The Institutionalization of Islam in Southern Senegal

Weaving together oral and written sources, The Institutionalization of Islam in Southern Senegal investigates previously overlooked dimensions of Islamization in Senegambia through the processes of intermarriage, Quranic education, and jihd. Due to its geographic location at the point where Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau meet, the Middle Casamance has historically been a melting pot where centralized and decentralized societies have coexisted for generations. In the past, historians have failed to consider the contributions of the Middle Casamance region and Mandinka Muslim settlements to the development of Islam, despite centers for Islamic education having existed in the region centuries before the emergence of the Sufi and jihd movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Aly Dram seeks to close this gap by conceptualizing the leading role played by these Mandinka settlements and how religious spaces are negotiated, acquired, and transformed through intermarriage, Quranic education, and jihd when peoples from distinct backgrounds encounter one another. Drawing on archival documents, oral history and traditions, travelers accounts, the Arabic text Pakao al-Qurano (Holy Book of Pakao), and original ethnography, The Institutionalization of Islam in Southern Senegal demonstrates how these communities reframe the debates about the institutionalization of Islam in Senegambia geographically, chronologically, and thematically.