Yacouba Sylla

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Yacouba Sylla (* 1906 in Nioro du Sahel , † 1988 in Gagnoa ) was a preacher of Tijaniyyah -Ordens in French West Africa , who in the late 1920s in Kaédi sparked a religious insurgency, also called Yacoubisme is called. After his exile in the Ivory Coast , Sylla and his supporters built a flourishing commercial enterprise there in the late 1930s and became politically active. Yacouba Sylla is also called "le patriarche" by his followers.

Contact Hamahoullah

Sylla, who belonged to the Soninke people , was born in 1906 to Sokona Sylla and the trader and planter Aoua Cissé from Gagnoa. At an early stage, he joined Cheikh Hamahoullah, who in the 1920s founded a reform movement within the Tijaniya order that was strongly egalitarian . In 1929 he was appointed muqaddam ("chief") by Hamahoullah, whom the French had interned in Méderdra , and charged with spreading his teaching, known as Hamallism, in the Sahel . At the festival of sacrifice in Méderdra in 1929, Hamahoullah is said to have shoved bites into his mouth several times, which today's followers of Yacouba Sylla regard as a symbolic act of investiture by Hamahoullah.

Preaching in Kaédi

After his stay in Méderdra, Sylla preached first in Kayes and then in Kaédi. The small town of Kaédi had about 4,000 inhabitants at that time and was completely ruled by the Tijaniya order, which was represented here with two branches. While the Tukulor living in the Touldé district followed the teachings of ʿUmar Tall , the Soninke in the Gattaga district were enthusiastic supporters of Cheikh Hamahoullah. A ritual difference between the two groups was that the Umaritic Tijānīs prayed the order's own prayer Dschauharat al-kamāl twelve times during the so-called Wazīfa, whereas the Hamallist Tijānīs only eleven times. According to the number of pearls on their prayer beads , the Umaritic Tijanis were also known as "les douze grains" ("the twelve pearls") and the Hamallists as "les onze grains" ("the eleven pearls").

Sylla quickly gained a lot of influence with the Hamallists in Gattaga, among other things because he had the reputation of being able to read minds and being well informed about their identity, age and life situation when foreign visitors arrive. He also preached about the equality of men and women and the worthlessness of jewelry. He had women's clothing made of semi-transparent tulle burned and gold necklaces sold. He later organized public confessions for those who entered into extramarital sexual relations. In addition, he publicly spoke out in favor of capping the bride price , which had experienced inflationary development in previous years.

Overall, women outnumbered Yacouba Sylla's supporters. According to a French survey from March 1930, there were a total of 350 followers, 225 of whom were women. Former slaves were also well represented in his following.

Imprisonment and first exile

After the first clashes between his Hamallist supporters and the Umaritic Tijans in Kaédi in May 1929, Sylla was expelled from Kaédi to his hometown of Nioro on August 31, where he arrived in the course of September.

Since Yacouba Sylla admitted women to dhikr ceremonies, non-hamallist tijans in Nioro accused him of holding orgies . They also accused him of spreading seditious chants. He was also credited with preaching the independence of the child within the family and of the individual within society. On October 18, 1929, a court in Nioro sentenced Sylla to two months in prison and two years' banishment for disturbing public order . After serving his sentence in Nioro, he was transferred in mid-December by the governor of French Sudan to Koutiala , where he was to spend the time of his exile in a French internment camp with his brother Fodié Sylla .

Despite the absence of the two Sylla brothers, fights between the "Onze Grains", several hundred of which had streamed into the city, and the "Douze Grains" continued to break out in Kaédi from December 1929. Since the French colonial authorities mostly sided with the latter, numerous supporters of Yacouba Sylla gathered in Kaédi on February 15, 1930 to express their protest against this attitude of the French. French Gardes de Cercle shot into the protesting crowd, killing more than 30 of Sylla's supporters. Yacouba Sylla, who was held responsible for the protests, was exiled to Sassandra in Ivory Coast for eight years on February 27, 1930 on the orders of the Governor of French Sudan, Henri Terrasson de Fougères .

Although many of Sylla's followers were imprisoned or banished, the unrest in Kaédi continued. In 1933 Fodié Sylla, Yacouba's brother, proclaimed himself a Mahdi . After attacking the headquarters of the French colonial authorities, he was imprisoned in Kidal for several years .

Working in the Ivory Coast

Forced residence in Sassandra

In Sassandra, where he was serving his eight-year internment, Sylla soon began to produce charcoal , which he sold to Europeans. Some time later he worked as a baker. In the course of time, more and more of his followers from Kaédi and Nioro and the various places where they had been interned followed him to the Ivory Coast, so that a new community of 250 people emerged here, who pooled their assets and held public confession ceremonies . With her help, Sylla acquired a first plot of 135 hectares in 1932/33 in Kokolopozo (Dioulabougou), 135 kilometers from Gagnoa. There he let his followers grow coffee, cocoa and palm oil . In 1936 Sylla bought a second cocoa and banana plantation 20 kilometers north of Sassandra, which he also had his followers cultivate.

As a marabout and entrepreneur in Gagnoa

After his internment sentence was lifted on February 28, 1938, Sylla bought a third piece of land in Gagnoa in 1939, on which he grew lemons, coffee and cocoa. He built a house here and moved his main residence here. He opened a fourth plantation in Daloa . In 1939 he was so wealthy that he was able to give his Sheikh Hamahoullah a Ford Mercury .

Sylla and his followers soon penetrated other areas of the economy. By 1943 he acquired seven trucks with which he operated as a freight forwarder between the two cities of Gagnoa and Abidjan . In 1947 he acquired two building plots. On one in Sassandra he built a residential complex with a prayer center ( zāwiya ), on the other in Gagnoa a coffee roastery. In 1949 Sylla opened a number of butcher shops, bakeries and cinemas. Together with other African traders, he made competition for Lebanese-Syrian traders and European trading houses such as the Compagnie française de l'Afrique occidentale . In the same year 1949, Sylla founded a branch of his company in his former place of work Kaédi, the main purpose of which was to integrate supporters from Mauritania into his business network. At the local level, he made a name for himself by funding the electrification of the city of Gagnoa between 1946 and 1958 .

Due to his economic success and his reputation as a religious leader and marabout , Sylla was drawn into the political activities of his new home from 1942. So he made the acquaintance of the young politician Félix Houphouët-Boigny , with whom he developed a close friendship. With Sylla's support, Houphouët-Boigny ran for election to the Constituent Assembly in 1946. Sylla also actively campaigned for the introduction of Félix Houphouët-Boigny's Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) in Gagnoa. In the anti-French atmosphere of the 1940s and 1950s, Sylla was held in high regard by Muslims with his past as a religious leader who had conflicted with colonial power. At the same time, he and his supporters contributed to de-escalation in conflicts with the French colonial administration, so that the latter assessed his role more positively. After the Ivory Coast gained independence in 1960 and Félix Houphouët-Boigny became its first president, Yacouba Sylla's followers supported his regime, while they themselves received patronage from him . The non-Muslim Bété , who opposed the RDA, on the other hand, Sylla was considered a foreign intruder. In 1955, a group of young Bété men attacked his plantation complex in Dioulabougou in order to destroy it. In 1949 Sylla opened a number of butcher shops, bakeries and cinemas.

In the period after 1938 religious teachings played a rather subordinate role in his Yacouba Sylla's activities. Nonetheless, he continued to be venerated as a saint and Sufi by his followers . He had a reputation for not only being able to read minds, but also to be able to look into the past. Until 1975 he made regular visitation visits to the meetinghouses of his community in the various cities of the Ivory Coast, after which he was prevented from doing so by a paralysis. Before the "Patriarch" died in 1988, he designated his eldest son Cheikna Sylla as his successor. He founded the Cheick Yacouba Sylla Foundation in Abidjan in 1998, which promotes teaching and education according to the teachings of Islam , the cultivation of the heritage of Ahmad at-Tijani , Sheikh Hamahoullah and Yacouba Sylla, the building of Zāwiyas, the popularization of Sufi assemblies, the Promoting vocational training for young Muslims as well as interreligious dialogue is one of its main tasks. Yacouba Sylla's grave in Gagnoa is the destination of an annual pilgrimage for his followers.

literature

  • Cheick Chikouna Cissé: “La confrérie hamalliste face à l'administration coloniale française: le cas de Cheick Yacouba Sylla (1929–1960)” in Mali-France - Regards sur une histoire partagée, GEMDEV / Université du Mali. Editions Donniya et Editions Karthala, Bamako-Paris, 2005. pp. 55-76.
  • JC Froelich: Art. "Ḥamāliyya" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. III, pp. 107a-108b.
  • Sean Hanretta (a): “'To Never Shed Blood': Yacouba Sylla, Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Islamic Modernization in Côte d'Ivoire” in The Journal of African history 49 (2008), pp. 281-304.
  • Sean Hanretta (b): “Gender and Agency in the History of a West African Sufi Community: The Followers of Yacouba Sylla” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (2008), pp. 478–508.
  • Sean Hanretta: Islam and social change in French West Africa: history of an emancipatory community. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge [and a.], 2009.
  • Boukary Savadogo: “La communauté« Yacouba Sylla »et ses rapports avec la Tijâniyya hamawiyya” in Jean-Louis Triaud and David Robinson (éds): La Tijâniyya: une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l'Afrique . Karthala, Paris, 2000. pp. 269-287.
  • Alioune Traoré: Islam et colonization en Afrique. Cheikh Hamahoullah, homme de foi et resistant . Maionneuve et Larose, Paris, 1983. pp. 205-213.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Alioune Traoré: Islam et colonization en Afrique. Cheikh Hamahoullah, homme de foi et resistant. Maionneuve et Larose, Paris, 1983. p. 206.
  2. ↑ Sean Hanretta: “'To Never Shed Blood': Yacouba Sylla, Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Islamic Modernization in Côte d'Ivoire” in The Journal of African history 49 (2008), p. 294.
  3. ↑ Cheick Chikouna Cissé: “La confrérie hamalliste face à l'administration coloniale française: le cas de Cheick Yacouba Sylla (1929-1960)” in Mali-France - Regards sur une histoire partagée, GEMDEV / Université du Mali. Editions Donniya et Editions Karthala, Bamako-Paris, 2005, p. 63
  4. ↑ a b J. C. Froelich: Art. "Ḥamāliyya" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. III, pp. 107a-108b.
  5. ↑ Sean Hanretta: "Gender and Agency in the History of a West African Sufi community: The Followers of Yacouba Sylla" in Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (2008), 494b.
  6. ↑ See Hanretta 2008b, 479.
  7. ↑ See Hanretta 2008b, 487.
  8. ↑ Boukary Savadogo: “La communauté" Yacouba Sylla "et ses rapports avec la Tijâniyya hamawiyya” in Jean-Louis Triaud et David Robinson (éds): La Tijâniyya: une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l'Afrique. Karthala, Paris, 2000. pp. 269-287.
  9. ↑ Cheick Chikouna Cissé: “La confrérie hamalliste face à l'administration coloniale française: le cas de Cheick Yacouba Sylla (1929-1960)” in Mali-France - Regards sur une histoire partagée, GEMDEV / Université du Mali. Editions Donniya et Editions Karthala, Bamako-Paris, 2005, p. 61.
  10. ↑ See Hanretta 2008b, 503.
  11. ↑ See Alphonse Gouilly: L'Islam dans l'Afrique Occidentale Française. Éditions Larose, Paris, 1952. p. 145.
  12. ↑ See Traoré 208, Cissé 62.
  13. ↑ See Hanretta 2008a, 281, Cissé 64, Traoré 208.
  14. ↑ See Cissé 65.
  15. ↑ a b Cheick Chikouna Cissé: “La confrérie hamalliste face à l'administration coloniale française: le cas de Cheick Yacouba Sylla (1929-1960)” in Mali-France - Regards sur une histoire partagée, GEMDEV / Université du Mali. Editions Donniya et Editions Karthala, Bamako-Paris, 2005, p. 69.
  16. ↑ See Traoré 208.
  17. ↑ See Hanretta 2008a, 282.
  18. ↑ See Cissé 68 and Traoré 211.
  19. ↑ See Hanretta 2008a, 294.
  20. ↑ See Hanretta 2008a, 285f and Traoré 211.
  21. ↑ a b Sean Hanretta: "Gender and Agency in the History of a West African Sufi community: The Followers of Yacouba Sylla" in Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (2008), S. 286th
  22. ↑ See Lémassou Fofana: Côte-d'Ivoire: Islam et sociétés. Contribution des musulmans à l'édification de la nation ivoirienne (Xie – XXe siècles) . CERAP, Abidjan, 2007. p. 60.
  23. ↑ See Cissé 69.
  24. ↑ See Hanretta 2008a, 286.
  25. ↑ See Cissé 72.
  26. ↑ See Savadogo 282.
  27. ↑ See Hanretta 2008a, 288.
  28. ↑ See Hanretta 2008b, 479.
  29. ↑ a b Sean Hanretta: "Gender and Agency in the History of a West African Sufi community: The Followers of Yacouba Sylla" in Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (2008), S. 286th
  30. ↑ See Lémassou Fofana: Côte-d'Ivoire: Islam et sociétés. Contribution des musulmans à l'édification de la nation ivoirienne (Xie – XXe siècles) . CERAP, Abidjan, 2007. p. 289.
  31. ↑ See Savadogo 284.
  32. ↑ See Savadogo 287.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sylla, Yacouba
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sylla, Cheick Yacouba
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sufi of the Tijaniyya Order and entrepreneur in Ivory Coast
DATE OF BIRTH 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Nioro du Sahel
DATE OF DEATH 1988
Place of death Gagnoa