Mamadou Lamine Dramé
Scholar and resistance leader in the east (around 1835 – 1887)
Family : Place of birth : Goundiourou, near Kayes (present-day Mali) ; Date of birth : Between 1835 and 1840 ; Father : Mamadou, marabout, qadi and Qur’anic teacher
Education : From a family of marabouts, he received a solid Qur’anic education, partly at Goundiourou, then at Bakel, and travelled across Gajaaga as a student. He joined El Hadj Oumar Tall’s army, commanding a unit of Soninke horsemen. He then spent about ten years travelling, as far as Mecca and Constantinople.
Action : In 1885 he launched an uprising in the name of Islam in the upper Senegal River valley. He was part of the Tijani coalition alongside Saër Maty Bâ and Abdoul Bokar Kane against French expansion. In February 1886 he created a Soninke state and dominated the Boundou; in July 1886 he took Sénoudébou.
Trials : On 4 April 1886 his attack on Fort Bakel failed against the French army and its allies, including King Moussa Molo. He was wounded in the leg when captured, in December 1887.
Spiritual legacy : Wounded in battle, he was called back to God in December 1887 at Couting, near Toubacouta. His name remains tied to the memory of resistance in eastern Senegal.
Sources
- Persée — « Le marabout El Hadj Mamadou Lamine d’après les archives françaises » (Cahiers d’études africaines, 1969)
- A. Bathily, Mamadou Lamine Drame et la résistance dans le Haut-Sénégal (1885-1887)
- Persée — M. A. Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad : the precolonial state of Bundu (compte rendu, 1994)
- Wikipédia — Mamadou Lamine Dramé