Mamadou Lamine Drame

ممدو لامين درامي

c. 1840 CE · 1256 AH –

Al-Hajj Mamadou Lamine Drame (Mahmadu Lamine, Muhammad al-Amin; born between 1835 and 1840, died 9 December 1887), a Soninke marabout and Muslim scholar from Goundiourou near Kayes in present-day Mali, who between 1885 and 1887 led a series of revolts against French colonial rule and tried to found a Soninke state on the Upper Senegal. Taught first by his father, a qadi and Qur'an teacher, then in Casamance and at Bakel, he made the hajj between 1864 and 1874; on his return Ahmadu Tall, son of al-Hajj Umar, imprisoned him until Tall's son Madani freed him in 1885. He besieged the French fort at Bakel in April 1886 and took Boulibani and Sénoudébou, was defeated at Diana and Toubakouta, was captured by Musa Molo, king of Fuladu, and died of his wounds on the way back.

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Scholar · General
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Life in time

1800182518501875190019251950 c.
The Colonial Era · The Gunpowder Empires · The Modern Era Contemporaries: Abd al-Razzaq al-Bitar · Abdyl Frashëri · Abu Bakar of Johor · Abd al-Hadi Naja al-Abyari · Shihab al-Din al-Halawani, Ahmad ibn Ahmad

Place in the story

    Unknown (transmitted)

    Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

    Summary

    Al-Hajj Mamadou Lamine Drame (Mahmadu Lamine, Muhammad al-Amin; born between 1835 and 1840, died 9 December 1887) was a Soninke marabout and Muslim scholar from Goundiourou near Kayes in present-day Mali. 1 2 Between 1885 and 1887 he led a series of revolts against French colonial rule and tried to found a Soninke state on the Upper Senegal. 1 He besieged the French fort at Bakel in April 1886 and took Boulibani and Sénoudébou, was defeated at Diana and Toubakouta, was captured by Musa Molo, king of Fuladu, and died of his wounds on the way back. 1 2

    Early life and education

    He was born at Goundiourou near Kayes, and both articles' leads agree he was born between 1835 and 1840, citing Fisher (1970) and Nyambarza (1969), while the French infobox gives 1840 and the English infobox c. 1835. 1 2 He was taught first by his father, a qadi and Qur'an teacher, then in Casamance and at Bakel. 1 The two articles differ on his youth: the French article recounts that he was captured young, served in El Hadj Omar's army and spent ten years in religious exile in Mecca and Constantinople, while the English article's account rests on Fisher's study of his early life and pilgrimage. 2 1 The English article dates his hajj between 1864 and 1874. 1

    Career

    On his return from the hajj, Ahmadu Tall, son of al-Hajj Umar, imprisoned him — so the English article, citing Isichei — and he remained imprisoned until Tall's son Madani freed him in 1885. 1 From his release he led the uprisings against the French in 1886–1887 and attacked the fort of Bakel in April 1886. 1 2 He took Boulibani and Sénoudébou, then was defeated in turn at Diana and Toubakouta; when Toubakouta fell on 8 December 1887 he was wounded and captured by the forces of Musa Molo, king of Fuladu. 1 2 He died of his wounds on 9 December 1887 on the way back to Toubakouta, near Ngogo-Soukouta by the Gambia on the French narrative; the English article's infobox instead gives 12 December 1887, which in the French narrative is the date his corpse was still being carried on the litter, three days after his death. 2 1

    His son Souaiybou continued the resistance after him, holding the tata of Gori against Ahmadu Tall's five-month siege of December 1887–March 1888, and was executed by the Toucouleurs after its fall. 1

    Positions and criticism

    This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

    The English article's lead calls him a "Tijani marabout" without a citation at that point, and the Fula article repeats the phrase in translation from the English, so it is not a second attestation. 1 Behind it stands one source family, Fisher's 1970 study, which also reports an oral tradition that at Bakel in 1886 he preached an eleven-bead reform of the Tijani dhikr — a report later scholarship on Tijani history calls almost certainly an anachronism. 1 The French article, resting on the French archives through Nyambarza (1969), calls him a Muslim scholar and military leader and names no order at all, and his youthful service with El Hadj Omar is association and milieu, not an attestation of Lamine personally. 2 His faith therefore stands unclassified in the data record, with the Tijani claim recorded as a single-source-family tradition rather than a value. 1 2

    Sources

    • The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
    • Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.

    Connections

    Explore the connections

    Opposed
    Ahmadu Tall

    People and things also explored

    al-Hajj Umar Tal· Alboury Ndiaye· Ahmadu Tall

    Sources

    1. Mahmadu Lamine — English Wikipedia
    2. Mamadou Lamine Dramé — French Wikipedia
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “Mamadou Lamine Drame”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/mamadou-lamine-drame/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-25.

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    al-Hajj Umar Tal

    Draft card for al-Hajj Umar ibn Sa'id al-Futi Tal, the Tijani mujahid and Toucouleur scholar who founded a state in West Africa; he died in 1864 and his entry is not yet checked on the page.