In preceding chapters, I outlined the evolution of the Hamawiyya and the Tijaniyya, and emphasised the strength and resilience of these two Sufi orders and the power and authority of their present leaders, particularly in the prayer economy. Although the two Sufi orders and their respective leaders dominate the field of religious practice in Nioro, other Islamic discourses are hardly inconsequential in Nioro and its hinterland. In fact, Islamic ‘reformist’ ideas, including anti-Sufi currents, have long been important in this region of West Africa. In general, reformists in West Africa have been opposed in principle to the way that Islam has historically been practised there; they usually seek to bring religious practice more in line with what are deemed more ‘correct’ practices, modelled on the presumed centre of the Islamic world, the Arab Middle East. They have, for example, criticised the veneration of Muslim religious leaders, the Sufi orders and the use of esoteric practices. If reformism, its emergence, and spread have been documented for colonial and postcolonial Mali, the broader influence of reformism has not. Although reformism does not exist in the form of separate institutions such as mosques or schools in the town of Nioro proper, it has, nevertheless, been on the rise in the area from at least the 1940s, if not earlier. In this chapter, I trace the presence and influence of reformism and certain reformist ideas in the region of Nioro and some of the local responses to them. In doing so, one of my objectives is to understand some of the ways in which the Sufi tradition might be transformed.

During the colonial period, French colonial administrators used the terms ‘Wahhabi’, ‘Wahhabism’ and ‘Wahhabiyya’ rather loosely to refer to reformist Muslims in West Africa. Although such language continues to be used there today in both French and in the region's vernaculars, it is in fact somewhat misleading. Wahhabiyya is generally the term used to designate the community Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1787) formed in Arabia. The House of Sa’ud adopted and propagated his teachings, which emphasised the oneness of God (Ar., tawhid) and the need to extirpate unIslamic practices. Those the French labelled Wahhabis in West Africa were never simply the advocates of such ‘Wahhabi’ doctrines. Indeed, they were always a more heterogeneous group of individuals.