Dans la Cité des Marabouts (review)

Geert Mommersteeg is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utrecht, and has conducted nearly three decades of research on the historic West African town of Djenné. This book is the long-awaited French translation of his In de Stad van de Marabouts (Amsterdam: Prometheus) which was shortlisted in 1999 for the Prix des Ambassadeurs and sold an impressive number of copies in the original Dutch. The book's eight chapters and epilogue are finely worked and grounded in extensive fieldwork and interviews with some fifty Islamic 'marabout' scholars. Constant Hamès, CNRS Researcher in Anthropology and expert on Qur'anic text and talismans, provides a brief but insightful preface to the work, and a more substantial postscript is authored by economist and scholar of West African development, Joseph Brunet-Jailly. The book is illustrated throughout with Martin Stoop's beautifully composed black-and-white portraits of fully garbed marabouts, and with seductive images of the town and its buildings photographed by Catherine and Bernard Desjeux. A short but useful glossary of key local terms, many of which have lexical roots in Arabic, is included at the back.

The book opens in the year 1986, during the Islamic month of Ramadan. The author is lying on his back, studying the constellation of cracks in the mud ceiling above his bed, and struggling to keep the fast during the hottest period of the dry season. The greatest challenge, we are told, is thirst. Mommersteeg's narrative style immediately sets the tone for the remaining work, which is a masterful combination of highly personal accounts of fieldwork and erudite scholarship on the history, religious character and social structure of Djenné. The reader is soon introduced to Mommersteeg's key research assistant, the learned mason Boubacar Kouroumansé. The intense working relation and friendship between the two men is a running theme through the book, offering important insights into the negotiations, dependencies and bonds of lasting friendship that often develop between anthropologist and field assistant. Mommersteeg recounts in the first chapter how he had originally set out to conduct a study of changing power relations within the town's organizational structure, focusing on communities of artisans, traders and religious scholars. The first two groups, however, were already well represented in the literature, but little was known about the knowledge, practices and lives of the marabouts. It was to this that the anthropologist turned his full attention.

Chapter 2 introduces two major kinds of knowledge acquired and practised by Djenné's religious scholars: namely a 'transparent' knowledge of the Islamic scriptures that is taught in the town's numerous Qur'anic schools and the purpose of which is collective well-being with its sights on paradise; and a 'secret' esoteric knowledge employed in the production of amulets, dream interpretation, geomancy, prophesyzing and making benedictions, all of which are typically commissioned in the service of individual, earthy pursuits. The ensuing chapters are devoted to exploring these two kinds of knowledge, and though the esoteric kind is disputed by some as anathema to 'orthodox' Islam, the links between them are shown to be inextricable. Chapter 3 provides detailed descriptions of the stages of Qur'anic education during which children memorize passages by rote, and only a tiny handful who persevere to higher levels of schooling actually learn to read and understand the Arabic script. Qur'anic knowledge forms the basis of effectual 'maraboutage', and we subsequently learn about the practices of individual marabouts and the services they provide for clientele.

Chapter 6 offers perhaps the most illuminating descriptions of the intricate procedures involved in making an amulet. In the case study presented, Marabout Sidi Oumar is commissioned to make an amulet that will cause the milk girl, Fatimata, to fall in love with the anthropologist. The text is accompanied by line drawings that assist the reader's understanding of how Arabic text, numerals and zodiac signs are calculated and integrated into...