Cheikh Moussa Kamara
Scholar and historian of Fouta-Toro (c. 1864 – 1945)
Family : Place of birth : About 1864; academic works cite Gouriki, and he lived and taught at Ganguel Soulé, on the Senegal River ; Date of birth : About 1864
Education : A Muslim scholar, Senegalese sources present him as a disciple of Cheikh Saad Bouh, one of his favourite students. He learned and taught the Islamic sciences: law, Qur’anic exegesis and Arabic grammar.
Action : At Ganguel Soulé he founded a daara and trained disciples who went on to found other teaching centres. Between 1920 and 1925 he wrote in Arabic the Zuhūr al-basātīn (“The Flowers of the Gardens”), a vast history of the Black Muslim peoples of more than 1,800 pages, gathering the traditions of Fouta-Toro, Mauritania and Fouta-Djallon, and even of more distant lands. He relied on oral enquiries among elders and families, and took a critical view of some of the nineteenth-century holy wars and of the caste system. He also wrote on the life of El Hadj Oumar Tall, on law, grammar and dialogue between Islam and Christianity. In 1935, at the inauguration of the Cathedral of African Remembrance in Dakar, he was chosen by the Muslim religious leaders of French West Africa to speak for them, and pleaded for understanding among the three religions of the Book.
Spiritual legacy : He was called back to God in 1945. His manuscripts, deposited at IFAN in Dakar with Théodore Monod (partly from 1944, through his grandson), now form the Cheikh Moussa Kamara collection. The Zuhūr al-basātīn, translated and published by the CNRS, is one of the great written sources for the history of West Africa. His thought in favour of dialogue between religions is regularly recalled at the annual ziarra of Ganguel.
Sources
- CNRS Éditions — Cheikh Moussa Kamara, « Florilège au jardin de l’histoire des Noirs (Zuhūr al-basātīn) », introduction
- Cambridge — « Reading with the colonial in the life of Shaykh Musa Kamara, a Muslim scholar-saint » (Africa)
- Seneweb — « Cheikh Moussa Camara, le saint, le savant et l’érudit de Ganguel (1864-1945) »