REVIEWS

GOMEZ, Michael A., Pragmatism in the age of : The Precolonial state of Bundu, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, xiii, 252 pp., 0 521 28646 8.

This book is the author's Ph.D. dissertation at Chicago, and it attempts to describe the precolonial society of Bundu and to place it in the con- text of the region's Islamic developments. The central thesis of the book is that Bundu succeeded in maintaining itself by a policy of pragma- tism in contrast to its hapless neighbours consumed in the destructive jihad wars. Since such pragmatism is untypical, in fact something of an immaculate exception in the circumstances, it behooves the author to explain and justify it. Did he come to the view from the Bundu sources themselves, or did he try to fit the story into a prefabricated frame? If the Bundu sources claim such a pragmatist position, then clearly , which licenses jihad, would be irrelevant, but if the prag- matist argument is the author's own ex post facto view, then we have a major descriptive as well as analytical gap between evidence and inter- pretation. Consequently, the whole project looks unpromising at best. The author claims that Bundu was established by Muslim clerics during the jihad wars that spread in the area. Precisely what role Islam played in the founding and maintenance of the state is unclear. In some ways it is even denied by the logic of pragmatism which the author defines as 'a policy in which the pursuit of commercial and agri- cultural advantage supercedes all other considerations.' The point is sharpened with the assertion that in a pragmatic state such as Bundu alliances and rivalries 'are determined by economic expediency' (p. 2). Yet almost in the same breath we are told that Bundu 'was a novel West African experiment in Islamic government' (p. 4), and certainly the prima facie evidence gives Islam a central role. In the end, however feasible the attempt to describe Bundu's political history with reference strictly to considerations of commerce and agriculture, the enterprise here falters by the failure to account for Islam. Thus the resulting pic- ture becomes fuzzy conceptually and strained analytically. It leaves the impression that political and economic history knows only to muzzle 331 religion, whatever significance historical agents may or may not give it. Bundu was founded by Malik Sy, a Muslim cleric of the Torodbe Fulbe tribe. His name and fame persisted with the establishment of an eponymous lineage, the Sissibe, which in effect constituted a new dynastic line in Futa Toro, the region adjacent to Bundu, the site of his polit- ical ascendancy. Malik Sy's education followed the traditional Muslim path: rote memorization of the Qur'an as a first stage, followed by study of hadith, szra, the biography of the Prophet, grammar, jurispru- dence and law, Islamic chronicles, and tasrïj, an arcane art clerics studied to enable them to produce amulets. The Torodbe, like their other Fulbe tribesmen, adopt the title tcherno for their scholars, what among the Manding peoples is called karamoklzo/ karamogo,and the Wolof seringe, in fact the Muslim African equivalent of indigenous clerical func- tionaries such as the Torodbe sirruyanke, the Yoruba babalawo, the Hausa budeji, and the Nupe bircht. Thus did Malik Sy obtain the title of tcherno. Furthermore, he made sure that his son and successor, Bubu Malik Sy, followed the standard Islamic educational path, going to Futa Jallon for the purpose, and returning to Bundu an accomplished scholar in his own right. All this material indicates the role religion played not only in standard education but in secular life, and leads us to expect Malik Sy's Bundu to reflect a good deal of that religious emphasis, and not merely as a pragmatic pinch of salt. Bundu belonged to the whole culture of the establishment of states in the larger Senegambia region, a region that was in historical conti- nuity with the tradition of medieval empire building in Ghana, Mali and their successors. In that climate Islam was introduced and it took root and flourished. For example, in the relatively small compass of greater Bundu we have numerous small states such as , Khasso, Kantora, Fuladu, Tanda, and Gajaaga, the state with whose ruler Malik Sy was at daggers drawn. Bundu was part of this political constellation in which religion and political affairs combined quite naturally. Malik Sy was stepping into a familiar role. Several factors played on Bundu's history. There was the legacy of the jihad of 's Nasr al-Din who was Malik Sy's contempo- rary though there is little evidence of any actual personal contact between the two leaders. Nasr al-Din's movement caused widespread social upheaval, with refugees spreading south and east and spilling over into Bundu and neighbouring states. It is an interesting historical fact that Sudanic Islamic sources make very little reference at all to Nasr al-Din, a code of silence most likely based as much on ethnic or racial feel- ing as on any other. Michael Gomez's argument that because Malik