The Zawaya[a] were nomadic tribes from the arid lands to the north and east of the Senegal River in West Africa.
[4] The Zawaya attempted to avoid conflict with the stronger warrior groups by renouncing arms and paying tribute.
[6] The Zawaya, with their passive lifestyle of herding, prayer and study, were treated with some contempt by the stronger groups, but this was mingled with respect.
He was a Zawaya from the west and a regular attendant at the teaching circle of the jurist Maḥmūd, grandson of Anda Ag-Muhammad in the female line.
[8] By then some of the Zawaya were moving south to avoid the depredations of the warrior tribes, risking conflict with the sedentary populations of Chemama, Gorgol and Tagant.
His goal was to establish an ideal Islamic society based on the original organization of the first caliphs, where ethnic and tribal differences would be ignored.
[11] Rather than immediately attack the Hassān, in 1673 Nāșir al-Din launched his jihad with an invasion across the Senegal River into the Futa Tooro and Wolof states.
Most of the Zawaya were opposed to the peace, and deposed al-Amīn, replacing him with 'Uthmān, the former vizier and close friend of Nāșir al-Din.
This brought increased prosperity to the Hassāni of Ida Aish, who controlled the trade to Bakel on the Senega River, and took some of the profits that the Zawaya had traditionally made from collecting and selling gum.
However, a clerical leader managed to establish an alternative gum market at Medine, further upstream, competing with the Hassāni.
[21] There are records of Zawaya moving into the lands south of the Senegal in the seventeenth century, where they proselytized and intermarried with the local people.
[27] In the late 1800s, Zawaya are referenced in a letter by the Kingdom of Jimma's Muslim state leader Abba Jifar II in Ethiopia to Hadiya rebel Hassan Enjamo.
They adopted the teachings of the fifteenth century cleric Muhammad al-Maghili, said to be the first to introduce the Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood to the western Sudan.
[6] Sidi Mukhtar became the leader of a Tuareg coalition dominated by the Kunta that controlled the Niger bend and surrounding areas.
His sponsorship of the proselytizing Sufi tariqas, particularly the Qadiriyya order, meant that Islam was no longer the private religion of Saharan traders, but began to steadily spread among the black populations of the Sahel and further south.