Ahmad al-Tijani

Ahmad al-Tijani (full name Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tijani) was a Sufi shaykh — a master of Islamic mysticism — and the founder of the Tijaniyya, a tariqa (Sufi order, literally "path") that became one of the most widespread devotional movements in the Maghreb and West Africa. He was born around 1737 (1150 in the Islamic hijri calendar) at Ayn Madi on the edge of the Algerian Sahara, into a family that claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad; some modern references place his birth in 1735.

As a young man he studied in Fez, then a leading center of learning, and was initiated into several established orders. He later taught in the Algerian south, and around 1772–1773 traveled east on the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), reportedly teaching in Tunis and meeting Sufi masters in Cairo along the way.

The order traces its origin to a waking vision in which, it holds, the Prophet appeared to al-Tijani at the desert oasis of Boussemghoun and named himself al-Tijani's sole spiritual guide. This is the Tijaniyya's foundational belief, recounted here as the order's own tradition rather than as established history; its date is given variously as 1781, 1782, or 1784.

Around 1796 he moved to Fez, where the Moroccan sultan Mawlay Sulayman received him and where he built the order's central lodge. He died in Fez in 1815 and is buried there in a mausoleum that remains a major pilgrimage site.