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“From Senegambia to Mali—including in the Islamic theocracy in Futa Djallon,84 in Futa Toro,85 and among the Dina in Masina—the Fulbe also contributed decisively to state building in nineteenth-century western Bilad al-Sudan.86 Particularly remarkable among them was Umar Tall.87 Initiated into the Tijaniyya in his homeland of northern Senegal, Tall travelled to Mecca, where he spent three years studying. He was appointed representative of the Tijaniyya in the Bilad al-Sudan by the Tijani shaykh Muhammad al-Ghali. On his way back to his native Futa, he sojourned seven years in Sokoto as the guest of Sultan Muhammad Bello and produced one of the most important texts of the Tijaniyya order.88 When he returned to his native land, Umar Tall led a jihad to Islamize his country and succeeded in establishing a state that was brought down by French colonial rule in the late nineteenth century.”
-Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa
