Ahmad Baba al-Massufi

Ahmad Baba ibn Ahmad al-Tinbukti al-Massufi al-Sanhaji, the principal scholar of the Sankoré madrasa of Timbuktu, was born on the twenty-sixth of October 1556 (the principal twenty-first of Dhu al-Hijja 963 AH) at the principal Saharan town of Araouane two hundred kilometres north of Timbuktu of the principal Songhai Askia dynasty, the principal son of Ahmad ibn al-Hajj Ahmad — a scholar of the principal Sankoré tradition — and his Sanhaja Berber wife of the principal Massufa clan.

He was raised across the principal closing decades of the Askia Songhai regime at the principal Timbuktu Sankoré madrasa — and was instructed by his father and by the principal Timbuktu jurist Muhammad Baghayogho in the principal Quranic and hadith canon, the principal Maliki jurisprudential tradition of the Sankoré-and-Djinguereber school, the principal Arabic grammatical and rhetorical canon of the principal Maghrebi literary tradition, the principal lexicographical canon (the principal Lisan al-Arab of Ibn Manzur), and the principal biographical-and-bibliographical canon (the principal tabaqat tradition of the Maghrebi-and-Andalusi 'ulama).

He was placed by his father about 1583 in the principal mudarris (professor) seat of the Sankoré madrasa of Timbuktu — the principal Sankoré being the principal northern of the three principal madrasas of Timbuktu (the principal Djinguereber, Sankoré and Sidi Yahya) and the principal one most connected to the principal Saharan-Berber scholarly diaspora. He directed across 1583 to 1591 the principal Sankoré faculty, accumulated a personal library of about sixteen hundred manuscripts (the principal largest private library of the Timbuktu Songhai record), and authored about thirty-five treatises of jurisprudence, grammar, lexicography, biography and bibliography.

He was deported in October 1593 by the principal Moroccan Saadian conquering force of Pasha Mahmud ibn Zarqun (who had defeated the principal Songhai at Tondibi on the thirteenth of March 1591) to Marrakesh, where he was imprisoned for two years and then released on house arrest of about twelve years' duration. He continued at Marrakesh the principal teaching, the principal jurisprudential consultation, and the principal authorship — including the principal Mi'raj al-Su'ud of 1615, his foundational anti-slavery treatise condemning the principal enslavement of Muslims (of any race) and questioning the principal racial slavery of the trans-Saharan and Atlantic trades, and the principal Nayl al-Ibtihaj of 1605, his foundational biographical dictionary of the Maliki jurisprudential tradition.

He returned to Timbuktu in 1608 under the principal Moroccan Pasha Mami, resumed the principal Sankoré teaching for nineteen years, and died at Timbuktu on the twenty-second of April 1627 of natural causes, at seventy. About a thousand of his manuscripts survive in the principal Ahmad Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research at Timbuktu (Institut des Hautes Études et de Recherches Islamiques Ahmad Baba). He is honored here as the principal scholar of the Sankoré madrasa of Timbuktu and the principal foundational jurist of the Maghrebi-Sahelian anti-slavery tradition.