El Hadj Oumar Tall
Scholar, Tijaniyya leader and empire builder (around 1794 – 1864)
Family : Place of birth : Halwar (Fouta Toro) ; Date of birth : Between 1794 and 1797 ; Mother : Sokhna Adama Aïssé Thiam ; Father : Saïdou Tall, a Muslim scholar
Education : He began studying the Qur’an with his father, then trained with masters of Futa Toro and Mauritania, distinguishing himself in theology, Maliki law and Arabic. He was initiated into the Tijaniyya by Abdel Karim al-Naqil in Futa Jallon. From 1827 he travelled for many years: Hamdallaye, Sokoto (where he married a daughter of Sultan Mohammed Bello), the Fezzan, Cairo (where he studied at al-Azhar), then the holy places, where Muhammad al-Ghali, a direct disciple of the brotherhood’s founder, trained him in the highest teachings of the way and named him caliph of the Tijaniyya for the Sudan. He then preached for about ten years.
Action : He settled at Dinguiraye (present-day Guinea) in 1848, gathering disciples and scholars around the Tijaniyya. In 1852 he proclaimed the jihad: Nioro was taken in 1854, Kaarta in 1856, Ségou on 10 March 1861, then Hamdallaye, capital of Macina, in 1862.
Trials : In 1857 the siege of Médine was lifted by Faidherbe’s army; he sometimes had to take refuge in the caves of Deguembéré.
Spiritual legacy : He disappeared on 12 February 1864 in the Bandiagara cliffs, in circumstances never cleared up. His son Ahmadou reigned at Ségou, Nioro and along the Niger until the French conquest of 1893. His teaching deeply marked the Tijaniyya in West Africa. His nephew Tidiani Tall succeeded him at Bandiagara; his son Aguibou became king of Dinguiraye, then master of Macina (1892).