Touba

Touba began as a place chosen for prayer. In 1887 Cheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacké, a scholar from a religious family in nearby Mbacké, founded a settlement in the bush under a tree he identified with felicity — touba in Arabic — and made it the centre of the Sufi order he had begun to gather around him. The French colonial authorities distrusted the movement's growth and exiled him to Gabon in 1895 and later to Mauritania, then kept him under surveillance at Diourbel until his death in 1927. The exile, endured without armed resistance, became the central story of Mouride devotion and is what the Grand Magal commemorates.

Bamba was buried at Touba, and his successors built the city around the tomb. Construction of the Great Mosque began under his son Mamadou Moustapha Mbacké; foundations were finished in 1932, work stopped during the Second World War and resumed afterwards, and the building was inaugurated in 1963. Successive caliphs enlarged and decorated it, adding minarets, domes and marble brought from abroad.

Around the mosque an entirely new city grew, built and financed largely by the brotherhood and its traders and by Mourides working in Dakar, France, Italy and the United States. Touba obtained a distinctive legal status, administered by the caliphate rather than by ordinary municipal government, with its own rules on conduct. From a few thousand residents at independence it has grown into the second largest city in Senegal, spreading over the flat groundnut country in every direction.

Everything in Touba refers back to the brotherhood. The Mouride order teaches work as a form of worship, discipleship to a spiritual guide, and the memory of Amadou Bamba, whose portrait — the one known photograph, a robed figure with a covered face — appears on walls, buses and shopfronts across Senegal. The Baye Fall, the community founded by Ibrahima Fall, are the most visible members, wearing patchwork robes and dreadlocks and devoting themselves to labour and to collecting for the brotherhood.

The city's calendar is religious rather than civic. The Grand Magal is the great event, when millions of people arrive and households across Touba cook for whoever comes, hospitality being understood as a religious act; smaller magals and the birthdays of caliphs punctuate the rest of the year. Religious chant, the recitation of Bamba's poems known as khassaides, is the characteristic music, and it is sung in mosques, in homes and at family ceremonies rather than in clubs.

Behaviour is regulated more tightly than elsewhere in Senegal. Alcohol and tobacco are forbidden in the city, entertainment considered frivolous is discouraged, and dress is conservative for residents and visitors alike. Within those limits Touba is welcoming, and the ordinary Senegalese courtesies — long greetings, tea in three rounds, food shared from a common bowl — are as strong here as anywhere.

Touba's population was about 1.1 million at the 2023 census, which makes it the second largest city in Senegal after Dakar, and it swells enormously for the Magal. Growth has been extraordinarily fast, driven by migration from the surrounding countryside and by Mourides choosing to build in the holy city; whole quarters have been laid out on former farmland, often ahead of the water, drainage and electricity networks that follow.

The economy is trade. Mouride commercial networks reach from Touba's markets to Dakar's Sandaga, to Italy, France and New York, and the remittances they generate finance the large houses, the mosque's continuous enlargement and much local building work. Groundnut farming and livestock support the surrounding area, religious schools employ teachers and scholars, and transport keeps a constant stream of goods moving on the Dakar road.

Daily life follows prayer times and the heat: activity early and late, a long pause in the middle of the day, and evenings in the courtyard or at the mosque. The city has no bars or nightlife in the usual sense. Its pressing problems are water supply, flooding after heavy rain in quarters built on low ground, waste collection for a population that periodically multiplies, and the strain of the Magal on roads, health services and sanitation.

Cooking in Touba is Senegalese home cooking done on a large scale. Ceebu jën — fish with vegetables over broken rice in tomato sauce — is the midday meal here as everywhere, though this is inland country and dried or salted fish often stands in for fresh. Mutton and chicken are more prominent than on the coast: yassa, cooked with lemon, mustard and quantities of onion, and mafé, the groundnut stew that suits a region built on the groundnut crop, are the dishes served most often.

Millet remains a staple in the surrounding countryside and appears as lakh, a porridge eaten with sweetened curdled milk, and thiakry, steamed millet couscous with curds, which is also the food most readily offered to a visitor. During the Magal, families cook enormous pots of rice and meat and distribute them free to pilgrims, and street kitchens work day and night.

The city's name is attached to the country's characteristic coffee. Café Touba is roasted with djar, the grains of selim pepper, ground with the beans and brewed strong and sweet; it is associated with Amadou Bamba and sold from flasks on street corners across Senegal. Otherwise the drinks are bissap from hibiscus flowers, bouye from baobab fruit, ginger juice and ataya tea poured in three rounds — and nothing stronger, since alcohol is not permitted in the city.