SY, MALIK
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Al-Hajj Malik Sy (1855-1929) is the founder of the Zâwiya (school and convent) of Tiwawan (Tivaouane), in Senegal. Member of the Moslem Brotherhood tijâniyya (tidjane), he played a very prominent role in the diffusion of the Arabic language and in the propagation of Islam in Senegal.
He was born, about 1855, in the region of the River, near Dagana, in a family of tucoulor origin (the Sy clan), but which had been “wolofised” for some generations. He learned the Quran in the Senegalese Fouta (Fouta Tooro), sought knowledge by traveling extensively in Senegal, and finished his studies at the age of thirty, in 1855. In 1889 he undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca. After two or three attempts (first in Saint-Louis, then in Marne), he finally settled in Tiwawan, Kayor in 1902 and devoted himself to the teaching of the Arab language and the Moslem religion.
He was initiated into the world of the tijâniyya “way”, successively, by his maternal uncle Ma Youra (in 1873), who had himself been initiated by the famous tucoulor conqueror Al-hajj Omar b. Sa’îd Tâl (d.1864), then, towards 1888, by the Moors Idaw ‘Alî, who introduced the “way” into Mauritania.
Malik Sy had four legitimate wives, who gave him 14 children, six of them males. His son Babakar succeeded him after his death in 1929. One of his daughters Khadijatou, married Seydou Nourou Tal, grandson of Al-Hajj Omar.
Al-Hajj Malik Sy was held to be the most literate marabout in Senegal. He wrote some twenty works, each of about four to 25 pages, out of which 26 have been printed in Tunis (1915). They treat religion and the times. Some of them are in verse.
The Zâwiya of Tiwawan had, in the days of Malik Sy, from 80 to 250 students. Apart from the Quran, theology, Coranic law (mâlêkite) and Arabe grammar, were taught there. It had a library of several hundreds of books, printed in the Maghreb, Egypt or the East. In the days of Al-Hajj Malik Sy, his Zâwiya was according to Payl Marty (1917), “a veritably popular university”.
Nowadays, every year, at the time of the anniversary of the birthday of the prophet (gamu), more than a hundred thousand followers go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Al-Hajj Malik Sy, in Tiwawan. He has left a great name in knowledge and piety; most of the present tijâniyya “marabouts” were his students; and one of the avenues in Dakar is named after him. At the end of the 19th century, he was one of the principal figures of Arabisation and Islamisation in Senegal.
VINCENT MONTEIL
