Note 56 — Chapter XI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.

The first of these militant propagandist movements on the part of the members of the Tijāniyyah order owes its inception to al-Ḥājj ʻUmar, who had been initiated into this order by a leader of the sect whose acquaintance he made in Mecca. He was born in 1797, near Podor on the Lower Senegal, and appears to have been a man of considerable endowments and personal influence, and of a commanding presence. He was the son of a marabout and received a careful religious education; he was already famed for his learning and piety when he set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1827. He did not return to his own country until 1833, when he commenced an active propaganda of the teaching of the Tijāniyyah order, fiercely attacking his co-religionists for their ignorance and their lukewarmness, especially the adepts of the Qādiriyyah order, whose toleration particularly excited his wrath. He traversed the Central Sudan, winning many adherents and receiving honour as a new prophet, until about 1841 he reached Futah-Jallon, where he armed his followers and commenced a series of proselytising expeditions against those tribes that still remained pagan about the Upper Niger and the Senegal. It was in one of these expeditions that he met his death in 1865. His son, Aḥmadu Shayk͟hu, succeeded in holding together the various provinces of his father’s kingdom for a few years only; internal conflicts and the advance of the French broke up the Tijāniyyah empire, and their territories passed under the rule of France.56