Al-Hajj Umar Tal and the Realm of the Written: Mastery, Mobility and Islamic Authority in 19th Century West Africa

Abstract

In 1864, al-ḥajj ‘Umar Tāl, one of the most important nineteenth century West African Muslim scholars and political figures disappeared in a cave in Mali. This study attempts to reconstitute crucial aspects of his life through an analysis of his body of work. While previous scholarship only emphasized his political accomplishments, including his jīhad, I argue it is important to approach Tāl as an intellectual and examine his life as it unfolded within the context of the nineteenth century. By rooting my analysis on Arabic documents, including letters, poems and a legal treatise, I produce a narrative from within that focuses on the possibilities, contradictions, and ambiguities of this one life. By centering this study on Tāl’s own words, I recover a crucial indigenous voice from the past. My narrative examines Tāl’s mastery over the Islamic religious sciences, his extraordinary mobility in the pursuit of learning, and ultimately the claims that he made through the knowledge that he possessed. By interpreting Tāl’s scholarly production over time, I demonstrate that his life is a rare interpretive prism to investigate pertinent questions about Islamic practice, authority and politics in precolonial West Africa. This precolonial past is significant because in the twentieth century long standing Islamic knowledge practices underwent an epistemological shift. The emergence of new forms of schooling, standardized curricula and an emphasis on reading, also transformed the historic roles of Muslim scholars. No longer the sole interpreters and transmitters of religious doctrine and practice, the majority of Muslims scholars became experts within the framework of emerging nation-states. While these changes have drawn considerable scholarly analysis, the precolonial past continues to remain understudied.