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Ṣanhājah scholars of Timbuctoo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

H. T. Norris
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Extract

The scholars who are descendants of Muhammad Aqīt b. ‘Umar b. ‘Alī b. Yahyā al-Ṣanhājī, and who include Aḥmad Baba al-Tinbuktī, are rightly regarded as being among the greatest in the medieval Sudan. Yet, in part due to the fact that the mosque and quarter of Sankuray were the focal point of their scholastic endeavours and in part due to the vague use of the geographical expression Takrūr, which included, as an appendage, areas northwards to the Mauritanian Adrar as well as the Sudanese Sāhil, the essentially ḥanh¯jī and Saharan origin and background of these scholars is sometimes underrated.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , October 1967 , pp. 634 - 640
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1967

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References

1 See Hunwick, J. O., ‘A new source for the biography of Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbuktī (1556–1627)’, BSOAS, XXVII, 3, 1964, 568–93, for a thorough survey of all known source material regarding this family.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The text, or portions of it, are in the possession of my Mauritanian friend, the scholar wuld ḥāmidun al-Daymānī, who has kindly furnished me with the information contained in this paragraph. The poem is too incomplete to quote, with the exception of the opening verses which are themselves sadly corrupt and incomplete:

3 There are differing dates with regard to its foundation since another tradition states 730/1329. There are also variant legends regarding its founders. See Manny, R., ‘Notes d'histoire et d'archéologie sur Azougui, Chinguetti et Oudane’, Bull. IFAN, Sér. B, XVII, 1–2, 1955, 153–61.Google Scholar

4 Manny does not mention Tāmgūna, but only ‘troglodyte’ Tin Labbe. Here is buried the legendary Bāfūr who lived in the days of Abü Bakr b. 'Umar and who feigned conversion to Islam. This spot, or giant, may or may not be associated with Labbi b. Wār Jāy (Jābī) chief of Takrūr who supported Yaḥyā b. 'Uhar in the Adrār battle of Tabfarīllī (Tifrilla ?) in 448/1056–7, where the latter met his death. See al-Bakrī, , Description de l'Afrique septentrionale tr. Slane, de, Arabic text, second ed., Paris, 1911, 168, French trans., revised ed., Algiers and Paris, 1913, 316. Many Tāmgūna settled in Senegal and are known as Kuntilla.Google Scholar

5 was the haunt of the only known historical scholar who came to the Adrar in Almoravid times, who was Qāḍi of āzūgi, and who is buried there, the Imām Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-ḥasan al-Murādī al-ḥaḍrami. See a'immat al-andalus, Cairo, 1955, 572, and Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Maqqarī, Azhār al-riyāḍ fī 'iyād, Cairo, 1942, III, 161.

6 As these scholars may be legendary there is no certainty that they were ever pupils of Qādī Abu 'l-Faḍl 'Iyāḍ b. Mūsā al-YaḥṢubī al-Sabtī (476–544/1083–1149). See Ibn Kitāb al-Ṣilah, II, 429.

7 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. 'Abdullāh b. 'Imrān b. 'āmir al-Sa'di, ed. O. Hondas and E. Benoist (PELOV, IVe Sér., Vol. XII) Paris, 1898, 35; tr. O. Houdas (PELOV, IVe Sér., Vol. XIII), Paris, 1900, 58. Māsinah was frequented by Ṣanhājah emigrants from . Part of the population of bears the name Imāsna, according to Aḥmad b. al-Amīn , Kitāb al-wasīṭ, Cairo, 1958, 459. An Azayr (Soninké) element has always characterized , likewise Wādān. See Charles Monteil, ‘La langue azer’, in Monod, Th. (ed.), Contributions a l'étude du Sahara occidental, Paris, 1939, 215–25.Google Scholar

8 It is of note that this claimed kinship to the earlier(?) Id Ajar (Idayjar) and not to the more powerful Idaw 'Alī or They are a fraction of the Ideichilli, see Monteil, ‘La langue azer’, 219.

9 Tadeliza or Tilzda in Air?

10 Fatḥ fī ma'rifat a'yān ‘ulamā, ’ al-Takrūr written in 1214/1799–1800 by Muḥammad 'Abdullāh b. Muḥammad b.al-ṭālīb 'Alī al-Bannānī al-Bartilī al-Walātī.

11

12 Some such identification is supported by Abū 'Abdullāh Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr al-Zuhrī, Kitāb al-jughrāfīya, British Museum Add. MS 25743 (folio 95a), who records that the people of Ghana were converted to Islam in 469/1076 by Yaḥyā b. Abī Bakr, ‘the Amīr of the Massüfah’.

13 , Arabic text, 202, French trans., 309.

14 Hamet, Ismael, Chroniques de la Mauritanie sénégalaise, Paris, 1911, 85, 253.Google Scholar

15 A chatty, semi-colloquial, travelogue in which the slightly eccentric author describes his pilgrimage. This work is popular in Mauritania and Senegal, and I have a photographed copy of the text in my possession. This particular copy was completed in 'l-ḥijjah 1253/March 1838. Little is known about this scholar except that he also wrote a book on genealogies, a chronicle of events in Wādān, and his Fayḍ al-minān fi 'l-radd'alā mubtada'āt 'l-zamān, an anti-Ibāḍī polemic. The whereabouts of copies of these latter texts is at present unknown. The extract of the Riḥlah given here is slightly abbreviated.

16 A distortion of a Ẓnāga root, an-wallan or 'in 'ndyān (place where gazelles lick fawns). The author probably confuses the Adrār Wadān (Wadān) with the Libyan Waddān. But for his error he would never have written this entertaining description.

17 A famous scholar of the idaw 'Alī who died c. 1233/1818. See Kitāb al-wasīṭ, 37–40.

18 The text is obscure and faulty in this passage. It appears that the writer refers to the Qāḍī Maḥmūd b. 'Umar (1463–1548), the author of Taqāyīd, a two-volume commentary on the

19 Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd b. Abī Bakr al-Wangarī was the principal teacher of Aḥmad Bābā, al-Tinbuktī.

20 Many of the scholar's claims were confirmed much earlier by European travellers. According to D. Pacheco Pereira (1506–8) and Valentim Fernandes (1506–7) Wadin was a town of 300 hearths. About 1500 it could have had 1, 500–1, 800 inhabitants, and this total might at its greatest have been 5, 000. In 1487 the Portuguese established a factory there, and it was then the chief town of the Adrax and the entrepÔt for the salt mined in Ijjil (Afdayrak and Fort Gouraud).