The Muslim Community
Contributed by: David RobinsonThe Muslim community was much larger, and almost entirely African: Wolof, Futanke, Moorish, and other groups with origins in the interior of Senegambia, Mauritania and Mali. Their numbers and sophistication grew over the course of the 19th century, as they worked out terms of incorporation into the colonial structures of Saint-Louis and later of French West Africa. In 1850 most of the Muslim leaders were born in the interior and settled in Saint-Louis; they were unsure of their relations to the small but growing French administration.[[img]] By 1900 most of the leaders were born in the town and knew the possibilities and limitations of their influence, within an imperial administration and in relation to the republican institutions. Over the decades they had created an important Muslim educational and Sufi center, and were constantly receiving teachers and preachers from the wider region. [[img]]These visiting clerics went by the same name as the local resident ones - that is "marabouts," a word which goes back to the Almoravids of al-murabitun, the 11th century Islamic reform movement which briefly dominated the northwestern side of Africa and Spain. Along the way the Muslims of Saint-Louis passed by a series of steps and controversies. The first was the construction of the town mosque in the 1840s, in the northern part of the island which became the "Muslim quarter," just as the south was called "kretian." It is unclear from the archival sources whether the administration helped with the costs of construction.