96 Book Reviews

Rüdiger Seesemann
The Divine Flood: Ibrahim Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth-Century Sufi Revival.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi + 331 pages, glossary, general index. Cloth.
isbn: 9780195384321. £45.99 / US $70.00.

Rüdiger Seesemann’s book, The Divine Flood, is a welcome addition to the

growing scholarship on the history of Muslim societies in West Africa. This
recent scholarship, pioneered by a new generation of historians and social sci-
entists, has greatly transformed our understanding of Islam in Africa. By har-
nessing innovative methodological and interpretive approaches and by taking
seriously internal written and oral sources, it has moved the debate beyond
dominant orientalist and instrumentalist interpretations that marginalized
African Muslims and downplayed the role of religious beliefs, to relocate West
African Muslims within the global Muslim community (umma) while acknowl-
edging their distinct identity.
The Divine Flood is a study of the Sufi movement founded by the Senegalese
Shaykh Ibrahima Niasse (1900–75), arguably one of the most influential Sufi
masters in twentieth-century West Africa, but whose history has been over-
shadowed in the literature by the towering figures of Ahmadou Bamba and
Elhaj Malick Sy, respectively leaders of the Muridiyya and Tijaniyya Malikiyya
tariqas. The book follows two recent dissertations on the same topic and
focuses on similar notions of spiritual education, experiential knowledge, reli-
gious authority, and modernity.1 But its originality resides in its temporal frame
covering the origin and formative years of the movement and its exploration of
an impressive array of internal written sources, including Niasse’s own writ-
ings. This is a refreshing departure from established scholarship on Muslim
communities in sub-Saharan Africa, which until recently paid little attention
to indigenous literature and ignored historical dynamics independent from
colonial connections. In contrast to his predecessors, Seesemann is particu-
larly interested in the role of ideas and especially the theological foundations
of Niasse’s core religious thought and claims. He explores the history, transfor-
mation, and transformative power of complex Sufi notions and concepts such
as fayda and tarbiyya, discussing how these notions are appropriated, reinter-
preted, and acted upon by disciples of different educational and socio-cultural

1 Joseph Hill, “Divine Knowledge and Islamic Authority: Religious Specialization among
Disciples of Baay Ñas” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2007); and, Zachary Valentine Wright,
“Embodied knowledge in West African Islam: Continuity and change in the gnostic commu-
nity of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse [Senegal]” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2010).

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Book Reviews 97

backgrounds. And his goal is to do this by putting Niasse and his disciples’ writ-
ings in context. Seesemann argues that the intellectual dynamics which
unfolded as an interactive communicative process involving religious leaders
and ordinary disciples explains the originality and success of Niasse’s move-
ment. The attraction of Niasse, unlike other Sufi masters in Senegal, was not
his ability to impart baraka or solve existential problems, but rather his role as
a disseminator of experiential mystical knowledge that shortened disciples’
paths to illumination.
The book is comprised of an introduction, five chapters and an epilogue. It
also includes a map, seven charts that illustrate the text throughout, and two
pictures. In the first chapter, Seesemann utilizes oral and written hagiographi-
cal narratives to reconstruct the first thirty years of Niasse’s life, focusing
mostly on the work of Ali Cisse, his closest disciple. Contrasting popular oral
discourses with learned written perspectives, the chapter chronicles Niasse’s
life and spiritual growth as his claim to superior spiritual authority pitted sup-
porters and deniers within his family and the larger Tijani community of
Senegal and beyond. The bone of contention between Niasse and his critics
revolved around his claim as “bringer of the fayda” or divine flood that Shaykh
Ahmad al-Tijani, the founder of the Tijaniyya tariqa, had predicted. The chap-
ter offers an erudite perusal of the meaning of fayda and the polemics
unleashed by Niasse’s claim. It also documents the tensions and conflicts gen-
erated by the popular reception and understanding of the fayda and its power.
The second chapter concerns tarbiyya, the most important concept of
Niasse’s teachings and practice after fayda. Tarbiyya is a ubiquitous word of the
Sufi lexicon that refers to spiritual training, but in Seesemann’s view, this con-
cept conveys a unique significance in the Niasse tradition. Its significance
builds on Sufi and Tijani interpretations but departs significantly from these as
tarbiyya was turned into a means for fast-track access to mystical realization
for all disciples without discrimination. He credits tarbiyya for being the most
important factor in the expansion of Niasse’s influence. But as central as it is to
an understanding of Niasse’s calling, the study of tarbiyya seems to present an
unforeseen and important challenge to the author. He explains that tarbiyya
does not lend itself to critical inquiry because it is shrouded in secrecy and
neither master nor disciples are willing to discuss its working. Moreover,
because tarbiyya pertains to the domain of experiential knowledge, its access
is exclusively limited to initiates. Hence, one is then left inferring causality
from something whose influence is impossible to measure, because it is
unknowable in the first place. However, while tarbiyya might be inaccessible to
the outsider, its expected impact on the disciple’s body and mind might well

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98 Book Reviews

transpire in observable forms accessible to the researcher. Indeed it is this per-

formative dimension of tarbiyya that demonstrates its tangibility in the eyes of
disciples and shaykh as well. An examination of external signs of piety such as
acts of worship, dress, speech, demeanor, and behavior could yield important
insights into the working of tarbiyya.
Chapter 3 picks up the story begun in the first chapter of the book, focusing
on the gradual emergence of the community of fayda in Kosi from the 1930s,
and the tensions and conflicts generated by this process. Seesemann suggests
that the hostility that confronted Niasse’s nascent community bred greater
cohesion, providing the glue that welded his disciples together and leading to
his ultimate triumph. This is a familiar trope of Sufi narratives of change that
draws from the archetypical history of the prophet Muhammad, with his strug-
gles in Mecca and his ultimate success in Medina. Faulting previous scholar-
ship, Seesemann downplays the role of sibling rivalry in the conflict, instead
locating the source of tensions in the excesses of overzealous disciples who
fueled disputes with Tijani disciples and masters by making outrageous claims
on behalf of their shaykh. Such rivalries are, however, common in the history
of Sufi orders in Senegal and beyond, and they reflect deeper questions of legit-
imacy as conflicting claims of authority rooted in biological and spiritual prox-
imity to deceased founders of a tariqa pit against each other brothers and
uncles vying for power. The author might have dismissed too quickly dissent-
ing opinions. Taking seriously the voices of naysayers, and especially those on
the losing side of history, could yield significant apocryphal stories that could
present an important counter to hegemonic discourse crafted by the
leadership.
The last two chapters of the book tell the story of the expansion of the Niasse
movement across West Africa as the fayda overflowed Senegal, blurring colonial
boundaries and uniting French and British colonial subjects beyond adminis-
trative and linguistic barriers. Here the author singles out Niasse’s trip to
Conakry in Guinea and Kano in Nigeria, in the aftermath of wwii, as the defin-
ing moments in the spread of the fayda. The reconstruction of these trips is
mostly based on Niasse’s travelogue. And we are told that the circulation of writ-
ten copies of these travel narratives coincided with the flow of disciples to
Kaolack. The perceived correlation between the circulation of Niasse’s writings
and the growth of his community raises legitimate questions. For instance, how
were these texts circulated? How widely were they read, who read them, and in
what settings? Seesemann particularly insists on the critical importance of the
Conakry trip, which he sees as a coronation of Niasse’s spiritual journey.
Unfortunately, the author’s reliance on textual analysis without consideration
of the broader socio-political context makes it difficult for the reader to under-

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stand the circumstances and significance of these trips for disciples. And the
underlying assumption that the influence of these texts was enough to bring
millions of people to follow Niasse is even more problematic. Many questions
remain unanswered. How does one explain the timing of these trips? Did the
changing circumstances of French colonial rule after the Brazzaville Conference
of 1944 (so-called “second colonization”) affect Niasse’s proselytizing project?
How does one explain the choice of Conakry? What kind of interactions did he
entertain with people? What impressions did he make, since this is a region
where the fayda has little influence (compared to Nigeria and Senegal)? The
author sidesteps these questions because, as he indicates, Niasse himself does
not provide such context in his travelogue. But given Niasse’s visibility in the
political scene of colonial West Africa, his activities did not go unnoticed
by the French and British colonial administrations and traces of these intelli-
gence reports are accessible in archival repositories across West Africa and
Europe. The utilization of such documents, combined with oral sources, could
have helped better put Niasse’s texts in context. This is particularly critical, since
the author’s declared aim is to bring “text into dialogue with context”(24).
The book’s epilogue expands its time frame by looking at the increasing glo-
balization of the fayda beyond its earlier confines in Senegal and the impor-
tance of Niasse’s legacy. Here Seesemann does an excellent job tying Niasse’s
career as a Sufi master to his later career as a member of the global ulama and
as an active participant in the high politics of the umma.
The Divine Flood is a masterful exercise in Islamic intellectual history. In my
view, no book has gone so far to document the role of ideas and spiritual edu-
cation in the birth and development of a Sufi movement in West Africa. But the
book’s strength is also its weakness. Because of the author’s commitment to
textual analysis, little space was availed to oral history beyond over a dozen
interviewees hailing from Niasse’s family and inner circle. The absence of dis-
ciples’ voices diminishes the significance of their role and undermines the idea
of “interactive communicative process” between shaykh and disciples, which
according to Seesemann defines the Niasse movement. This shortcoming that
reflects the author’s methodological choice does not in any way diminish the
value of this important book that should occupy a prominent place in the
library of any scholar interested in the history of Islam in West Africa.

Cheikh Babou
University of Pennsylvania (USA)

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