Million Muslim pilgrims flock to Senegal's "Mecca"

By Daniel Flynn

TOUBA, Senegal (Reuters) - More than a million Muslim pilgrims packed Senegal's remote northeastern city of Touba on Thursday as members of the powerful Mouride brotherhood flocked to "Africa's Mecca" from across the world.

Huge crowds moved shoulder to shoulder in the sweltering heat around the marble Great Mosque as devotees from Senegal joined with Mourides returning from overseas to pay homage to the Sufi Islam movement's founder, Cheikh Amadou Bamba.

The "grand Magal", or "great pilgrimage" in Senegal's national tongue Wolof, commemorates Bamba's exile in 1895 by French colonial authorities, who feared his growing influence.

"This is an extraordinary day. People have come from across Africa, from across the world," said Abdoulaye Gueye, 39, from Senegal's southern town of Ziguinchor. "What you have in Mecca, the prophet of Touba recreated here. It is the same thing."

Lines of pilgrims waited hours in the dust and blistering heat to enter the vast mosque, whose 87-metre (287-foot) tower dominates the skyline of Touba, a holy city controlled by religious authorities where drinking and smoking are forbidden.

Dreadlocked disciples known as Baye Fall dressed in baggy patchwork clothes blew whistles and brandished huge wooden clubs to keep the crowds in order. Many shook silver begging bowls and demanded donations for their religious teachers, or marabouts.

All over town street hawkers sold T-shirts and necklaces bearing the one surviving black-and-white photograph of Bamba, whose doctrine of hard work as a means to reach paradise has made the Mouride order wealthy and powerful in Senegal.

"If you pray here in Touba, God will listen to you," said Abdou Magib Sow, 64, who has been coming to the Magal since he was 19. "Every year there are more people."