ʿUmar Tal

ʿUmar Tal, in full al-Ḥājj (“the Pilgrim”) ʿUmar ibn Saʿīd Tal, also spelled el-Hadj Omar ibn Saʿīd Tal, (born c. 1797, Halvar, Fouta-Toro [now in Senegal]—died Feb. 12, 1864, near Hamdalahi, Tukulor empire [now in Mali]), West African Tukulor leader who, after launching a jihad (holy war) in 1854, established a Muslim realm, the Tukulor empire, between the upper Senegal and Niger rivers (in what is now upper Guinea, eastern Senegal, and western and central Mali). The empire survived until the 1890s under his son, Aḥmadu Seku.