On The Path of The Prophet
Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and the Tariqa Muhammadiyya

Zachary Valentine Wright
African American Islamic Institute Distributed by Fons Vitae
ISBN 0976528703 Price: $15.00 Order here


Shaykh Ahmad Tijani (1737-1815) was one of the central figures of eighteenth-century Islamic reform and Sufism (Islamic mysticism). The Sufi order that bears his name, the Tijaniyya, today claims millions of adherents all over the Muslim world, especially in West Africa. Known by his followers as the Qutb al-Maktum (the Hidden Pole), Shaykh Ahmad Tijani has remained for many an enigmatic and sometimes controversial figure. Here for the first time in the English language is an exposition of his life and doctrine based on primary sources and interviews with prominent Tijani leaders in Senegal, Morocco and Egypt.



Through the lens of the Tariqa Muhammadiyya – an intellectual movement emerging in the eighteenth century to express the essential connection between the Prophet Muhammad and Islamic mysticism – the reader is provided a rare window into what appears to have been the principal impulse behind the Shaykh and the Tijaniyya order. Such a coherent articulation of the synonymous nature of Islam and Sufism as provided by the Tijani tradition is worth a closer look in a time where Islam is so often accused of promoting a dangerous mixture of political and religious fanaticism.

About the Author
Zachary Wright is currently enrolled in Northwestern University as a PhD student in African History, specializing in Islam in West Africa. Originally from New Hampshire, Zachary is a graduate of the American University in Cairo (M.A. in Arabic Studies – Middle East History) and Stanford University (B.A. in African History). Between studies, he has worked as a journalist and high school Social Studies teacher, among other things. The primary research for On the Path of the Prophet was conducted during the author’s extended stays in Senegal (1998-1999, 2003), Egypt (2000-2002) and Morocco (2002-2003), but Zachary has also visited Tijani communities in Mauritania, the Gambia, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, France and America. His most influential teacher on the subject of the Tijaniyya has been the renowned Senegalese Shaykh Hassan Cisse. Besides eighteenth and nineteenth century Sufism, his other research interests include Islam in West Africa, Islam in America and modern movements in Islam.




Table of Contents


Acknowledgments vii
Introduction by Shaykh Hassan Cisse ix
Note on Transliteration xi
Preface xiii
Introduction: Sufism within Traditional Islam 1
The Tariqa Muhammadiyya and the 18th Century Revival of Sufism 2
Economic and Social Factors in 18th Century Sufi Revival 4
Ahmad ibn Idris and Shaykh Ahmad Tijani 6
Elements of the Tariqa Muhammadiyya 9
Note on Sources 12
Plan of Development 22


Chapter I:
Biographical Portrait I: In Search of Knowledge 24
Early years and teachers 24
Pilgrimage East 32
Desert Illumination and the Vision of Prophet 45


Chapter II:
Biographical Portrait II: The Shaykh and the Events of his Time 62
The Ottoman authorities of Algeria 62
Fes, Mawlay Sulayman and the solidification of a Tariqa 66


Chapter III:
Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and Islamic Sacred Law (Shari’a) 78
Involvement in the World 88
Ijtihad and the Islamic Legal Tradition (Fiqh and the Madhahib) 92
The Qur’an and Salat al-Fatih 104


Chapter IV:
Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and the Sufism of his time 109
Prior Tariqa affiliation 112
The Tijaniyya within the ideology of earlier Sufism 115
Purification of the Self 117
Knowledge of God and Human Purpose 121
The Tariqa Muhammadiyya and the Muhammadan Reality 128


Chapter V:
Towards a distinctive Tijani Sufi doctrine 134
Sainthood 135
The Shaykh al-Tarbiyya or Spiritual Initiator 140
The Principal of Shukr and God’s grace in an age of corruption 147
Conclusion 159


Epilogue: Reflections on the later spread of the Tijaniyya 165
Appendix: Some Prayers of Shaykh Ahmad Tijani 173
Bibliography 177

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Excerpts from Zachary Wright, On the Path of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and the Tariqa Muhammadiyya (Atlanta: African American Islamic Institute, 2005), p. 147-158. Posted with permission of publisher.]

Shaykh Ahmad Tijani was not the first saint to stress the principal of shukr (giving thanks or being grateful) and its relationship to Divine grace, but his placement of shukr as the only door remaining to arrive to God seems unprecedented. The Shaykh’s ideas on this subject might be said to partly define the distinctiveness of the Tijaniyya order, and certainly they are the essential ingredient in understanding how he was able to supply “a distinct vision of the destiny of his followers.”1 Indeed, it is through the concept of shukr that the Shaykh confronts the perceived corruption of the times and emphasizes the grace (fadl) or mercy of God and the course of its descent.

The Qutb al-Maktum or the Khatm al-Awliya’, being the closest saint to the Prophet and thus the most sincere in his praise (hamd or shukr) to God, becomes the receptacle and distributor of Divine favor or grace flowing through the Prophet. The appearance of such a position in a corrupt age, near to the End of Time, is no accident, but a favor from God, “which He bestows on whom He will, and God is the possessor of the highest bounty (fadl).”2 Thus, for Shaykh Tijani, the Tariqa Muhammadiyya was a path of grace in a corrupt world whose core practice defined the essential behavior of the Prophet and the purpose of the Islamic message, that of giving thanks or praise to God.

Shaykh Ahmad Tijani places giving thanks on par with faith itself by citing the Qur’an, “What can Allah gain by your punishment, If ye are grateful (shakartum) and ye believe? Nay, it is Allah that recogniseth (all good) (Shakir), and knoweth all things.”3 It is useful in this regard to recall the semantics behind the opposite of belief, the word kufr; usually translated as “disbelief,” but also meaning “to cover up” or “to be ungrateful.”4 Thus the act of being grateful was the recognition and exposing or opening of oneself to Divine favor, which Shaykh Ahmad Tijani endowed with the greatest importance:

The closest of the doors to Allah is the door of Shukr, and who does not in this time enter through it, does not enter. [This because] the ego-selves (nafs) have become thick and they are not affected by spiritual exercises and devotions or obedience, nor are they restrained by accounting (hisab) or argumentation. So if one wants to become immersed in happiness and blessing, he should absent himself from all of that and end his distance [from God], and all goodness promised from God we find connected with having no other desire than to give thanks. For as the Most High has said: “If ye are grateful, I will add more (favors) unto you.”5

Such a passage also helps to explain the Tijani de-emphasis of excessive asceticism. For Shaykh Ahmad Tijani, the action of giving thanks, saying alhamdulillah, or praising God, was obviously intimately connected with the path of the Prophet as well as being the ultimate expression of servitude before God. The emptying of the self of every desire except to praise or render thanks to God defines the closest station of proximity to God, where dwells the Prophet himself. Thus Shaykh Hassan Cisse comments, “Because of the humility displayed by the Prophet, the blessings and peace of Allah upon him, before his creator, Allah granted him the highest position in the hereafter, known as ‘the Praiseworthy Position.’”6

It is from this station of selfless proximity that flow God’s favors to the rest of the saints and to creation. Shukr is the most important action for the servant to receive this grace: the servant must never believe that it is only through the merit of his good deeds that he may attain the good favor of God. Shaykh Ahmad Tijani, as was mentioned previously, cautioned the aspirant not to “err in pride in believing himself full of good qualities.” The Shaykh himself used to entreat God, “I come, bringing no knowledge and no piety, rather all is defilement, my Lord, with me.”7 This idea was of course not new, and Hakim al-Tirmidhi once described the Prophet’s own preeminence “because of what is contained in his heart, not because of his works.”8 The idea of grace (fadl) thus implies the complete submission of the servant to permit God’s own action. According to Shaykh Ahmad Tijani, the saint becomes a letter (harf) among the letters (huruf) emanating from the Divine Essence, thereby “permitting him a direct action.”9

According to Shaykh Hassan Cisse, Shaykh Ahmad Tijani’s emphasis on shukr and the grace (fadl) of Allah finds its parallel in the Hadith, for the Prophet once said nobody would enter Paradise except through the mercy of God. When asked if that included himself, he replied even himself.10 Indeed Shaykh Ahmad Tijani himself declared, “We have nothing but the grace (fadl) of Allah and His mercy.”11 The Shaykh delimited within this grace from God the guidance and intercession of the Prophet and the presence of the saints, or the people of God (ahl-Allah), “those who call on their Lord morning and evening, seeking His Face.”12 Such grace was necessary because the servant was painfully unable, especially in the present time, to fulfill God’s commands by his own efforts. As the Jawahir poses the question, “Are you capable of fulfilling all the obligations of the Law, the explicit and the implicit? Are you able, without assistance, to triumph over your passions?”13

Clearly what is meant by shukr is the recognition of God’s grace and beauty, an essential action to avoid His punishment. In the words of the Shaykh,

If Allah wishes the destruction of a servant, He empowers him to His [decreed] blessing, [but] without adding to it … and if He wills mercy to a servant He makes known to him His blessing and makes him eager to show gratefulness and to avoid denial, and this [gratefulness] is the source of all good.14

Elsewhere, the Shaykh likens gratefulness to love for God, for “the source of love is the witnessing of [God’s] beauty and beneficence.”15 He was thus concerned to enumerate to his followers the grace or mercy of God. These passages of the Jawahir present a deeply compassionate idea of the Divine.

Indeed Allah has mercy on a servant for the sake of only one quality … if He finds one trait of goodness in you, such as modesty, generosity or something of love, for example, or a peaceful heart or truthfulness of speaking, or something of this in your actions for His sake, He has sympathy for you and takes you by the hand.16

But even this is not enough to express God’s mercy, and later the Shaykh simply declares, “Allah shows mercy without a reason.”17 Such an emphasis has subsequently provided the basis for a tradition of tolerance within the Tijaniyya, for God’s mercy or rahma is present everywhere in the creation, even among wrongdoers or non-Muslims.18 Shaykh Ahmad Tijani once said, “Wrongdoing is only an accident where the sick person remains enveloped by the love of his Creator; his fate is between the Hands of his Lord. No other except God will know how to declare his fate.”19 Consequently the Shaykh often urged his followers to “ignore the evil of people.”20 Such a general emphasis on tolerance or not delving into another’s shortcomings has been expanded by some Tijani scholars to include those who reject Sufism or the Tijaniyya, and thus has implications for the modern division between Sufis and anti-Sufis. Shaykh Hassan Cisse advises Tijanis not to attack those hostile to them in the manner they themselves are attacked, since “it is just ignorance” that allows some other Muslims to label Sufis or Tijanis as unbelievers. Such behavior for any Muslim, concludes the Shaykh, “is dangerous, and very sad.”21

Shaykh Ahmad Tijani’s emphasis on the mercy or grace of God situated within the context of emptiness of the self presents the classic juxtaposition between hope and fear of God. On the one hand, we find the Shaykh assuring his followers of the unending mercy of the Creator, but in the majority of correspondences we find him encouraging them nonetheless in the fear of God. Critics of the Tijaniyya are quick to isolate his assurances of mercy of God or His salvation from the totality of his teachings.22 In the context of the Jawahir’s cautioning of the aspirant against God’s anger or even misguidance (makr Allah), it must be admitted that this seems to make about as much sense as taking in isolation the Prophet’s assurances of salvation for anyone who once uttered the profession of faith, “There is nothing worthy of worship but God” (la ilaha ill-Allah), without considering the hadith that not even the Prophet will enter Paradise without the mercy of God.

In any case, Shaykh Ahmad Tijani was enthusiastic to proclaim, based on what the Prophet reportedly told him, the wonder of God’s mercy to his followers. Those who took his wird (the Tijani litany) and loved him are thereby a beloved of the Prophet and would not die before becoming one of God’s saints (wali).23 But such statements can not be considered unique to the Tijaniyya. The Prophet appeared to such saints as Abu Madyan, Ibn ‘Arabi, Muhammad Zawawi and al-Nabulsi to shake their hands and inform that others who shook their hand, sometimes up to the seventh person, would be saved from Hellfire.24 The Egyptian Tijani Shaykh Muhsin Shalaby contextualizes such an idea by citing the hadith where a wrongdoer is granted Paradise simply for giving a thirsty dog some water, and pointing out that the mercy of God is such that it sometimes appears as if “Allah is using any excuse to send people to Paradise.”25 In any case, Shaykh Hassan Cisse explains the possibility of Shaykh Ahmad Tijani’s pronouncements by saying they came not from him, but were statements made by the Prophet himself. Unless one is willing to accuse the Shaykh of lying on behalf of the Prophet, despite his having knowledge of the hadith where the Prophet said that anyone lying concerning him should prepare his seat in Hellfire, there is no choice but to accept the Prophet’s announcements as they were reported by the Shaykh.26

Whatever Shaykh Ahmad Tijani’s emphasis of God’s mercy, it apparently never eclipsed his stress on the necessity of having fear of God. The Tijani disciple should therefore not “take the promise of salvation as a trick to be safe from the punishment of God for his sins.” In this case, God would veil him from the remembrance of God’s grace and its means of distribution through the Prophet and the saints. “If so, God clothes his heart in ignoring us until he maligns us, and if he maligns us, God makes him die an unbeliever… [his] heart must be ever fearful of the punishment of God.”27 Even those most beloved of God, according to the Shaykh, never stop fearing Him, “Because the Prophets and the Saints themselves, despite their elevated ranks, did not believe themselves sheltered from Divine anger and always strove in the purification of their souls.”28

The idea of accessing God’s grace through contact with the Prophet was understood by Shaykh Ahmad Tijani to have a relationship to a new era of Islamic history. The Shaykh seemed concerned that the knowledge of God’s favor or grace, itself perhaps the most important inheritance from the Prophet, was in danger of obscuration by the corruption of the times. Specifically he was anxious about the prevalence of sin and the Muslim’s increasing inability to live according to God’s command. He warned his disciples, “Know that nobody in these times can keep away from sin since it falls on human beings like heavy rain, but do acts of penitence, the most assured of which is Salat al-Fatih.”29 Elsewhere he urged his disciples to have patience with the corruption of the times in the following terms:

This time is one in which the bases of divine ordinance have been destroyed …; and it is beyond the capacity of any person to carry out God’s command in every respect in this time, except those attired in knowledge of Him or who approach it. However, things being what [as] they have been described, and as the servant has no escape from that in which God has placed him, the gray is better than the black. Abstain from acting contrary to God’s command as much as it is within your powers, and carry out His ordinance as much as possible; but do for yourself numerous acts of penitence day and night.30

In such a time the saint, or “those attired in knowledge of Him,” had a particularly important role to play. The saint, as was explained previously, was for Shaykh Ahmad Tijani the true inheritor of the Prophet, so his presence among the people, especially in difficult times, served as an opening to God’s favor or grace that would not otherwise be available given the near impossibility of fulfilling Divine ordinance in such a time. The legal scholars were thus unable by themselves to pass on the Islamic message to the people, and the Jawahir asks the negatively rhetorical question, “The ‘ulama of today, are they capable of transmitting guidance to the people?”31 The saints alone, due to their access to God’s grace through spiritual relationship to the Prophet, were capable of serving the people in this regard. The Shaykh was of course not implying the saints had the power to change to the law to fit the new age, but only that his position as ibn waqtihi, the son of his time, required him to act within Divine ordinance “according to what his time requires”32 in order to maintain access to God’s grace.

It is tempting to conclude that what the Shaykh meant by the corruption of the times was the onset of modernity and the beginnings of non-Muslim colonial control of Muslim societies. But even if Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in 1798 can be seen in hindsight as ushering in a new era for the Muslim world, it is doubtful Shaykh Ahmad Tijani was speaking of the encroaching age of European modernity when he spoke of the corruption of his age. There is no reference to the Europeans in the Jawahir, nor to any of the elements of European style modernity, such as increasing technological progress, secularization, urbanization, etc. More likely the Shaykh, as with many an Islamic reformer before him, saw his own time as the most recent, lowest state of deterioration from the time of the Prophet; a time whose corruption was itself testament to the approaching End of Time. For Shaykh Ahmad Tijani, the most serious result of this decline was the disappearance of the people of knowledge who were capable of providing guidance to the Muslims.33

Such a notion of guidance or grace in a corrupt age defines the historical purpose the Shaykh saw his own Tariqa Muhammadiyya as playing from his own time until the Last Day. It is with such a notion that is found the most valuable definition of the Tariqa Muhammadiyya as both an abstraction and an historical phenomenon. Thus, for Shaykh Ahmad Tijani, the Tariqa Muhammadiyya was a path of grace through contact with the enduring, guiding spirit of the Prophet, seeing its culmination in the formation of the Tijaniyya order as a favor from God to face the difficulties of a world full of transgression and increasingly bereft of knowledge.

Excerpts from Zachary Wright, On the Path of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and the Tariqa Muhammadiyya (Atlanta, 2005), p. 81-85. Posted with permission of publisher.]

“Know that Sufism is compliance with Allah’s command and avoidance of His prohibitions, externally and internally, with regard to what pleases Him, not what pleases you.”

It is clear from the primary sources containing Shaykh Ahmad Tijani’s ideas and behavior that he possessed a profound respect for the legal value of the Qur’an and Sunna of the Prophet and his companions, as well as (though to a lesser extent) for the inherited tradition of scholarly interpretation of these sources. As was shown earlier, he was trained in the sciences of the Qur’an and Hadith and prior to his becoming a shaykh al-tarbiya (of spiritual instruction), he spent most of his time during his travels teaching Qur’anic tafsir (interpretation) and Hadith. The Jawahir al-Ma’ani itself provides evidence of this emphasis, with frequent reference to Qur’an and Hadith throughout the work. Of the 246 pages in the Jawahir’s 2001 Cairo edition, fifty-four are concerned specifically with explanation of certain verses of the Qur’an, twenty comment only on Hadith, while another ten are concerned with specific questions of fiqh. It seems many of Shaykh Tijani’s students were attracted to him for his knowledge of the traditional Islamic sciences, even if they did not always stay long enough to receive initiation into his path. The celebrated Tariqa Muhammadiyya shaykh Muhammad al-Sanusi (1787-1859) testified,

I learned from him [Tijani], and I took the Qur’an from him, and he told me that he had taken it from the Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace), asleep and awake. And he excelled in following his, may God bless him and grant him peace, example in all actions, and he honored me by letting me take the Qur’an from him, by this noble sanad, after he had taken it from him [the Prophet].

In a work translated as, “Lumières sur la Tijaniyya et les Tijan,” the Senegalese Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975) quotes the statements of several notable scholars from Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt more or less contemporary to Shaykh Ahmad Tijani (but who were not known to have formerly entered the order) attesting to the level of his erudition. As we have seen, his early circle of followers contained many distinguished faqihs, such as Ibrahim Riyahi (later to become Tunisia’s head Mufti and rector of Zaytuna), Muhammad al-Hafiz of Mauritania and Ibn Mishry of Algeria. Later Tijanis have been no less energetic in the field of Islamic law, as evidenced by the activities of such men as the Moroccan jurist and traditionalist Muhammad al-‘Arabi al-Sa’ih (d. 1892), the Mauritanian scholar Ahmad al-Shinqiti (d. 1913), the Marakeshi Qadi Ahmad Sukayrij (d. 1949), Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (who in 1961 received, for his Islamic scholarship and efforts to spread Islam, the title “Shaykh al-Islam” from the Azhar), the Egyptian scholar Muhammad al-Hafiz (d. 1978) and the former Mufti of Albania, Hafiz Sabri Cocki. With the spread of the Tijaniyya in places like West Africa, the order has sometimes become more famous for its Islamic scholarship than anything else.

Shaykh Ahmad Tijani himself provides the model for the respect for the Shari’a many of his later followers would come to represent. When asked if false statements would be attributed to him after his death, he replied in the affirmative and urged his followers to use the criterion of the Shari’a to determine the truth: “If you hear anything attributed to me, weigh it on the scale of the Shari’a. If it conforms, accept it, otherwise reject it.” Ali Harazem al-Barada writes about his Shaykh, “We find him stern (shadid) concerning the religious obligations … and he often says, ‘The best of remembrances (adhkar) is the [servant’s] remembrance of Allah at the command of his Lord and His prohibition.’” He demanded of his disciples that saintly miracles be kept hidden and elaborated that “An act of righteousness is better than a thousand miraculous feats.” He was reportedly particular about the performance of the canonical prayer, emphasizing that it should be made in congregation and at its proper time, saying, “No work is better than prayer (salat) in its proper time.”

According to the Jawahir, the Shaykh did not neglect the external sciences and his knowledge in this area included the theology of God’s oneness (tawhid), Qur’anic interpretation (tafsir), Prophetic traditions (Hadith) and biography (sira), and other traditional sciences such as grammar and poetry; in fact sharing with the ‘ulama “the entirety of their knowledge.” But, as is illustrated from al-Sanusi’s statement about Shaykh Tijani’s knowledge of the Qur’an, it seems that he did not make a great distinction between esoteric and external knowledge, holding that the “external sciences return in their entirety” to the reality of the esoteric sciences. Specifically, the study of the Qur’an and Hadith, which helps to instill the fear of Allah, serve to separate the aspirant from the frivolity of the material world (dunya), thereby allowing him to behave “as if he is seeing the afterlife between his hands.” The inner state of the worshipper before his Lord should be one of utmost sincerity and purity “in order to accomplish an act of pure adoration and satisfaction of Divine laws.” The contemporary Senegalese Tijani Shaykh Hassan Cisse explains in this regard the place of the Shari’a within the real knowledge of God (ma’rifa):

The importance of this knowledge [Shari’a] is that it is used to service and maintain the ma’rifa (reality, beauty and magnificence) of Allah already acquired. It is a means of revisiting Allah through primary worship like prayer, fasting, alms giving and pilgrimage, and secondary worship like marriage/divorce, commerce/economics, etc.

It is clear that Shaykh Tijani held the classic Sufi opinion of the essential link between the Shari’a and the esoteric reality (Haqiqa). “It is incumbent on the truthful person,” he said, “to immerse himself in the esoteric reality (Haqiqa) while working with the external Shari’a, keeping to the regulations, and that is the straight path in following the Messenger.”