Al-Hajj Umar Tall

al-Hajj Umar ibn Sa'id al-Futi Tal (Arabic: حاج عمر بن سعيد طعل‎‎), (c. 1794–1864 CE), Umar Saidou Tall, born in Futa Tooro, Senegambia, was a West African political leader, Islamic scholar, Tijani Sufi and Toucouleur military commander who founded a brief empire encompassing much of what is now Guinea, Senegal, and Mali.

Umar Tall's name is spelled variously: in particular, his first name is commonly transliterated in French as Omar; the patronymic, ibn Sa'id, is often omitted; and the final element of his name, Tall (Arabic: طعل‎‎), is spelt variously as Taal or Tal.

The honorific El Hadj (also al-Hajj or el-Hadj), reserved for a Muslim who has successfully made the Hajj to Mecca, almost always precedes Umar Tall's name. He also later took the honorifics Amir al-Mu'minin, Khalifa, Qutb (pole of the universe), vizier of the Mahdi, Khalifat Khatim al-Awliya (successor of the seal of saints), and Almami (Imam).

Umar bin Sa'id was born approximately in 1794 in Halwar in the Imamate of Futa Toro (present-day Senegal), Umar was the 10th of 12 children. His father was Saidou Tall, from the torodbe tribe, and his mother was Sokhna Adama Thiam. Umar Tall attended a madrassa before embarking on the Hajj in 1828, returning in 1830 as a marabout with the title El Hadj and was initianted into the Tijaniyya, and then assumed the khalifa of the Tijaniyya sufi brotherhood in the Sudan. El-Hadj took the Tijani honorific Khalifat Khatim al-Awliya. This authority would become the basis of his personal authority necessary to lead Africans.

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