1860s–1890s: (Samori Ture — The Last Great Muslim Military Leader and State-Builder of the Nineteenth Century, Wangara Merchant Who Built a Personal Army Thr…

1860s–1890s: (Samori Ture — The Last Great Muslim Military Leader and State-Builder of the Nineteenth Century, Wangara Merchant Who Built a Personal Army Through Slave-Raiding, Attempted Islamization in the 1880s Before Retreating to Military Consolidation Against French Aggression, and Eventual Defeat and Exile): In the wake of Umar’s death, jihad erupted among the Wolof people of Senegambia, involving widespread destruction and enslavement of non-Muslims but also substantial conversion. To the southeast, religious violence in Toron and Konyan was led by Mori-Ule Sise; when he was killed in 1845, his cause was taken up by Samori Ture, who belonged to a wangara family. In the 1860s and 1870s Samori built a substantial personal army and brought a large area under his sway. His state was essentially military, administered through military governors and an army dependent on imported firearms and horses paid for through widespread slave-raiding. In the 1880s he attempted more systematic Islamization, trying to enforce Islamic law and patronizing Muslim scholarship, with much support from fellow wangara who had benefited from his encouragement of regional commerce. But following considerable resistance he retreated from his Muslim policy and concentrated on military and political consolidation, particularly against French aggression that forced him eastward in the 1890s. He was eventually defeated and exiled by the French. Samori was the last of the great Muslim military leaders and state-builders of the nineteenth century — the end of an era in which Islam had been the vehicle for struggle at the local level, for the creation of larger militarized expansionist states, and for moral and spiritual reform.