Background
Tierno Bokar was born in Segou, Mali, in 1875 and moved to the village of Bandiagara in 1893.
Tierno Bokar was born in Segou, Mali, in 1875 and moved to the village of Bandiagara in 1893.
A disagreement over the proper number of repetitions for a Sufi prayer (Hamallayya prescribed 11 times as opposed to 12) rose dramatically in scale. In Bandiagara, Bokar was ostracized by his clan and family and forbidden to teach or pray publicly. Throughout the increasingly violent fighting, Bokar preached a message of religious tolerance and universal love.
A book written by a pupil of his, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, entitled Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar: Le sage de Bandiagara (translated into English as A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring of Tierno Bokar) introduced him to the non-African world.
(it was originally published in 1957, under the title Tierno Bokar: Le Sage de Bandiagara, with co-author Marcel Cardaire)
Bokar"s life story was later made into a play directed by Peter Brook entitled Tierno Bokar. Brook made the story of prayer repetitions into another play, entitled 11 & 12, which ran at the Barbican Centre (London) in early 2010.
The poet Maabal described Bokar with the following poem:.