The greatest extent of the Toucouleur Empire at the time of El Hadj Umar Tall’s death in 1864.

Umar’s army lost 2,000 of its best troops in the failed siege. “I told you that you could not defeat the cannon”, the khalifa is said to have reminded his talaba. Worse, the failure to take Médine was a major blow to Umar’s prestige throughout the Senegal region. A new strategy was urgently needed.

Umar could not afford another confrontation like Médine . . . nor [could he] force the French back into the old dhimmi mould. He could, however, preach the corruption of association and dependence on European power by adding the weapon of hijra to the arsenal of jihad. Hijra was the holy act of removal from opposition and pollution which Muhammad had inaugurated in AD 622 as he went from Mecca to Medina.

Umar began appealing to Muslims in Futa Toro and other parts of western Senegal to leave their “polluted” homelands and join him in building a new, more godly state in the east. Observers at the time, including Faidherbe, saw this appeal as a threat to the future of the French colony. The French authorities were keenly aware of their dependence upon the largely Muslim population of Senegal. Already, significant numbers of peasants, artisans, and workers had gone east to fight for Umar. It is estimated that about 20 per cent of the population of Futa Toro decamped permanently for the east during the decade of the jihad.

Fearful of the impact of the call to hijra on his Muslim subjects and eager to get down to the business of consolidating his hold over western Senegal, Faidherbe proved receptive to Tukolor feelers for peace talks in 1860. For his part, Umar was weary of the seemingly endless warfare on two fronts, against the French in the west and the restless subjects of his jihad empire, the Bambara peoples of the newly-conquered states of Kaarta and Segu, in the east. On 10 September 1860 a treaty of peace was signed between Umar and Faidherbe at Médine. The settlement drew a boundary line between the French and Tukolor empires along the course of the Upper Senegal and Bafing rivers, and thus put an end to hostilities between the two sides for the next two decades.

In 1863 Faidherbe dispatched a delegation headed by a young naval officer, Abdon- Eugène Mage, to negotiate a new treaty with al-Hajj Umar that would permit French commercial penetration of the region between the Senegal and Niger rivers. Although the khalifa died before Mage could reach him, the French envoy, after being held a virtual prisoner for nearly two years, was finally able to negotiate a pact with Umar’s son.