Grand Magal of Touba

The exile of Amadou Bamba

The Mouride Brotherhood was founded by Sheikh Amadou Bamba, and the Grand Magal commemorates his exile to Gabon by the French colonial government in 1895, a time Mourides see as a period of persecution and a test of his spiritual strength. Magal is a Wolof word meaning celebration or anniversary. Bamba asked his followers to mark the anniversary of his exile. After his death in 1927 his son and successor, Moustapha Mbacké, organised the first gathering in 1928 on the anniversary of his death, with around 70,000 people; in 1946 his successor, Falilou Mbacké, moved it to the anniversary of the exile, as Bamba had wished.

The pilgrimage has grown from hundreds of thousands of people in the late twentieth century to nearly two million in 2000 and more than three million in 2011. The organising committee cited a record of more than 6.5 million participants in 2025.

In the holy city

The rites have been compared with those of the Hajj. The two central moments are visits to the Great Mosque of Touba, with a partial circuit of the building, and to the mausoleum of Amadou Bamba, believed to hold his baraka, or spiritual power, where pilgrims pray with outstretched hands and touch the walls and doors. Some wait more than six hours for a few minutes of prayer. Pilgrims also visit the tombs of other Mouride leaders, the Well of Mercy, said to have been created by God for Bamba, and Touba’s central library of his writings, and they call on their own spiritual guides, the marabouts. At night they gather to sing the Arabic poems, or qasaid, written by Bamba.

The residents of Touba house and feed the visitors, local Mouride associations look after the pilgrimage sites, and members of the Baye Fall provide much of the labour. The Caliph General of the brotherhood also receives official government delegations, a custom that goes back to the colonial period. Mourides abroad — in dozens of cities in Europe and North America — celebrate the Magal at the same time, singing Bamba’s poetry and watching broadcasts from Touba.