A talibé (also spelled talibe, plural talibés; Arabic: طالب, romanized: ṭālib, lit. 'seeker', 'student'; pl. طلاب ṭullāb) is a boy, usually from Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Mali or Mauritania, who studies the Quran at a daara (West African equivalent of madrasa). This education is guided by a teacher known as a marabout. In most cases talibés leave their parents to stay in the daara.[1]
Within Senegal, the term talibé can be used in a wider context, “for instance to denote a militant adherent of a political party.”[2]
- ^ Human Rights Watch, Off the Backs of the Children: Forced Begging and Other Abuses against Talibés in Senegal (2010), https://www.hrw.org, p 4, 17, 21; Donna L. Perry “Muslim Child Disciples, Global Civil Society, and Children's Rights in Senegal: The Discourses of Strategic Structuralism” (2004) 77:1 Anthropological Quarterly 47 at 49.
- ^ Ed van Hoven “The Nation Turbaned? The Construction of Nationalist Muslim Identities in Senegal” (2000) 3 Journal of Religion in Africa 225 at 245 (footnote 26).