Arabic Beyond the Arabs
Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu: 1,600 volumes lost
أحمد بابا التنبكتيّ: ألفٌ وستّمئة مجلّد ضاعت في المحنة
Ahmad Baba belonged to the Sanhaja, the Berber tribes of the Sahara, from a branch called Massufa, and grew up in Timbuktu, in today's Mali. He studied with the scholars of his town and wrote more than forty books in Arabic, among them Nayl al-Ibtihaj, a biographical dictionary of Maliki scholars. When the Moroccan army entered Timbuktu he was taken captive with his family to Marrakesh, and sixteen hundred volumes of his books were lost in that ordeal.
- In brief
- A Sanhaja Berber of the Sahara who wrote over forty books in Arabic
- Outside Arabic
- Nayl al-Ibtihāj
«ليس هو من السودان، بل من صنهاجة من قبيلة يقال لها مسوفة … وألف عدة كتب تزيد على أربعين تأليفًا.»
The first sentence goes back to al-Ifrani's Safwat man Intashar (p. 52), which is not on Turath, so it is quoted here through two later works that cite him. The figure of 1,600 comes from the editor's introduction to Nayl al-Ibtihaj, who refers to Ahmad Baba's account of himself in Kifayat al-Muhtaj.
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