Torodbe
The Torodbe; singular Torodo[a] (also called Turudiyya, Banu Toro, Takrur, Toronkawa) were Muslim Toucouleur clerics and theocratic monarchs who preached and reigned in Futa Toro, a region located in the north of present-day Senegal, and other Fula communities in West Africa from at least the seventeenth to the early twentieth century.
[1] The Torodbe originated in Futa Toro, a strip of agricultural land along the Senegal River[2] and at the time the state of Takrur, from as early as the 9th to as late as 13th century,[citation needed] later spreading throughout the Fulbe territories.
They may well have been a distinct group by the fifteenth century, when the Denianke conquered Takrur, creating the Empire of Great Fulo.
[3] In 1644 the Zawaya Berber reformer Nasr ad-Din launched a jihad to restore purity of religious observance in the Senegal river valley.
He gained support from the Torodbe clerical clan against the traditional leaders of the region and initially saw great success, but Nasr ad-Din was killed in 1674 and by 1677 the movement had been defeated.
[8] As with the Zawaya and Mandé clerisies, the early Torodbe clerics were looked down upon by the warrior groups in their societies, which usually had little interest in Islam.
The Torodbe lived in settled communities and would not follow any caste-based trade such as being fishermen, smiths, weavers or tanners.
[3] The jihads launched by the Torodbe leaders were in response to declines in Islamic practices coupled with oppression by the ruling classes.
In practice, particularly in Futa Toro and Bundu, the Torodbe evolved into a closed society limited to a small number of families.
Some of them undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca and then spent many years in countries such as Egypt, where they absorbed a sophisticated understanding of the world and of Islamic thought.
[7][b] The Torodbe Malick Sy, also spelled Mālik Sī, launched one of the first of the jihads towards the end of the seventeenth century in Bundu.
Bundu then entered a period of anarchy as the state's neighbors launched attacks while the different communities of Torodbe asserted their autonomy.
[29] In 1785 they obtained an agreement from the French to no longer trade in Muslim slaves and to pay customs duties to the state.
[28] By the mid-nineteenth century, the Torodbe almamis in present.day Senegal had become hereditary oligarchies that imposed a harsh and oppressive rule on the people.
[30] Jihad leaders in the region who followed the Torodbe revolutionary tradition in the late nineteenth century included Maba Diakhou Bâ in the Kingdom of Sine, Mahmadu Lamine in Senegal and Samori Ture who founded the short-lived Wassoulou Empire in what is now Guinea.
[7] The largest of the Fulani jihads was led by the Torodbe scholar Usman dan Fodio and established the Sokoto Caliphate in 1808, stretching across what is now the north of Nigeria.
[27] Seku Amadu (Shaykh Ahmad Lobbo) was born in a poor family around 1773 at Malanga in the Segu Empire province of Massina.
He was pious, honest and unassuming, and became deeply interested in religion, attracting many followers who were influenced by the Islamic movement in Sokoto.
[44] The Liptako Emirate was an early 19th-century Fulani Islamic state in the region where today's Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger meet.
The Torodbe, who had opposed the revolt, were given the role of forming an electoral college that would select the amir based on his personal merit, proven abilities, family connections and other factors.
[2] Muhammed Bello, son and heir of Uthman dan Fodio, has been attributed as the author of a poem that praises the glorious exploits of the Banu Toro.
[36] The poem said in part: These [Banu Toro/Torodbe] are my people; the origin of my clan; ... for the support of Islam they are in league; ... of them are some who excelled in the religious sciences ... and those who defended themselves against the wickedness of the enemy and declared djihād.
