Introduction

This book aims to study the lives of a number of West African ʿulamāʾ from northern Nigeria, Mali, and Mauritania, who, after seeing the defeat of the Muslim jihād against European colonizers, chose to undertake the hijra (emi- gration) to Mecca and Medina. In doing so they seized the opportunity to perform the ḥajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), and later settled there as mujāwirūn/ mujāwir (residents of the neighborhoods of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina). In this hijra, the majority of people took the Sudan route (rather than the Maghrib route to Cairo and then to the Hijaz), which in the nine- teenth- and early twentieth-century was the more common route of most West African pilgrims to Mecca and Medina. Some of these pilgrims who were fleeing colonization were also, to a lesser extent, attracted by opportunities to work in agriculture (especially cotton cul- tivation) or in the army in Sudan, first under the rule of the Mahdī and then under English colonial rule. The descendents of these migrants now form a significant proportion of the population in Sudan, where they are often called Fallāta; in Saudi Arabia they are called Takārira or Takkāra (sing. Takrūrī).1 Some of these West African ʿulamāʾ who arrived in the Hijaz after the conquest of the region by Ibn Saʿūd (1925–26) embraced his Wahhābī-Salafī doctrine and helped spread it through the Hijaz and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia by teaching and preaching in mosques and schools. In this book, I argue that these ʿulamāʾ from Africa (and also those from India) in Mecca and Medina were not working for an international Islamic project, but were rather performing the Islamic duty of daʿwa (missionary work or propaganda), which for them was to spread the Wahhābiyya—the version of Islam they came to embrace and that they regarded as the only correct and valid doctrine. They did not identify themselves with the Saudi nation state, but with the daʿwa aspect of the policy of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and the

1 Takrūrī refers to the kingdom of Takrūr that historians situate in the eleventh century and which extended along the Senegal River between today’s Senegal and Mauritania. (See Abdourhmane Ba, Le Takrur, des origins à la conquête par le Mali (VIème–XIIIème siècle) (Dakar: IFAN/UCAD, 2002); ʿUmar al-Naqar, “Takrur, The History of a Name,” Journal of African History 10, no. 3 (1969): 365–373. The Wolof use the term “Tocolor,” which the French transformed into “Toucouleur.” In the Middle East, Takrūr or Ahl at-Takrūr or Takārira or Takkāra has become a generic name that refers to all people originating from West Africa. Bilād al-Takrūr seems to have been in use prior to Bilād al-Sūdān. While the first term does not have any racial mean- ing, the second means “land of black.”

Saudi kings who succeeded him. They identified themselves only with their respective ethnic groups (their names indicated their countries of origin: al-Fūtī, al-Fallāta, al-Takrūrī, al-Shinqīṭī, al-Timbuktī, etc.) and with the tradition of the salaf al-ṣālih (pious predecessors). The Saudi nation state, the nostalgia for the Ottoman Islamic caliphate, and the idea of the umma as a national entity of all Muslims were far from the minds of these ʿulamāʾ. For these ʿulamāʾ, the umma was not a political entity but rather a spiritual community that shares the same religion. And for this community to be true, they thought, it should adhere to the Wahhābiyya doctrine. This is reflected in their writings, in which they do not question the politics of colonialism or the political institutions that were meant to defend the interests of Muslims. Second, these ʿulamāʾ did not have an anti-colonial agenda in their countries of origin, contrary to what the colonial administration believed and propagated. And third, I show that the project of Ibn Saʿūd was successful particularly because of the support provided by the ʿulamāʾ from outside the Arabian Peninsula. Ibn Saʿūd presented his Wahhābi-Salafī project as a revival of Islam, and thus as a project of all Sunnī Muslims who follow the four schools (madhāhib) and not only as a revival of the people of Najd, as is so often propagated. Apart from these arguments, I address the religious debate and practice of hijra, ḥajj, and jihād in the specific historical context of colonialism, pan-Islam, and nationalism, as well as the potential role of biography and autobiography in the history of the spread of Wahhābī teaching in Saudi Arabia and West Africa. In this way, the present book is also intended to be a contribution to this part of the history of the colonization of Africa, which has not been well studied. I have utilized a method based on interviews with students and relatives of these ʿulamāʾ in Saudi Arabia and in West Africa and; my research is largely dependent on private archives and the private libraries of these ʿulamāʾ. Thus, the method followed here is both historical and anthropological. By Salafism I mean a doctrine of Islam that claims to refer solely to the example of the salaf al-ṣāliḥ, that is, the first three generations of Muslims. According to the proponents of this doctrine and according to the ḥadīth (in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Muslim) of the Prophet Muḥammad, the best human beings are the people of his generation and then those of the two succeed- ing generations. Thus, the Salafī consider that these generations of people had the truest understanding of Islam and should therefore be the role model of all Muslims. This doctrine involves a full rejection of the schools of law (madhāhib) (as is the case of the Ahl al-Ḥadīth) or a partial rejection of them (as is the case of the Wahhābīs who follow the Ḥanbalī madhhab) and a complete