From law to custom: The shifting legal status of Muslim originaires in Kayes and Medine, 1903-13

In the early colonial period the frontier towns of Kayes and Medine on the Upper Senegal River were home to a community of Muslim originaires of the f our communes of Senegal. The article examines this group's efforts to estab lish and maintain a Muslim tribunal in Kayes, thus preserving a space for t heir privilege and identity within the French colonial system. But while th eir appeals to the colonial administration were successful in 1905, a 1912 revision of the legal system took away their privilege and made Muslim orig inaires constituents of native courts. The article provides context for und erstanding the Muslims' protests, as well as the administration's changing attitudes towards them. Whereas much of the literature on the originaires h as focused on their status as assimilated Africans with voting rights, this article calls attention to their identity as Muslims.