Abdulaye Yakhine Diop

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Abdulaye Yakhine Niakhité Diop (* approx. 1881 ; † July 24, 1943 in Thiès ) was a man from the Wolof people who joined the Senegalese Murīdīya brotherhood, at times claimed to be the Mahdi , and a Wrote a book designed to imitate the Quran . His followers, who are known as Iyakhines , form a separate community within the Murīdīya to this day. Its center is in Thiès, where the tomb of Abdulaye Yakhine is venerated.

Life

About the origin and youth of Abdulaye Yakhine there are only oral traditions of his followers, some of which are legendary. Accordingly, he was born in Mecca in 1881 into a family of descendants of the Prophet Mohammed and went to Senegal around 1900 in search of a spiritual leader. He first settled in Keur N'Diaga M'baye, where he became a follower of the Fādilīya - marabout Saad Buh. He later went to N'Dande, where he met and joined Sheikh Ibra Fall , the chief deputy of Amadu Bamba . Ibra Fall, who had founded his own Baye Fall movement within the Murīdīya, sent Abdoulaye in 1914 to Thiès, a small town at a railway junction near Dakar , to build a new Murīdic community there.

After Abdulaye Yakhine had settled in Thiès, he was soon seen there by his followers as a friend of God ( walī Allaah ) and a miracle worker. They considered him the third most important personality of the Murīdīya after Amadu Bamba and Ibra Fall. Abdulaye began to dictate an Arabic book to one of his followers, which he called Furqān , which is actually an epithet of the Koran. In this book he announced the coming of a mahdi and scourged the ignorant who, as “prisoners of the shamefulness of their souls”, doubted the mission of God's Messenger . One of his followers claimed to have received a revelation through a voice that the Messenger of God named in the Book of Furqān was Abdulaye himself. This message was also the subject of special litanies which Abdulaye's followers sang in public to the rhythm of three tambour drums.

When Amadu Bamba died in 1927 and the Murīdīya entered a leadership circle because no new head of the brotherhood could be agreed upon, Abdulaye Yakhine traveled to Touba , the holy city of the Murīdīya, and brought himself into play as a possible new head of the brotherhood. After Ibra Fall's death in 1930, when the leadership crisis of the Murīdīya deepened, he publicly proclaimed that he was the Mahdi. A French colonial official who worked in Thiès reported in 1931 that at that time Abdulaye was active in propaganda in the towns of Diourbel , Bambey, Khombole and the neighboring towns, claiming that the case after the death of Amadu Bamba and Ibra to be the only remaining Messenger of God. However, his religious advertising found relatively little echo. In 1938, Abdulaye made a new attempt and settled in Touba with some of his followers, but was evicted from there by the police, to the great satisfaction of Mamadou Moustapha, the son of Amadu Bamba, who was the official recognized by the French authorities at the time Who was General-Caliph of the Brotherhood.

According to the documents of the French colonial authorities, Abdulaye announced in 1940 that the real Mahdi he had always talked about was actually Hitler and that Hitler had given him command of Senegal. The French, he is supposed to have preached, would soon leave the country to hand over rule to his followers. However, the accuracy of these reports is denied by today's supporters of the Community.

Abdulaye Yakhine continued to write his book Furqān , which was designed as an imitation of the Koran, until his death in 1943 without completing it. Since he had no sons, there was a succession dispute within his community after his death. Several of his key deputies, particularly Bara N'Gom and Sheikh Fall, sought to be recognized as the new head of the community, but Abdulaye's first wife, Tabara Cisse, who came from a respected Mandinka , was able to provide religious leadership the community passed to their eldest daughter Sokhna Magat Diop (1917-2004). According to the oral tradition of the Iyakhines, Abdulaye is said to have prepared his daughter for this religious leadership position as caliph during his lifetime.

The Keur Yakhine district in Thiès

The tomb mausoleum of Abdoulaye Yakhine is venerated in the Keur Iyakhine district of Thiès to this day. It's there in the central thoroughfare on a street island. The followers of the community, who also use the French term "temple" for the building, visit it regularly in order to circling the inside of the tomb of the saint. A few meters east of the mausoleum is a sacred spring. The community has its own mosque nearby. At the southern end of the neighborhood, the community owns a cemetery where many of Abdoulaye Yakhine's "companions" are buried.

literature

  • Christian Coulon, Odile Reveyrand: L 'Islam au féminin: Sokhna Magat Diop, cheikh de la confrérie Mouride (Sénégal). Bordeaux 1990. pp. 4-8.
  • Rosa Lake: “The Making of a Mouride Mahdi. Serigne Abdoulaye Yakhine Diop of Thies ”in Eva Evers Rosander and David Westerlund (eds.): African Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters Between Sufis and Islamists . Hurst, London, 1997. pp. 216-253.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Coulon / Reveyrand. L'Islam au féminin . 1990, p. 5f.
  2. ↑ See Coulon / Reveyrand. L'Islam au féminin . 1990, p. 6f.
  3. ↑ See: "The Making of a Mouride Mahdi." 1997, pp. 218, 220, 245.
  4. ↑ See Coulon / Reveyrand. L'Islam au féminin . 1990, p. 7.
  5. ↑ See Coulon / Reveyrand. L'Islam au féminin . 1990, p. 8.
  6. ↑ See: "The Making of a Mouride Mahdi." 1997, p. 227.
  7. ↑ See Coulon / Reveyrand. L'Islam au féminin . 1990, p. 8f.
  8. ↑ See: "The Making of a Mouride Mahdi." 1997, p. 216.
personal data
SURNAME Diop, Abdulaye Yakhine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diop, Abdulaye Yakhine Niakhité
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Senegalese clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH around 1881
DATE OF DEATH July 24, 1943
Place of death Thiès