Un politologue chez les marabouts

The marabouts viewed by a political scientist.- In his book Le marabout et le Prince (Islam et pouvoir au Sénégal), the political scientist C. Coulon tried to point out that the same study can focus on and analyse the Mouride brotherhood, Al Hajj Umar's jihad, or the foundation of Médina Gonasse; he also brought new data about little-known maraboutic movements. Re-examining some of the case studies in Coulon's book, we intend to show that limiting oneself to analysing the marabouts' politics in terms of resistance to colonisation, or as an Islamic culture expressing popular aspirations, cannot suffice. What is needed is to emphasize the relative autonomy of what should be considered a clerical class, which appeared well before the colonial period. This class is structured by propaedeutic-pedagogical relations which take shape with the acquisition of Koranic knowledge, and are reproduced by marriage exchange within the clerical hierarchy.