Amadu Bamba and the founding of the Muridiyya: The history of a Muslim Brotherhood in Senegal (1853--1913)

This dissertation examines the historical roots of the Muridiyya through an analysis of the internal dynamics of the development of Islam in 19 th century Senegal and a reflection on the changing meaning of Islam as agent of cultural and social change. I reconstruct the genesis of the Murid Muslim brotherhood and the biography of the founder, Amadu Bamba, based on a wide variety of sources in several languages. These include taped interviews in Wolof, hagiographies, biographies, and correspondences written in Arabic and Wolofal (Wolof written with Arabic scripts), religious iconography, and French colonial reports.; In this study, I demonstrate that the emergence of the Muridiyya is intimately associated with social and religious changes at work in the Western Sahara and Senegal long before the colonial encounter of the mid-nineteenth century. I show that ideas and perceptions developed in the context of the interactions between rulers, Muslim clerics and Europeans in the pre-colonial setting shaped the relations between the French colonial administration and the Murids in the early development of the brotherhood. I also demonstrate that the Muridiyya is not a mere reaction, a coping strategy to respond to changes wrought by external structural forces, as many scholars have argued, but rather it is an important phase in the development of Islam in Senegal. It is neither the end of a process nor the beginning of another, but part of a continuum that individualizes itself as an original attempt by Amadu Bamba and his early companions to respond to past and present challenges.