The Grand Magal marks not a birth or a death but an exile. Amadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride order, was deported by the French colonial administration to Gabon in 1895; the Mourides remember the exile as the moment of his spiritual victory rather than his defeat, and mark the 18th of Safar accordingly. Touba, the city he founded, is the destination — it is legally distinct in Senegal, run by the Mouride caliph rather than ordinary municipal authority, with no alcohol, no music venues and no nightlife. Estimates of attendance range from four to six million, swelling the city more than tenfold for three or four days. Households across the city cook for days and feed anyone who arrives, which is itself the practice; diaspora Mourides in Paris, Milan and New York send remittances timed to it, and the economics of the festival are a studied part of Senegal's national accounts. The Mouride work ethic, and the Baye Fall who serve rather than pray in the ordinary form, make this one of the most distinctive Islamic formations anywhere, and it is barely visible in English-language accounts of the religion.