Karamokho Ba of Touba in Guinea by LAMIN SANNEH

FUTA JALLON AND THE JAKHANKE CLERICAL TRADITION Part II: Karamokho Ba of Touba in Guinea BY LAMIN SANNEH (University of Aberdeen, U.K.) In Part I of this study we looked at the ethnic and religious background to the history of Futa Jallon. In this section the life and work of Karamokho Ba is considered in detail, based on a chronicle of the Jabi-Gassama qabzlah to which Karamokho Ba himself belonged. Yet such was his stature that he was accorded universal recognition by the rest of the Jakhanke community. His concerns and achievements had deep roots in antiquity, and for his contem- poraries he came nearest to being what al-Hajj Salim Suware, the 13th century founder, was for his epoch, namely, a model of clerical independence and intellectual eminence. That explains why he has come down to us known only by his professional sobriquet, 'Karamokho Ba', 'the superlative scholar'. Yet the man whose life and teachings received unhesitating praise in his day and beyond has left us no works of his own, and what we have of him comes largely from the text of this chronicle. In spite of previous attempts to make this or similar texts available,' nowhere has this been done with the chronicle faithfully reproduced. Paul Marty, who first signalled the existence of the document more than half a century ago,2 gave it very skimpy treat- ment. But Marty had a good excuse, for he was in touch with living Jakhanke elders at Touba itself, at a time of course when Touba, always proud of its virgin political status, was a 'kept city' of the French. And then Jean Suret-Canale recently called our attention to the document.3 More than Marty, Suret-Canale devotes considerable space to the piece in a summary translation to which he provided a helpful political commentary and background. But as he himself admits, "the recitation was translated for me during the interview but afterwards the commandant d'arrondissement told me several passages of the ta'rikh, which he had heard when he had 106 been present at an earlier reading, had been cut out. "4 The actual text does not appear in Suret-Canalc's study. In 1975 Lucy Quim- by published a composite version of several accounts in English translation.5 Somewhat inexplicably Quimby makes Touba a place in Senegal, perhaps confusing it with the Senegalese Touba of Mouride renown. The anthropological and sociological considera- tions of Quimby had been developed at considerable length by Pierre Smith in a study published in 1 965,6although Smith does not suggest, as Quimby does, that the Jakhanke have suffered from a need to assert their identity through political leadership, something in fact which is scrupulously rejected by the Jakhanke. Philip Cur- tin in several studies has tried to build the reputation of the Jakhanke on commercial grounds, and this attempt has survived in the Quimby article. Essentially it would want to divert the main course of Jakhanke history into the mixed streams of purchase, profit and prayer. I have assessed the usefulness of this approach elsewhere.' There are hints and echoes of the chronicle in a number of diverse places. Al-Hajj Ibrahim ibn Karamokho Sankoung, better known as al-Hajj Soriba, reproduces virtually all the details of the chronicle in a little known source where he provides extensive glosses on certain aspects of the subject, particularly the miracles of Karamokho Ba.1 A similar source, originating from his brother, al- Hajj Banfa Jabi, is a virtual copy of the present chronicle, except that Banfa Jabi's document is a conflation of at least two different sources, including details of the biography of al-Hajj Salim Suware.9 Al-Hajj Mbalu Fode Jabi, the Maliki mufta of Senegal, has had an account of his qabïlah compiled in which he drew largely ° from the present chronicle, whose author was his own father. I) Mbalu Fode's account, however, places an heuristic accent on the miraculous elements of the story. When shown a copy of the present chronicle at his home in Senegal he stressed that that document is in fact the cornerstone of our knowledge of Karamokho Ba and his community, an opinion no doubt as much inspired by a considera- tion of scholarly merit as by a sense of filial piety. One final source which hints strongly at our chronicle is a short manuscript written by Sayd Ahmad al-Habib al-Madani, more popularly known as al-Hajj Marhaba, formerly of Accra, Ghana. We may refer to this document as TKM, to distinguish it from our chronicle which it would be convenient to call TKB. TKM is acces- .

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