Ahmad Baba al Massufi

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Ahmad Baba redirects here. For the Algerian musician see Ahmad Baba Rachid.

Ahmad Baba al-Massufi (1556-1627, full name Abu Al-'abbas Ahmad Ibn Ahmad Al-takruri Al-Massufi) was a writer, scholar, and political provacateur in the area then known as the Western Sudan.

Ahmad Baba was the son of a noted scholar and teacher, Ahmad bin al-Hajj Ahmad bin Umar bin Muhammed Aqit.^[1] Born at Araouane, he moved to Timbuktu at an early age, to study with his father and with a scholar known as Mohammed Bagayogo (sometimes spelled Baghayu'u); there are no other records of his activity until 1594, when he was deported to Morocco, where he remained until 1608 over accusations of sedition.^[2] A fair amount of the work he was noted for was written while he was in Morocco, including his biography of Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Maghili, a scholar and jurist responsible for much of the traditional religious law of the area. The biography was translated by M.A. Cherbonneau in 1855, and became one of the principal texts for study of the legal history of the Western Sudan.^[3] Ahmad Baba's surviving works remain the best sources for the study of al-Maghili and the generation that succeeded him.^[4]

[edit] Notes

^ Hunwick, J.O. "A New Source for the Biography of Ahmad Baba al-Tinbukti (1556-1627)" (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 27, No. 3. [1964], pp. 568-593), 569.
^ Hunwick 569.
^ Abd-Al-Aziz Abd-Allah Batran. "A Contribution to the Biography of Shaikh Muhammad Ibn 'Abd-Al-Karim Ibn Muhammad ('Umar-A 'Mar) Al-Maghili, Al-Tilimsani" (The Journal of African History, Vol. 14, No. 3. [1973], 381-394), 381.
^ Bivar, A. D. H.; Hiskett, M. "The Arabic Literature of Nigeria to 1804: A Provisional Account" (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 25, No. 1/3. (1962), 104-148), 109.