The Mouride Dahira between Marseille and Touba

Abstract

Mouridism is a contemporary Sufi religious movement originating in Senegal at the end of the 19th century. Its founder, Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, was exiled several times by the colonizers, who saw the movement as a danger to their enterprise. Initially trained in prayer and in working in the fields in the daara and pioneers in the cultivation and sale of groundnuts in Senegal, the Mouride taalibes (disciples) became great merchants. The drought of the 1970s led them to organize new economic activities, notably those related to commerce, initially in Dakar and later in the cities to which they migrated.