In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

5 w Murid Conflict with the French Colonial Administration, 1889–1902 The conflict between the Murids and the French colonial administration of Senegal, which reached its climax between 1895 and 1907, is the bestdocumented episode in the history of the Muridiyya. Because of the abundance of relevant archival documents and oral sources, colonial writers, Murid hagiographers, and contemporary scholars have given much attention to this period. However, colonial views and perspectives on the conflict, conveyed through the archives, weigh heavily on scholarly interpretations. In addition, most approaches have taken a narrow view of the confrontation by focusing primarily on the actions initiated by the office of the governor in Saint-Louis. Although information about the rationale and implementation of the administration ’s policy is readily accessible, we know little about Murid initiatives and responses to this policy beyond what is revealed through (the filtered) archival records. Did Amadu Bamba envision waging jihad of the sword, as argued by French administrators? Was the Muridiyya a real threat to colonial rule, and if so, in what ways? How did Murid disciples and sheikhs explain French hostility , and how did they respond to it? What was the impact of the conflict on the development of the Murid order? In previous chapters, I have provided partial responses to some of these questions. Here, I critically examine Murid and French accounts in order to reconstruct the events that led to the arrest and deportation to Gabon of the founder of the Muridiyya. I also propose a new interpretation of the conflict and examine the crucial role that the personal politics of African and French field administrators, at the provincial and state levels, played in the deterioration of the relationship between the Murids and the colonial administration. 115 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. the french, the african chiefs, and the murids Colonization did not spell the end of the Wolofs’ precolonial political structures and their ethic of government. In the late nineteenth century in the aftermath of the conquest, the French maintained a revamped form of traditional chieftainship to compensate for their lack of political legitimacy and for the absence of appropriate administrative personnel. They co-opted segments of the defeated aristocracy in a bureaucratic system that preserved some of chiefs’ material privileges but restrained their authority.1 These chiefs worked under the supervision of French commandants and residents, but despite legal restrictions, they retained a great deal of autonomy and wielded power in their management of the territory under their control. Though they acknowledged the suzerainty of their French overlords, many chiefs claimed for themselves a certain legitimacy stemming from dynastic affiliations and the memory of their social status during the precolonial era.2 They retained the trappings of the royal courts and gathered entourages of retainers, slaves, and griots (bards). They sought to exercise full authority over the population and expected the same level of respect and loyalty that precolonial Wolof rulers had enjoyed from their subjects. It was during this period when African colonial chiefs were consolidating their power that the Muridiyya started to expand in Kajoor and Bawol. The history of the tense relations between the Murids and the chiefs seems apocryphal to many bearers of oral traditions. Descendants of these chiefs are now respected members of the Murid community, and Murids are loath to retell stories that would open old wounds. They do not want to mention the past mistakes of the ancestors of now devoted Murids, memories that they think would only embarrass the latter without adding anything important to our understanding of the history of their organization.3 The reluctance of Murid historians to deal with this episode in the history of the order reflects the tensions that, in Pierre Nora’s view, characterize the relations between history and memory. For Nora, memory, because of its affective and magical nature, is prone to amnesia and is unwilling to accept contradictions, whereas history, as an intellectual and secular operation, challenges our memory through its ability to reconstruct the past and its tendency to desacralize and critically analyze discourses.4 From the start, African chiefs viewed the Muridiyya as a threat to their power. Ibrahima Njaay, head of the province of Njambur in northern Kajoor, was among the earliest and most vociferous critics of the Murid tariqa. He was the...

Share