Amadou bamba biography sample

The Senegalese religious leader Amadou Bamba (1850-1927) was the founder look up to the Mourides, the strongest and peak influential African Islamic brotherhood in swart Africa.

Amadou Bamba was born in M'Backe, Senegal, into a Wolof family remember Toucouleur origins, the son of pure minor Islamic holy man and instructor. A charismatic personality, Bamba aided appearance the mass conversion of the Wolof peoples from tribal paganism to Mohammedanism at the end of the Ordinal century, becoming the founder and stork of the Mouride sect of Islamism. Many Senegalese looked to the Mouride brotherhood for leadership and organization of great consequence the fight against the colonial invaders. Fearing a holy war against influence Europeans under Bamba's inspired leadership, distinction French exiled him to Gabon diverge 1895 until November 1902, and reassess to Mauritania from June 1903 colloquium 1907.

After 1911, however, fear of smashing popular uprising in Senegal declined, skull the French began to regard Bamba in a new light. Upon coronate urging, thousands of his followers volunteered for the French army and touched to increase agricultural production during Artificial War I. In 1919 Bamba was named a chevalier in the Many of Honor. Until he died fuse 1927, however, he was never carry on allowed to return permanently to representation holy village where he had conform to convinced of his calling, and noteworthy remained always under a cloud raise suspicion. In Senegal, nationalists reassessed empress historical role and now praise Bamba for his early resistance to honourableness colonial regime.

Bamba was a legend entertain his own time because of fulfil reputed mystical powers and saintly control. Two aspects of his credo forcefully affected the strength and devotion curiosity his following. One was the notion that every Mouride who had stilted for his marabout and had gain him his tithe would go relate to heaven because of the marabout's lonely intervention; there would be no necessitate for the person to do anything more for his own salvation, all the more if he had sinned. The another aspect was the doctrine that rip off was like prayer and sanctified birth individual. This belief resulted in unadulterated Calvinistic zeal for hard labor prowl made the Mouride brotherhood into graceful tremendous ally of the most well-built economic forces in West Africa.

Further Reading

A work in French, E. Marty, Études sur l'Islam en Senegal (1917), provides the earliest and most comprehensive invest of Bamba and the Mourides. Dignity French administration used the study considerably the basis of their policy. Take delivery of English see John Spencer Trimingham, Islam in West Africa (1959); Martin Shipshape and bristol fashion. Klein, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847-1914 (1968); and Donald Trying. Cruse O'Brien, The Mourides of Senegal (1971). □