Applying historical ethnography, the chapter demonstrates that the nature of the interactions between Africans and the French along the West African coast from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries did not favor the development of either a French-based creole or a pidgin. When the first French traders arrived in West Africa they capitalized on the century-long trade routes and social networks established by the Portuguese. They formed partnerships with powerful female commercial partners, who acted as language and cultural brokers between African and French traders. Over time, trading practices evolved from direct exchanges requiring mutual language learning to the emergence of professional interpreters, making it less necessary for the trading partners to learn each other’s language. By the eighteenth century, the French engaged in military conquests. The nature of interactions between African recruits and French officers and the types of population structures in which the former were inserted, did not favor the emergence of a pidgin-like variety identified in creolistics as Français Tirailleur. A detailed analysis of some of the grammatical structures of this putative variety suggests that Français Tirailleur was likely fabricated by those who described or quoted it in their books.

This chapter explores the emergence of new the claims of authority on which Aḥmad Lobbo rested his role as a spiritual leader charged with the political power – a domain that had traditionally been a prerogative of the region’s warrior elites of Fulani, Bambara, and Arma origins. It first analyzes the writings of Aḥmad Lobbo to understand his project of religious reform. It then follows the unfolding of the events that translated the conflict between Aḥmad Lobbo and the religious establishment of the city of Djenné into an open war between his entourage and the old Fulani warrior elite in charge of political power in 1818. It concludes by showing that Aḥmad Lobbo’s authority was not only expressed through his demonstrable mastery of Islamic jurisprudence. He was also perceived as a Friend of God known for his access to Divine Blessing, or baraka.