El Hadj Umar Tall

al-Hajj Umar ibn Sa'id al-Futi Tal (Arabic: عمر بن سعيد طعل‎‎), (c. 1797–1864 CE), Umar Saidou Tall, born in Futa Tooro, Senegal, was a West African political leader, Islamic scholar, 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.

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 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 assumed the caliphate of the Tijaniyya sufi brotherhood in the Sudan. This authority would become the basis of his personal authority necessary to lead Africans.

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