Salam

is there an article or biography of Sidi Muhammad Ghala and Sidi Omar Futi Tall?

Salaam,

Inshallah I will provide these soon

Al-Hajj Umar and the forces of Islamic renewal
Al-Hajj Umar Taal al-Fûtî al-Tûrî 1 is one of the most prominent Muslim figures in West African history. Born in the last decade of the eighteenth century in the Senegal River valley, he devoted his life to religious study from an early age. In about 1825 he undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca, and remained for about three years in the environs of the Holy Cities where he received instruction and guidance in the doctrines of the Tijaniyya Sufi order which he had joined in West Africa. His instructor in Mecca, one of the most elevated leaders of the order, appointed Umar a khalifa in the Tijaniyya order, a position which gave him effective spiritual authority over all Tijani adherents in West Africa 2.
Although the Tijaniyya order was not yet very widespread in West Africa, al-Hajj Umar began actively proselytizing on its behalf as soon as he had returned from Mecca. His enthusiasm was not welcomed in all quarters and he occasionally found himself engaged in serious disputes, especially with the Shehu of Borno and with the Qadiri Sufi leaders of Timbuktu and Masina. On the other hand, he got on well with the Qadiri Caliph Muhammad Bello of Sokoto, with whom he remained for some years and whose daughter he married. During these years Umar also wrote quite extensively, and the subject to which he increasingly warmed was the explication of Tijani doctrine, an interest which culminated in 1845 in the completion of what must be considered his major work, Rimâh hizb al-rahîm 'alâ nuhr hizb al-rajîm (The Spears of the Party of the Merciful against the Throats of the Party of the Damned) 3. Despite its militant title, the book is a detailed explanation and defense of Tijani ideas and teachings and is considered by members of the order to be one of their most authoritative doctrinal works. It must be one of the most widely read books ever written by any West African Muslim scholar and has been published in Cairo, Tunis, and Beirut.
Although upon his return to West Africa al-Hajj Umar put most of his effort into spreading the doctrines of the Tijaniyya order, this was not the only subject about which he wrote, nor the only issue which attracted his attention. He was also very disturbed about factional strife and disunity among West African Muslims, about the widespread distribution of what he considered prohibited or misguided practices by Muslims, and generally about the sea of unbelievers which often surrounded West African Muslim communities. He was extremely outspoken on all these matters. In Futa Jallon, where he finally settled fifteen years after setting out on his pilgrimage, he attracted a growing number of Muslims to his following and very soon he was himself the leader of a burgeoning Muslim community. As this community grew, relations worsened with local political leaders who began to fear a threat to their own authority. The increasing tension culminated in 1852 with an attack by a non-Muslim chief against al-Hajj Umar, who consequently declared jihâd, or religious war, against the “unbelievers.” Local success by the Muslims was followed by more far-reaching campaigns northward toward the Bambara 4 kingdom of Kaarta, conquered in 1857, and where a new Muslim administrative centre was established at Nioro. An unsuccessful confrontation with the French in 1858 turned Umar's energies eastward toward a second Bambara kingdom, Segu, the conquest of which in 1861 led to conflicts with the neighbouring Muslim state of Masina. Masina had aided Segu against the Umarian forces, and even though he now found himself in the midst of the kind of intra-Muslim conflict he had so often condemned in the past, Umar refused to seek a compromise with his adversary. In 1862 the Masina capital, Hamdallahi, was captured and its ruler subsequently put to death.
Umar and a large contingent of his forces settled in Hamdullahi. Geographically, the fruits of the jihâdi conquests had been extensive. Umarian lieutenants were established over a wide territory as local rulers; nascent Muslim administrations were functioning in many formerly non-Muslim districts. But the position was far from secure. Bambara rebellions were widespread, and the defeated Fulbe of Masina were not idle. By 1863 they had formed an anti-Umarian coalition of Muslim groups in the Niger valley which counterattacked Hamdallahi. Warfare continued for months and Umar was besieged in Hamdallahi. Early in 1864 he managed to escape eastward, only to be surrounded again among the hills and rocks near a village called Degembere, and there, in circumstances still not fully explained, he died apparently from the effect of an explosion of gunpowder.
Following Umar's death, the coalition of his enemies began to split apart. The Umarians regrouped their forces, defeated the Fulbe, and set about the task of tightening their grip on Masina. They established a new capital on the plateau east of Hamdullahi at a Dogon village called Bandiagara 5.
Umar's conquests not only changed the political face of the western Soudan, but modified its religious complexion as well. This was not only due to the establishment of new Muslim regimes in formerly non-Muslim areas, but also because Umar never ceased to proselytize on behalf of the Tijaniyya Sufi order. Large numbers of those who joined the jihâdi cause became adherents of the Tijaniyya, and every administrative centre in the Umarian organisation was also a centre from which the religious order was proclaimed. In the inland Delta regions of the Niger valley, where Islam had enjoyed a lengthy and often illustrious history, Umar's movement met not only political and military resistance, but also serious doctrinal opposition to some of the basic teachings of the Tijaniyya. The spiritual leadership of the long established and eminent Qadiriyya Sufi order was centered among the Kunta in Timbuktu. Qadiri objections to Tijani doctrine were not new to al-Hajj Umar; he had encountered them soon after his return from Mecca. But during the jihâd there was an intensification of the doctrinal debate, in which the political and military stakes were very high. The disputes were resolved on the battlefield; the doctrinal debates themselves cooled as the antagonists came to accept the new political order, unstable as it was. The Tijaniyya spread into former Qadiri areas, and eventually adherents to the two orders adopted attitudes of mutual tolerance. The expansion of the Tijaniyya continued unabated and even gained momentum in the twentieth century; today the order exist's throughout Muslim West Africa.
Upon al-Hajj Umar's death, his eldest son Amadu, whom Umar had named as his successor, sought to pick up the reins of his father's political and spiritual authority and to unify the newly conquered territories into a centralized state. For almost twenty-five years he struggled from his capital in Segu to achieve this goal, but the odds were overwhelmingly against him. Not only was there the constant problem of retaining control over conquered territory, but many of those to whom Umar had delegated administrative authority, for example in Dinguiray and Nioro, refused to accept Amadu's claims to leadership. Dissension in these areas erupted into armed conflict. In Masina Ahmadu's cousin, Tijani, who had founded the new capital of Bandiagara, maintained a peaceful but nonetheless carefully guarded attitude of independence. These internal divisions prevented the consolidation of the Umarian conquests into a cohesive Muslim state, but the collapse of the entire political edifice was precipitated not by an internal threat but by an external one: French imperial expansion.