Journal of Religion in Africa 48 (2020) 312-346 brill.com/jra Staging Touba: The Performance of Piety Kate Kingsbury Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
[email protected] Abstract Touba, in Senegal, is the equivalent to Mecca for Sufi Mouride Muslims, who embark on an annual pilgrimage called Le Grand Magal to celebrate the founder of their faith, Cheikh Amadou Bamba. When devotees describe their sacred city they frequently com- pare Touba to heaven, juxtaposing it to the materiality and chaos of other Senegalese cities, as though it was distinct from these lieux. Yet Touba shares many similarities in terms of its economic importance with other metropolises. Mourides despite pre- senting themselves as a united religious community, have differences of opinion and even praxis. This paper explores the imagination of Touba and the Mouride order by Mourides, positing that the sacred sites of Touba comprise a stage for the performance of piety and the generation of a particular Mouride ontology through which they see Touba, their order and the world. Keywords Senegal – Touba – Mourides – Pilgrimage – Magal – Africa – Religion In 1887, a Senegalese Sufi saint wandering across the arid sands of the Sahelian desert on a mystical retreat to find God, sought respite from the blistering sun, recount hagiographic tales. In the middle of the arid wilderness he came across a lone baobab tree. Reclining against its trunk in the shade of its canopy, it is said that he experienced a hierophanic vision. The angel Gabriel soared down from the heavens to deliver a divine message to the sitting Sufi.