Islam and Modernity

Collaboration, Modernity and Colonial Rule: Sidiyya Baba and Mauritania | The Sidiyya and the French

Collaboration, Modernity and Colonial Rule: Sidiyya Baba and Mauritania

By David Robinson

The Sidiyya and the French

By World War I the Sidiyya had restored their position in Trarza and established considerable influence in other regions. They enjoyed prestige and support as winners in the struggle for the creation of colonial Mauritania. Baba could claim a hegemony equal to that of his grandfather, and one obtained in very different - and difficult - conditions. He consolidated the Sidiyya position among the Abyayri and other groups through carefully designed marriage strategies. Like his grandfather and father, he encouraged alliances within the Awlad Abyayri group, increased its size through descendants and assimilation, and made the Ahl Shaikh Sidiyya the dominant fraction. Most of his daughters espoused prominent members of Abyayri fractions. Mahjuba married Shaikhuna wuld Dadda, a close counselor who made frequent visits to the Murids, Bu Kunta and Malik Sy; it was Shaikhuna who escorted Bamba from the peanut basin to Trarza in 1903. Bettul, also called Fatima, married into the prominent Tashumsha tribe, the Awlad Daiman. Her husband, Bu Mediana, was another important agent for Sidiyya interests.

The Sidiyya accumulated considerable wealth in animals, fields and oases and a large following of disciples, subjects and servants. This wealth extended from grain farms on the north bank of the river valley to date palms and oases in the Adrar. It included property taken at the expense of the Ijaydba and other groups who had opposed the Sidiyya at the turn of the century. Baba sent his sons, sons-in-law and disciples on regular collection tours among the Murids and in other areas where his family exercised influence.

The Sidiyya enjoyed unquestioning support from the administration. In part this was evident in the "political" gifts and the authorizations for collection tours in Senegal. It was also expressed in the presumption of support which the Sidiyya made, and which their potential opponents made, in cases of conflict - such as fields of the north bank of Futa Toro or wells which the Abyayri secured at the expense of the Ijaydba. Butilimit, with its administrative center, military garrison, and French doctor, was a visible sign of the alliance. The French Orientalist, Louis Massignon, catalogued part of the vast library established by Sidiyya al-Kabir.

Baba wrote a considerable number of works during his later years, with great encouragement from the French. One of the most accessible of these, available in English translation, is “The History of the Western Sanhaja,” which was published by the well-known literary and historical scholar H. T. Norris in Saharan Myth and Saga. Baba traces what is known about the origins of the Moors, both the Berber and the Arab, the zwaya and the hassan, from the time of the Almoravids (11th century) to his day. He describes the wars among the zwaya and the difficult conditions which he faced at the turn of the century, and takes the same position towards the French presence that he espoused in the fatwa of 1903. It is worth quoting his conclusion to this work:

[The reason for the wars among the zwaya] was the lawlessness and anarchy of the country and the lack of interest of fighting men and others in [the country] in following the Glorious Quran in which [God] says, 'Where two parties of believers fight each other, then make peace between them, both equitably, and act with justice. Verily, God loves those who are just.' God Almighty, who is the All-Knowing and All-Wise, brought the French state, and they spared the bloodshed of these poor people and restrained aggressive hands from their possessions. What favour is greater than that, and what advantage is there above that which lends to others benefits such as the wells which they have dug and soundly constructed, and the markets which they have established, and the skilled doctors and the numerous medicines [supplied] without charge? Since the death of the respected doctor and active scholar and man of letters, Awfa [b Abu Bakr; died in 1883], may God Almighty have mercy upon him, there has been no skilled doctor among the Moors. The benefits of French medicines and doctors have been tried and proved, such as the removal of smallpox from the land. There used to be hardly a year free of it, and it was usual for death to occur because of it, or blindness, or loss of an eye, or deformity. [It has led] to the treatment of many grave illnesses. Were the Zwaya and Arabs and others besides them of the people of this land to remember the situation they were once in, the killing, the looting, the feuds, the forms of injustice, and to recall it, and to put the blessings which have come to them because of the French before their very eyes, they would be full of joy that they came, and know that nothing equals good health, and that the common good bestows dignity.

Baba was a "modernizer." He admired the efforts which Muhammad Ali had made in Egypt in the early nineteenth century. He was a pioneer in Western education. In 1912 he encouraged the establishment of a medersa or "franco-arabe" school in Butilimit, and a few years later welcomed a school for girls, a striking innovation within Moorish society at the time. The medersa was one of the few colonial Muslim schools which was maintained in French West Africa, and over the decades it produced a significant portion of the intellectual and political leadership of Mauritania -- many of them from the Sidiyya lineage. After World War II the medeersa was elevated to the status of Institut Supérieur d'Etudes Islamiques, a kind of modernized "Al-Azhar" for West Africa.

Baba gave unquestioning support to the French war effort. He was among the first to condemn the Ottoman links to the Axis forces and to decouple Ottoman actions from Islamic obligations. He wrote and circulated a special prayer for the troops in 1914, published along with other attestations in the French journal Revue du Monde Musulman. Here is an excerpt from his statement:

Written as God knows, with two days remaining in the lunar month of Muhammad, corresponding to 8 December 1914, at Butilimit, may God keep it safe.

May our Muslim brothers - may God guide them - be vigilant at the lies that can damage the interests of France and create distance from France, given the merits which the French have brought to the Muslim countries, which they have always treated with care and to which they have brought many advantages. It is not permissible for a Muslim who knows his interests to work in any way which can weaken France.

The recompense for a good deed, is it not also a good deed?

Baba supported the recruitment in Mauritania and Senegal, recruitment that was critical to the French war effort; only black soldiers were called to fight. In partial return for these efforts, the colonial authorities nominated Baba for the Comité consultatif des Affaires Musulmanes, a body designed to demonstrate France's distinction as a "Muslim power." In 1916, as the French and British wrestled with the issues of re-authorizing the pilgrimage and encouraging Arab nationalism against the Ottoman Empire - this was the time of “Lawrence of Arabia” - they sought prominent Muslim allies across their imperial possessions. When the French constituted a habus commission of prominent Muslims to handle the movement and residence of pilgrims in the Holy Lands, they considered Baba to be one of only two marabouts in West Africa who fulfilled the necessary conditions. But they esteemed that "Sidia's absence [would be]...too damaging to the maintenance of order in Mauritania where his personal intervention [might be] necessary at any moment."

The Sidiyya leader continued to travel to Saint-Louis and Dakar on special occasions, despite declining health. He went to Dakar in 1916 to see Governor General Clozel and his assistant Maurice Delafosse. At about the same time his son Abdallah was in Diourbel visiting Amadu Bamba. n 1917 Baba showed his acceptance of the Christian presence by welcoming the leading Catholic figure of French West Africa, the Monsignor Hyacinthe Jalabert, Vicar of Senegambia. Jalabert was touring southern Mauritania, to visit the tombs of French soldiers and officials who had fallen in the course of the conquest of Mauritania. Baba provided a camel escort and had his son Ahmed accompany him. Shaikh Sidiyya was back in Dakar at least one more time, in 1919. Taleb Khiar, a son of the "resistance hero" Ma El Ainin, wanted to make his submission to the French, but only on condition that Baba accompany him from Butilimit to the capital of French West Africa.

Shaikh Sidiyya, through his sons and agents, and his own correspondence, remained influential in French policy and practice in the Senegalo-Mauritanian region until his death in 1924.

The very positive impression which Sidiyya Baba made on Coppolani and Gouraud carried over to Paul Marty, head of the Muslim Affairs Bureau in Dakar and a veteran of the administrations of Algeria and Tunisia. Marty exercised enormous influence over Islamic policy, the images of the marabouts and brotherhoods, and the interpretation of twentieth century history in French West Africa. He carried the praise of Baba to new heights:

By his clearly francophile attitude, Shaikh Sidiyya rendered, as much to our authority as to the faithful of his Way and by extension to all Moors, a great service. We owe to him the possibility in Mauritania, from the outset, of collaboration between Christian and Muslim, between the French chief and the director of a Muslim order. In responding enthusiastically and loyally to the political genius that was Coppolani, he permitted two peoples, two civilisations and two religions to know and respect each other. He took a giant and positive step for the evolution of our relations with the inhabitants of the Sahara.

Baba and Marty helped formulate the conception of Islam noir, “black Islam,” that became the slogan and policy of French West Africa during the colonial period. It used the prevailing racial categories, categories common to both the bidan and the French, to segregate the Islamic practice of black West Africans from the supposedly superior practice of the Moors of Mauritania and the Arabs of the “heartland” regions of the faith. The colonial government carefully monitored the pilgrimage, the newspaper subscriptions and anything else which might break down that segregation. It was only after World War II that the phrase "Islam noir" and the policy behind it were abandoned.

The affection and esteem did not always carry over to the next generation, but the sense of obligation certainly did. The Sidiyya were a colonial investment. Mauritania was inconceivable without them. Mohamed, Ahmed, Abdallah, and the other sons became regular visitors to colonial offices in Saint-Louis and Dakar.

Baba made some effort to organize his holdings and distribute labor among members of his family. He turned administrative tasks over to his brother al-Mukhtar in 1911, but took them back in 1916 after some complaints. In his last years he began to distinguish between the political, administrative, intellectual, judicial and mystical dimensions of the Sidiyya heritage, and to make different allocations to his sons. Mohamed took over the overall leadership at Baba's death in 1924. When he in turn died in 1927, Ahmed withdrew into contemplation and the management of his flocks, so that overall religious and administrative leadership passed on to the third son, Abdallah.

Sulaiman shared in the administrative work, while Ya'qub carried much of the baraka and organized many of the collection tours to Senegal and beyond. Isma'il and Harun became the scholars of the family. It is thanks to Harun's indefatigable work, not finished at his death in 1977, that we owe much of our knowledge of the Sidiyya enterprise and the precious library.

Collaboration, Modernity and Colonial Rule: Sidiyya Baba and Mauritania

By David Robinson

The Sidiyya and the French

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