The Umarian library of Segu, also called the Fonds Archinard, is housed at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The material was brought from Segu, the main Umarian capital, by Colonel Louis Archinard after capturing the city in 1890. The BNP bound the volumes and put them at the disposition of researchers in the early 20th century in the Fonds Arabe.

There are 518 volumes in all, and 491 of them are consecutive from volume 5259 of the Fonds Arabe to volume 5749. The volumes vary in size, averaging around 300 folios, and usually contain multiple documents. Occasionally a long Arabic manuscript, authored in West Africa or the Islamic heartlands, will fill up most of a volume. Everything is in Arabic, with the exception of occasional `ajami pieces, usually quite short and in Pulaar.

The material was produced or collected in essentially 3 periods: 1, the period of al-hajj Umar’s pilgrimage and teaching (up to 1852), 2, the period of his jihad of the sword against the Mandinka, Bambara and Masina (1852-64), and 3, the reign of his son Ahmad al-Kabir or Amadu Sheku (1864-93). Umar probably began the archives / library while he was teaching in Futa Jalon, and Ahmad al-Kabir expanded it during his reign from Segu, which began in 1862 as his father took the army to campaign against Masina, and ended in 1884, when Ahmad left for Nioro and put his son Madani in charge in Segu. We have no details about the care and creation of the archives / library; some may be found from a close reading of the documents.

For an initial and rather hastily completed inventory of the whole collection, see Noureddine Ghali, Sidi Mohamed Mahibou and Louis Brenner, eds, Inventaire de la Bibliothèque `Umarienne de Segou, Editions du CNRS, 1985. This was compiled in the early 1980s thanks to a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to Yale University. Microfilm and perhaps paper copies of the collection are supposedly held at the Centre Ahmed Baba in Timbuktu and at the Umarian library in Dakar. The 16 original cahiers compiled by Mahibou and especially Ghali are included in the collection.

The documents which BNP (Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris) copied are only a small part of this vast collection. The description of the contents are often approximative, reflecting the work in the Inventaire and a hasty reading. But these documents clearly contain important insights that will emerge from careful reading, both for the career and reign of Umar Tal and those of his son Ahmad al-Kabir. For each entry, the first number refers to the volume of the Fonds Arabe at the BNP, the second to the folios within the volume.

A very few of the most important items for reconstructing Ahmad’s reign can be found, with photos of the Arabic text and English translation, in John Hanson and David Robinson, After the Jihad: the Reign of Ahmad al-Kabir in the Western Sudan (Michigan State University Press, 1991). The materials used extensively are listed in The Holy War of Umar Tal, pp 376-78.