The Kunta of the Sahara (Islamic Studies)

Introduction

Many kinship networks and lineages across contemporary West and North Africa, concentrated in the southern Sahara and Sahel, trace their descent to a common ancestor named Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti al-Kabir, who purportedly died at the turn of the 16th century. Generally, “the Kunta” (in Arabic, Kinata) refers collectively to people who claim this heritage. The label “the Kunta,” may also refer more specifically to the Sufi scholars and their descendants who rose to prominence in the Azawad (in what is now northern Mali) in the 18th century and who exerted considerable influence over the social and intellectual world of the southern Saharan desert until the French conquests in the mid-19th century. The key figures responsible for propelling this branch of the Kunta clan to prominence were Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (d. 1811) and his son, Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti (d. 1826) (known as “al-Khalifa” to distinguish him from his eponymous ancestor). These two figures controlled important trans-Saharan trading routes, established a large pedagogical network, and composed hundreds of manuscript texts in Arabic. Academic scholarship on the history of the Kunta kinship network relies heavily on two hagiographies composed by Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa and on the work of colonial-era administrators and scholars. The historical narrative that emerges from these sources has remained largely unchanged in the academic literature up to the present day and would greatly benefit from a critical reevaluation. The end of the colonial period and the independence of the states bordering the Sahara has seen the publication of a small body of scholarship dedicated to the history of the Kunta lineage and kinship network. However, information about the Kunta is more likely to appear in scholarship dedicated to sets of interrelated concerns, including studies of precolonial Saharan social history, studies of Saharan economic history, and studies of West African Sufism. The frequency with which members of the Kunta network appear in works dedicated to these topics attests to their geographical spread and historic influence. Unfortunately, with one exception, there has been almost no scholarship related to the Kunta in the modern period.

Historical and Geographical Overviews

There are several works that situate the rise of the Kunta in the 18th century within larger historical frameworks. Of these, Abitbol 1979 and Saad 1983 provide complementary accounts. Abitbol’s work does not focus on the Kunta, who emerge only briefly at the end of his study, but rather treats the relationship between Morocco and Timbuktu from the Moroccan invasion of 1591 to the dominance of the Caliphate of Hamdullahi in 1833. The majority of this period saw the rule of Timbuktu by the Arma, the descendants of the Moroccan soldiers who invaded the city. Saad examines the same period but focuses on the city of Timbuktu and the intellectual community that formed the backbone of the city’s social institutions during the Arma Pashalik. While the research that informs Willis 1971 is outdated, the work provides one of the only historical surveys that situates the Kunta in relation to the polities of the West African interior. Various members of the Kunta network appear in Kane 2016, which provides a useful and up-to-date synthesis of scholarship on the history of the southern Sahara and Sahel.

Abitbol, Michel. Tombouctou et les Arma: De la conquête marocaine du Soudan nigérien en 1591 à l’hégémonie de l’empire Peulh du Macina en 1833. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1979.
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Does not directly discuss the Kunta, but provides a detailed overview of major historical movements in the region. This work also discusses the transregional and even international connections between Timbuktu, the southern Sahara, Morocco, European powers, and the Ottoman Caliphate.
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Kane, Ousmane. Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
DOI: 10.4159/9780674969377Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An accessible synthesis of the scholarship on the history of the southern Sahara and Sahel from the earliest reports by Arab explorers to the present day. Kane refers most frequently to the Kunta in chapter 3, which covers the rise of important clerical lineages in the region.
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Saad, Elias N. Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables 1400–1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
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A history of the city of Timbuktu from its origins to the French conquest in the mid-19th century. Saad argues that the social institution of scholarship produced a patrician class and provided continuity in the social structure of the city over a turbulent period in its history. This work provides some of the intellectual genealogy of the Kunta scholars, who acted as the protectors of the town prior to the French invasion.
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Willis, John Ralph. “The Western Sudan from the Moroccan Invasion (1591) to the Death of al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1811).” In History of West Africa. Vol. 1. Edited by J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, 441–484. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
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Synthesizes colonial-era scholarship on the various peoples of West Africa. Although the sources that inform this work are outdated and require more scrutiny, this is still one of the only works to provide an overview of the career of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti in relation to the rise and fall of regional powers to the south, including the Pashalik rulers of Timbuktu, surrounding Tuareg groups, and the kingdoms of Kaarta and Segu.
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Guides to the Primary Sources: Catalogues and Databases

The vast majority of the works composed by Kunta scholars remain in unedited manuscript form in libraries across West and North Africa and Europe. Volume 4 of the Arabic Literature of Africa (ALA), Hunwick 2003, contains an essential overview of several hundred of the major texts authored by the most prominent members of the Kunta network, along with useful historical and biographical synopses. Volume 5 of the same series, Stewart 2015, contains information on works by thirty-five additional Kunta writers. The largest accessible West African collections of these manuscripts are the IHERI-AB (formerly CEDRAB) collection in Timbuktu; the library of Haroun Ould Sidiyya Baba in Boutilimit, Mauritania; the IMRS in Nouakchott, Mauritania; the BNRM in Rabat, Morocco; and the Segou Collection (the former library of ʿUmar Tal, sometimes known as the Fonds Archinard), now held by the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris. There is a microfilm copy of the Boutilimit collection in the archives of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, and the Biblioteque Nationale has recently made the entire contents of the Segou collection available online through Gallica. The contents of eleven West African manuscript collections (including the Timbuktu, Boutilimit, Nouakchott, and Segou collections) can be searched simultaneously in English and Arabic through the Arabic Manuscript Management System (AMMS) established by Charles C. Stewart. Hall and Stewart 2011 use the catalogues of the West African manuscript libraries to construct a useful survey of the most frequently copied and widely distributed texts across the region, and Mahamoudou 2008 provides a useful overview of the works of Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa al-Kunti.

The Arabic Manuscript Management System.
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An invaluable, and free, online database that allows users to simultaneously search the contents of eleven West African manuscript libraries in either English or Arabic.
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Hall, Bruce, and Charles Stewart. “The Historic ‘Core Curriculum’ and the Book Market in Islamic West Africa.” In The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa. Edited by Krätli Graziano and Ghislaine Lydon, 109–174. Library of the Written Word 8; The Manuscript World 3. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011.
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An analysis of the contents of the eleven regional manuscript libraries covered by the AMMS that seeks to uncover the most popular and widely circulated texts across the region in the period 1625–1925. The works of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti and Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti stand out as some of the most widely circulated texts composed by regional authors.
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Hunwick, John O. Arabic Literature of Africa. Vol. 4, Writings of Western Sudanic Africa. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003.
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Provides an essential survey of texts composed by regional authors in Arabic. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the writings of prominent Kunta scholars and includes biographical synopses of the major figures, drawn primarily from Marty 1920a and Marty 1920b (both cited under Colonial-Era Sources) and Batran 1971 (cited under Histories of the Kunta Network).
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Mahamoudou, Mahamane. “The Works of Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti.” In The Meanings of Timbuktu. Edited by Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008.
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Provides a list of twenty of the major treatises composed by Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti in manuscript collections in Timbuktu and the surrounding region. Each title is followed by a substantial description of the contents of each work.
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Nobili, Mauro. Catalogue des manuscrits arabes du fonds de Gironcourt (Afrique de l’Ouest) de l’Institut de France. Rome: Istituto per l’oriente C.A. Nallino, 2013.
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A catalogue of 142 Arabic manuscripts from the Niger Bend from the personal collection of George de Gironcourt (b. 1878–d. 1960) now housed at the Institute de France. The catalogue includes a long introduction focused on the development of written culture in the region and on the formation of the collection.
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Stewart, Charles C. Arabic Literature of Africa. Vol. 5, The Writings of Mauritania and the Western Sahara. 2 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2015.
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An important recent addition to the Arabic Literature of Africa series, this volume includes information on the writings of thirty-five Kunta scholars, as well as many of their contemporaries in the Western Sahara.
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Published Regional Sources

Almost all academic scholarship on the Kunta network refers back to two family histories composed by the early 19th-century figure Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti, called “al-Khalifa” (the successor). These two works are called al-Risāla al-ghallāwiyya (The Ghallāwiyyan letter) and al-Ṭarāʾif wa’l-talāʾid min karāmāt al-shaykhayn al-wālida wa’l-wālid (Original and inherited knowledge regarding the miracles of the two shaykhs, my mother and my father). Fortunately, these two works have now been edited and published, respectively, as al-Kunti 2013 and al-Kunti 2011. Other main regional sources used to reconstruct the history of the Kunta include biographical dictionaries composed by non-Kunta scholars. Of these, only two have been published, al-Wasīṭ fī tarājim udabā Shinqīt (The arbiter of the histories of the lettered of Shinqit) by Aḥmad ibn al-Amin Shinqiti, and the Fatḥ ash-shakūr (The opening of thanks) by al-Bartili al-Walati. The latter is published in French translation in El Hamel 2002. The entries in these two sources do not support the image of Sidi al-Mukhtar’s life and influence that emerges from the Kunta sources. None of these sources contain the widely cited dates for the deaths of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (d. 1811) or Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa (d. 1826).

El Hamel, Chouki. La vie intellectuelle islamique dans le Sahel ouest-africain (XVI–XIX siècles): Une étude sociale de l’enseignement islamique en Mauritanie et au nord du Mali (XVI–XIX siècles) et traduction annotée de Fatḥ ash-shakūr d’al-Bartilī al-Walātī (mort en 1805). Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002.
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The major biographical dictionary providing information on pre-19th-century regional intellectuals, translated into French by Chouki El Hamel. Al-Bartili’s dictionary contains a short entry for Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti, which does not include any dates. El Hamel’s long introductory essay provides information on al-Bartili himself, the structure and sources of the work, the sociopolitical context, and the development of Islamic traditions of learning in the region.
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al-Kunti, Muhammad ibn al-Mukhtar. Ṭarāʾif wa’l-talāʾid min karāmāt al-shaykhayn al-wālida wa’l-wālid. 4 vols. Edited by Yaḥya ould Sayyid Aḥmad. Algiers: Dar al-Maʿrifa, 2011.
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A hagiographical account of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti composed by his son and successor, Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa; there are no complete witnesses to this work. Information related to Sidi al-Mukhtar’s personal history and genealogy is concentrated in chapters 1 and 4. The family genealogy in chapter 1 is not identical to the one provided by the same author in the Risāla al-ghallāwiyya.
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al-Kunti, Muhammad ibn al-Mukhtar. Al-Risāla al-ghallāwiyya. Edited by Hamahullah ould al-Salim. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 2013.
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A long letter from Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa to the Aghlal in the Mauritanian Hodh, denouncing their aggression against the branches of the Kunta family in that region and rejecting the claims to religious authority made by the Aghlal leader, ʿAbd Allah wuld Sidi Mahmud. Chapter 2 provides the main source for much of the commonly cited genealogical information on the Kunta.
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Shinqiti, Aḥmad ibn al-Amin. Al-Wasīṭ fī tarājim udabāʾ Shinqīt wa al-kalām ʻalā tilka’l-bilād taḥdīdan watakhṭīṭan waʻādātihim wa akhlāqihim wa mā yataʻallaq bi-dhālika. Egypt: Matbaʾ al-Sunnah al-Muhammadiyah, 1958.
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First published in Egypt in 1911, this biographical dictionary provides information on major regional scholars. The brief entry on Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti does not contain dates for either his birth or his death. Shinqiti agrees that Sidi al-Mukhtar was descended from the Quraysh, but claims that Sidi al-Mukhtar was only a tributary to the Kunta network, and that the Kunta as a whole do not descend from the Quraysh.
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Precolonial Observers

In addition to internal Kunta sources, accounts by European travelers in the southern Sahara provide most of the remaining 18th-century evidence for the presence of the Kunta network and for the social world of the desert during that period. There are several published accounts of Europeans who traveled in the Sahara desert during the height of the Kunta’s ascendency in the region, usually in search of Timbuktu. Major Edward Laing, who set off from Tripoli in 1824, was one of the first to reach Timbuktu. Unfortunately, he died after leaving the town, and his journal was never recovered, but the correspondence from his journey has been published as Bovill 1964. Réné Caillié successfully reached, and returned home from, Timbuktu in 1827; however, his published two-volume account is most useful for the time he spent in the Mauritanian Gebla learning Arabic, and where he apparently briefly met Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti al-Khalifa. Later, Heinrich Barth, a German explorer, departed on a mission financed by the British government to establish commercial relations in the African interior. He began his journey from Tripoli along with one British and one Prussian companion. Both of his companions passed away early in his journey and he continued on his own to Timbuktu, where he spent several months under the protection of Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi al-Saghir (see Barth 1965).

Barth, Heinrich. Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: Being a Journal of an Expedition Undertaken under the Auspices of HB Majesty’s Government. Vol. 3. New York: Drallop, 1965.
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All three volumes of Barth’s account provide his detailed observations about the societies of the interior of West Africa, but Volume 3 is particularly interesting for studies of the Kunta, as it details his stay in Timbuktu under the protection of Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi al-Saghir al-Kunti.
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Bovill, Edward W. “Missions to the Niger, Vol. I.” In The Journal of Friedrich Hornemann’s travels. . . , The Letters of Major Alexander Gordon Laing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1964.
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Contains the published letters of Major Alexander Gordon Laing. Laing set off from Tripoli in 1825 on a mission, financed by the British African Association, to find Timbuktu. From his letters, it appears that he did successfully make it to Timbuktu, but was killed shortly after leaving the city. Laing’s journals were never found, so any historical information from his journey must be gleaned from his correspondence.
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Caillié, René. Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo, and across the Great Desert, to Morocco, Performed in the Years 1824–1828. 2 vols. London: Frank Cass, 1968.
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René Caillié’s two-volume account of his two trips into the Saharan desert. With financing from the French government, he spent eight months in 1824 in what is now southern Mauritania, learning some Arabic and Muslim practices. During this period he briefly mentions meeting a man whom he refers to as “the Sherif Sidy-Mohammed, belonging to the Koont nation.” In 1827 he makes his way across West Africa to Timbuktu, pretending to be an Egyptian Muslim.
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Colonial-Era Sources

Beginning in the late 19th century, officers, administrators, and scholars attached to the colonial French government included reports and studies about the Kunta network as part of their surveys and surveillance of the African people under their rule. Although laden with racist and Orientalist assumptions, these sources laid the foundations that still shape scholarship on both the Kunta and Saharan history. Indeed, many of these sources are widely cited in postcolonial scholarship on these topics. The many works of Paul Marty were particularly influential in shaping knowledge about Muslim societies in Africa, and histories of the Kunta still follow the narrative of his 1920 publications (see Marty 1920a and Marty 1920b). In addition to Marty’s works, I have included below the colonial-era publications of greatest relevance to the study of the Kunta. Additionally, Triaud 2010 offers a genealogy of the various colonial figures involved in producing knowledge about West African peoples. Triaud’s narrative chronicles the beginning of colonial studies by French colonial administrators such as Marty, the emergence of more learned studies by French administrators who received scholarly training in North Africa, and the ultimate breaking off of “sub-Saharan” studies from “the Algerian school.” Triaud is particularly laudatory of “Algerian orientalists” such as Houdas and Delafosse, and he praises both their erudition and their empathy for African peoples.

Bâ, Hampaté Amadou, and Jacques Daget. L’empire Peul du Macina. Paris: Mouton, 1962.
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First published in 1955, this work draws on oral interviews to tell the history of the Caliphate of Hamdullahi. Kunta leaders, in particular Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi al-Saghir, figure prominently at the end of this narrative. While Bâ and Daget list their interviewees in the introduction, they combine and edit the account into one master narrative in which individual voices cannot be distinguished.
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Cortier, Maurice Adrien. D’une rive à l’autre du Sahara. Paris: E. Larose, 1908.
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Three years after the French conquest of the Algerian Sahara in 1904, Captain Arnaud and Lieutenant Cortier of the French Colonial Army were sent on an expedition from Algiers to Gao. This work comprises Cortier’s published field notes. He refers to Zayn al-ʿAbdin al-Kunti’s attacks against French outposts, and his last chapter, devoted to the Tuareg of the Adrar des Ifoghas, contains a long section on Shaykh Bay al-Kunti.
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Hamet, I. “Les Kounta.” Revue du Monde Musulman 15 (1911): 302–318.
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Summarizes Cortier’s description of Bay al-Kunti and reports that Cortier came back from his expedition with an Arabic manuscript that he refers to as “Le Tarikh Kounta.” The majority of this article consists of a translation of this text, which is a misidentified excerpt from Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa’s Risāla al-ghallāwiyya (published as al-Kunti 2013, cited under Published Regional Sources; cited in Marty 1920a and Marty 1920b).
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Martin, Alfred Georges Paul. Les oasis sahariennes (Gourara-Touat-Tidikelt). Vol. 1. Paris: L’Imprimerie Algérienne, 1908.
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Martin’s first work on the history and geography of the Algerian oases, although certain chapters from the historical sections were censored by the French government. This work is primarily important for the study of the Kunta because Martin translates a letter dated 1440 from the sultan of Bornu addressed to the descendants of Sidi al-Mukhtar and Sidi ʿUmar al-Shaykh in Tuwat.
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Martin, Alfred Georges Paul. Quatre siecles d’histoire marocaine au Sahara de 1504 a 1902, au Maroc de 1894 a 1912 d’apres archives et documentations indigenes. Paris: Alcan, 1923.
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Martin’s final publication of his history of the Saharan desert after the French government lifted its censorship of his work. Martin translates sections from an unnamed “local chronicle” that discusses the arrival of a Kunta-led army in Tuwat in 1551. Verification of the Arabic original would provide one of the few sources verifying the pre-18th-century history of the Kunta network.
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Marty, Paul. Études Sur L’islam Au Sénégal. Paris: E. Leroux, 1917.
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One of Marty’s many works that aimed to survey and classify the various peoples of French West Africa. This work still forms the basis for scholarship on the activities of Bu Kunta during the late 19th century.
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Marty, Paul. Études sur l’Islam et les Tribus du Soudan. Vol. 1, Les Kounta de l’est: Les Berabich, les Iguellad. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1920a.
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The original academic source for much of the historical data on the Kunta network and lineage. The first half of this volume details the hagiographic lineage leading up to Sidi al-Mukhtar and Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa, while the second half is dedicated to detailed descriptions of the various contemporary Kunta descendants and their relationships with their neighbors, including the Iwellemmedan and the Barabish.
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Marty, Paul. Études sur l’Islam et les Tribus du Soudan. Vol. 3, Les Tribus Maures du Sahel et du Hodh. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1920b.
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The third volume of a four-volume work aimed at classifying the various peoples of the French Sudan. This volume contains a short chapter on the Kunta living in the Hodh. According to Marty, the Kunta of this region descended from two branches: the first from a different son of the legendary Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi, and the second from one of Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti’s brothers.
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Richer, Ange Marie-Joseph. Les Touareg du Niger (région de Tombouctou-Gao): Les Oulliminden. Paris: E. Larose, 1924.
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Chronicles the history and contemporaneous activity of the Tuareg Iwellemmedan Confederation. After defeating the Pashalik rulers in 1737, the Iwellemmedan asserted control over Timbuktu, and the Kunta often interceded to act as mediators between the city and theTuareg.
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Triaud, Jean-Louis. “L’islam au sud du Sahara: Une saison orientaliste en Afrique occidentale.” 2010.
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Provides a useful genealogy of major figures involved in the production of knowledge about West Africa from the beginning of the colonial period to the present day.
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Histories of the Kunta Network

Postcolonial scholarship on the Kunta kinship network rests primarily on the works Batran 1971 and Batran 2001. While he draws on Marty 1920a and Marty 1920b (both cited under Colonial-Era Sources), Batran also works directly from the Kunta’s own documents, and primarily from the two family histories composed by Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa, as discussed in al-Kunti 2011 and al-Kunti 2013 (both cited under Published Regional Sources). These internal histories provide a patrilineage that extends back to ʿUqba Ibn Nafiʿ, an Abbasid general who conquered large areas of West Africa. According to Batran, the story of the lineage moves from “legend” to “history” with the late-15th-century figure of Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti and his son, Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi al-Kabir. A tomb to the latter was established at the oasis town of Tuwat at the turn of the 16th century. Between this time and the early 18th century, the family split, with one branch settling in the regions of the Hodh and the Adrar, in what is now Mauritania, and another moving East into the Azawad, in what is now northern Mali. Ould Cheikh 2001 and Nobili 2012 provide analyses of the sociopolitical agendas embedded in the internal Kunta histories. Meanwhile, Whitcomb 1975a and Whitcomb 1975b provide some of the only external evidence verifying the broad outlines of this historical account. The history of the Kunta lineage becomes much more verifiable beginning in the mid-18th century with the rise of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti from the Kunta of the Azawad. As a wealthy trader and prolific scholar, this figure developed a vast network of disciples across the region and became known as a Sufi friend of god, or wali. Sidi al-Mukhtar was succeeded by his fifth son, Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa, who maintained the Kunta trade and teaching networks. Ould Cheikh 2008 provides a short biography of this figure in English, while Ould al-Salim’s introduction to his edited version of the Risāla al-ghallāwiyya provides a more extensive examination of his career. Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa was succeeded, first, by one son, Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Saghir, and then by another, Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi. These last two generations of Kunta leaders are known both from their contact with European explorers and for their engagements with other regional Muslim leaders and movements. Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi is particularly well represented in scholarship on the history of the region because he engaged in correspondence with the caliphs of Hamdullahi in Masina and opposed the northward expansion of al-Hajj ʿUmar Tal’s movement in the mid-19th century. As a result, he appears as a major figure in histories of the Caliphate of Hamdullahi and Robinson 1985, an account of ʿUmar Tal’s movement. Stewart 1976 provides a useful examination of the interactions between the Kunta scholars in Timbuktu, the rulers of Masina, and the rulers of Sokoto, in the mid-19th century. Zebadia 1974 provides a useful annotated collection of excerpts from Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi’s correspondence. To my knowledge, there has been no sustained scholarship on the history of the Kunta from the colonial conquest on, even though, according to Marty 1920a (cited under Colonial-Era Sources), two grandsons of Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa interacted with the French colonial administration at the turn of the 20th century. According to Marty, Zayn al-ʿAbidin declared a jihad against the French following their occupation of Timbuktu, while Shaykh Bay ibn Sidi ʿUmar encouraged the Tuareg to avoid conflict with the French.

Batran, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. “Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti and the Recrudescence of Islam in the Western Sahara and the Middle Niger, c. 1750—1811.” PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1971.
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This work became one of the primary sources for all subsequent research on the Kunta, and it is the most extensive presentation of Batran’s research on Sidi al-Mukhtar. Batran presents the history of the Kunta family, drawing on a combination of the main Kunta hagiographies and colonial-era sources in his studies. The dissertation then argues for the prominent religious, social, and political role played by Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti in the region.
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Batran, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. The Qadiryya Brotherhood in West Africa and the Western Sahara: The Life and Times of Shaykh al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1729–1811). Recherche et Études 10. Rabat, Morocco: Publications de l’Institut des Études Africaines, 2001.
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A shorter, more accessible version of Batran 1971.
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Nobili, Mauro. “Back to Saharan Myths: Preliminary Notes on ʿUqba al-Mustajab.” Annual Review of Islam in Africa 11 (2012): 79–84.
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Compares the legend of ʿUqba al-Mustajab from Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa’s Risāla al-Ghallāwiyya to the legend of ʿUqba b. Amir from the Kel al-Suq. Nobili argues that southern Saharan Muslims drew on the legendary personas of three different figures named ʿUqba to fashion a mystical ancestor.
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Ould Cheikh, Abdel Wedoud. “La généalogie et les capitaux flottant: Al-Shaykh Sîd al-Mukhtâr (c. 1750–1811) et les Kunta.” In Emirs et présidents: Figures de la parenté et du politique dans le monde arabe. Edited by Pierre Bonte, Edouard Conte, and Paul Dresch, 137–161. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2001.
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Uses the two Kunta genealogies to analyze the interpenetration of spiritual and political genealogy in Sahara social history. Ould Cheikh demonstrates that the genealogy in the Risala al-ghallawiyya serves to establish the Kunta’s authority over crucial trade routes and the town of Walata, and argues that Sidi al-Mukhtar successfully fused his familial genealogical authority with his Sufi, spiritual authority, thus turning his network of students into familial and economic agents.
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Ould Cheikh, Abdel Wedoud. “A Man of Letters in Timbuktu: Al-Shaykh Sidi Muhammad Al-Kunti.” In The Meanings of Timbuktu. Edited by Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, 231–248. Cape Town: HSRC, 2008.
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A short biography of Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa, with a review of his correspondence. This work discusses the relationships between Sidi Muhammad and other Muslims in the region, including the Kunta in the Hodh, Ahmadu Lobbo of Masina, and the Sokoto caliphs.
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Ould al-Salim, Hamahullah. “Muqaddama.” In al-Risāla al-ghallāwiyya. By Muhammad ibn al-Mukhtar al-Kunti, 3–119. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 2013.
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This introduction to al-Kunti 2013 (cited under “Published Regional Sources) provides an extensive biography of Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa based on original research. Ould al-Salim draws on primary manuscript sources that I have not seen examined in other scholarship on the Kunta, including works attributed to the descendants of Shaykh Sidiyya al-Kabir.
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Robinson, David. The Holy War of Umar Tal. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
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Provides a detailed account of the life of al-Hajj ʿUmar Tal and his jihad. Toward the end of his campaign, ʿUmar Tal was opposed by Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi al-Kunti of Timbuktu, who ultimately led a counter-jihad against him.
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Stewart, Charles C. “Frontier Disputes and Problems of Legitimation: Sokoto-Masina Relations 1817–1837.” The Journal of African History 17.4 (1976): 497–514.
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700015036Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful examination of inter-regional politics, suggesting that the Kunta leaders acted as power brokers in the evolving relationship between the Caliphates of Masina and Sokoto in the early 19th century. Stewart also suggests that the Kunta leaders may have supported challengers to the authority of Hamdullahi in order to circumvent the Masina Caliphate’s prohibition on the sale and trade of tobacco.
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Stewart, Charles C. “Bakkāʾī al-Kuntī, Aḥmad al-.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Vol. 1. Edited by John L. Esposito. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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A concise biography of the life and career of Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi al-Kunti.
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Whitcomb, Thomas. “New Evidence on the Origins of the Kunta—1.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38.1 (1975a): 103–123.
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00047054Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
First part of a two-part article.
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Whitcomb, Thomas. “New Evidence on the Origins of the Kunta—2.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38.2 (1975b): 403–417.
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00142508Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Part two of an analysis of a fragmented genealogy written by a Kunta family member named al-Hajj ʿAbdallah b. Sidi Ahmad at the turn of the 18th century. ʿAbdallah quotes from another text that he ascribes to his ancestor Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi. If verified, this source would provide the only historical evidence for the life of Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi. Also compares the different genealogies provided by all the Kunta texts and reports from other writers and observers in the region.
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Zebadia, Abdelkader. “The Career and Correspondence of Aḥmad al-Bakkāy of Timbuctu from 1847 to 1866.” PhD diss., University of London, 1974.
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A discussion, with copious English translations, of all the letters exchanged to and from Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi al-Kunti. The study covers the relationship between Ahmad al-Bakkaʾi and the caliphs of Hamdullahi, the Sokoto caliphs, Tijaniyya leaders in Morocco, and al-Hajj ʿUmar Tall. One section covers the period during which al-Bakkaʾi offered his protection to Henrich Barth in Timbuktu and subsequently tried to ally with the English to stem the invasion of the French.
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Precolonial Southern Saharan Society

Scholarship about the Kunta kinship network in the precolonial period takes place against a larger backdrop of literature about the social history of the southern Sahara desert. For several decades, one of the central concerns of this scholarship was to describe and debate the nature of sociopolitical organization among acephalous societies of the region. Precolonial Saharan social structure is outlined in Norris 1986, which discusses the migration of Arabic-speaking populations into the region over the course of the 13th and 14th centuries. According to this history, tensions erupted in the late 17th-century when a messianic figure named Nasir al-Din united various Berberphone groups and led them against the Arab speakers in a conflict known as “Shurbubba.” One of the most enduring frameworks of scholarship on the southern Saharan is the idea that this conflict resulted in the establishment of two complementary “noble” Saharan lineages. According to this narrative, Berberphone groups, who lost the conflict, took on a “scholarly” or “clerical” role, while ceding political and military authority to the “warrior,” Arabaphone lineages. Stewart 1973 aligns this narrative with the structuralist framework of “segmentary lineage theory.” Ould Cheikh was one of the first to criticize this model for overlooking what he regarded as nascent state-formation in what is now Mauritania during the precolonial period (see Ould Cheikh 1987). Following from Ould Cheikh, some scholars have focused on the emergence of states or state-like formations in specific regions. Bonte 2008 focuses on the development of an emirate in the Adrar and traces the role of the western branch of the Kunta network in this process. Taylor 1996 focuses particularly on the Mauritanian Gebla to show that the political power of “warrior” lineages was increasingly undermined by European incursions along the coast and the Senegal River. Recently, the idea that the upper echelons of Saharan society could be neatly divided into two groups has come under increased criticism. Cleaveland 2002 demonstrates how various Saharan peoples manipulated social designations, genealogies, and legal arguments to advance various social or economic agendas. Meanwhile, Hall 2011 demonstrates the racial implications of lineage classifications and argues that elite Saharans like the Kunta used genealogical memory and Islamic law to establish themselves as “white,” in contradistinction to more easily enslaved groups of “blacks.”

Bonte, Pierre. L’émirat de l’Adrar mauritanien: Harîm, compétition et protection dans une société tribale saharienne. Paris: Karthala, 2008.
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An account of the emergence of political factions and emirate state-formation in the region of the Adrar in what is present-day Mauritania. This work contains an insightful analysis of how Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Khalifa’s presentation of the Kunta family history indicates a rewriting of descent, social status, and political alliances. Later chapters use oral interviews to present the most detailed account available of the history of the Kunta in the Adrar and the Hodh.
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Cleaveland, Timothy. Becoming Walāta: A History of Saharan Social Formation and Transformation. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002.
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Questions the “segmentary lineage” model of a precolonial Saharan society divided between “clerical” and “warrior” groups, arguing that French colonial administrators popularized these terms as part of their efforts to divide settled and nomadic Saharan groups. Cleaveland also demonstrates how individuals and families manipulated their genealogies to claim zwaya, hassan, or tributary status, and thus to make particular claims for social status and authority, or on the obligations owed to them by other groups.
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Hall, Bruce S. A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960. African Studies 115. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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A detailed account of how racial models of “blackness” and “whiteness” developed in the Sahara and Sudan over the 19th-century, how these models were adopted and adapted by French colonial administrators, and how they continue to live on today. This work expands on Cleaveland’s criticisms of the “segmentary lineage” model of Saharan society, arguing that the terms zwaya and hassan were developed by regional scholars who considered themselves “white” to justify seizing property, particularly enslaved “blacks,” from other Saharan groups.
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McDougall, E. Ann. “The Economics of Islam in the Western Sahara: The Rise of the Kunta Clan.” In Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa. Edited by Nehemia Levtzion and Humphrey J. Fisher, 39–54. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987.
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Argues that the Kunta used terms like talamidh (students) to create historical justifications for what were essentially tributary relationships establishing economic dominance over other groups.
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Norris, H. T. The Arab Conquest of the Western Sahara. Beirut: Librarie du Liban, 1986.
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Argues that over the course of the 15th to 19th centuries, a common culture developed in the southwestern Sahara. Norris traces the foundation of this culture to the advent of Arabic-speaking peoples called “the Hassan” to the Western Sahara beginning in the 15th century. He then proposes that the rise of scholarly lineages such as the Kunta led to the construction of a tradition of Islamic learning that ultimately resulted in the Arabization of southern Morocco.
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Ould Cheikh, Abdel Wedoud. “Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir politique dans la société maure precoloniale (XIème siècle–XIXème siècle): Essai sur quelques aspects du tribalisme.” PhD diss., Université de Paris V, René Descartes, 1987.
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Ould Cheikh’s dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the legend of Shurbubba from the primary Arabic sources, and a thorough description of the stratified Saharan society that emerged in the wake of this conflict. Ould Cheikh argues for the development of nascent states, called “emirates,” in the precolonial period, and uses Kunta texts to discuss the role of Islamic concepts such the invisible realm and friendship with God in the development of this political sphere.
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Stewart, Charles C. Islam and Social Order in Mauritania: A Case Study from the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.
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Uses the life of Shaykh Sidiyya al-Kabir to examine the relationship between religious and political authority in the 19th-century southern Sahara desert. Because Shaykh Sidiyya was a student first of Sidi al-Mukhtar and then of Sidi Muhammad, Stewart argues that he established his own Sufi community in the Gebla according to the model provided by his teachers.
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Taylor, Raymond Michael. “Of Disciples and Sultans: Power, Authority and Society in the Nineteenth Century Mauritanian Gebla.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1996.
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Examines the effects of European incursion on the social and political structure of Gebla society in the 19th century.
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Saharan Economics

Scholars such as E. Ann McDougall have pointed out the interrelationship between social and political formations in the region and the underlying mechanics of economic production and trade. According to economic historians, the precolonial regional economy revolved primarily around trade in salt and slaves. McDougall 1980 established the literature on the history of the production and trade of salt in the Sahara. McDougall’s work draws on Batran 1971 (cited under Histories of the Kunta Network) to argue that the Kunta network controlled the production of rock salt from the mine at Ijil beginning in the early 18th century, and uses oral interviews to establish that clients of the Kunta mined salt from that source in the 1980s. Her many publications since then have highlighted the relationship between the economics of production and trade and the social and political configurations of Saharan society, stressing the importance of understanding the Sahara as its own economic, cultural, and social region, and of tracing its relationship and interdependencies with neighbors to both the north and the south. Lydon 2009, in her examination of the 19th century book trade, offers one of the few accounts of the role of women in precolonial trading economies. Meanwhile, Lovejoy and Baier 1975 echoes McDougall’s interest in the relationship between social identification and economic patterns, while also paying attention to the role of cycles of drought. Webb 1995 follows this line of inquiry with a work that examines the relationship between ecological cycles of aridity and increases in raiding and slaving. Indeed, the inter- and intraregional trade of slaves has occupied the attention of many economic historians of the region. While the vast majority of research on slavery in Africa has been dedicated to the Atlantic slave trade, Klein 1992 and Austen 1992 focus on the particularities of the Saharan trade. McDougall 1988 adds to this literature by focusing on slavery in Mauritania during the late colonial period, and McDougall 2002 offers an essential critique of the academic literature on slavery, arguing that the focus on the Atlantic slave trade perpetuates both 19th-century abolitionist and Orientalist discourses and has served to define North Africans, Saharans, and Muslims as non-African. Finally, Scheele 2012 draws the discussion of Saharan economics into the present with an excellent anthropological study of trading communities in the desert. Scheele’s work traces the intersection between society, religion, and trade in the desert in the context of unequal relationships between Algeria and Mali. Her work is also the only one, to my knowledge, to discuss the Kunta in the modern period.

Austen, Ralph A. “The Mediterranean Islamic Slave Trade out of Africa: A Tentative Census.” Slavery and Abolition 13.1 (1992): 214–248.
DOI: 10.1080/01440399208575059Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An updated republication of an article originally published in 1979, this work seeks to estimate the number of enslaved people transported across the Sahara desert during the precolonial period. McDougall 2002 offers a comparison and critique of the two versions of this article.
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Klein, M. A. “The Slave Trade in the Western Sudan during the Nineteenth Century.” Slavery and Abolition 13.1 (1992): 39–60.
DOI: 10.1080/01440399208575050Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Covers the demographics, size, and social effects of the slave trade within the Western Sudan over the course of the 19th century. While Klein does not directly discuss the Kunta, he does make claims about economic, social, and political changes to states along the desert edge that interacted with Kunta leaders during this period.
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Lovejoy, Paul E., and Stephen Baier. “The Desert-Side Economy of the Central Sudan.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 8.4 (1975): 551–581.
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Focuses on a region of the Sahara and Sahel to the east of the Azawad. Provides an excellent study of the economic relationship between the Sahara and savanna, and demonstrates the relationship between class and ethnic identifications and economic specializations in the region.
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Lydon, Ghislaine. On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511575457Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed examination of 19th-century trans-Saharan trading networks, paying particular attention to the role played by Saharan women. This work argues that common adherence to the authority of Islamic jurisprudence allowed far-flung and complex trading networks to operate across the Sahara in the absence of centralized state power.
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McDougall, Elizabeth Ann. “The Ijil Salt Industry: Its Role in the Precolonial Economy of the Western Sudan.” PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1980.
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Covers the history and importance of the trade of salt from the Sahara to sub-Saharan West Africa during the precolonial period. McDougall identifies the salt mine at Ijil, in the Mauritanian Adrar, as one of the most important locations for mining lucrative rock salt, and estimates that the Kunta network took control of this mine in the early 18th century.
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McDougall, Elizabeth Ann. “A Topsy-Turvy World: Slaves and Freed Slaves in the Mauritanian Adrar, 1910–1950.” In The End of Slavery in Africa. Edited by Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, 362–388. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
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Focuses on a period during the French rule of Mauritania when slavery was legally abolished but still permitted. McDougall discusses both enslaved and servile people (haratin) and examines the effect of slavery on the economics of the region during this period, as well as the differing treatment and experiences of enslaved or servile men and women.
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McDougall, Elizabeth Ann. “Discourse and Distortion: Critical Reflections on Studying the Saharan Slave Trade.” Outre-mers 89.336 (2002): 195–227.
DOI: 10.3406/outre.2002.3990Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An essential critique of Anglophone research on the slave trade that points out the long-lived Orientalist discourses within the field. This work argues that academic research on the slave trade has effectively hived North Africa and the Sahara off from Africa, and defined “Muslims” as “non-African” and “Africans” as “non-Muslims.”
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McDougall, Elizabeth Ann. “Snapshots from the Sahara: Salt the Essence of Being.” In The Libyan Desert: Natural Resources and Cultural Heritage. Edited by David Mattingly, et al., 295–303. London: Society for Libyan Studies, 2006.
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Briefly covers five primary sources related to the trade of salt in the Saharan desert. Three of these sources relate directly to the involvement of the Kunta leaders and their clients in the precolonial and colonial salt trade.
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McDougall, Elizabeth Ann. “On Being Saharan.” In Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa. Edited by James McDougall and Judith Scheele, 39–57. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
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Provides an excellent overview of the last four decades of research on Saharan economies.
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Scheele, Judith. Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara: Regional Connectivity in the Twentieth Century. African Studies 120. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139135412Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A crucial anthropological account of trading communities in the contemporary Sahara, spanning the region encompassed by the modern national states of both Algeria and Mali. Scheele refers to the Kunta kinship network during her historical discussion of desert economies as well as in modern contexts. Her work is the only account that discusses the Kunta in a modern context.
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Webb, James L. A. Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
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Focuses on the relationship between increasing aridity and the increased enslavement of sedentary peoples of the West African interior by Saharan populations to the north. This work is particularly important for the study of the Kunta, as it focuses on both the time period and geographical location in which Kunta leaders reached the peak of their influence.
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Sufism in West Africa

Many scholars have situated the history of the Kunta within the development of Sufi communities and intellectual traditions in West Africa, although many of these scholars have confused the development of Sufism (the social, cultural, and intellectual traditions relating to people who identify as Sufis) with taṣawwuf (a specific, prescriptive genre of Arabic literature); see, for example, Nouhi 2009 and Ould el-Bara 2008. Major trends in this scholarship include investigating the development of the concept of walaya (friendship with God) in the writings of elite Sufi scholars. Batran 1979 offers a succinct overview of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti’s understanding of friendship with God. More recently, Nouhi 2009 argues that Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti’s social and political prominence can be attributed to his success in shaping local understandings of the Sufi friends of God. The most popular line of investigation has involved the growth and development of organized and institutionalized Sufi lineages (turuq). Again, much of this literature still uses an outdated terminology that translates the turuq (singular, tariqa) as “Sufi orders,” or “Sufi brotherhoods,” equating them, erroneously, with medieval Christian monastic cultures. Ould el-Bara 2008 situates the life and works of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti within a brief, albeit flawed, history of Sufism. Ould el-Bara calls the lineage of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti the “Bakkaʾiyya,” which he describes as an organized social institution in the same model as the 20th-century Sufi organizations of Senegal. Brenner 1988 and Brenner 2000 compare Sidi al-Mukhtar’s understanding of his Sufi lineage and his relationship with the historical Sufi Abd al-Qadar al-Jilani to that of his near contemporary Uthman dan Fodio. Boubrik 1999 and McLaughlin 1997 examine the development of the Sufi community surrounding Muhammad Fadil in the Mauritanian Hodh, and debate the degree of influence that Kunta scholars exerted on this community. There is a great deal of scholarship on the organized Sufi lineages of French West Africa during the colonial period, although not much of this scholarship relates directly to the Kunta. A member of the kinship network, a man named Bu Kunta, was operating in the region during the late 19th century. Information about him, as well as the descendants of Shaykh Sidiyya al-Kabir and the sons of Muhammad Fadil can be found in Robinson 2001. This work also provides an excellent overview of the relationship between the French colonial state and its Muslim subjects. Robinson and Triaud 2000 and Robinson and Triaud 2012 are anthologies of scholarship related to the development of the various organized Sufi lineages and their relationship to the colonial state. Finally, Soares 2007 offers an important criticism of the scholarship on these organizations. Soares’s criticisms echo those of McLaughlin 1997 a decade earlier.

Batran, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. “The Kunta, Sīdī al-Mukhtar al-Kuntī, and the Office of Shaykh al-Tarīqa’l-Qādiriyya.” In Studies in West African Islamic History. Vol. 1, The Cultivators of Islam. Edited by John Ralph Willis, 113–146. London: Frank Cass, 1979.
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Summarizes material from Batran 1971 (cited under Histories of the Kunta Network). The first half of the article covers the lineage and genealogy of the Kunta family, and the second half focuses on situating Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti within the context of the Qadiriyya Sufi lineage and understandings of Sufi friendship with God (walaya).
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Boubrik, Rahal. Saints et société en Islam: La confrérie ouest saharienne Fâdiliyya. Paris: CNRS, 1999.
DOI: 10.4000/books.editionscnrs.4028Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the community that developed around Muhammad Fadil wuld Mamin in the 19th-century Mauritanian Hodh. Boubrik argues that the main hagiography of Muhammad Fadil, composed by his son-in-law, was modeled on Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa al-Kunti’s Ṭarāʾif w’al-talāʾid (al-Kunti 2011, cited under Published Regional Sources).
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Brenner, Louis. “Concepts of Ṭarīqa in West Africa: The Case of the Qādiriyya.” In Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam. Edited by Donal B. Cruise O-Brien and Christian Coulon, 33–52. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
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Compares how Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti and the leaders of the Sokoto Caliphate understood their relationship to ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani, the eponymous founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi lineage. The information on Sidi al-Mukhtar in this article stems from Batran 1971 (cited under Histories of the Kunta Network).
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Brenner, Louis. “Histories of Religion in Africa.” Journal of Religion in Africa 30.2 (2000): 143–167.
DOI: 10.1163/157006600X00627Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Reprises much of the discussion of ʿUthman dan Fodio and Sidi al-Mukhtar from Brenner 1988, but also situates these two figures relative to other aspects of West African religious practice, including pedagogical and divinatory practices.
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McLaughlin, Glen Wade. “Sufi, Saint, Sharif: Muhammad Fadil wuld Mamin; His Spiritual Legacy, and the Political Economy of the Sacred in Nineteenth Century Mauritania.” PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1997.
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The best discussion of both Muhammad Fadil’s community and Sufism in the southwestern Sahara during the 19th century. McLaughlin argues that Sufi lineages and communities had not yet become highly organized institutional forces, and that there is not enough evidence to establish a direct connection between Muhammad Fadil and Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti. He concludes by rebutting the claim made by Ould Cheikh that the “sacred” constituted an automatous sphere separate from the political economic of the 19th-century desert.
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Nouhi, Mohamed Lahbib. “Religion and Society in a Saharan Tribal Setting: Authority and Power in the Zwaya Religious Culture.” PhD diss., University of Alberta, 2009.
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Nouhi works from primary sources by the Kunta scholars. In this work, he argues that Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti and his followers successfully used their scholarship and pedagogy to alter local understandings of Sufi friendship with God (walaya) to establish themselves as both religious and political authorities in the region.
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Ould el-Bara, Yahya. “The Life of Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti.” In The Meanings of Timbuktu. Edited by Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, 193–212. Cape Town: HSRC, 2008.
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Situates the life and works of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti within the framework of the development of organized Sufi lineages (turuq).
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Robinson, David. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Oxford: James Currey, 2001.
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Describes how the French established themselves as a “Muslim power,” with specific policies relating to Muslim populations in general and organized Sufi lineages specifically, and addresses the French distinction between Islam maure (sometimes Islam arab) and Islam noir. In the second part of the book, Robinson discusses the histories of several prominent Sufi figures from the colonial period with ties to the Kunta network, including Bu Kunta, several descendants of Shaykh Sidiyya al-Kabir, and Ahmadu Bamba.
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Robinson, David, and Jean-Louis Triaud, eds. La Tijâniyya: Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique. Paris: Karthala, 2000.
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An anthology of articles in both English and French on the history, development, and role of the Tijaniyya Sufi lineage in North and West Africa.
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Robinson, David, and Jean-Louis Triaud, eds. Le temps des marabouts: Itinéraires et stratégies islamiques en Afrique occidentale française, v. 1880–1960. Hommes Et Sociétés. Paris: Karthala, 2012.
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An anthology of articles in both English and French focusing on the relationship between West African Sufis and the French colonial state.
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Soares, Benjamin F. “Rethinking Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa.” African Affairs 106.423 (2007): 319–326.
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adm015Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Offers an important criticism of scholarship on the Sufi lineages (turuq) of West Africa, and suggests that scholars have read the influence of modern Senegalese organizations both anachronistically into the past and onto regions where different social and religious models were at work.