Touba, Senegal: The Symbology of the Tree and Issues of Spirituality and Modernity

Crowds gather to celebrate the Magal in Touba, Senegal.  Source: http://www.biyokulule.com/sawiro/sawirada_waaweyn/Senegal-Touba2.jpg

Once a year, millions of visitors from near and far converge on the city of Touba, Senegal to celebrate the Magal.  This Muslim festival commemorates Sufi leader and founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, Cheikh Amadou Bamba’s exile by the French colonial authorities in 1895 due to fear over his growing influence in the area.  Clearly, French efforts to subdue the Mouride movement were in vain, as today, the Mourides constitute the most powerful and largest Muslim brotherhood in Senegal, with well over a million members.[1]  In spite of this, it seems quite strange that the capital of this Sufi religious movement would be located in the middle of rural Senegal, miles away from its coastal capital city of Dakar, and, more importantly, hundreds of miles away from what is considered the geographic and ideological center of Islam: Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  As is true for most religious movements, politics and economics have a lot to do with how much influence religious groups can exert and where they can expand their power.  After gaining independence from France, the Senegalese government quickly established diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia to help support the annual pilgrimage of many of Senegal’s Muslims to Mecca.  In 1970s, Senegalese president Léopold Senghor welcomed financial assistance from oil-rich Arab nations following a drought and soaring oil-prices due to the 1973 Arab oil-boycott.[2]  At the same time, Arab nations set up the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa and the Islamic Development Bank to provide aid to Muslim African states.  While the Muslim influence in Senegal has been shaped by a variety of other factors, it is clear that politics and economic necessity have led to the drastic ascendance of Islam in the West African nation. 

Sufi leader Cheikh Amadou Bamba. Source: http://www.blackpast.org/files/blackpast_images/Bamba_Ahmadu.jpg

While I have expounded on some of the factors leading to Senegal’s prominent role in the development of Islam in Africa, it still remains perplexing why a small, rural city in the middle of Senegal would become the capital of the Mouride Brotherhood and an important convergence point for millions of pilgrims worldwide.  Legend has it that Sufi leader Cheikh Amadou Bamba established the town of Touba under God’s guidance.  When he came to the site where the city was to stand, he sat beneath the shade of tree to rest and experienced a moment of illumination that indicated to him that it was here that God’s town was to be built.  The landscape was indeed to embody the city’s spiritual beginnings.  In this paper, I will attempt to show how the archetype of the tree is used as a sign for the both the spiritual and the material worlds in Touba, and ultimately underscores how Sufism has been anchored in the larger landscape of the city, making it a traditional city in a modern setting.   

Baobab Tree, Senegal. Source: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01520/baobab-gett360_1520903c.jpg

The tree is a symbol used in many religious and secular spheres because of its universality and prototypical form.  In Christianity, Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and condemn the rest of humanity to original sin.  In Buddhist theology, the Buddha is said to have been sitting under a pipal tree when he was enlightened or “awakened.”  Examples outside of the explicitly religious realm in which the symbolism of the tree is evoked include the story of George Washington and the cherry tree.  As the tale goes, a young George Washington was outside testing out his new hatchet when he accidentally chopped down the cherry tree that his father had planted and that he had been caring for for so long.  When his father confronted him about it, questioning whether it was indeed him that had chopped down his tree, George felt an immediate obligation to tell the truth in spite of the significance he knew the tree held for his father.  His father was elated that his son was telling the truth and reassured him by letting him know that telling the truth was worth much more than his cherry tree.  There are various levels of symbolism in this tale of morality, but it is obvious that while the point of the story was to demonstrate the importance of telling the truth (and how the Father of this country was an upstanding citizen, even at a young age), the tree held a special value that was highlighted specifically in the story.  This story, and the pervasiveness of the archetype of the tree through different cultures and religions, begs the question of what a tree really represents and what makes it such a powerful symbol.  For one, the tree is the ultimate symbol of growth, decay, and resurrection; in short, it represents the cycle of life which every person and thing of nature is subject to, automatically making it a universal symbol.  It gets its nutrients from the earth; grows sturdy and strong as the years pass; changes as the seasons change; and finally loses its leaves, representing the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.  I contend, however, that there is something more than its biological qualities that make it so symbolic and attractive to religious symbology.  Perhaps it is that a tree is the physical manifestation of these principles of life.  A tree is grounded in the earth by its roots that spread throughout the ground, while at the same time reaching skyward in a straight path that eventually splits into many branches.  Those branches grow leaves that change colors and fall and then grow again in a seemingly endless cycle of renewal: “The meaning which the tree form conveys—though it varies from one religion to another—revolves around its essential physical property, i.e., the fact that it rises from earth to sky.  In cosmological terms, the tree stands at the “center” of the world; it also transcends the world as an axis mundi, linking this earth to that which is above and below it.”[3]  As Eric Ross observes, the tree has the quality of evoking multidimensional qualities of being; it represents transcendence.  The tree inhabits the underworld through its roots, the earthly world through its trunk, and the heavenly realm through its spread of branches in the sky.  Given its symbolic yet easily accessible form, it not only symbolically, but physically occupies the realm of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the natural and the created, the religious and the secular, and the modern and the traditional. 

Grand Mosque, Touba, Senegal. Source: http://frysingerreunion.org/africa/senegal508.jpg

Because a tree can physically occupy different realms of nature, at once, it is no surprise that the archetype of the tree is also of high symbolic importance in the Islamic tradition.  There are various designations of the tree that take different forms in the many sects of Islam—in Sufism, one of the designations of the tree is the tree of paradise, or the Tûbâ.  The Tûbâ is described in Sufi literature as a tree that is a hundred years wide, has great shade, magnificent fruit, roots of pearl, a trunk of ruby, and many other extraordinary features.[4] Etymologically speaking, the name of the city Touba comes from the word Tûbâ, denoting this Sufi tree of paradise.  Having established this basic connection between the city of Touba and the symbol of the tree, we can look at how the symbol of the tree functions in the ordering and the landscape of Touba and serves as a representation of the connection between spiritual and material worlds.

Touba, Senegal designated by red arrow. Source: Africa Map

As I mentioned earlier, Ross asserts that the tree stands as an axis mundi, being both in the center of the earth and representing the connection between the earthly and spiritual worlds.  The first, obvious way in which this idea is played out in Touba is through the presence of actual trees in places of importance: “For the Sufis especially, actual trees continue to be the locus of pious or devotional acts, including spiritual and burial, and these have much to do with their relation to the archetypal tree…”[5]  The legend of the founding of Touba is, as already mentioned, centered around the idea of an actual tree standing as a symbol for the place where the city was to be built.  This shows, in a very real way, that the tree was to be the literal center of the city, as well as to represent the spot where Cheikh Amadou Bamba connected with the spiritual realm for guidance.  While the exact location of this spot is a detail lost to history, at the center of the city is the Great Mosque, a shrine representing what is the spiritual center of the city, once denoted by a tree.  Next to the Great Mosque is Touba’s cemetery, which, until 2003, had a baobab tree as its center point.  The tree was personalized by a proper name in Wolof (the most commonly spoken ethnic language), Guy Texe, which translates to “Baobab of Bliss.”[6]  This name emphasizes the connection between the “tree of paradise,” showing that this tree is the the physical manifestation of the idea of the tree as axis mundi.  This argument is strengthened when one considers the function of a cemetery.  The cemetery is the earthly gate to the spiritual sphere.  Physical burial in Touba itself, because of its spiritual significance in Sufi belief, is supposed to bring the dead in even closer contact with the spritiual realm than being buried in an ordinary cemetery located elsewhere.  The placement of the tree in the center of the cemetery epitomizes and makes real this connection between the earthly and spiritual realms.  One other place in which the connection between the spiritual and the earthly is actualized by the presence of trees is the tree-lined boulevard that encloses the city of Touba.  The Rocade, as it is commonly called, surrounds the entirety of the city and delineates the spiritual and political limits of the city.   It keeps out things like alcohol and drugs that go against the “Straight Path of Islam,” while creating a safe, protected space in which people can meditate on the state of their spiritual lives without material interruptions.  The fact that it is surrounded by trees physically shows that the city is grounded in the earth by virtue of being a built urban environment, while occupying a space closer to the spiritual realm. 

Map of Touba showing the Rocade enclosing the city.  Source: http://www.daaramouride.asso.ulaval.ca/images/Touba2.jpg

Not only is the idea transcendence and of occupying multiple realms of being actualized by the presence of real trees, but it is also symbolized by the layout of the city. Touba is organized around a main square that contains the famous Great Mosque.  The Mosque is the ubiquitous Mouride symbol and is famous around Senegal and greater Africa for its commanding central minaret: “The distinctive minaret represents all that the city signifies for Mouides, but it also stands as a physical, tangible, concrete manifestation of the paradisiacal Tûbâ.”[7]  Ross asserts that the minaret is the physical representation of the tree of paradise, a representation that operates on a formal as well as a symbolic level.  Formally, the Mosque adopts the qualities of tree roots spreading out in all directions and covering a wide stretch of ground.  The minaret then rises up above all of this in the center and points skyward much like the trunk of a tree would.  In this way the Mosque channels the grounded quality of tree roots while at the same time channeling the spiritual character of a tree through its tall minaret.  Additionally, the city is laid out in such a way that all major streets emanante outwards from the central square.  This reinforces the idea that the Mosque, representing the archetype of a tree, is the  the axis mundi from which all roads or roots originate.

 Touba is a city that straddles the border between the spiritual and the earthly.  This quality of transcendence is actualized through the use of the tree as both a mental symbol and the physical manifestation of this property.  This multi-dimensionality serves to emphasize the city's position as a traditional city in a modern world.  Touba was founded in 1887, but the Grand Mosque, which baptized the city as a spiritual center for Sufism, was not completed until 1963.  This makes it different from the majority of other religious centers in the world which are hundreds if not thousands of years old.  Touba has all the amenities of a modern city and was planned by modern architects and builders, but remains traditional in a non-Western sense.  While its urbanization has been planned in accordance with Sufi spiritual beliefs and customs in the way a Western city is planned in accordance to theories of urban planning and growth, it has remained connected to the idea that urban growth is a spontaneous process that changes as the culture of a city changes.  This is again reinforced by the symbol of the tree as ever-changing and evolving while remaining rooted in the ground and sturdy. 

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[1] Sheldon Gellar, Senegal: An African Nation Between Islam and the West, 2^nd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 112.

[2] Ibid., 98.

[3] Eric Ross, Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 15.

[4] Ibid., 15.

[5] Ibid., 29.

[6] Ibid., 72.

[7] Ibid., 71

Bibliography 

Gellar, Sheldon. Senegal: An African Nation Between Islam and the West. 2^nd ed. Boulder: Westview 

Press, 1995. 

Ross, Eric. Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006.

HRAC Mapping and Representations of Class in Senegambia

The “mapping” discerned in the Human Relations Area File layer for Africamap complicates issues of landscape and brings forth many larger questions about the usage of landscape.  Right off the bat we notice that most of these classifications cut across both man-made boundaries such as borders, and natural boundaries, such as rivers.  In this blog post, I will primarily be concerned with the division of man-made boundaries since it speaks to the extent to which man can alter the landscape.

Africamap: Map of Senegal and Gambia depicting class stratification

The layer I will focus on here is the class stratification layer.  When you look at a map of Senegambia with this layer in place, you immediately realize that there seems to be a pretty strong division between classes in the region. At first glance, the division appears to have no rhyme or reason; however upon closer inspection, we discern that the class divide is centered around the capital city of Dakar, Senegal.  This division immediately brings up issues of colonization.  Generally speaking, the most prosperous cities in Francophone Africa are coastal cities; these were cities were used as ports to transport goods (and oftentimes slaves as well) in and out from Europe and other places.  These cities, not coincidentally, became the capital cities in most of these countries and these socio-economic divisions still exist today.

The implications of this on landscape are enormous.  While the majority of Africa remains rural, there has been a shift towards urbanization in the latter part of the past century.  The divide between urban and rural, however, is still enormous, with most state resources being focused on capital cities and not much else outside of that.  The rural people of Senegal maintain agriculture as their main source of income transforming the landscape over and over as they learn new strategies of farming and stick ardently to others.

Africamap Overview

Africamap has certainly shaped my conception of the African continent since it is my first real exposure to issues in Africa.  I think that the geographically based approach that Africamap takes in terms of organizing data is particularly helpful since it allows you to immediately situate things in space and time.  I think that the tool is useful though not incredibly accessible, since it requires the user to a) have some previous guidance in terms of figuring out how it works, and b) know something about the issue they’re interested in studying to really make full use of the resource.  In my opinion, it serves more as a tool to reaffirm or discover new aspects about issues that one is already researching than as an entry point to research.  In this sense, I found Africamap increasingly more useful as the semester went along.  As you begin to narrow your field of focus, it becomes much easier to understand what you're looking for and how to use Africamap to find it.  One aspect of Africamap that I found really cool was how you can have different feeds from websites such as Picasa or Youtube.  This injects your research with an interesting multimedia approach that academic work sometimes lack.  The idea that you can use media sharing websites in scholarly work is a relatively new one, but is certainly fruitful and can lead to many interesting insights. 

Avifauna and the Landscape: Senegal

This blog post will focus on some of the environmental issues brought up by the readings from this week.  I specifically focus on an organization called Wetlands International Africa that has its head office in the capital city of Dakar, Senegal.

This picture show the Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary, one of the many bird conservation parks in the region.

Wetlands International is an organization that works to sustain and restore wetlands and their resources   One of the principal projects they are working on is a community enhancement project in Lake Ouye, Malika, Senegal.  Malika, Senegal is located in the Dakar region of Senegal.  Lake Ouye is important because in the rainy season it is crucial for migratory wintering birds.  This project focuses on the conservation of the lake and avifauna by working together with the surrounding community. 

The Gambian wetlands

             According to the article by W.M. Adams, it is absolutely imperative that communities are well educated on the importance of preserving wetlands environments in West Africa.  This WIA project seems productive because it focuses both on migratory birds as well as informing the community about the importance of preserving this ecosystem.

            Another interesting concept brought up in the article by Ellis and Galvin was the idea of the side effects of regional climate variation.  In the Sahel, rainfall is the dominant driver of ecosystem dynamics.  Since the migratory birds come to spend the European summer months in Africa, they end up in the Sahel during the rainy season.  It is therefore imperative that there are preservation projects focused on conserving the avifauna of the region because they are an essential part of the ecosystem during this time.

Saint-Louis and Paradoxes of Landscape

For this week’s blog post, I decided to focus on a part of Senegal that I haven’t explored yet: Saint-Louis.  Saint-Louis is located at the mouth of the Senegal River and is the former French capital of Senegal.  Saint-Louis is a very physical manifestation of its history; the town is filled with 19^th century colonial buildings that speak of a bygone era.  Yet more than being simply a place that stands for the past, it could help explain some of the complexities of Senegalese culture as we know it today.

Africa Map: Red triangles on the far left showing the location of Saint-Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River

The French influence in Senegal is undeniable.  It is evident in the most abstract and in the most obvious.  The official language is French and most of the place names are French; however, only those educated in the colonial style French schools really speak it regularly.  Most people speak their own ethnic language, with Wolof being the most widely spoken.  This immediately introduces one of the many paradoxes in Senegalese culture. 

Africa Map: Map showing the French Colonies in 1930

Today, Saint-Louis seems to represent a lot of those paradoxes.  Its location places it both at the mouth of the Senegal River and at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean so that it is a bridge between river and ocean.  It is also located at the border of Senegal with Mauritania, making it a bridge between savanna and desert.  Finally, its deep involvement with the French connects it to Europe in a way that no other African city is.

Picture showing the Feidherbe Bridge to Saint-Louis.  Source: http://www.galenfrysinger.com/senegal_saint_louis.htm

From this short analysis we can see the fruitfulness of exploring the city of Saint-Louis in terms of trying to understand a part of Senegalese culture.  Hopefully seeing it as more than merely a beautiful place can bring out more interesting paradoxes and lead to deeper analyses grounded in the history of the landscape.   

 Chronology: Senegal and The Gambia 

1360: Wolof people establish the Jolof Empire

1443: Portuguese ships reach the mouth of the Senegal River, and a year later they land on the coast of Senegal at a peninsula they name Cabo Verde, meaning Green Cape.

1617: The Dutch turn the trading station on Île de Gorée into a major slave port.  The French eventually take Gorée from the Dutch in 1677.

1633: The French establish La Compagnie du Cap Vert et du Sénégal, the main trading company operating in France’s African colonies.

1659: French traders put down roots on the barely inhabited island of N’Dar at the mouth of the Senegal River.  They rename the place Saint-Louis, after the French emperor, and build and important urban center.

1677: The French gain control over the trading station of Île de Gorée, founded in 1455 by the Portuguese, then fought over by the Dutch, British and French.  Gorée’s architecture shows the legacies of all of its occupants.

1756: Britain and France are opposed in fierce territorial battles lasting seven years.  Britain briefly gains control of all of France’s possessions in the Senegal area, though soon has to return them.

1783: The Treaty of Versailles delineates the spheres of Anglophone and Francophone influence that dominates the region to this day.  Gambia is given to the British, and Gorée returned to the French.  Later attempts at unifying the territory fail.

1794: The slave trade is abolished in France, only to be reinstated by Napoleon eight years later.  It is finally abolished once and for all in 1815.

1820: Gambia is declared a British protectorate and, after failed attempts by Britain to exchange it for other colonial territories, it becomes a full colony in 1886.

1848: The key colonial centers of Rufisque, Dakar, Gorée and Saint-Louis become self-governing communes, where citizens enjoy the same rights as those of France.

1857: France opens a military post at Lebou village of Ndakaru.  This act is considered by many as the official founding of Dakar.

1864: Omar Tall’s forces are finally defeated by the French, but his missionary zeal inspires followers to keep fighting jihads for another three decades.

1884-1885: Colonial powers gather at the Berlin Conference to “carve up” the African continent in line with their territorial interests. 

1889: After the demarcation of colonial territories at the Berlin Conference, it takes France and Britain another five years to agree on the current borders between Senegal and Gambia.

1895: Saint-Louis in Senegal becomes the capital of the vast, French owned area of Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF; French West Africa), stretching from Senegal in the west to present-day Sudan in the east.

1906: Léopold Sédar Senghor is born in a small fishing village in the Siné-Saloum region.  A sharp intellectual, he follows simultaneous careers in politics and poetry, and becomes the first president of independent Senegal.

1960: On 4 April Senegal and Mali are granted independence as a joint federation—an idea strongly supported by Senghor.  But the alliance only lasts four months before the two countries split.

1965: The Gambia becomes and independent country with David Jawara as prime minister and Queen Elizabeth II as titular head of state.

1970: Gambia becomes a full republic. 

1980: Senegal proves its democratic maturity when president Senghor steps down after losing the elections and makes room for former Prime Minister Abdou Diouf. 

1981: Newly elected Senegalese president Abdou Diouf leads his first military intervention—in neighboring Gambia.  Though his army’s support helps thwart a coup, 500 people are killed in the events, causing hostilities between the two nations.

1990: Throughout this difficult decade, the separatist movement in Senegal’s Casamance clashes frequently with government forces, claiming the lives of hundreds of people and damaging the tourist industry that flourished in the region.

2000: Abdoulaye Wade, leader of the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais, becomes president of Senegal in democratic elections, running a campaign with the slogan sopi (change).

2002: Nearly 2000people are killed when the ferry MS Joola capsizes between Dakar and Ziguinchor, a catastrophe provoked at least partly by dangerous overcrowding.  Senegal’s biggest disaster leaves the country in shock.

2003: President Jammeh’s claims that major oil resources have been found off the Gambian coast provoke skepticism on one side; hope on the other.

2004: Prominent Gambian journalist and government critic Deyda Hydara is assassinated while under surveillance by secret service agents.  They still unsolved murder brings the issue of press freedom in Gambia into sharp focus.

Site Survey: Gorée Island, Senegal

Gorée Island is a tiny island located approximately 3 kilometers from the main harbor of Dakar, Senegal, making it the closest point on the continent to the Americas.  It is about 45 acres large and has an estimated population of 1,300 permanent residents.  The island was named an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978 for its involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.

Africa Map: Gorée Island is denoted by the red triangle 

Perhaps the most physical testament to the slave trade in Gorée is the House of Slaves.  The House of Slaves is a small fort that served as a warehouse for slaves making the journey across the Atlantic.  It was built by the Dutch in 1776, and it is the last existing slave house in Gorée; the first were built by the Portuguese, the first European colonizers on the island, in 1536.  The shipping of slaves from Gorée lasted for 312 years—from 1533, when the Portuguese launched the slave trade, to 1848, when the French halted it. 

Today, thousands of visitors a year visit the island to learn about this gruesome part of African history.  There is only one hotel on the island, however, and most tourists don’t even stay over night.  It is said that Gorée is a very tranquil place, and that most people that visit act less like tourists and more like pilgrims visiting a holy shrine.

Entrance to the House of Slaves: http://webworld.unesco.org/goree/en/screens/0.shtml

This site raises a lot of questions about the prevalence of the slave trade in Senegal.  While I was researching, I found some conflicting opinions on importance of Gorée Island in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  Some scholars claim that only about 200 slaves passed through Gorée on their way to the Americas. I believe that the importance of it, however, is not diminished by the amount of slave traffic that passed through there; the important thing is that it serves as a testament to the atrocities of the slave trade.

Literature and Landscape

The two books I read for this week are The Language of Landscape by Anne Whiston Spirn, and South Africa: The Structure of Things Then by David Goldblatt.  I’d like to use narrative structure to compare ideas in the two books. 

In The Language of Landscape, Spirn uses poetry and literary allusions as a vehicle to speak about the landscape.  She often references Mark Twain and his descriptions of the Mississippi River to talk about the ever-changing nature of the landscape.  She also uses the phrase “literature of landscape” to characterize the way in which one should read the landscape.  Just like in literature studies, one must closely “read” aspects of landscape in order to further understand the hidden connections within each landscape or part of a landscape.  One must also be able to literally and figuratively read the stories that the landscape is telling.  Each part of a landscape—the rock, the hill, the tree, and the path—has a story to tell.  The history of a tree is hidden in its trunk and in its branches and in its leaves.  The difference between the story that a tree has to tell and the story that a person constructs, is that the former makes no moral judgements or distinctions between what constitutes a worthy story; it simply accumulates occurences.  Man incorporates these stories into his culture, oftentimes creating narratives about survival, power, and failure around them.  In this way, a narrative dialogue between the landscape and its human inhabitants is formed.

            Goldblatt’s book South Africa: The Structure of Things Then looks at landscape through the lens of photography.  This automatically struck me as a very interesting way in which to capture ideas about landscape.  The camera is a fascinating medium in that it can bring out aspects of the landscape that can otherwise go unnoticed.  For example, in the picture of the Hindu Temple on page 8, given the perspective the picture is taken from, you can see another building through the doorway on the left.  This provides an interesting counterpoint to the structure of the temple.  If you were looking at the temple in real life, you probably wouldn’t really put the other building in context with the structure of the temple.  In a picture, the photographer can frame the shot in such a way that interesting landscape qualities are brought out and emphasized.  On the other hand, photography is a limited medium in that it can only capture visual aspects of the landscape.  Goldblatt must make up for this by providing a narrative history.  Still, he doesn’t fully engage all the senses in his description of landscape the way I think Sprin does.  Sprin practices what she preaches.  She compellingly uses of narrative to make the landscape quite literally come alive, and, in doing so, is able to engage all of my faculties.  Goldblatt, in part limited by the medium, falls a bit short narratively speaking, and ends up making a less forceful, but still interesting point about the nature of landscape.