Biographical Sketch Truth within Truth
By Baruti Muhammadu D.S. Kamau,
Shaikh Sidi Ahmed al-Tijani was born in a village in Algeria called Ain Madi in 1737. His father, Muhammad al-Mukhtar bin Ahmed bin Mahmad bin Salim was a venerated man of learning who lived and taught in Ain Madi. Shaikh Ahmed al-Tijani became an orphan at sixteen years old when his mother and father died during a plague in 1752.
When he was seven years old he had read the Qur'an under Muhammad bin Ba'afiyya and the Mukhtasar by Shaikh Sidi Khalil, which is a standard legal text in West Africa and North Africa. Afterwards, he read the Risalat Jama'at al-Sufiyya bi bilad al-Islam by Abu al-Qasim al-Qushairi. Also he studied the Muqaddimas of Ibn Rushd and Shaikh Abd al-Rahman al-Akhdari. In 1757, when he went to Fez to meet some Sufi Shaikhs he applied himself to the study of the Prophetic Traditions. By the time he was twenty-one years old, he had already been firmly grounded in religious learning.
At the age of 21, Shaikh Ahmed al-Tijani felt the call for Sufi life. As a consequence, he joined three Sufi brotherhoods: The Sufi order of Ahmed al-Habib bin Muhammad, the Qadiriyya and the Nasiriyya. Then a Wali by the name of Muhammad bin al-Hasan al-Wanjili prophecized that the Shaikh would achieve spiritual realization in the desert. Thus, the Shaikh went to al-Abiad a village on the outskirts of the desert and settled in the Zawiyya of Sidi ‘Abdul Qadir bin Muhammad for 5 years, where he taught and pursued Allah.
When the Shaikh (R.A.) was on his way to Mecca he stopped at the town of Azwawi near Algiers, where he was initiated into the Khalwatiyya Sufi order by a Muqaddam named Mahmad bin ‘Abdul Rahman. When he finally reached Mecca in 1774, he met an Indian Sufi Shaikh, through the Indian Shaikh’s servant, named Ahmed bin Abdullah, who claimed to have been forbidden to discuss with any human being except his own servant. After Ahmed bin Abdullah died, it was said that the Shaikh (R.A.) received all of his occult mystical powers, through Tarqiyyah.
Afterwards, Shaikh Ahmed al-Tijani went to Medina to visit the Prophet’s (S.A.W.) tomb. There he met the leader of the Khalwatiyya Sufi order, Shaikh Abdul Karim al-Samman, who informed the Shaikh that he was to become Qutb al-Aqtab (The Dominant Authority) among the Walis. Leaving Medina he went to Abi Sanghum. During the first year of Shaikh Ahmed al-Tijani’s stay in Abi Sanghum, he announced to his followers that the Prophet (S.A.W.) appeared to him in a wakeful state and authorized him to start his work of Tarbiyah (spiritual training and guidance). He informed his following that S.A.W. had assigned him the wird and the wazifah of the Tariqah.
