Encyclopedia of Islam

Umar ibn al-Khattab

  

685  J

---

644, Umar was assassinated by a slave who had a 

personal grudge against him. Umar is said to have 

appointed a committee to choose the next 

caliph

;

they named Uthman as his successor.

See also c

ompanions

 

oF

 

the

 p

rophet

.

Kate O’Halloran

Further reading: Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the 

Age of the Caliphates (London: Longman, 1985); Wil-

ferd Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of 

the Early Caliphate (Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1997).

Umar Tal

 

(Al-Hajj Umar)

 

(1797–1864)  

Tijani Sufi shaykh who launched jihad to reform 

Islamic practice and resist French colonial expansion in 

West Africa during the mid-19th century

Born in Futa Toro (in modern-day Senegal), Umar 

Tal joined the Tijani Sufi order at the age of 18. 

As a young man, Umar departed his homelands 

for an extended pilgrimage to m

ecca

 and the east-

ern Islamic lands. While in Mecca, Umar studied 

under the Tijani 

shaykh

 Muhammad al-Ghali, 

who appointed him as the representative for the 

order in W

est

 a

Frica

. After three years in the east, 

Umar returned to West Africa, staying in Sokoto 

for some six years. In 1838 he settled in Futa Jal-

lon (Senegal), where he established a reputation 

as a holy man and mystic.

By 1849 the local tribal authorities in Futa Jal-

lon became concerned by the large number of the 

shaykh’s followers and his increasing vehemence in 

preaching Islamic revival. Forced to leave the region, 

Umar retreated to Dinguiray, where he established a 

community. In imitation of the prophet m

Uhammad

,

Umar declared that his flight had been his own h

ijra

and he began to recruit warriors and assemble weap-

ons in preparation for 

Jihad

 against the ungodly rul-

ers who opposed his message. During the next 15 

years, Umar and his followers launched countless 

attacks upon surrounding communities, resulting 

in a state of some 150,000 square miles in the region 

of modern-day Guinea, Mali, and Mauritania. In 

1862 he conquered Hamdullahi on the Bani River 

and sacked t

imbUktU

. However, tribal resistance led 

to a siege of Hamdullahi, in which Umar and his fol-

lowers were trapped for some eight months before 

he ordered the town to be burned and fled to the 

nearby cliffs of Bandiagara. Here he died mysteri-

ously in February 1864. The empire that he estab-

lished, bequeathed to his son, Ahmadu, collapsed 

into civil war, and Ahmadu was finally driven out of 

Nioro in 1891, effectively ending Umarian 

aUthor

-

ity

 in the region. Despite the short duration of the 

state he established, al-Hajj Umar’s jihad was one of 

a number of similar reform movements that revived 

Islam and resisted the spread of French colonial 

authority in 19th-century West Africa.

See also 

reneWal

 

and

 

reForm

 

movements

.

Stephen Cory