Senegal's first religious center, the holy city of Pire Goureye, a monument to Koranic teaching and elite education, with over 400 years of existence, in the northwest of Senegal, in the former kingdom of Cayor, is a high place of Islamic education in the department of Tivaouane, in the Thiès region. A religious city that occupies "an important place in the religious life of Senegal," for having housed the oldest Koranic school, the first Islamic university in the country opened around 1603, where almost all Muslim scholars stayed, and the oldest great mosque in West Africa built in 1611, which was burned on colonial orders by General Pinet Laprade. Which, along with the Khaly Amar Fall (Xaali Amar Faal) mausoleum, is now on the list of classified historical sites and monuments.

Pire Goureye, which has several thousand inhabitants for an area of 5192km, grouping together 72 villages, was a village inhabited by Fulani shepherds who came there to graze their flocks and surrounded by a forest composed mainly of palmyra palms and called "Saniakhor". Khaly Amar Fall or Xaali Amar Faal (1555-1638), the patriarch, descendant of the first Damel of Cayor, will be the one who will have valued the area to make it a framework for human life by establishing Islam there. After solid humanities in Fouta and Mauritania, he returned to the land of his ancestors, where he founded, at the beginning of the 17th century, the Islamic center of Pire, the first institution of higher education in Senegambia, which was one of the first universities in black Africa (the University of Sankoré in Timbuktu was older). A few years later, he also founded a mosque there.

A land of faith, Pire was the laboratory of crown princes and Muslim scholars. Born in Fouta in 1555, Khaly Amar Fall, after whom a foundation and the auditorium of Cheikh Anta Diop University are named, died in 1638. That's 83 years of fulfilling religious life. His father, Pathé Kouly Fall, came from the "Fall" dynasty that ruled Cayor, while his mother, Djégui Bâ, was from Fouta.

Despite its demographic growth, palmyra palms are still present in Pire and have even become a source of income for the population. The local economy depends in part on this palmyra forest. Its founders having worked hard for the spread of Islam in Senegal, this has been perpetuated thanks to the work of the venerated Serigne Tafstr Abdou Cissé, disciple and companion of Seydi El Hadji Malick Sy, father of Serigne Amadou Cissé who is the father of the late Khalife Serigne Moustapha Cissé. Tafsir Abdou Cissé, native of Wanar, a village in Kaffrine, in the Saloum region, settled in Pire in 1902 and received permission from El Hadji Malick Sy to celebrate the Gamou there. The patriarch of Pire was called to God in 1961, at the age of 99.

Upon his death, his son, El Hadji Amadou Cissé, took over to continue his father's work. He, in turn, was called to God in 1980. Today, the mosque and university represent symbols of unity among the inhabitants of Pire and beyond, of the Senegalese nation, embodying human values that are increasingly rare today. A historical heritage that deserves to be rehabilitated.

Built in 1611, the legendary Great Mosque of Pire, which, along with its famous university, was a symbol of the influence of the holy city in the field of teaching the Koran and Arab-Islamic sciences, is one of the oldest in Senegal, and even in West Africa. This great mosque, which was the place of prayer for eminent scholars of Islam in Senegambia, was, along with the Islamic University of Pire, created around 1690, one of the training centers for men of God and resistance fighters in the armed struggle against the colonists.

The latter, who, to put an end to this resistance that was beginning to overwhelm them, had decided to set fire to the Islamic university library of Pire, a burning center of Islam in Senegal. As if to confirm the central role played by Pire in the training of men of God in Senegal, the Cissé family evokes the passage of great scholars at the Islamic university and the mosque of Pire.

Among them, Thierno Malick Sy of Boundou, Tafsir Makhtar Ndoumbé Diop, founder of the village of Coki, Mame Marame Mbacké, Mame Mor Anta Sally Mbacké, Khalima Diakhaté Kala, Mabba Diakhou Ba or Cheikhou Omar Toutiyou Tall, Alpha Mayoro Wellé, Thierno Seydou Tall as well as about thirty almamys including Thierno Souleymane Baal, Abdou Khadre Kane, Elimane Birane, Elimane Amady Gaye, Tafsir Boguene, Thierno Mole, Thierno Sada and Therno Dembo. This institute taught all branches of Islamic sciences.