The Muslim holy city of Touba, self-defined ‘capital’ of the Murid Sufi order in Senegal, is increasingly thriving on its global connectedness. This article situates the phenomenon of Touba’s globalisation within current literature on the global city and world city networks. It assesses four of the processes through which the holy city’s values and structures are diffusing across the global North. First, the universality of Touba in Murid historiography is considered. Secondly, the diffusion of the toponym ‘Touba’, through the naming of expatriate associations and institutions, is analysed. Thirdly, the types and distribution of businesses set up in the US by Murids is assessed. Fourthly, the diffusion of typical Murid images is discussed as they too contribute to Touba’s international renown.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Al-Ghazâlî (1981) Le Tabernacle des Lumières (Mishkât al-Anwâr), transl. by DeladrièreR.Paris: Seuil.
2.
AppaduraiA. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
3.
AqeronC.-R.NoraP. (1997) Les lieux de mémoire. Paris: Gallimard.
4.
BabouC. A. (2002) Brotherhood solidarity, education and migration: the role of the Dahiras among the Murid Muslim community of New York, African Affairs, 101, pp. 151–170.
5.
BabouC. A. (2007) Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913. Athen, OH: Ohio University Press.
6.
BabouC. A. (2008) Migration and cultural change: money, ‘caste’, gender, and social status among Senegalese female hair braiders in the United States, Africa Today, 55(2), pp. 3–22.
7.
BaschL.Glick SchillerN.Szantonc BlancC. (1994) Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States. New York: Gordon and Breach.
8.
BavaS. (2001) The Mouride Dahira: between Marseille and Touba, ISIM Review, 8, p. 7.
9.
BavaS. (2003) Le Dahira urbain, lieu de pouvoir du mouridisme, Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine, 96, pp. 135–143.
10.
BavaS.BleitrachD. (1995) Les mourides entre utopie et capitalisme, Le Monde diplomatique, November, p. 21.
11.
BavaS.GuèyeC. (2001) Le grand magal de Touba: exil prophétique, migration et pèlerinage au sein du mouridisme, Social Compass, 48(3), pp. 421–438.
12.
BourdieuP. (2000) Les structures sociales de l’économie. Paris: Seuil.
13.
BourlonA. (1962) Mourides et mouridisme 1953, in: ChailleyM.BourlonA.BichonB.. (Eds) Notes et études sur l’islam en Afrique noire, pp. 53–74. Paris: J. Peyronnet and Co.
14.
BrennerN.KeilR. (2006) Editors’ introduction: global city theory in retrospect and prospect, in: BrennerN.KielR. (Eds) The Global Cities Reader, pp. 1–16. London: Routledge.
15.
van BruinessenM. (2003) Sufism and the ‘modern’ in Islam, ISIM Review, 13, p. 62.
16.
CarterD. M. (1997) States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
17.
CastellsM. (1989) The Informational City. Oxford: Blackwell.
18.
CisséO. (2001) Mame Thierno Birahim (1862–1943): Frère et disciple de Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Paris: l’Harmattan.
19.
CopansJ. (1980) Les marabouts de l’arachide. Paris: Le Sycomore.
20.
CoulonC. (1996) Touba, lieu saint de la confrérie mouride, in: Amir-MoezziM. A. (Ed.) Lieux d’islam: cultes et cultures de l’Afrique à Java, pp. 226–238. Paris: Autrement.
21.
CoulonC. (1999) The Grand Magal in Touba: a religious festival of the Mouride Brotherhood of Senegal, African Affairs, 98(391), pp. 195–210.
22.
Cruise O’BrienD. B. (1971) The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
23.
Cruise O’BrienD. B. (1988) Charisma comes to town: Mouride urbanisation 1945–1986, in: Cruise O’BrienD. B.CoulonC. (Eds) Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam, pp. 135–156. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
24.
DieyeC. A. (n.d.) Touba: Signs and Symbols. Self-published.
25.
DiopA. B. (1966) Lat Dior et le problème musulman, Bulletin de l’IFAN, série B, 28(1–22), pp. 493–539.
26.
DiopA. M. (1994) Les associations islamiques sénégalaises en France, Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara, 8, pp. 7–15.
27.
DiopM. C. (1981) Fonctions et activités des dahira mourides urbains, Cahiers d’études africaines, 21(81–83), pp. 79–91.
28.
DioufM. (2000) The Senegalese Murid trade diaspora and the making of a vernacular cosmopolitanism, transl. RendallS., Public Culture, 12(3), pp. 679–702.
29.
EbinV. (1996) Making room versus creating space: the construction of spatial categories by itinerant Mouride traders, in: MetcalfB. D. (Ed.) Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, pp. 92–109. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
30.
FadahunsiO. (2002) Senegalese progress evident in Harlem, The African, 1August (http://indypressny.org; accessed 8 December 2003).
31.
FallP. D. (2002) Ethnic and religious ties in an African emigration: Senegalese immigrants in the United States, Studia Africana, 13, pp. 81–90.
32.
FlustyS. (2006) Culturing the world city: an exhibition of the global present, in: BrennerN.KeilR. (Eds) The Global Cities Reader, pp. 346–352. London: Routledge.
33.
FoleyE. (2008) Hôpital Matlaboul Fawzaini: how the Murid Diaspora is remaking the medical landscape in Senegal. Paper presented at the conference on Globalizing Mystical Islam: Exploring the Murid Diaspora in Europe and North America, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, May.
34.
FreundB. (2004) Globalisation and the African city: Touba, Abidjan and Durban. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the African Studies Association of Australia and the Pacific, ‘African Renewal, African Renaissance: New Perspectives on Africa’s Past and Africa’s Present’, University of Western Australia, November.
35.
FreundB. (2007) The African City: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36.
FriedmannJ. (1986) The world city hypothesis, Development and Change, 17, pp. 69–83.
37.
FriedmannJ. (1995) Where we stand: a decade of world city research, in: KnoxP.TaylorP. (Eds) World Cities in a World System, pp. 21–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
38.
GlotonM. (1982) L’Arbre du Monde. Paris: Les deux océans.
39.
GreenA. W. (2004) Noble capitalism: an analysis of the prosperity of the Murid Tariqa in Senegal, Res: A Journal of Undergraduate Research, 1(1), pp. 7–36.
40.
GrilloR.SoaresB. (2005) Transnational Islam in Europe, ISIM Review, 15, p. 11.
41.
GuèyeC. (2002a) Touba, la capitale des mourides. Paris: Karthala.
42.
GuèyeC. (2002b) L’économie toubienne: de la capitale des Mourides aux interstices du marché mondial. CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social and Economic Research in Africa), Dakar.
43.
GuèyeC. (2003) New information and communication technology use by Muslim Mourides in Senegal, Review of African Political Economy, 98, pp. 609–625.
44.
JefferyA. (1959/1960) Ibn al-’Arabî’s Shajarat al-Kawn, Studia Islamica, 10, pp. 43–77 and 11, pp. 113–160.
45.
MalcomsonS. L. (1996) West of Eden: the Mouride ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Transition, 71, pp. 26–45.
46.
MaroneI. (1970) Le tidjanisme au Sénégal, Bulletin de l’IFAN, série B, 32(1), pp. 136–215.
47.
MartyP. (1922) Etudes sur l’islam en Côte d’Ivoire. Paris: Editions Ernest Leroux.
MbackéK. (2005) Sufism and Religious Brotherhoods in Senegal, trans. by RossE., ed. by HunwickJ.Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers.
50.
RiccioB. (2000) Disaggregating the transnational community: Senegalese migrants on the Coast of Emilia-Romagna. Working Paper No. WPTC-01-11, Transnational Communities programme, University of Oxford.
51.
RiccioB. (2003) L’urbanisation Mouride et les migrations transnationales sénégalaises, in: PigaA. (Ed.) Islam et villes en Afrique au sud du Sahara: Entre soufisme et fondamentalisme, pp. 359–375. Paris: Karthala.
52.
RobertsA. F.Nooter RobertsM.ArmenianG.GueyeO. (2003) A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
53.
RobinsonD. (2000) Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
54.
RobinsonJ. (2006) Global and world cities: a view from off the map, in: BrennerN.KielR. (Eds) The Global Cities Reader, pp. 217–223. London: Routledge.
55.
RossE. (1995) Touba: a spiritual metropolis in the modern world, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 29(2), pp. 222–59.
56.
RossE. (2005) From ‘marabout republics’ to ‘autonomous rural communities’: autonomous Muslim towns in Senegal, in: SalmS. J.FalolaT. (Eds) African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective, pp. 243–265. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
57.
RossE. (2006) Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
SalemG. (1981) De la brousse sénégalaise au Boul. Mich’: le système commerciale mouride en France, Cahiers d’études africaines, 21(81–83), pp. 267–288.
60.
SalzbrunnM. (2004) The occupation of public space through religious and political events: how Senegalese migrants became a part of Harlem, New York, Journal of Religion in Africa, 34(4), pp. 468–492.
61.
SambA. (1969) Touba et son ‘magal’, Bulletin de l’IFAN, série B, 31(3), pp. 733–753.
62.
SannehL. (1989) The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia. New York: University Press of America.
63.
SassenS. (1991) The Global City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
64.
SchimmelA. (1975) Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
65.
SmithR. G. (2003) World city actor-networks, Progress in Human Geography, 27(1), pp. 25–44.
66.
StollerP. (1996) Spaces, places, and fields: the politics of West African trading in New York City’s informal economy, American Anthropologist, 98(4), pp. 776–788.
67.
Suret-CanaleJ. (1970) Touba in Guinea: holy place of Islam, in: AllenC.JohnsonR. W. (Eds) African Perspectives, pp. 53–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
68.
SyC. T. (1969) La Confrérie sénégalaise des mourides. Paris: Présence africaine.
69.
TallS. M. (1998) Un instrument financier pour les commerçants et émigrés mourides de l’axe Dakar–New York: Kara International Exchange, in: MarfaingL.SowM. (Eds) Les Opérateurs économiques et l’état au Sénégal, pp. 73–90. Paris: Karthala.
70.
TallS. M. (2002) Mouride migration and financing, ISIM Review, 9, p. 36.
71.
TallS. M. (2004) Senegalese emigrés: new information and communication technologies, Review of Political Economy, 31(99), pp. 31–48.
72.
TaylorP. J. (2004) World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis. London: Routledge.
73.
VillalónL. (1994) Religious rituals and rallies: religious ceremonies in the politics of Senegalese state–society relations, Comparative Politics, 26(4), pp. 415–437.
74.
WerbnerP. (2005) ‘Pilgrims of love’: Sufism in a global world, ISIM Review, 15, pp. 44–45.
