’s verbal
authorization to conduct my research during my first week in Medina Baay in 2001, yet
he and many of the Americans and others directly associated with him remained reticent
and apparently suspicious of me throughout most of my research in 2001 and 2004. Soon
after I arrived in 2001, the Imam arranged a group interview between me and several
American students ranging from around ten to thirty years old, yet they were for the
most part unwilling to talk to me without the Imam present. A handful of older and
more independent Americans were friendly and frank with me, yet a site never emerged
where I could have sustained contact with a variety of Americans. I found my visits to the
Imam’s compound were directly related to increasingly paranoid rumors circulating in
Medina Baay about me being a spy and an enemy.25 Some of the more fantastic rumors
25 For example, my parents visited early in 2004 and I took them to see many of Medina Baay’s leaders.
Soon after, a friend told me that some men from this inner circle had questioned her about me, telling her
that my parents were not actually my parents but were fellow spies. They also told her falsely that I was
operating without Shaykh Hasan’s permission. Similar rumors that I was a spy circulated throughout my
stay in Medina Baay, mostly instigated, as far as I could tell, by people in this inner circle, most of whom had
never spoken to me personally.
428
were spread by several Senegalese in this circle who had asked me unsuccessfully for
sometimes large quantities of money.26 Rather than become further embroiled in the
politics of this inner circle or in an imagined clash of civilizations, I decided to focus
my energy elsewhere, especially on talking to Senegalese and Mauritanian disciples, who
were generally very welcoming and interested in speaking openly with me. Later in my
research, after I had collaborated closely with several Medina Baay residents, tensions
began to ease as people who knew me well began to speak up on my behalf. Still,
because of my shift in focus away from the Imam’s immediate circle, my observations of
Americans in Medina Baay rely on a handful of casual encounters and non-ethnographic
sources such as web sites.
Shaykh Hasan is most closely associated with the international association of disci-
ples (often termed a daayira), Nas.r al-c Ilm (“Helping Knowledge”), and with the African
American Islamic Institute (AAII), which is officially part of Nas.r al-c Ilm. However,
whereas Nas.r al-c Ilm is an organization of disciples, the AAII is a general Islamic-ori-
ented non-governmental organization with members throughout the world.27 Since 1998
it has been a consultative member of the United Nations Economic and Social Council,
and Shaykh Hasan Siise has participated in numerous international conferences as its
founder and president.
Shaykh Hasan left his doctoral work at Northwestern University in 1982 to assume
26 One, a relative of Baay Ñas whom many acquaintances warned me from the beginning to avoid, proposed
to sell me secret and damaging information on the Ñas family for two thousand dollars. His proposal was so
outlandish that I could only imagine that he was trying to entrap me. On another occasion he reported that
spy paraphernalia had been discovered in my room while I was away and that I was in danger because I had
been found out as a spy. Another man would sometimes interrupt my conversations, loudly proclaiming
that no one should talk to me, a non-believer. I repeatedly heard reports of him openly warning leaders not
to trust me. Once when I questioned him, he told me that I had been in Medina Baay for a long time yet had
never once given him money, implying, I thought, that he would leave me alone if I paid him off.
27 The AAII web site (http://www.aaii.info/members.html) reports 500,000 individual members and 106
organizational members, including fourteen American States. The site does not clarify what constitutes
membership and how these figures are counted.
429
many of his deceased father’s responsibilities, becoming Imam of the mosque and found-
ing a QurO ānic school. Like Baay Ñas’s own school, the Al-H c
. ājj Abd Allāh Ñas Islamic
Institute, the school began as an informal Islamic school using the same methods and
texts as other informal schools in the area. It has since grown into a formal institution
that was incorporated as part of the AAII in 1988 with support from American disciples.
Senegal’s government recognizes the school as a Franco-Arabic school and therefore gives
it some public funding. The school’s main purpose remains to teach the QurO ān, but it
also teaches secular subjects such as French, English, and computer literacy. Its offers
separate courses geared toward English speakers and Senegalese (its web site, http:/
/www.aaii.info/, names them as two separate schools, the AAII QurO ānic School and
AAII American School). It has a reputation for producing h.āfiz.s, many of them Amer-
ican, quickly. Since his graduate studies, Shaykh Hasan has visited the United States
regularly and has become well known among American Muslims.28
The school is only one of the many projects under the AAII’s umbrella.29 Many of the
projects fall under health and education or both, and others address rural infrastructural
and economic development. The ShifāO al-O as.qām clinic in Medina Baay, near the AAII
school, offers health care at a reduced cost and conducts public health campaigns for
vaccination and women’s health with significant participation from foreign donors, both
disciples and non-disciples.
The day after I arrived in Senegal in June, 2003, Shaykh Hasan Siise and the AAII
inaugurated a university called the Université El Hadj Ibrahima Niasse after obtaining
land from the Senegalese government and the partnership of St. Christopher’s College
28 Many
American Muslims I have spoken with inside the United States who have no connection to the
movement are aware of Shaykh Hasan, often without knowing his last name or .tarı̄qah affiliation.
29 Participants in the Institute present the organization on several web sites, including their official site,
http://www.aaii.info/, and http://home.earthlink.net/∼ halimcisse/aaii − 2.html.
430
of Medicine in Luton, United Kingdom.The university aims to grant medical doctorates
and degrees in English and Religious Studies as well.30 In January of 2004, the Imam
estimated that there were already twenty-four students enrolled in the university’s Dakar
campus. St. Christopher’s had been in existence in the United Kingdom since 2000 but
was only accredited by the Senegalese government (although not by the United Kingdom
government, where it operated) in 2003.31 Shaykh Hasan Siise and the AAII have also
organized the founding of a village, Kóosi Atlanta, south of Kaolack in Lagem designed
to be a village suitable for foreign immigrants to raise their children.
In his public activities, Shaykh Hasan Siise follows his grandfather’s lead in acting as
a Tijāniyy S.ūfı̄ leader when addressing Tijāniyy disciples and as a more general Islamic
leader abroad and in most of his public capacities. Al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri similarly is
adamant about presenting himself as a Muslim and only discussing Tijāniyy doctrines
among the initiated. Maygariyy (1979) accuses Baay Ñas of hypocrisy for concealing
his S.ūfı̄ tendencies when participating in the international Islamic and political spheres,
saying that many of those who championed Baay Ñas as an Islamic leader would not
have done so had he spoken frankly about his S.ūfı̄ beliefs. Any Tijāniyy leader would
likely say that Maygariyy has missed the point, as mystical doctrines were never intended
to be a political platform but rather to be something adherents experience and talk about
in private. As previous chapters have shown, the practice of engaging in institutions and
30 When I spoke with Shaykh Hasan Siise on 21 January, 2004, he told me they had originally intended to
have a degree in Islamic Studies but now planned to offer a degree in Religious Studies more generally in
order to secure more international support.
31 Seehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4410020.stm (retrieved February 13, 2007) for a BBC investi-
gation of the school’s woes. The General Medical Council, the public accrediting organization of the United
Kingdom, lists St. Christopher’s (as of 13 February 2007) as not offering acceptable qualifications (http:/
/www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/join_the_register/registration/acceptable_primary_medical_qualification.asp).
St. Christopher’s and the University have awarded medical doctoral degrees, but their degrees have
not become widely accepted and have been controversial in some places. See the discussion on http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Christopher_Iba_Mar_Diop_College_of_Medicine for some of the controversy.
The AAII web site (http://www.aaii.info/) currently projects that the school will be recognized by the
United states and the World Health Organization.
431
public spaces through z.āhir discourses and practices while reserving bāt.in for disengaged
spaces is common among Taalibe Baay. Baay Ñas often said, as many muqaddams repeat,
that he is Tijāniyy when holding his prayer beads (pronouncing his wird) and a simple
Muslim the rest of the time.
The Americans affiliated with Shaykh Hasan Siise and the African American Islamic
Institute blur the boundary between Taalibe Baay and non-Taalibe Baay. Most of those I
spoke with were from Muslim families and had not received wird, and some seemed rather
uninterested in the wird, at least for the moment. As opposed to Senegalese disciples,
American Muslims in Medina Baay do not come from a cultural or family environment
in which discipleship to a particular S.ūfı̄ shaykh is an important part of their cultural
identity and belonging. They are, however, from an environment in which being a Muslim
is distinctive and is a primary axis of identity and belonging. Even those who had taken
the wird described Medina Baay not as a Tijāniyy place but an Islamic place and Shaykh
Hasan as an Islamic leader. Those who told me they had taken the wird were generally
those who had studied the QurO ān and Islamic subjects for several years and had decided
at a certain point to study Sufism as one of their branches of knowledge. One American
woman had lived in Kaolack for over a decade and considered herself a devoted student
of Shaykh Hasan but said she had no interest in Sufism. She told me she believed in
keeping religion very simple and saw no personal need for wirds.
I asked several Americans if they considered themselves disciples of Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m,
and each one answered no. I asked one if he was a Tijāniyy, and he answered that he was
a simple Muslim. He clarified that he was following guidelines set out by Shaykh O Ah.mad
at-Tijāniyy but that this had nothing to do with his religious identity. He was a disciple
not of Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m but of Shaykh Hasan, who in turn is a disciple of Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m.
The man had received wird and, apparently, at least elements of tarbiyyah, and would likely
432
be considered “Taalibe Baay” by many Senegalese disciples. Many Senegalese disciples
might find his claim not to be Taalibe Baay offensive, as they insist that all spiritual heirs
of Baay are his disciples. Yet there are many degrees of z.āhir and bāt.in speech, and it is
conceivable that this disciple considers himself a disciple of Baay in a mystical sense but
has learned through interaction with the Imam to be careful about speaking of mystical
truths with outsiders. Whatever their deeper beliefs, however, American disciples in
Medina Baay generally do not openly invoke discipleship of Baay as a diacritic of cultural
identity. Although some describe Shaykh Hasan as uniquely wise and learned, they do
not explain their discipleship in terms of unique mystical secrets and a larger movement
or community of disciples who share these secrets.
Many Senegalese disciples, however, seem unaware that many Americans in Medina
Baay are not “disciples” in the sense generally intended by this word and that those
who are do not typically ascribe to a public Taalibe Baay identity. Instead, many Taalibe
Baay unproblematically describe all those associated with a particular religious leader as
adherents to the .tarı̄qah and as partaking of its cultural identity in contradistinction to
members of other .tarı̄qahs. Americans seem generally unaware of or uninterested in such
cultural conceptions of discipleship.
Differences between how Senegalese and Americans in Medina Baay understand them-
selves as disciples raises the question of whether they are all part of a single Taalibe Baay
identity, movement, or even network. “Taalibe Baay,” of course, is a Wolof word that
Americans are unlikely to use, yet I have never heard Americans employ an equivalent
identity label (such as “disciples of Shaykh O Ibrāhı̄m”).
Discussing how Americans became aware of Shaykh Hasan or other muqaddams and
how some subsequently came to see themselves as disciples and members of a commu-
nity would require more in-depth ethnographic research. My encounters with American
433
disciples have reaffirmed the distinction between a network, a movement, and an iden-
tity. These Americans are clearly part of what I would call a Taalibe Baay network: they
receive instruction from a spiritual successor of Baay Ñas, pray in a mosque alongside
Senegalese Taalibe Baay, and come to understand principles of Islam much in the same
way a Senegalese disciple of the same leader might. Yet they probably do not see them-
selves as sharing the same “Taalibe Baay” identity as their Senegalese neighbors. Such
an identity is likely irrelevant for someone who has not grown up alongside Murids and
other branches of Tijāniyys but who has grown up as a minority Muslim in America.
After I returned to the United States, members of my Medina Baay family living in
New York invited me to attend the Gàmmu at the Baay Ñas house in the Bronx. Arriving
shortly after midnight, I found mostly Senegalese disciples inside, including a female
muqaddam I knew in Dakar and several disciples I knew in Medina Baay, plus a small
handful of Americans and Nigerians. The women of the New York daayiras had prepared
a festive meal of cere (Senegalese millet couscous) and salad, which we ate before going
to the basement for the meeting. Most of the leaders and attendees of this meeting
were in their thirties or below. The chant leader was a Wolof-speaking Gambian, and
the three men in charge are a son and grandson of Baay Ñas and a relative of Baay’s
muqaddam Sëriñ Daara Usmaan Njaay. During the dhikr portion, the chanters sometimes
lost their unison (I had the impression that New York disciples do not attend regular
daayira meetings). The gàmmu narrative was delivered in the same three-pitch chant style
that Baay Ñas and other Taalibe Baay leaders throughout Senegambia use. The speeches
were indistinguishable from many I have heard in Medina Baay. While I expected this
event might draw some of the many Americans affiliated with Shaykh Hasan Siise in the
area, the meeting was almost entirely organized by and pitched toward Senegambians,
and only one of the night’s speeches is delivered in English. The meeting seemed more
434
an occasion to rekindle old Senegalese solidarities than to take part in new solidarity.
While in Medina Baay, I met numerous disciples of Shaykh Hasan Siise from New
York, Atlanta, and other cities, yet few attended the two Gàmmus I attended at Baay’s
house, which aimed to reproduce with as much fidelity as possible such an event in
Senegal. On the other hand, when Maahi Siise visited New York in 2005, I came to the
apartment where he was lodged and found a group of men roughly equally divided
between Americans and Senegambians, plus at least two Nigerian Hausas. It seemed that
disciples of all cultures have a relationship with the shaykh yet that religious meetings
and collective activities are largely limited to people of a particular cultural background,
as they include a large number of cultural elements (chanting style, food, the language of
the speeches) that may be familiar to people of one culture and not another. Senegalese
and American disciples interacted amicably in Maahi’s presence and did not divide into
cliques. Yet it was clear that what brought them together was the presence of a shaykh.
That is to say, to a large extent, transnational relations between American and Sene-
galese disciples appear to derive more from shared vertical connections to a shaykh than
from horizontal imaginations of a single community. Despite sharing the same spaces and
leaders, they tend to have quite different ways of articulating discipleship and belonging.
9.5 Conclusion
This chapter has sketched a preliminary approach to how Taalibe Baay networks globalize
through extending relationships of apprenticeship and the cultivation of religious knowl-
edge around the world. I have argued that to understand globalizing religious projects,
we need to appreciate the techniques through which religious subjects are produced and
networks are formed and maintained. Taalibe Baay globalization employs the translocal
embodiment of practical and discursive repertoires through disciplinary practices. Only
through taking seriously these translocal techniques of self cultivation can we understand
435
the emergence of cosmopolitanisms that both disengage from and engage with—yet are
not reducible to “a response to”—multiple, situated instances of modernity. Among Taal-
ibe Baay, the cultivation of religious knowledge and dispositions is inseparable from the
cultivation of spaces of religious authority, leading disciples to occupy the same spaces
largely through affiliation with a religious leader. Identities, cultural practices and mean-
ings, and imaginations of community are often bound up with discipleship, yet their
relationship to discipleship is not predetermined.
Despite disciples’ intense attachment to Baay and the powerful idea among many dis-
ciples that there is a global community of “Taalibe Baay,” from an analytical standpoint
Baay Ñas’s disciples can in no way be described as a unified movement, community, or
group. Those who identify themselves as Taalibe Baay invoke multiple and incompatible
mappings of membership, and many attached to Baay seem not to have any sense of
“Taalibe Baay” group identity at all. The lack of group identity, centralized bureaucracy,
and clearly articulated official doctrine is not a liability but a clear benefit. The slipperi-
ness of Taalibe Baay notions of community and Taalibe Baay’s relatively open policies of
discipleship seem to have promoted the expansion of its networks through areas with con-
trasting notions of the relationship between discipleship, identity, and community. That
the Murid organization, for example, is so deeply integrated with local political and eco-
nomic institutions and accompanies such “thick” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998:73) cultural
connotations (see Villalon 1995; Coulon 1981; Copans 1980; Cruise O’Brien 1971; Roberts
and Roberts 2002) has perhaps limited its cross-cultural appeal as a more universalizable
global affiliation of believers. Diouf quotes a Murid journalist who advocates “the de-Se-
negalization of Amadou Bamba’s thought by restoring its splendor” so that “Muridism
will have access to the world at large” (2000:701). Although Senegalese disciples of Baay
Niass are as “Senegalized” as Murids, Taalibe Baay leaders’ general disengagement from
436
political and economic institutions in favor of participation in Islamic cosmopolitanisms
has allowed them to be many things to many people and to define themselves as a purely
“religious” tendency.
437
Conclusion
This dissertation has shown how informal spaces, practices, and relations of Islamic ed-
ucation affect disciples’ approaches to truth, authority, and community. Relations of
religious apprenticeship extend across cultural and national boundaries, not dissolving
them yet creating cosmopolitan languages and practices that allow disparate people to
imagine themselves and act as members of a single community. Religious apprenticeship
connects disciples both horizontally, through commonalities of behavior and speech, and
vertically, through shared discipleship to Baay Ñas and his representatives. I have shown
how languages and practices of engagement and disengagement, accommodation and
autonomy, make possible strategies to handle cultural differences and mediate participa-
tion in religious and secular spheres. Various forms of education favor rationalities that
are mutually irreducible yet not mutually exclusive, involving multiple practical, discur-
sive, and rational repertoires yet not corresponding to separate epistemic positions. In
treating rationalities as repertoires of dispositions and practical orientations rather than
as epistemic orientations, I have sought to complicate modernist teleologies of religious
“rationalization” and “secularization” as well as dualistic practice theories (such as Bour-
dieu’s) that assume a single rationality and subject position for each actor.
I have made several related observations about religious knowledge, modernity, and
globalization. The first is a general argument that the increasing institutionalization of
religious groups does not necessarily reflect religious practice, as people participate in
438
Joseph Hill Conclusion
multiple networks of knowledge and authority and do not embody a single, coherent
rationality. A more specific observation concerns how particular Taalibe Baay religious
practices and discourses concerning z.āhir and bāt.in truths make possible practices of ac-
commodation, disengagement, and translocal solidarity and community. Third, I have
suggested approaching globalization not only in terms of institutions, infrastructures,
and circulation of discourses and goods but also in terms of disciplinary practices through
which translocal networks of agents cultivate dispositions and practical repertoires con-
nected to relations of authority.
The first observation is that what may appear as the “modernization,” “seculariza-
tion,” or “rationalization” of religious groups reflects not a transformation of religion
into a disenchanted institution but the creation of institutional relationships necessary
to attain certain ends, such as organizing large projects and engaging with secular in-
stitutions while maintaining practices irreducible to these institutions. This engagement
entails not a general religious rationalization but delegating various kinds of specialists
to act as public representatives, organizers, and intermediaries. For example, an observer
might see the formation of the O Ans.ār ad-Dı̄n federation in Dakar or the many NGOs
associated with muqaddams as a reinvention or transformation of the religious movement
into a rationalized, secular-style institution. Such NGOs participate in United Nations
bodies and receive funding from foreign aid organizations to engage in charitable and
aid work. To assume, however, that the institutions that publicly represent religious ad-
herents are coextensive with their daily practice and experience is akin to confusing the
state and its institutions with the people they metonymically represent.
That Islamic organizations around the world do not isolate themselves but rather take
on the forms and discourses of secular institutions—a trend that Roy (2004) underlines—
should come as no surprise. However, religious leaders’ alliances with secular institu-
439
tions signal neither an epistemic shift toward a secular outlook nor a cynical deployment
of hegemonic discourses to economic or political ends. Rather, they imply a selective
and partial engagement with secular institutions through delegating specialists of secu-
lar networks of knowledge and authority. Throughout much of their history, the Taalibe
Baay have been relatively disengaged from national and international institutions partly
because of leaders’ intentional choices to distance themselves from a colonial and post-
colonial government they saw as foreign and un-Islamic and partly because, even when
they desired to engage in these institutions, they lacked the prerequisite relationships
and specialists. Through sending certain disciples to become Francophone-educated ur-
ban elites, Taalibe Baay were able to create the institutional relationships necessary to be
counted among the major Islamic “brotherhoods” in Senegal. The organizations these
elites formed owed their form more to the secular networks in which they arose to partic-
ipate than to the networks of religious apprenticeship and authority that they represent.
Similarly, it should come as no surprise that religious practices irreducible to the
language and logics of modern secular institutions are largely illegible to and absent
from this sphere, even when they retain their vital importance in the daily practices
of disciples. Studying the formal religious institutions and central authorities in their
capacity of official representatives reveals relatively little about the daily religious lives
of most participants, including the lives of religious functionaries who occupy leading
roles in them. Latour notes the fallacy that assumes that “the production of bureaucratic
rationalization” presupposes “rational bureaucrats” (Latour 1993:115). To see beyond
the public manifestations of religious organizations requires a close ethnographic look at
religious networks and daily religious practices.
Taalibe Baay religious networks have expanded not through a centralized or rou-
tinized publicity campaign or corporate organization but through diffuse, personal re-
440
lations of mystical apprenticeship through which experiences of the Divine are cultivated
and given a social content. Muqaddams in some ways seem to act as functionaries of a
larger movement, yet their role is inherently somewhat charismatic: to introduce disciples
to the sublime nature of God. Mystical education and group meetings cultivate multiple
centers of charismatic authority and experience that disrupt the routinizing tendencies of
hereditary succession and bureaucratic organization. Dreams and mystical experiences
offer multiple ways to access Baay’s charismatic authority and knowledge without ap-
pealing directly to Baay’s official representatives. Yet the wide distribution of the charis-
matic does not unequivocally challenge centralized institutions and religious authority
but is also the basis on which centralized and routinized authority spread their influence.
Through education in multiple kinds of religious and secular knowledge, Taalibe Baay
simultaneously maintain the charisma and communitas of S.ūfı̄ knowledge, the hierarchy
of routinized religious succession, and the institutionalization of large-scale religious or-
ganization and engagement with secular spheres. These are all mutually reinforcing yet
often mutually compromising tendencies, any of which can prevail at any given time.
Related to this first argument about simultaneous, mutually irreducible rationalities
is a second observation concerning more specific Taalibe Baay strategies and practices to
accommodate contrasting imperatives through the language and practices of esoteric and
exoteric fields of religious knowledge. Taalibe Baay interact with secular institutions or
the larger Islamic community while forging quasi-autonomous networks and communi-
ties through practices of self-cultivation and authority. There is often a somewhat radical
disjuncture between what outsiders expect of Taalibe Baay—whether governmental or
non-governmental organizations, Muslims unfamiliar with their mystical experiences, or
Senegalese imposing caste distinctions—and their own ideologies and projects. There are
also important cultural and political disjunctures between Taalibe Baay themselves. Their
441
strategies of engagement and disengagement depend to a large degree on the opposition
of multiple z.āhir and bāt.in truths that are not reconciled but rather mediated through
paradox.
A speaker may accept a z.āhir truth even if it appears to contradict a bāt.in truth, as
both rely on contrasting yet simultaneously valid premises. At the same time, the same
speaker might declare as false a statement that considered true given a mystical premise
he or she considers unavailable to an interlocutor (for example, statements about “seeing”
or “being” God believed true only from the mystical point of view of someone having
undergone tarbiyyah). These opposing viewpoints are often paradoxical, and someone
unfamiliar with these different ways of speaking about and approaching reality may find
many Taalibe Baay discourses to be self-contradictory. Taalibe Baay generally do not
harmonize these paradoxes or oppose them as literal and figurative expressions but rather
take both to be literally true (although not necessarily equal) given an apparent or hidden
frame of reference, choosing which to emphasize based on immediate imperatives.
Often, what Taalibe Baay describe as z.āhir realities are invoked at points of articulation
with outsiders or fellow disciples they expect to hold a competing point of view, whereas
they reserve truths considered bāt.in for invocations of religious experience and commu-
nity. Mystical speech about bāt.in truths, as we saw in the story of Daam Jóob, serves to
highlight the community and consubstantiality of all disciples. Meanwhile, Taalibe Baay
leaders most often speak to non-Taalibe Baay Muslims in more general Islamic language
and present themselves in secular domains through the terms and forms of secular in-
stitutions (especially the officials of daayiras and federations). As we saw in Chapter 2
and Chapter 3, this tendency to employ z.āhir discourses to engage with fields outside
networks of religious authority while reserving bāt.in discourses for relations considered
inside the immediate religious community precedes the beginning of the Fayd.ah and was
442
prevalent among religious communities such as the Njolofeen who lived in polities gov-
erned by non-Islamic authority figures. Yet specifically Taalibe Baay practices of religious
education, such as tarbiyyah and large meetings mixing general Islamic teachings with
mystical chants and speeches, have distributed discourses and practices related to z.āhir
and bāt.in among disciples more broadly.
In addition to its uses aside from engaging with and accommodating imperatives
outside the religious community, this binary pair also mediates internal relations of com-
munity and authority. Within Taalibe Baay networks, z.āhir and bāt.in terms negotiate
and contest multiple imperatives and points of view. In such cases, the bāt.in is usually
reserved for the truth the speaker perceives as more profoundly true while the z.āhir is
usually reserved for a state of affairs that one must accept but does not hold in high re-
gard. As in engagements with secular or broader Islamic networks, the z.āhir corresponds
to pragmatic engagement with another, while bāt.in corresponds to the inner nature of
things, which is often seen as more timeless and less contingent. I have argued that
these strategies are not simply logical or linguistic games but are rooted in disciplinary
practices of Taalibe Baay religious apprenticeship.
This emphasis on embodying practical orientations, of course, owes something to
Bourdieu (1984), who connected practical habitus with conceptions of truth, right, and
judgment that Kant had located in metaphysical faculties. It also owes something to Fou-
cault’s notions of “technologies of the self” and “self cultivation” (1997c, 1986) which
challenge Bourdieu’s insistence that the habitus is so deeply ingrained as to be nearly
unmodifiable. The Taalibe Baay show that not only do people actively use disciplinary
techniques of religious education to forge selves but that the self they forge is multiply
defined in relation to multiple practical rationalities and truths. Thus, one problem with
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus is that it is too unitary—the same scheme of habits and ten-
443
dencies applies to all domains. If we think in terms of repertoires of habits and tendencies
rather than a coherent set of dispositions forming a habitus corresponding to one’s po-
sition in the social field, we can better conceive of how people can cultivate multiple
practical approaches not expressible as a single and unambiguous position in the social
field.
A third observation has been to extend this discussion of disciplines of the body and
relations of apprenticeship to thinking about globalization and the creation of cosmopoli-
tanisms. Studies of globalization have often had difficulty overcoming a dichotomy be-
tween globalized daily practice and global institutions, and infrastructures, and flows of
commodities, capital, discourses, and images. It is not controversial to say that the global
is local through and through and vice versa, yet it has not been easy to imagine daily prac-
tice as anything other than something local that (perhaps creatively) reacts and responds
to larger global flows and institutions. Daily practice appears active with regards to the
local (it “localizes” global processes) but passive with regards to the global (it is “glob-
alized” or affected by globalization). I have presented Taalibe Baay religious practices as
actively globalizing through both geographically proximate and dispersed networks of
knowledge and authority that are beyond a micro/macro or local/global dichotomy.
More specifically, my attempt to go beyond these dichotomies has involved approach-
ing networks of religious globalization in terms of the cultivation of religious dispositions
and relations of authority. An important medium of this globalization process is the reli-
gious subject who comes to embody religious knowledge through disciplinary practices
and to recognize other disciples as embodying the same knowledge. Disciplinary prac-
tices have long been recognized as a means of creating similar kinds of consciousness,
habits, and subjectivities in disparate places, for example, in Marx’s (1867) and Foucault’s
(1979) descriptions institutions (factories, prisons, schools) that inculcate similar dispo-
444
sitions in different places. The possibility that similar material conditions that shape
subjectivities might lead to transnational solidarities and identities has been the basis of
many transnational syndicalist and revolutionary movements. This discussion of Taalibe
Baay apprenticeship shows how self-disciplinary practices can be employed intentionally
within transnational networks of apprenticeship to transform disciples into members of
a community and active participants in a religious movement. These transnational rela-
tionships are produced not primarily through simply circulating discourses or creating
transnational institutions but through diffuse educational networks of self-cultivation.
I have approached Taalibe Baay as a cosmopolitanism, understood as a cross-cul-
tural network that contains techniques of cultivating mutually recognizable protocols
of interaction and an ethos and aesthetic of openness. Islam has long been associated
with cosmopolitanisms, especially but not exclusively among its elite, that have facili-
tated transcultural interactions, mutual identifications, and practices of community. The
Tijāniyyah arose out of such cosmopolitanisms and produced its own transnational net-
works through which religious specialists developed their own cosmopolitan spaces and
practices through education and through visiting tours. Taalibe Baay have further cul-
tivated cosmopolitan networks through distributing mystical practices and discourses
among lay disciples, creating a basis for mutual recognition and interaction, although
elites continue to have the most intensive intercultural interactions. This cosmopolitanism
does not come under any corporate structure or identity category but rather can be un-
derstood as a family resemblance (Wittgenstein 1953) of characteristics through which
those associated with Baay Ñas tend to recognize and interact with one another.
I have not approached Taalibe Baay as an “alternative” modernity, cosmopolitanism,
or globalizing project, for to do so would demote their project from a universalizing
project to a contingent or subsidiary one, a status that many of them do not accept.
445
Taalibe Baay religious practices and networks of authority and community globalize but
do not constitute a globalization or modernity any more than they constitute a move-
ment, community, or identity. Not only are their boundaries too fluid to be perceived
as a single entity but overly using nouns—modernity(-ies), globalization(s), identity(-ies),
culture(s)—to describe them would mistake a conjuncture of processes and practices for a
set of people or ideologies. Likewise, the related adjectives imply a noun to which they are
attached. I have preferred to describe cultural actors using active verbs—to modernize,
to globalize, to identify, to cultivate—which differ significantly from their passive forms.
This is not to suggest speaking without nouns and adjectives but to rethink many of our
theoretical concepts as active processes wherever possible. There are severe limitations to
understanding the Taalibe Baay as a globalization, as a part of a larger globalization, as
global, and as globalized, all of which point to and describe things out there rather than
showing the active and productive effects of religious apprenticeship.
Ultimately, this dissertation has drawn attention to the importance of studying re-
ligious knowledge and authority in the making of national and transnational Islamic
communities and networks. It has not exhaustively examined the content of this religious
knowledge, whether the minutiae of textual studies or the details of mystical experiences
and dreams. What I have been able to say about the experiential knowledge cultivated
through mystical education has been limited, both because (as many Taalibe Baay con-
stantly reminded me) I have not experienced tarbiyyah and because most disciples keep
the content of their spiritual histories private. Such knowledge is bāt.in both intentionally
and by its very nature. Beyond the mystical knowledge of lay disciples and specialists,
Islamic leaders act as organic intellectuals (Gramsci 1971) both through their daily ac-
tivities as community leaders and teachers and through their participation in scholarly
traditions. This dissertation has said little about Islamic specialists’ study, production,
446
and application of specific texts and concepts.
I intend this dissertation to preface a much larger project examining the practice,
production, and reproduction of religious knowledge and networks of religious authority.
Although many observers, from colonial administrators to contemporary social scientists,
have recognized the central place of Islamic groups in multiple aspects of Senegalese life,
most of them have paid minimal attention to the importance of religious knowledge in
Islamic groups’ networks of authority and community and have explained Islamic groups’
power primarily in terms of vague notions of charisma, religious fervor, inheritance, or
material interest. Highlighting the mutually constitutive nature of Islamic knowledge,
authority, and community among Taalibe Baay, I have aimed to contribute to a theoretical
framework for speaking of the production and reproduction of religious knowledge in
the context of networks of authority and modernity. A more complete examination of the
content and use of forms of Islamic knowledge in West Africa will require analyzing the
vast quantity of texts and the techniques of producing, transmitting, and applying them.
Few scholars have explored this fertile field, which has immense implications not only
for strictly religious questions but for questions such as rural literacy, the Wolof lexicon,
and disciples’ and specialists’ approaches to everyday life.
447
Appendices
Appendix A
The Medina Baay Historical and

Social Research Committee
As I have mentioned, much of this dissertation is based on data from an ongoing, collab-
orative research project by members of the Medina Baay Historical and Social Research
Committee (MBHSRC), an organization I founded with fifteen residents of Medina Baay
in 2004 during my dissertation research. The decision to form this group was not in-
spired by an anthropological precedent I had encountered, my training in field methods,
or any pre-conceived plan. Rather, it seemed to fall into place through a confluence of
factors. I had collaborated unofficially with various Medina Baay residents since the be-
ginning of my research, and several had significantly shaped the direction of my research.
Among these was H

. arakah Caam, Medina Baay’s unofficial archivist; Wolof teacher Aadi
Faal, who hosts a weekly radio broadcast; QurO ān teacher Ndaara Sekk; and several high
school students who shared a house with me. I also had thought about ways in which I
could actively participate in the community, both to contribute something and to define
my role in such a way as to facilitate my work.
Some of my collaborators showed a genuine interest in and implicit understanding
of conducting research and became particularly interested in the history of the group. I
soon realized that they and several others were contributing in ways that went far beyond
technical assistance, determining to a large extent which sites to visit, who would be
449
Joseph Hill The Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee
interviewed, what questions were asked, and the protocol that would be used in this
whole process. The fiction that this project was strictly my own became hard to maintain.
H
. arakah, who regularly forms elaborately-named research and educational entities,
suggested establishing a group with an official name, although I initially found the idea
counterintuitive and pretentiously official. I discussed the idea with several acquaintances
and determined that this move might have a number of benefits. It would create a pub-
lic face for my research, making my goals and methods transparent and dispelling the
obscurity that had led to numerous false rumors. Forming it would give me an oppor-
tunity to speak with leaders and make sure they understood and supported my project.
Regular meetings would allow me to discuss and obtain feedback on research topics and
methods openly. Perhaps most importantly, I had chosen to study an extremely complex
topic, and a diverse and coordinated group of people might bring both a large quantity of
information and multiple approaches to the same questions from researchers of different
backgrounds. Thus, the project would become explicitly multivocal and multiperspectival
in ways that an independent researcher could not.
After coming up with a name for the group—The Medina Baay Historical and Social
Research Committee (MBHSRC—unfortunately, not a pronounceable acronym as is the
usual practice in areas of French influence)—I drafted fliers in English, French, and Arabic
and presented them to a number of prominent leaders in Medina Baay for their permis-
sion and feedback. I was surprised that none seriously objected to or commented on the
methods or results of the project and that they mostly raised minor semantic questions
concerning the Arabic flier. My host from Mauritania, al-H

. ājj wuld Mishri, who from the
beginning supported me more than I could have hoped for, took me personally to visit
Imam H
. asan Siise about the idea, hoping that his presence might positively influence the
Imam’s reception. The Imam seemed cautious as usual but presented no objections.
450
On the morning of Thursday, July 23, 2004, confident that I had the consent of Me-
dina’s central leaders and had found a reliable group of collaborators, I called a meeting
to inaugurate the Research Committee officially. I invited those I had already worked
with up until that point as well as several others interested in the project. These included
archivist H O
. arakah Caam; Wolof specialist Aadi Faal; Qur ān teacher Baay Sàmb; high
school students Allaaji Abdulaay (Aas) Bittéy, Abdulaay (Baay Laay) ÑaN, and Yuunus
Caam (all three of whom shared a house with me). Several inaugural members could not
attend the meeting, including So.Na.C.O.S. employee Baay Sekk, his wife, French teacher
Ndey Xadi Bittéy, and QurO ān teachers Sëriñ Daara Àmmat (Ndaara) Sekk and Allaaji
Caam. Later, high school student Sheex Baay Caam, university students Alliyun Sekk
and Abdu Salaam Caam, independent researcher Mamadu Lasxar Ba, and agronomist
Aamadu Njaay would join the MBHSRC. Thus, the MBHSRC ultimately included fifteen
residents of Medina Baay and its surroundings in addition to myself.1 Several of my clos-
est collaborators are close relatives of my original host Baay Caam and were by extension
considered my adopted relatives.
At the inaugural meeting, I explained the role I envisioned members of the MBHSRC
to play in the project, which was primarily to conduct interviews, recording them on cas-
sette whenever possible (I bought each of them a portable tape recorder) and transcribing
them. I handed out a list of potential interview questions and had them brainstorm for
people to interview. Most began with grandparents, neighbors, personal religious lead-
ers. During the first few weeks, I spent most of my time training members and organizing
the group’s activities. We held weekly meetings in which we discussed the direction of re-
search, interview methods, and strategies for dealing with difficult situations. In addition
to the training provided in these meetings, I arranged to interested MBHSRC members to
1 Members of the MBHSRC are presented on the web page http://medinabaay.dyndns.org/Medina/doc/
medina/MBHSRC.
451
take Wolof lessons from Aadi Faal and to take computer literacy lessons at a nearby non-
governmental organization so they could transcribe their interviews in Wolof.
As MBHSRC members became more confident and independent, I spent less time
managing and training and became more productive in active research than ever be-
fore. MBHSRC members involved me in their interviews and filled my schedule with
interviews and short trips to various villages and cities. MBHSRC members became in-
creasingly adventurous, traveling to villages and towns throughout and beyond Senegal.
Abdulaay ÑaN and Abdu Salaam Caam traveled to Baay’s birthplace of Tayba Ñaseen and
the birthplace of the Fayd.ah, Kóosi Mbittéyeen. Aamadu Njaay and Aadi Faal conducted
interviews in several Ñoominka fishing villages where the movement has taken hold.
Three MBHSRC members (Aas Bittéy, Abdu Salaam Caam, and Alliyun Sekk) researched
primarily in Dakar, where I often came to work with them. Sheex Baay Caam accom-
panied me to Mauritania. Two members (Baay Sekk and Aamadu Njaay) interviewed
muqaddams in Gambia, and Mamadu Lasxar Ba spent four months conducting interviews
in Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali. (See Table A.1 for a list of places where MBHSRC members
conducted research.) Ba’s sole form of picture identification as he crossed several borders
was his MBHSRC member card, which he says all officials honored because they know
and respect Medina Baay.
Working with this group significantly broadened my experience of Taalibe Baay net-
works and introduced me to a wide range of people, places, and ideas I would not have
otherwise discovered. These researchers approached the topic with an implicit under-
standing of the Fayd.ah as a multi-ethnic and multi-sited network, leading me to follow
paths of discipleship across Senegal. Each MBHSRC member concretely shaped my own
“mapping” (Clarke 2004) of Taalibe Baay networks. Discussing the results of our research
openly led to a synergy and momentum only possible through such an organized form
452
Place MBHSRC members

Saalum
Caameen Sanc Sheex Baay Caam, Allaaji Abdulaay Bittéy, Joseph
Hill
Caameen Kër Maasàmba Céeg Caam Ndaara Sekk
Cilla Njaay Allaaji Caam
Kañmoor Aadi Faal, Joseph Hill
Kawlax/Medina Baay nearly all members
Kóosi Mbittéyeen Baay Laay ÑaN, Abdu Salaam Caam
Mbittéyeen Abdu Yuunus Caam, Joseph Hill
Mbittéyeen Waalo Joseph Hill, Allaaji Abdulaay Bittéy, Sheex Baay
Caam
Tayba Ñaseen Abdu Salaam Caam, Baay Laay ÑaN, Joseph Hill
Ndóofaan Lagem Aadi Faal
Njaayeen Kàdd Ndaara Sekk
NjéyjeN Aamadu Njaay
Kër Yoro Xoja Joseph Hill, Allaaji Caam
Siin
KaaraN Aamadu Njaay
Sóokóon Aamadu Njaay
Jirnda Aamadu Njaay
Jam Ñaajo Aadi Faal
Medina Sangaako Aadi Faal
Dakar region
Dakar, Rufisque, and suburbs Abdu Salaam Caam, Alliyun Sekk, Allaaji
Abdulaay Bittéy, Sheex Baay Caam, Ndaara Sekk,
Joseph Hill
Gambia
Bànjul and suburbs Aadi Faal, Baay Sekk, Aamadu Njaay
Ndungu Kebe Aadi Faal
Mauritania
Nouakchott, Mac t.a Mulāna, etc. Joseph Hill, Sheex Baay Caam
Other West African countries
Nigeria, Ghana, Mali Mamadu Lasxar Ba
Table A.1: Sites of Medina Baay Historical and Social Research Committee research
453
of collaborative research. Suspicions did not cease (and probably never will), yet many
formerly skeptical people observed our collaborative work and came to view my presence
positively as the mutual contributions between local people and the project became clear.
In addition to the clear benefits of working with this large number of people in a
transparent way, this collaborative project also came with significant challenges. MBH-
SRC members enthusiastically sought out interviewees, but when financial resources,
time, and enthusiasm waned, we were left with numerous untranscribed cassettes and
handwritten reports that had not been integrated into the on-line database. More funda-
mentally, working with such a large and diverse group made it difficult to monitor the
quality and direction of research, and although each member important contributions,
future research will likely involve a more focused subset of this group and more tightly
manage the interview-to-report process.
The MBHSRC’s work is ongoing, and only a small fraction of their work is repre-
sented here, partly because not all has been organized and partly because of the ques-
tions I have decided to highlight. MBHSRC members continue to author and send me
reports, which I continue to organize in a database on the MBHSRC web site, http://
medinabaay.dyndns.org, although much of it is still not available publicly for confiden-
tiality reasons. The large amount of Arabic archival data, most of it from H
. arakah Caam
and H
. asan Muh.ammad Siise, remains unanalyzed and largely uncatalogued. Although
the dissertation that occasioned the foundation of the group has been completed, I en-
vision the MBHSRC’s current work as the beginning of a long-term collaboration and a
growing body of data. This dissertation is far from exhausting the possibilities of col-
laborative research on Islamic education, knowledge, and history in transnational Taalibe
Baay networks.
454
Appendix B
Wolof and Arabic Transliteration and

Pronunciation
This dissertation and the larger collaborative project consistently use systematic, phone-
mic Wolof and Arabic transliterations rather than following commonly used French-
derived conventions, even in names of people and places with widely known French
spellings. At the risk of confusing those accustomed to prevailing French spellings, I
have made this choice to facilitate accurately recording important phonemic distinctions
lost in French-derived spellings. When mentioning people or places widely known by
their French transliteration, I often provide the most common French spelling for refer-
ence, subsequently following the more exact and unambiguous Wolof and Arabic sys-
tems. Only the names of countries and national and regional capitals retain their official
spellings. With regard to Islamic and S.ūfı̄ terms of Arabic origin but commonly used in
Wolof, my general practice is to use a Wolof transliteration when speaking of widespread
Senegalese meanings and categories and to use Arabic transliterations when speaking of
meanings that are more general to Islam and Sufism around the world. Of course, this
distinction is often arbitrary and in many cases either could have been used.
Wolof, Arabic, and French words are differentiated through distinct type-settings in-
stead of specifying the language explicitly: Wolof, Arabic, French, English. When other
languages are used, they are simply indicated thus and the language is specified explic-
455
Joseph Hill Wolof and Arabic Transliteration and Pronunciation
itly. To avoid encumbering the text, I generally do not alter the formatting of proper
nouns, even when transliterated phonetically. In translations, code-switches in the orig-
inal utterance that are translated into English are distinguished thus: from Wolof, from
Arabic, from French, from English.
For simplicity’s sake, I generally indicate foreign plurals by the singular form plus s
in standard type. Hence: muqaddams instead of muqaddamūn, .tarı̄qahs instead of .turuq,
daayiras instead of daayira. I only use Arabic plurals where the plural has a particular
collective meaning or is otherwise integral to the meaning, as in c ulamāO (scholars, the
literate religious elite, rather than c ālims) and c ulūm (sciences, disciplines, rather than
c ilms).
B.1 Wolof Transliteration and Pronunciation
Wolof transliterations adhere to the phonemically standardized Romanized translitera-
tion system of the Centre de linguistique appliqué de Dakar (CLAD) rather than more
widely used yet less precise Arabized and French patterns.1 According to this system,
the French spelling Ndiaye becomes Njaay, Diop becomes Jóob, Thioube becomes Cubb,
Niang becomes ÑaN, Kaolack becomes Kawlax, Diourbel becomes Jurbel (or Njaaréem),
Thiès becomes Cees or Kees.
B.1.1 Consonants
The following consonants (araf yu góor) are weak and are pronounced approximately
as they are in English: b, d, f, g (always hard), h (used primarily in loan words and
sometimes—especially in the Saalum region—pronounced before an initial vowel), j, k,
l (closer to the French pronunciation), m, n, p, s, t, w, y. At the end of a word, weak
consonants are not voiced, and some final consonants are therefore not distinguishable in
1 Thanks to Aadi Faal, my principal Wolof consultant, for his insight on some of the technical terminology
and distinctions used here.
456
certain contexts (d and t, b and p, g and k). Generally speaking, words do not end in a
weak k or p.
The letter c is pronounced somewhat like English “ch”, and x is pronounced somewhat
like ch in the German “ach.”
Wolof also includes the following weak consonants: ñ (as in Spanish: somewhat like
ny as in “onion”), N (as the ng in “walking”).
In addition to these consonants, Wolof includes several nasal consonants (nosal), all
of which are single phonemes spelled with two characters: mb, nc, nd, ng, nj, mp, nt, nq.
Unlike the weak consonants listed above, nasalized consonants do not have strong forms
and can behave much as strong consonants. Of the nasal consonants, only mb, nd, ng, and
nj can act as initial consonants.
I occasionally use certain letters that are not part of the standard Wolof system but
that are sometimes retained in loan words: h, sh, and z. Not all speakers pronounce these
letters uniformly (Arabic h and h. are often either dropped or replaced by x;2 sh, z, and
several other Arabic letters are often replaced with s).3 In transcribing Wolofized names
that are sometimes pronounced with these phonemes (Sheex, Zeynabu, Hasan), I generally
retain these letters, preferring more distinction over less. The reader should be aware that
some speakers would pronounce these names “Seex,” “Seynabu,” and “Asan.”
The only strong consonant represented by a single character is q (a gutteral sound,
similar to qāf in Arabic). Otherwise, nearly all the above weak consonants (aside from f,
s, w, and the borrowed consonants h and z) have a strong form, which is represented by
doubling the letter in writing and insisting on the letter when speaking, often distinguish-
ing it by pronouncing (but not writing) a light vowel when spoken at the end of a word
2 Arabic Mah.mūd becomes Maxmuut but Ah.mad becomes Ammat or Aamadu

3 Dhikr becomes sikkar; waz.ı̄fah becomes wasifa; shaykh becomes either sheex or seex, or séex in some
regions
457
Root consonant Twin consonant
b (Bittéy, bale) mb (Mbittéyeen, mbalit)
d (Daraame) nd (Ndaraame)
f (Faal, firi [to interpret]) p (Paaleen, piri [interpretation])
g (Géy) ng (Ngéyeen)
j (Jolof, Jóob) nj (Njolofeen, Njóobeen)
s (Saaxo, Saar, saaf, sol) c (Caaxo, Caareen, caaf, coolaay)
Table B.1: Twin consonants in Wolof.
(what is written tudd sounds like it might be written tuddu). Strong consonants, includ-
ing q, cannot occur at the beginning of a word. Some weak consonants (p, k) with a few
exceptions only exist at the beginning of a word, and in intermediate or final positions
one normally only finds their strong form (pp, kk).
Place and collective family names often derive from the In some derived nouns, espe-
cially commonly encountered place and family names, the initial consonant of the root is
substituted with a twin consonant. The new consonant is either the nasalized version of
the original consonant or, if the consonant cannot be nasalized, either a related consonant
or the unmodified original consonant. Thus, the village Njóobeen comes from the family
name Jóob, mbalit (refuse) from bale (to sweep), and caaf (something roasted) from saaf
(to roast). Consonants not listed here remain unchanged. (See Table B.1.)
B.1.2 Vowels
The following vowels (araf yu jigéen) are short: a (between u in the English “up” and a
in “all”), e (as in the English “get”), é (as the French é or the English a in “late”), i (as in
458
the English “in”), o (pronounced with the mouth open), ó (pronounced with the mouth
nearly closed), and u.
All the above short vowels can be lengthened, which is represented in writing by
doubling them. Long vowels cannot precede strong consonants.
Wolof also contains two neutral (yemb) vowels whose length is not a distinguishing
factor: ë (as u in “put”), and the open à (pronounced with the mouth more open than the
unaccented a and only occurring before strong or nasal consonants).
B.2 Arabic Transliteration and Pronunciation
Transliterating Arabic is particularly complicated as it requires preserving a long-estab-
lished written system while facilitating pronunciation. I follow a simple rule: make all
basic pronunciation distinctions that a fully vocalized text would make, except that case
endings are dropped. Thus, I distinguish short and long vowels (a and ā, i and ı̄, u and ū)
and emphatic and non-emphatic letters (between d X and d. , h è and h. h, s and s.

, t H and t. , z P and z. ). The guttural consonant c ayn ¨ is represented here as c ,
and the glottal stop, hamzah (or hamzat qatc —“cutting hamza” Z) as O . Dh (dhāl X) is

.
pronounced as the soft th in “the.” Th (thāO H ) is pronounced as the hard th in “thorn.”

Gh (shı̄n ) is pronounced as sh in English. Gh (ghayn ¨) is a gargling sound somewhat

resembling the French r. Q (qāf ) is a guttural sound like a k pronounced deep in the
throat. Kh (khāO p) is pronounced like ch in the german ach.

Again in conformance with fully vocalized standards, I transliterate the nisbah de-
scriptive noun ending literally as -iyy, favoring Arabic literary conventions over tenden-
cies of spoken Arabic and other common transliterations (the most common of which is
-ı̄). The feminine form of the nisbah construction is also transliterated literally (-iyyah), as
in Tijāniyyah.
For simplicity’s sake, I only transliterate case endings where they would be commonly
459
pronounced in Arabic, as in certain common expressions and terms (as in al-h.amdu li-Llāhi,
c Ibādu ’r-Rah.mān) or in texts where omitting them might ruin the meter. Many Maurita-
nian names have vowel endings that resemble case endings but are considered integral to
the name (Ah.maddu, Muh.ammadhin, Muh.ammadan), and these are always transliterated.
Following fully vocalized Arabic orthography, I always represent tāO marbūt.ah

è,
an ending most commonly designating a feminine noun or adjective) as a consonant pre-
ceded by a, transliterating it as -at when it is part of an O id.āfah construction and otherwise
as -ah (hence c ĀO ishah rather than c ĀO isha or c ĀO ishatu).4 This letter is considered a conso-
nant even though many speakers tend to drop any final h in speech, whether tāO marbūt.ah
or the letter hāO . In certain cases, I make exceptions to reflect common usage (for example,
if a particular woman is commonly called c ĀO ishatu).
The quasi-letter hamzat was.l (joining hamza), which only occurs at the beginning of a
word and is always followed directly by two adjoining consonants, is generally indicated

in Arabic texts as a plain initial O alif ( @, as opposed to @ or @). Here its transliteration
depends on the Arabic pronunciation. If not preceded by a vowel, its vowel is pronounced
and written; if preceded by a vowel, it is mute and is represented by ’. Its effect here is to
shorten the preceding vowel and to join it to the following consonant. Thus, ibnihı̄ é JK . @
“his son”), whose initial joining hamza is indicated solely by the vowel i, would be written

without this initial i if following a vowel: O ilā ’bnihı̄ éJK . @ úÍ@ , which is pronounced O ilabnihı̄.
The definite article al followed by a “sun letter” (h.arf shamsiyy : d, d., dh, s, s., t, th, t.,
z, z.) is assimilated to the sun letter, representing its pronunciation and its fully vocalized

spelling. Thus, what some transliterate al-shams Ò Ë@ I write ash-shams.
Finally, I transliterate long vowels as they are pronounced, dropping silent vowels
(such as the final O alif of certain third-person conjugations) and transliterating long vowels
commonly omitted from non-vocalized texts (such as the third-person singular masculine
4 In classical poetry, for example, a tāO marbūtah falling at the end of a line is written exactly as a hāO
. è
460
(that is, without the two dots) and can rhyme with any word ending with hāO .
f
pronoun è, è: hū, hı̄).
Transliterations of H
. assāniyyah (Mauritanian Arabic) terms are written not according
to the rules of classical orthography but as they are pronounced (and as Mauritanians
tend to write them). Thus, the name Mushrı̄ becomes Mishri; mah.z.ara (informal school)
is derived from mah.d.arah.
461
Appendix C
Glossary
C.1 Wolof terms
aada. Custom; tradition; in modern Wolof refers to the secular (for example, kilifay aada
means “secular leaders”) or conventional as opposed to what is prescribed by Islam.
àddiya. (From Arabic, hadiyyah) Gift, offering (made to a religious leader or senior
relative).
askan. Genealogical line; lineage or clan.
awukat. (From Wolof, awu: to echo, repeat + -kat) A supporting chanter who sings the
response to the call of the chant leaders in a religious chant meeting.
barke. (From Arabic, barakah: blessing.) Blessing; good fortune bestowed by God. One is
said to have barke if one is fortunate in some way, and a religious leader has barke that one
can access by interaction with the leader or with something associated with the leader. A
boroom barke (literally: one who has blessing) usually refers to someone wealthy.
bëkk-néeg. (From Wolof, néeg: bedroom) Attendant of a chief or religious leader. Al-
though sometimes described as a servant, a bëkk-néeg often becomes a close confidant of
their leader and may become a muqaddam.
buur. King; especially, the king of Saalum.
462
Joseph Hill Glossary
ceddo. (From Pulaar, seááe, pl. ceââo.) Previously, a caste or class of warriors employed
by kings and chiefs to police and collect taxes. Although a privileged class, many of
them were of slave origin. Muslims came to use the term in a derogatory way for any
pagan or nominal Muslim, especially those associated with the aristocratic factions during
the struggles of the 19th century, in which those associated with the Muslim factions
were known as “sëriñs.” Today, it more often designates any pagan (that is, someone
not adhering to a Religion of the Book), and by extension sometimes designates anyone
whose unruly and libertine behavior is considered unbecoming of Islam.
cere. Senegalese couscous. Usually made from millet in the north and a combination of
millet and corn in the south, usually mixed with a congealing agent made from baobab
or other tree leaves.
daara. (From Arabic, dār al-QurO ān: house of the QurO ān. ) QurO ānic school, usually run
inside a house or itinerant. The teacher is called a sëriñ daara. Nearly all Muslim children
in Senegal attend daara for several years, often before they begin study at a public French
school and then alongside French school. Daaras are also a stepping stone to advanced
religious studies at Arabic schools.
daayira. (From Arabic, dāO irah: circle.) A lay religious organization, usually formed by the
disciples adhering to a single S.ūfı̄ obedience or leader, often attached to a local muqaddam.
Some of these associations only organize religious activities such as chant meetings, while
others organize elaborate educational, economic, or development projects.
dàgga. A place where a number of granaries store grain for a village or hamlet.
dimb. A tree very common in Saalum, whose unripe fruit (xàllar) is cooked as a vegetable
in certain dishes around the beginning of the rainy season and whose sweet ripe fruit
463
(mutt) is eaten later in the rainy season.
doomu baay. “Child of father.” Member of one’s father’s patrilineage; often applied more
generally to anyone sharing one’s surname.
doomu bàjjan. “Child of paternal aunt.” Paternal cross-cousin (one’s father’s sis-
ter’s child), considered a man’s ideal marriage partner. Sometimes called one’s “jaam”
("slave"), highlighting the joking relation and reciprocal obligations between a person and
the doomu baajën.
doomu nijaay. “Child of maternal uncle.” Maternal cross-cousin (one’s mother’s brother’s
child), considered a woman’s ideal marriage partner. Sometimes called one’s “sàng”
(master or noble), highlighting the joking relation and reciprocal obligations between a
person and the doomu nijaay.
fajar. (From Arabic, fajr.) Daybreak; the daybreak prayer.
gàllaaj. Amulet, gri-gri. An object bearing supernatural properties.
gàmmu. Celebration of the birth and life of the Prophet Muh.ammad (known in Arabic
as mawlid or mawlid an-nabiyy ), celebrated on the night of 12 Ar-Rabı̄c al-O awwal (that is,
on the night following the 11th, as Islamic dates start at dusk and not at midnight). This
is the biggest community celebration of the year for Tijāniyys and many other S.ūfı̄s. The
month Ar-Rabı̄c al-O awwal is also known in Wolof as gàmmu. To gàmmu is to deliver the
stylized narrative of Muh.ammad’s life at a gàmmu event.
gàmmukat. (From Wolof, gàmmu: celebration of the birth of Muh.ammad; to deliver
the gàmmu + -kat (agentive suffix).) Someone who delivers a recitation of the birth of
Muh.ammad at a gàmmu event. Baay Ñas was the gàmmukat at the great Medina Gàmmu
464
during his lifetime and his son Aadi replaced him until his own death in 2005, after
which Muh.ammad al-O Amı̄n (Baaba Lamin) Ñas became the current gàmmukat. There
are another of other major and minor gàmmukats around the world who deliver local
gàmmus.
gan. Guest, foreigner, stranger.
géer. A member of the caste that through much of Senegal’s history has been associated
with land ownership, agriculture, and political power. Often translated “noble.” (Cf.
ñeeno.)
Gelwaar. A matriline of Séeréer rulers of Mande ancestry. They ruled Siin and Saalum
and continue to play important political roles in the region.
géwal. Griot; member of the caste of praise singers, musicians, historians, and public
speakers
O ijāzah. Diploma; in Sufism, the authorization (usually written) to represent a t.arı̄qah and
to induct new members. An O ijāzah typically contains a statement of the silsilah or chain
of authority of the person bestowing it, and it may have a section describing conditions
or the extent of the O ijāzah’s authority. In the Tijāniyyah, there are two principal kinds
of O ijāzah: muqayyad (limited), permitting its holder to set apart a specified number of
initiates and muqaddams; and mut.laqah (absolute, often called O ijāzah O it.lāq), where the
number is not limited, and further conditions or privileges may be added. The latter,
while previously rare, has become more common among Taalibe Baay in recent years.
jaam. Slave. Also a designation for one’s paternal cross-cousin. The reflexive verb, jaamu,
means to serve or worship (as a translation of c abuda).
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jàng kaamil. (From Arabic, kāmil: complete, perfect.) To read the entire QurO ān, usu-
ally as a group, each participant taking a part and reading it simultaneously with other
participants. The nominal form, njàng kaamil, refers to an event at which such a reading
takes place. This event is often organized as part of a larger religious event such as a
conference or on its own gàmmu or in honor of a deceased relative.
jébbalu. To swear allegiance to a religious leader, usually involving the physical act of
bowing down and declaring oneself at the mercy of the leader. The phrase is used among
various Islamic groups in Senegal, but the ritual of submission is most clearly defined
and standardized among Murids.
jinne. (From Arabic, jinn.) One of the categories of intelligent beings, along with hu-
mans and angels, mentioned in the QurO ān. Understood as creatures invisible to humans
who inhabit the earth and have culture, religion, and social organization like humans.
Although there are good and bad ones, most human interactions with jinnes tend to be
negative, so they are often understood as humans’ enemies, and jinne is often glossed as
“devil.” The term is also glossed as “genie,” as in the story of Alladin in A Thousand and
One Nights.
kër. House, compound; figuratively: family, lineage, descedents.
këru diine. “House of religion” or “family of religion”: a leadership of a religious obedi-
ence, including the descendents and close disciples of the obedience founder. The largest
këru diine in Senegal are the Tijāniyy branches of Tiwaawan and Medina Baay and the
Murid order of Tuubaa, and smaller Tijāniyy obediences are centered in Ceynaba, Me-
dina Gónas, and Jaamal.
Korite. (From Wolof, kori: the act of ending the fast; wori: to end the fast; koor: fast; woor:
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to fast.) Arabic: c Īd al-fit.r. The festival celebrating the end of the month of fast (Ramad.ān,
Koor).
lolli. Harvest season (late October and November), often the hottest time of year.
Màggal. (From Wolof, mag: to be big, hence to magnify or laud.) The yearly Murid
celebration marking the anniversary of Ahmadu Bàmba’s return from exile. The event
draws millions to the holy city of Tuubaa.
mbóot. A unique and important matter or secret. Also, cockroach.
mokkal. (From Wolof, mokk: to be pulverised.) To master, learn thoroughly; in QurO ānic
studies, to memorize each h.izb (60-th part) of the QurO ān without necessarily being able
to recite all parts at once (which is called tari).
muqaddam. Someone holding an O ijāzah, or a diploma bestowing authorization to repre-
sent a Sufi order and to induct others into it. A muqaddam often acts as a disciple’s shaykh
murabbı̄.
nawet. Growing season, from the beginning of the rains to the maturation of crops.
ndàgga. A Saalum-Saalum secular variety show whose orchestra consists of an orches-
tra of sabars, xalam, female singers and dancers, and male animators (whom one might
describe as traditional rappers), and whose program consists mostly of songs composed
specifically for the genre interspersed with jokes, short theatrical sketches, and chants.
ndiggal. Authorization, permission. In some religious contexts, it refers to a recommen-
dation or command given by a religious leader.
ñeeño. Those born into the artisanal castes, such as griots (géwal), smiths (tëgg) and
leatherworkers (uude).
467
ngénte. A child’s naming ceremony and celebration. Usually a major community event
in which several animals are slaughtered and elaborate meals are prepared.
Njolofeen. A group of families who emigrated southward to Saalum from the Jolof
kingdom during the late nineteenth century due to religious and political conflicts and
drought. They participated in bringing Islam and the Tijāniyy order to the Saalum re-
gion and formed the earliest group of disciples of Baay Ñas. They maintain a degree of
endogamy and are socially and culturally distinct from the Siñi-Siñi and Saalum-Saalum.
Ñoominka. Séeréer-speaking fishermen (an occupational and socio-cultural group), living
primarily in coastal Siin on the Saalum River Delta islands.
piri. (From Wolof, firi: to interpret.) Interpretation; (also piri Alxuraan) the act or event of
interpreting the QurO ān, tafsı̄r.
puj. The crown of a hut; a bundle of grass at the top of a thatch roof that holds the layers
of grass together.
rab. Bush spirit; often treated synonymously with jinne, although some insist that they
are two distinct kinds of being or even that rab are a tradition incompatible with Islam.
saafara. A liquid occult cure, often made from dissolving verses from the QurO ān and
herbal substances such as tree bark and leaves in water, that is washed over the body (cf.
téere). Figuratively: healing, relief.
Saalum-Saalum. Inhabitants of Saalum; anything particular to or having to do with
Saalum. Within the Saalum, it refers to the subset of Wolof speakers who claim a long
Wolof ancestry and do not trace particular ancestors outside Saalum, as opposed to the
Siñi-Siñi and Njolofeen.
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sabar. An drum ensemble composed of drums of the ndënd family, played primarily
in Wolof and Séeréer areas; a dance event featuring a sabar ensemble; one of the dances
commonly played at such an event and the rhythm that accompanies it; a popular name
for any ndënd drum. The drums are recognizable by their large wooden tuning pegs
(usually about seven) that surround and protrude from the body several inches below the
head, regulating the pitch through long straps fastening them to the head. The ensemble
usually includes the high-pitched lead nder; the mid-range mbëN-mbëN, which provides
the main rhythm; and the bass drums (goroN talmbat and làmb), which sit on the ground
and have closed ends. Several distinct sounds can be produced from each drum using
one bare hand and a stick in the other (usually the right hand).
sëriñ. Any person who works in a religious function, especially as a producer of occult
cures, muqaddam of a S.ūfı̄ order, or teacher of the QurO ān or other religious texts. Also, a
respectful title to address a male stranger: sir. sëriñ daara: a school master or teacher; a
title of respect for any religious teacher, especially one who teaches QurO ān and Islamic
sciences (xam-xam).
sëriñ daara. QurO ānic school teacher.
sikkar. (From Arabic, dhikr : mention, remembrance, invocation.) Any of the phrases used
to name God, especially Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh, Allāh, or any of the 99 names of God; the ac-
tivity of repeating these phrases; an event organized to chant these phrases communally.
(See dhikr)
sikkarkat. (From Arabic, dhikr : mention, remembrance [of God’s name] + -kat, an agentive
suffix [one who . . . ].) Someone who regularly chants the dhikr (sikkar) at religious events.
Such a person is often given monetary compensation for participating in the meetings of
various religious associations (daayira).

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siyaare. (From Arabic, ziyārah: visit.) To visit, especially a religious figure or parent to
whom respect is due, in which one often gives a monetary or other gift; a visit; also, a
large meeting organized to honor a religious leader, to whom disciples bring financial
or other material contributions. Tijāniyy consider it an official obligation to visit one’s
parents and religious leaders, and some kind of offering is usually given.
taalibe. (From Arabic, .tālib or .tālib al-c ilm: seeker of knowledge; student.) A student at a
QurO ānic school; a disciple of a shaykh.
Tabaski. The yearly feast day of sacrifice (c Īd al-Kabı̄r) at the end of the pilgrimage,
considered the most important feast day of the Islamic calendar.
tàkkusaan. The late afternoon; the late afternoon prayer (c as.r ).
tari. To recite; in QurO ānic studies, to recite the QurO ān from beginning to end from
memory, thus becoming a h.āfiz.. Also, a ceremony at which a student recites the QurO ān
and is awarded a diploma for having memorized the QurO ān.
téere. Book; also an amulet, especially one containing holy writing.
tëgg. To hit, beat; a smith; someone born into the smith caste.
timis. The dusk prayer: maghrib.
tubaab. A person of European origin or ancestry; a Westerner.
wàcce kaamil. (From Arabic, kāmil: complete, perfect.) To read the entire QurO ān,
usually as a group, each participant taking a part and reading it simultaneously with
other participants. The nominal form, njàng kaamil, refers to an event at which such a
reading takes place. This event is often organized as part of a larger religious event such
as a conference or on its own gàmmu or in honor of a deceased relative. (Same as jàng
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kaamil.)
woykat. (From Wolof, woy: sing, chant + -kat: agentive suffix.) Singer, chanter.
xalifa. (From Arabic, khalı̄fah.) Successor (of the Prophet, another religious figure, or
a patriarch); leader of the religious community or a family, usually the senior surviving
member.
xam-xam. (From Wolof, xam: to know.) Knowledge; in Islam, the Islamic disciplines
studied after studying the QurO ān, including fiqh, nah.w, nah.w, lughah, balāghah, h.adı̄th,
and so on.
xeet. Kind (of person, thing). Often used to designate race, ethnicity, caste.
yar. To educate, discipline, punish; a rod or whip.
yelwaan. To beg. Students of many QurO ānic schools live by yalwaan.
ziyārah. Visit. In Sufism, it often refers to a more or less ritualized visit to a religious
personality in which a gift (hadiyyah) may be given to the leader. Blessing (barakah) is
often said to result from such visits.
C.2 Arabic terms
O adab. Good manners; propriety; discipline; literature.
O ac jamiyy. Any Arabic-derived script used to write non-Arabic languages such as Wolof
or Pulaar.
c ālim. (Pl. c ulamāO .) “One who knows.” A scholar; a person of learning; often, a member
of the Arabic-educated Islamic intelligentsia. The verb c alima (to know) implies factual
knowledge through scholastic learning (c ilm). (C.f. c ālim.)
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c aql. Mind, intellect.
c ārif. One who knows. In Sufism, c ārif bi-’Llāh, one who has a deep experiential knowl-
edge of God and sacred matters. The verb c arifa (to know) implies knowledge through
experience (mac rifah), whereas the verb c alima (to know) implies factual knowledge (c ilm).
Thus, an “c ārif ” is distinct from an “c ālim,” a learned person or scholar. (c.f. c ālim.)
c asr. An era or period; the late afternoon prayer.

.
O asrār. Plural of sirr: Secrets.
balāghah. The study of Arabic rhetoric.
barakah. Blessing from God.
bāt.in. Inside; the esoteric, hidden nature of things.
daara. (From Arabic, dār al-QurO ān: house of the QurO ān. ) QurO ānic school, usually run
inside a house or itinerant. The teacher is called a sëriñ daara. Nearly all Muslim children
in Senegal attend daara for several years, often before they begin study at a public French
school and then alongside French school. Daaras are also a stepping stone to advanced
religious studies at Arabic schools.
daayira. (From Arabic, dāO irah: circle.) A lay religious organization, usually formed by the
disciples adhering to a single S.ūfı̄ obedience or leader, often attached to a local muqaddam.
Some of these associations only organize religious activities such as chant meetings, while
others organize elaborate educational, economic, or development projects.
dhikr. Any of the phrases used to name God, especially Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh, Allāh, or any
of the 99 names of God; the activity of repeating these phrases; an event organized to
chant these phrases communally.
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fanāO . Extinction, nothingness. In Sufism, a state in which one ceases to be aware of
oneself and is only aware of God.
fath.. Opening; in Sufism, the attainment of an experience of God, in which the self
dissolves and one experiences the unity of God.
Fātih.ah. “Beginning”: the first sūrah in the QurO ān.
fatwah. An official opinion concerning a legal matter made by a legal scholar (muftı̄),
drawing on the QurO ān, Sunnah, and previous statements by other legal scholars.
Fayd.ah. Also: Fayd.. Flood, emanation. The name that Baay Ñas and his disciples
apply to their movement and community, which is said to have officially begun in Kóosi
Mbittéyeen in 1929. The name comes from a prediction of Shaykh O Ah.mad at-Tijāniyy
that someone would flood the earth with the Tijāniyy order, bringing whole communities
into the order and into Islam. Many Tijāniyy leaders have claimed to be the predicted
S.āh.ib al-Fayd.ah (Bringer of the Flood).
fiqh. The branch of Islamic sciences that concerns Islamic prescriptions and norms,
often translated as “Islamic jurisprudence,” although it concerns not only strictly legal
questions but prescriptions for worship and daily practice. It is based on interpreting the
QurO ān and Sunnah.
Fus.h.ā. “Eloquent”: classical or literary Arabic, as opposed to its spoken dialects.
gàmmu. Celebration of the birth and life of the Prophet Muh.ammad (known in Arabic
as mawlid or mawlid an-nabiyy ), celebrated on the night of 12 Ar-Rabı̄c al-O awwal (that is,
on the night following the 11th, as Islamic dates start at dusk and not at midnight). This
is the biggest community celebration of the year for Tijāniyys and many other S.ūfı̄s. The
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month Ar-Rabı̄c al-O awwal is also known in Wolof as gàmmu. To gàmmu is to deliver the
stylized narrative of Muh.ammad’s life at a gàmmu event.
h.adı̄th. An account of the sayings or deeds of Muh.ammad, known collectively as Sunnah,
or tradition. Alongside the QurO ān, h.adı̄ths form the basis of the prescriptions of Islamic
jurisprudence (fiqh).
hadiyyah. Gift, offering. In S.ūfı̄ communities, something given to or performed for a
religious leader and rewarded with blessing (barakah).
h.āfiz.. One who memorizes or preserves; in Islam, someone who has memorized the
QurO ān and recited it from memory before the c ulamāO .
h.āl. State. In Sufism, a state of spiritual growth on the way to a higher maqām (station).
Practitioners often identify altered states of consciousness and ecstatic fits that disciples
undergo when participating in certain religious activities as a h.āl.
h.aqı̄qah. Reality. In Sufism, the underlying reality of the divine presence in all things; the
hidden unity of everything. As the antithesis of structure and differentiation, it is often
contrasted to sharı̄c ah, the law, which represents the order of things.
Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh. “There is no god but Allāh.” The first part of the two-part Islamic
shahādah. Saying this phrase or any of the names of God, or simply saying “Allāh”
is called dhikru ’Llāh, or mentioning God. The repetition of this and other dhikrs is a
cornerstone of many S.ūfı̄ orders’ practices, and the phrase is repeated 100 times during
the Tijāniyy wird.
hijrah. Emigration; the emigration of Muh.ammad and his early followers from Makkah to
Madı̄nah, where they were welcomed by his followers there, known as the O Ansār (those
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who make victorious). The Islamic calendar begins with this event and is thus called the
hijriyy calandar.
h.izb. Division. In politics, a party. In religion, one of the sixty roughly equal divisions of
the QurO ān (not to be confused with sūrah, a chapter, as a single h.izb can contain multiple
shorter sūrahs or only part of a longer one).
c Ibādu ’r-Rah.mān. “Servants of the Merciful [God]”: a Wahhābiyy inspired reform
movement in Senegal.
c ı̄d al-fit.r. Celebration of breaking the fast, beginning at dusk after the last day of the
month of Ramad.ān. (Days and months in the Islamic calendar begin at dusk, not at
midnight.)
O ijāzah. Diploma; in Sufism, the authorization (usually written) to represent a t.arı̄qah and
to induct new members. An O ijāzah typically contains a statement of the silsilah or chain
of authority of the person bestowing it, and it may have a section describing conditions
or the extent of the O ijāzah’s authority. In the Tijāniyyah, there are two principal kinds
of O ijāzah: muqayyad (limited), permitting its holder to set apart a specified number of
initiates and muqaddams; and mut.laqah (absolute, often called O ijāzah O it.lāq), where the
number is not limited, and further conditions or privileges may be added. The latter,
while previously rare, has become more common among Taalibe Baay in recent years.
O ijāzah muqayyad. Limited O ijāzah; the authority to induct only a limited number of
disciples and muqaddams.
c ilm. Knowledge; learning, as opposed to experiential or intuitive knowledge, or mac rifah.
(C.f. c ālim, c ārif.)
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O imām. (From Arabic, O amāma: in front of.) One who leads prayer, especially by appoint-
ment in a mosque; figuratively, a leader, one who is foremost (in a community, branch of
knowledge).
jamc iyyah. Association, society, organization. Sometimes used as a formal title for a
daayira.
jinn. One of the categories of intelligent beings, along with humans and angels, men-
tioned in the QurO ān. Understood as creatures invisible to humans who inhabit the earth
and have culture, religion, and social organization like humans. Although there are good
and bad ones, because only harmful ones interact with humans, they are usually spoken
of as enemies of humans and the most common translation is “devil."
khalı̄fah. Successor (of the Prophet, another religious figure, or a patriarch); leader of the
religious community or a family, usually the senior surviving member.
khalwah. Seclusion.
khidmah. Service. In Sufism, service rendered to a shaykh, either through ongoing
personal service or through working periodically in the shaykh’s fields.
khilāfah. Successorship, position of successor (khalı̄fah).
Khut.bah. Speech, usually the speech accompanying the Friday mosque prayer.
lawh.. Tablet or slate, used by students to write their QurO ān lessons on.
lughah. Language; in Arabic and Islamic studies, the study of vocabulary through
literature, especially poetry.
madrasah. School.
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maghrib. The westerly direction; the setting sun; the time of sunset; the sunset prayer;
the country Morocco; the Western Arab-speaking countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,
sometimes Mauritania).
mah.z.ara. (From Arabic, mah.d.ar : assembly.) (H

. assāniyyah dialect) A religious school,
usually itinerant or in a village, where QurO ān or other Islamic disciplines are taught.
majlis. Assembly, gathering. In West Africa, an informal Islamic school where students
study the Islamic sciences with a teacher after having completed QurO ānic study.
maqām. Situation, standing, rank. In Sufism, one’s level of spiritual progression (a static
measure), attained by going through states of spiritual progression (h.āl)
mac rifah. Knowledge; experiential or intuitive knowledge; in Sufism, direct and pure
knowledge of God (mac rifah O ilāhiyah).
matn. Back (anatomy); the main part or body of a text, especially a pedagogical text
used in Islamic and Arabic education, usually in verse (and usually in the rajaz meter),
intended to be memorized by a student and supplemented with a commentary (sharh.).
mawlid. Birth. Also mawlid an-nabiyy (birth of the Prophet) or al-mawlid an-nabawiyy (the
Prophetic birth), in Wolof gàmmu: the celebration of the birth of Muh.ammad, held on
the 12th night of the Islamic month of Rabı̄c al-O awwal. For Tijāniyys and many other
S.ūfı̄s, this is the largest celebration of the year, and hundreds of thousands of disciples
from around the world visit Medina Baay every year to celebrate it. In common speech
among Senegalese Taalibe Baay, mawlid has come to refer to chanting the long Mawlid
poem TahniO atu ’r-Rabı̄c by the Mauritanian shaykh Baddi wuld Sı̄dı̄na, whereas the Wolof
equivalent, gàmmu refers to the chanted prose narrative on the life of Muh.ammad.
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muc allim. Teacher.
muqaddam. Someone holding an O ijāzah, or a diploma bestowing authorization to repre-
sent a Sufi order and to induct others into it. A muqaddam often acts as a disciple’s shaykh
murabbı̄.
muqayyad. Limited, tied. For example, an O ijāzah that is muqayyad allows its bearer
to induct only a specified number of disciples into the order and to appoint a specified
number of muqaddams.
murabbı̄. Educator, guardian; in Sufism, one’s mystical initiator.
mus.h.af. A full copy of the QurO ān.
mut.laqah. Absolute, unlimited. Used to describe an unlimited authorization (O ijāzah).
nāfilah. Superogatory devotional activities; most often refers to the extra prostrations
conducted at a mosque or in a home after the nightly prayer c ishāO during the month
of Ramad.ān, over the course of which the imam recites the entire QurO ān, finishing the
recitation on Laylat al-Qadri (or Laylat al-Khatmi), the final night of nāfilah on the 26th
night of Ramad.ān.
nah.w. The study of Arabic grammar and syntax.
nisbah. “Relation.” In grammar, a noun or adjective showing relation or association
through adding the suffix -iyy (masculine, also Romanized as -ı̄) or -iyyah after the final
consonant of the word related to. )For example, something associated with the country
Sinighāl (Senegal) is described as sinighāliyy or sinighāliyyah (Senegalese).
qas.ı̄dah. Pl.: qas.āO id. Poem.
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saafara. A liquid occult cure, often made from dissolving verses from the QurO ān and
herbal substances such as tree bark and leaves in water, that is washed over the body (cf.
téere). Figuratively: healing, relief.
sanad. Pl: O asānı̄d. A chain of authority, for example, tracing a muqaddam’s authority
back to the founder of the order. An important leader usually has many of them, each of
which is listed on a written O ijāzah.
s.arf. The study of Arabic semantic morphology, lexical derivation, and conjugation.
sayr. Progress; procession; pursuance. In Sufism, the continued spiritual progression
under a shaykh after tarbiyyah.
shahādah. Testimony; in Islam, the two phrases (also called the shahādatayn, or “two
testimonies") that form the first pillar of Islam and that one is required to say to be
considered a Muslim: Lā O ilāha O illā ’Llāh and Muh.ammadun rasūl Allāh.
sharh.. Commentary, explanation; in Islamic and Arabic education, a text or verbal
explanation clarifying, elaborating on, and qualifying a primary pedagogical text (matn).
sharı̄c ah. The law of God, revealed in the QurO ān and Sunnah and interpreted through
fiqh. In Sufism, it is often contrasted to h.aqı̄qah (truth).
sharı̄f. (Pl.: shurafāO ) “Noble”; especially the family of the Prophet Muh.ammad, by
some definitions including only his direct descendents but sometimes referring to those
descended from his grandfather. They are
shaykh. “Elder.” Also shaykh murabbı̄: in Sufism, a spiritual guide in charge of spiritual
education. In some contexts, this title only applies to the founder of a spiritual lineage (an
order or an obedience), while in others it can apply to any muqaddam, especially major
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ones.
shirk. “Association.” In Islam, the greatest sin, association of things or people with God
through worship or comparison.
silsilah. Chain, succession, or genealogy. A muqaddam, for example, has a silsilah includ-
ing the person who appointed him or her, the person who appointed this person, and so
on, usually ending in Muh.ammad.
sı̄rah. Life history, acts; the branch of Islamic studies dealing with the life and acts of the
Prophet Muh.ammad.
sirr. (Pl.: O asrār ) Secret.
S.alāt al-Fātih.. A prayer formula that is recited in all the major Tijāniyy wirds, including
the principal wird (the lāzim) and waz.ı̄fah, and is recited at the beginning and end of
each religious meeting. Tijāniyys assert that it was shown to a saint in ancient times,
yet orthodox Muslims consider it an innovation (bidc ah) because it is not found word-for-
word in the QurO ān or Sunnah and claims to have been revealed after the end of prophecy.
Many volumes have been written either condemning this prayer formula or defending it.
The prayer is as follows: Allāhuma s.alli c alā Sayyidinā Muh.ammadin al-fātih.i li-mā O ughliqa
wa-’l-khātimi li-mā sabaqa nās.iri ’l-h.aqqi bi-’l-h.aqqi wa-’l-hādı̄ O ilā s.irātika ’l-mustaqı̄mi wa-c alā
O ālihı̄ h.aqqa qadrihı̄ wa-miqdārihı̄ ’l-c az.ı̄m. That is: “Oh God, bless our Lord Muh.ammad,
who opened what was closed and sealed what came before, who made triumpth the truth
by the truth, who leads to Your straight path, and on his family, in measure of his exalted
standing and degree.
Sunnah. “Tradition.” In Islam, the body of words and deeds of the prophet (each account
of which is called a h.adı̄th), upon which, along with the QurO ān, the study of Islamic
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prescriptions (fiqh) is based.
sūrah. A chapter in the QurO ān, arranged (apart from the opening chapter, the Sūrat al-
Fātih.ah) from the longest to the shortest.
tafsı̄r. (From Arabic, fassara, to interpret, explain.) ) Interpretation (eg., of a text). As a
discipline, it refers to QurO ānic interpretation. Also, the title of one who has received a
diploma in QurO ānic interpretation. This title is usually pronounced tamsiir in Wolof.
tarbiyyah. Education; in Sufism, the process of spiritual training at the hands of a shaykh
murabbı̄. Disciples of Baay Ñas have a particular understanding of this process.
.tarı̄qah. (Pl.: .turuq) Way or path. In Sufism, a body of practices and community associated
with a founding shaykh, often translated as “S.ūfı̄ order."
tas.awwuf. Sufism; mysticism.
tawh.ı̄d. “Making one”: the unity and uniqueness of God.
c ulamāO . (Sing.: c ālim) Scholars; particularly, Islamic scholars and learned religious
authorities.
c ulūm. Sciences; academic disciplines.
waz.ı̄fah. Occupation, duty. In Sufism, a litany or sequence of holy phrases pronounced
as a group, often at a mosque or a religious leader’s house.
wird. (Pl. O awrād) Any sequence of prayers or sacred formulas repeated for an extended
period of time; in many S.ūfı̄ orders the wird (also called al-wird al-lāzim, or “obligatory
wird”, sometimes abbreviated to lāzim) is a specific formula that members are expected
to pronounce regularly. In the Tijāniyy order, receiving the wird from a qualified au-
481
thority marks entrance into the order. (Sı̄dı̄ Muh.ammad al-c Arabiyy as-SāO ih. says of the
Tijāniyy wird: “Entrance into [the .tarı̄qah] is not valid for anyone without it” (Bughyat al-
mustafı̄d 26).) Tijāniyy obligatory wird consists primarily of one hundred repititions each
of O astaghfiru ’Llāh, the S.alāt al-Fātih. (a prayer on the Prophet Muh.ammad), and Lā O ilāha
O illā ’Llāh, and is to be repeated morning and evening daily. Although the lāzim is the most
symbolic of membership, the order has several other wirds that members are to practice
at appointed times. (See the pamphlet Wird Tidiane (http://medinabaay.dyndns.org/
Medina/photos/PhotoDocuments/Tijani%20Wird/) for the several Tijāniyy wirds and
their French transliteration and translation.)
z.āhir. Apparent, manifest. In Sufism, the visible or exoteric side of reality, as opposed to
the bāt.in, the invisible and esoteric.
zāwiyah. A religious center established by a shaykh or a group of disciples, often includ-
ing one or more central houses, a mosque (either in its own structure or in one of the
houses), and one or more religious schools located in its own structure or in the mosque
or a house. A zāwiyah can consist of only one house or apartment or a large mosque and
surrounding houses.
ziyārah. Visit. In Sufism, it often refers to a more or less ritualized visit to a religious
personality in which a gift (hadiyyah) may be given to the leader. Blessing (barakah) is
often said to result from such visits.
Zwāya. Members of several Mauritanian Arab lineages or tribes historically known as
Islamic scholars and clerics, as opposed to the Banı̄ H

. assān, those historically consid-
ered warriors. Outside observers generally describe them as descended from Berbers,
although they uniformly claim Arab ancestry (even those who speak Berber languages).
Some Zwāya lineages claim ancestors who migrated westward from the Arabian penin-
482
sula before Islam, while many claim to be sharı̄f s (of Muh.ammad’s family).
C.3 French terms
marabout. (From Arabic, murābit.: a designation formerly applied in Mauritania and
Morocco to adherents to the Islamic reform movement “al-murābit.ūn” (Almoravids). Sub-
sequently it came to be applied to any religious authority.) Any Muslim practicing a
religious occupation, especially a muqaddam of a S.ūfı̄ order, a textual teacher, or one who
deals in occult cures. Often a transation of sëriñ. A vague term that, while very commonly
used in French, is too broad to serve as a useful analytical category.
483
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Abstract

Divine Knowledge and Islamic Authority: Religious Specialization among

religious apprenticeship and co-discipleship. Whereas several major Islamic adherences

their unique access to ecstatic, mystical knowledge of God.

rience. A tendency to juxtapose two apparently contradictory truths through paradox

and points of view.

One particularly productive paradox is the simultaneously equalizing and hierarchiz-

ing nature of Taalibe Baay knowledge-authority. Mystical education distributes charis-

Ñas—and depends on transmission and validation through authorized channels. Taalibe

Baay imaginations and practices of community simultaneously emphasize the unity of

ing transnational networks of religious authority and community, challenging widespread

assumptions about modernity and globalization. Situating epistemic orientations in learned

practical repertoires, it undermines modernist teleologies of religious “rationalization”

and “secularization,” showing how practitioners cultivate multiple simultaneous approaches

through cultivating embodied dispositions through religious apprenticeship.

Dissertation Director: Kamari M. Clarke

All rights reserved.

Preface: A Narrative Mosaic and Collaborative Historical Ethnography xix

Religion and modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Islam and secularism in Senegal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Charisma, rationalization, and temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Overview of the dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

1 A Note on Paradox and Simultaneous Truths 29

1.1 Serious joking and true incongruities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

1.2 The inside and outside of paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

1.3 Paradox and pluralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

I History and Culture 44

2 The Njolofeen and Saalum: Distinction beyond Caste 45

2.1 A Landscape: From Jolof to Saalum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

2.2 Njolofeen and other groups in Saalum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

2.3 Njolofeen distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

2.4 Endogamy and the question of caste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

3 The Njolofeen in the Shadow of Revolution 82

3.2 Disengagement and Islamic spheres of authority: Njolofeen migration and

3.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

4.1 Narrating Baay Ñas and his disciples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

4.2 A tour of Medina Baay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.3 Baay Ñas’s early years (1900–1922) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

4.5 Founding Medina Baay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

4.6 The Fayd.ah’s spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

4.7 Dakar: The frontier at home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

4.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

5.2 The field of textual knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

5.5 Formal schools and the rationalization of religious knowledge? . . . . . . . 230

5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

6 Divine Knowledge: S.ūfı̄ Specialists, Disciples, and Tarbiyyah 241

6.1 Tarbiyyah: The muqaddam as educator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

6.2 Rethinking Islamic Specialists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

6.3 Becoming a S.ūfı̄ specialist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

6.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

III Authority and Community 286

7 Webs of Authority: The Shaykh, Muqaddams, and Disciples 287

7.1 Introduction: Authority, knowledge, and barakah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

7.2 Absolute authority versus specific authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

7.3 Khalı̄fahs, Descendants, and other authorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310

7.5 Conclusion: Mystical presence and routinized succession . . . . . . . . . . . 331

8 Community, Divine Knowledge, and Mystical Presence 335

8.1 Mystical unity and centrifugal tendencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

8.2 Daayiras: Communities of divine knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345