Mukhtar al-Kunti

Sidi al-Mukhtar ibn Ahmad al-Kunti (1729–1811), known as al-Shaykh al-Kabir, was a leading scholar of the Qadiriyya movement in the Western Sudan who played an important role in promoting the spread of Islam in West Africa. ^{1 2} Note: his dates predate the cohort band of the harvest list that named him; the sources' dates are followed as they stand.

Al-Mukhtar was born in 1729 in the Erg Oralla region north of Mabrouk, Mali. His family belonged to the Zawaya, tribes that had abandoned violence and self-defence for a peaceful life of religious devotion and herding, paying tribute to the warrior groups, and he was a member of the influential Kunta clerical tribe, which claimed Arab descent from Uqba ibn Nafi al-Fihri and many of whose members had moved east to the region north of Timbuktu and become salt merchants. ^{1 2} The Kunta had adopted the teachings of Muhammad al-Maghili, the noted cleric of about 1500 who was said to have introduced the Qadiriyya Sufi order to the region. ¹

His father died when he was ten; relatives and members of the Kel al-Suq and Kel Hurma families assisted in his education, and his main teacher was Shaykh Sidi Ali bin al-Najib of Araouane, a leading Qadiriyya cleric. ¹ For a period he was caretaker of the tomb near Oualata of Sidi Ahmed al-Kunti. ¹ John Hunwick suggested that he studied in Morocco between 1754 and 1757, but his article itself notes that this is inconsistent with the primary sources on his life, including his son's hagiography, and that al-Mukhtar did not leave West Africa in his education or in the rest of his life — the position followed here. ¹

Al-Mukhtar succeeded Sidi Ali as Shaykh on his death and made his base at Azawad, about 400 km north-east of Timbuktu, from where he mediated in tribal disputes, particularly between the Kunta and the Barabish. From 1757, already recognised as leader of the Kunta and soon by all the other Qadiri shaykhs, he became increasingly involved in resolving disputes among the Tuareg, and eventually came to be the recognised spiritual leader of a large region around the bend of the Niger River. ¹

He was a prolific author, said to have written three hundred treatises on aspects of Islam and its practices; he saw himself as a mujaddid, opposed charms and amulets and money-seeking mallams, and held that a shaykh should lead by an example of pure asceticism. ¹ He corresponded with scholars from the Kanem-Bornu Empire in the east to the Atlantic coast, required the tariqa's members to spread the message and train clerics who could found Islamic schools, and, asked about the status of the Fula people, explicitly refused to acknowledge any difference between blacks and whites. ¹ His pupils included Shaykh Sidya al-Kabir in Mauritania, and he taught Usman dan Fodio, who looked up to him as a teacher and whose Sokoto jihad of 1809 al-Mukhtar reportedly supported. ¹

Al-Mukhtar died at the age of 82 in 1226 AH (1811 CE) and was succeeded by his son Muhammad and then by his grandson Ahmed al-Bakkay. ¹

His article describes him as a leading scholar of the Qadiriyya, the pupil of the Qadiri Sidi Ali, his successor as Shaykh and the recognised leader of the Qadiri shaykhs, and the Encyclopedia.com entry presents him in the same personal standing as the Qadiriyya shaykh of his age and region; his faith is therefore recorded as documented sufi on those two independent sources, about the man personally, not on his tribe's older adoption of Qadiriyya teaching alone. ^{1 2} No Sunni school is recorded for him: no second independent source attests one for him personally, and the Maliki scholarly milieu of the Western Sudan is milieu, not attestation, as his faith note states.

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.