The Muslim Tribunal
[[img]]The second goal of the Muslim community was to establish a court where a modified form of Sharia law would be applied to inheritance and marital questions. They began to circulate petitions to this effect in the 1840s, and succeeded in gaining the attention of the dominant governor of the time, Louis Leon Faidherbe. [[doc]]Faidherbe was fresh from an experience in the expanding French sphere in Algeria, where the French made some effort to incorporate Islamic law within their colonial practice. [[img]]Faidherbe issued a decree in 1857 that established the Tribunal Musulman and named its first judge or qadi, a certain Hamat Ndiaye Anne from Futa Toro, who had been a resident in Saint-Louis for some time. Hamat Ndiaye and his successors kept a register for each year with Arabic summaries of the issues, litigants and decisions.