Sheikh Ahmad Tijani RA
Via: Anatomy of Sufism TV 📺
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Aḥmad b. Maḥammad b. Mukhtār al- Tijānī al-Ḥasanī was born in the southwestern Algerian oasis of ʿAyn Māḍī and traveled throughout North Africa and the Hijaz before taking up permanent residence in Fez, Morocco, in 1798.
Before leaving ʿAyn Māḍī at age twenty-one, he completed the standard curriculum of Qurʾān memorization and study of jurisprudence, theology, prophetic traditions, Qurʾān exegesis, and Arabic literature.
His travels in search of further knowledge (mostly prophetic narrations and Sufi training), led him to stays in several North African centers of knowledge, such as Fez, Tlemcen, Tuwāt, and Tunis.
During these years, he received initiation into various branches of the Shādhiliyya, the Qādiriyya, and the Khalwatiyya.
He accomplished the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1774.
During this trip, he received initiations from prominent Khalwatī shaykhs Maḥmūd al- Kurdī (d. 1780) in Cairo and Muḥammad al- Sammān (d. 1775) in Medina, as well as an Indian Sufi, likely of the Naqshbandiyya, Aḥmad al-Hindī (d. 1774) in Mecca.
His combination of Islamic learning and Sufi knowledge eventually distinguished him as “one of the greatest imams of
his time,” according to Tijānī sources.25
While making spiritual retreat (khalwa) in the Algerian town of Abū Samghūn in 1781–82, he experienced his first waking encounter with the Prophet Muḥammad.
Al- Tijānī reported that the Prophet told him to leave aside his previous Sufi initiations and gave him the distinctive litany (wird) of the Tijāniyya Sufi path.26 The claimed direct involvement of the Prophet Muḥammad in the establishment of the Tijāniyya, as well as the disciple’s
constant visualization of the Prophet’s enduring spiritual presence, meant that followers of the Tijāniyya considered the Prophet Muḥammad to be the ultimate Sufi shaykh of their “Muḥammadan way.”
Upon his final establishment in Fez, al- Tijānī joined Sultan Mawlay Sulaymān’s council of scholars and initiated several prominent Moroccan figures into the Tijāniyya, such as the jurist and theologian Ḥamdūn b. al- Ḥājj, several government ministers, and perhaps even the sultan himself.
The most comprehensive biographical dictionary of Moroccan scholars relating to the period, Muḥammad al-Kattānī’s Salwat al-anfās, describes alTijānī as “the grounded gnostic,” “the rope of the Sunna and the religion,” and the
“comprehensive saintly pole” before continuing: “He was among the scholars who put his knowledge into action,
the imams of independent scholarly opinion (al-aʾimma al-mujtahidīn), among those who combined the nobility of origin with the nobility of the religion, the nobility of knowledge, action, certainty, divine spiritual states (aḥwāl) and lofty saintly stations (maqāmāt).”
Such descriptions, although not uncontested, suggest al-Tijānī’s reception among elements of both general and elite audiences.
A number of Moroccan sultans have since maintained close relations with the
Tijāniyya, most recently funding the restoration of al- Tijānī’s final burial
place and main lodge (zāwiya) of the Tijāniyya in Fez, as well as al- Tijānī’s
original house in the city, the “House of Mirrors,” that Mawlay Sulaymān
gifted to al- Tijānī upon his arrival in Fez.
The Tijāniyya first spread primarily in North and West Africa.
By the early twentieth century, it had become the most popular Sufi order in Morocco.
By the nineteenth century, it had made significant inroads among established clerical lineages of Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria; and by the mid-twentieth century, under the leadership of the Tijānī revivalist Ibrāhīm Niasse (d. 1975, Senegal), had displaced the Qādiriyya as the
dominant Sufi order in West Africa.
It is today found all over the Muslim
world and beyond, with notable Tijānī communities (besides North and West Africa) in Indonesia, Singapore, India, Turkey, Palestine, Arab Gulf states, Egypt, Europe, and North and South America.
If the Tijāniyya has become one of the Islamic world’s most popular Sufi orders, it is certainly a testimony to the success of eighteenth- century Islamic scholarly revival.
The lack of serious academic consideration of the Tijāniyya in historical overviews of Sufism, or its place in eighteenthcentury revivalism, is an astounding oversight in both fields.
In elaborating the notion of the “Hidden Pole” (al-quṭb al-maktūm), the Tijānī tradition seemed unconcerned by such opacity: “The secret with me,” al- Tijānī said,
“is locked in a house whose doors are shut and whose key has been lost."
But full understanding of the shaykh’s secret knowledge is not necessary to appreciate the rapid spread of the order and the dynamic intellectual production it inspired.
رضي الله عنه وأرضاه ونفعنا ببركاته
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