A piece of pure gold: Maabal, disciple of Tierno Bokar

By Amadou Hampâté Bâ · June 2, 2021 · 7 min read

Contents

We all bear, in the deepest part of ourselves, this little piece of pure gold overlaid by countless veils. When we become aware of it, when we awaken, the master is not far away…

All that was known of him was his name, Bahamma, and his nickname: Maabal. He was then leading a dissolute life, spent his nights in drinking dens singing and drinking, was almost always drunk and kept company with bad boys. The people of Mopti called him ‘that ruffian Maabal’.

The encounter at Mopti

Tierno Bokar¹ almost never left his spiritual centre at Bandiagara. Once or twice a year, however, especially before the great feasts, he would ride to the large town of Mopti to lay in supplies… That evening, Maabal, who was coming back from the river, caught sight of Tierno in the distance. Intrigued by this unusual presence, he followed him into his host’s courtyard, helped him dismount, unsaddled the animal and took it to wash at the edge of the Niger. Having rubbed it down and groomed it as is fitting, he brought it back to the courtyard, gave it a bundle of grass he had gathered on the way to eat, and came to settle spontaneously not far from Tierno. The latter, who was sitting on a hide mat, offered him the place at his right hand.

As soon as Tierno’s disciples living in Mopti hurried up to greet him, exclamations broke out at once: ‘But how can it be, Tierno! You accept that this Maabal, this ruffian who spends the whole day drinking and who is the most debauched boy in Mopti, should sit there, at your right hand? Ah! If we had been there, he would never have entered your home!’ Tierno looked at them all at length. Maabal had shown no reaction: he was there, impassive, as though it were a question of someone else. ‘My dear friends,’ Tierno then said, ‘allow me to tell you that you are mistaken! This man who is beside me, I do not see him as you do. For me, Maabal is a piece of pure gold wrapped in a dirty rag that has been thrown on a heap of refuse. Neither what wraps the gold, nor the place where it lies, can diminish its value, for these are elements outside itself.’

Tierno’s words had not fallen on a deaf ear. Maabal had been deeply stirred by them…

A hundred kilometres on foot to Bandiagara

A few days later, when Tierno had gone back home to Bandiagara, Maabal felt within him an irresistible call and set off to join the one who occupied all his thoughts. In a few days, he covered on foot the hundred kilometres separating Mopti from Bandiagara, and presented himself at Tierno’s shortly after the afternoon prayer. The master was in his vestibule, surrounded by his disciples, teaching. After the customary exchange of greetings, Tierno opened the conversation:

‘Hey, Maabal! Welcome! And thank you again for having looked after my horse so well the other day!’

‘Tierno,’ Maabal answered, ‘I have come to see you with a very precise intention. I no longer wish to live where you are not. I want to live beside you, to be with you constantly. For only the man whose eye knew how to discern the piece of pure gold beneath a dirty rag thrown on a heap of refuse will have the hand capable of tearing the rag and making the gold appear. That is why I have come to you.’

‘I am glad of it, my son, and I accept your request. Welcome! We shall live together, then… However, it is not I who will do the work: it is for God to tear the rag so that the gold may appear. I only know that there is gold; but for it to appear is a question of time… Do you have a traditional trade?’

‘Yes, I am a weaver, and even a good weaver…’

Tierno then sent someone to fetch a loom. He had it set up in the courtyard, against the wall facing his own prayer hut, in such a way that each time Maabal raised his head, he saw Tierno, and each time Tierno raised his head, he saw Maabal.

Three months later, poetry

Three months went by. Maabal worked at his trade, prayed, watched Tierno and listened to his teaching. And one morning, Maabal the illiterate, Maabal who had never even attended Qur’anic school, Maabal who had never read anything, began to sing and never stopped. Visited by an irrepressible inspiration, he improvised in the Fulani language long mystical odes whose poetic splendour and elevation of thought astounded all those who heard them, beginning with the marabouts of Bandiagara. And his poems, no sooner sung, were taken up and passed from mouth to mouth through the town…

A new intoxication had taken hold of Maabal, that of the love of God: ‘The love of God has penetrated into me. It has gone to lodge inside my very bones and has dried up their marrow, so that I have become as light as a leaf that the wind sways between earth and sky…’ From that day on, Maabal never ceased composing. He had thus become one of the greatest Fulani poets of his time…

Maabal’s meteoric transformation and the lofty spiritual knowledge to which his poems bore witness filled the marabouts with astonishment: how could a man who had never studied know, or even sense, such realities of a higher order? In fact, Maabal did better than sense them: as the Sufis say, he ‘tasted’ them.

In less than three years, Maabal had been so consumed from within that every material envelope had become transparent to him. Lying in his hut, he could see the state of the sky through the roof. He could also see people approaching his hut as though the walls did not exist. He had indeed become ‘as light as a leaf that the wind sways between earth and sky’.

Sorsorewel, a poem by Maabal

I am submerged by a sea

And my love watches for the moon’s appearing,

May it be granted and cry out: ’O crescent,

Visible at last and laden with all beauty!’

At the instant when Thou ordainedst a shimmering,

The tent of darkness was torn away,

The fortress of debauchery crumbled,

And a shining fire sprang forth, on every side.

My eyes blinked

While I was inebriated,

My spirit turned away

From all the paths of this world.

Thereupon the Enemy of God fled,

Leaving me in peace.

Unburdened of my sins, I am in joy,

Praised be Thou for all Thy gifts!

I am in prostration

To render thanks to the Loving One,

The Rescuer, the Unique.

When will He will to make me come back entirely to myself?

A benefaction has been poured out,

The darkness has been dispelled,

Maabal has been ‘brought near’,

With all the friends of God.

My breast is laden

With the weight of my love for Ahmad.

A perfume suddenly arose,

Which I can compare to nothing else.

O Most High King!

So swift to mercy,

The Knower and the Wise,

Watching over the accomplishment of all things.

Bring me out of this fortress of stone!

Make me enter the ‘sacred Barque’!

Strip me of the ‘stained’ tunic!

Purify my inner being utterly!

Thou hast called and we have answered.

I do not say it was by an articulated sound,

But by an effect of Thy will,

O Creator of all creatures!²