As I have argued, the influence of Shaykh Hamallah and the Sufi affiliation around him expanded largely at the expense of the existing Sufi orders and their associated religious leaders during the colonial period. This was especially the case for the Tijaniyya and some of its leaders in the town of Nioro. Although there were people in Nioro who never accepted Hamallah as their shaykh, nearly all people report today that such people were a minority, perhaps even in the immediate aftermath of the repression in the 1940s. It is here that I would like to return to one of the points raised in the last chapter, namely how the French colonial presence helped shape what it meant to be Muslim. This is also apparent in the case of Tijanis in Nioro, some of whom had a much closer working relationship with the French than the Hamawis in the period leading up to and after the repression. The history of the Tijaniyya in the town also directly concerns the many Muslim religious specialists and their kin, who had never embraced Hamallah and who were living not only in the numerous villages around Nioro, but also in some of the far reaches of AOF.

In this chapter, I begin with the decline in importance of the Tijaniyya that occurred with the rise in prominence of Hamallah and the Hamawiyya, and I discuss some of the various reactions of the French and the Muslim establishment to this decline. I suggest that, as in the case of the rise of the Hamawiyya, the French colonial presence contributed wittingly and unwittingly to the revitalisation of the Tijaniyya in the town that began quietly, but earnestly, in the 1950s. Through a comparison of the different social trajectories of the major religious lineages associated with the Tijaniyya in the town, I explore the different ways social actors have engaged with the Tijaniyya.

DECLINE

In the previous chapter, I suggested that one of the most important issues facing Muslims in the aftermath of the French conquest and the onset of colonial rule was the question of leadership. In many parts of AOF including Nioro, the Tijaniyya remained important, despite the fact that there was no leadership around which people were united.