TIJANI, AHMAD AL- (1737-1815), founder of the Tijaniyah Sufi order. Abu al-`Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tijani was born at `Ayn Madi in southern Algeria. At the age of twenty he visited Fez, where he successively experimented with the litanies of several Sufi orders and was disappointed with all of them. Ten years later, in 1767, during his residence in Tlemcen, he had his first spiritual realization (fath).
In 1772-1773 he set out to perform the hajj. At Azwawi near Algiers he was initiated by `Abd al-Rahman al-Azhari (d. 1793) into the Khalwatiyah order, which had experienced a revival in Egypt a few decades earlier. Al-Tijani ardently followed this course; he learned the secrets of the Khalwatiyah from Mahmud al-Kurd! (d. I 78o) in Cairo and from Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Karim al-Samman (d. 1775) in Medina. His attachment to the Khalwatiyah contrasted with his earlier discontent with other Sufi orders. On his return to the Maghrib in 1774-1775 he initiated his first disciples into the Khalwatiyah. The introduction of the revived Khalwatiyah to the Maghrib was a departure from the Sufi tradition of the Shadhiliyah to which most Maghrrbi orders belonged.
In 1782 al-Tijani returned to the desert edge in southern Algeria, where he had a visionary encounter in which the prophet Muhammad taught him a litany (wird) enunciating a new independent tariqah and instructed him to sever relations with other orders and shaykhs. In spite of the break, elements of the revived Khalwatiyah remained more embedded in the doctrines and rituals of the Tijaniyah than the founder and later Tijanis would admit. Indeed, one of the most unusual features of the Tijaniyah, the exclusivity of the order, was an elaboration of a principle advocated by Mustafa al-Bakril and applied to some extent in the Egyptian Khalwatiyah.
As his fame as a saint grew, al-Tijani was compelled by the Ottoman authorities to leave Algeria. He arrived in Fez in 1798, and lived there until his death in 1815. The reformist Moroccan sultan Mawlay Sulayman (1792-1822), who sought to eradicate popular Sufism, warmly received al-Tijani because his Sufism combined strict observance of Islamic law with the rejection of asceticism and withdrawal from the world.
Al-Tijani claimed the rank of khatim al-awhyd’ (the seal of the saints), which implied that he was the link between the Prophet and all past and future saints. His adherents therefore had higher spiritual rank as well and were promised access to paradise without the need for giving up their possessions, provided they observed the precepts of Islam as well as they could. In this way he attracted to his order rich merchants and senior officials. Some of the most senior `ulama’ in Fez were hostile to al-Tijani and rejected his claim to superior status, but other prominent scholars joined the order.
In its adherence to Islamic law and to orthodox practices, as well as its positive attitude toward worldly affairs, the Tijaniyah was one of a group of new Sufi orders that emerged out of trends of renewal and reform in the eighteenth century. The dynamism of the Tijaniyah found expression in its nineteenth-century expansion, both militant and peaceful, mainly in West Africa.
[See also Khalwatiyah; Sufism, article on Sufi Orders; Tijaniyah.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The major source for al-Tijani’s life and teaching is Kitdb Jawahir alma’ant wa-bulugh al-amant ft fayd Sidi AN al-`Abbas al-Tijani (Cairo,
1977), written by his disciple, `All Harazim ibn al-‘Arabs Baradah, and approved by al-Tijani himself. The two important modern studies are: Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (London, 1965), and B. G. Martin, “Notes sur l’origine de la tariqa des Tiganiyya et sur les debuts d’al-Hagg `Umar.” Revue des Etudes Islamiques 37.2 (1969): 267-290.
NEREMIA LEVTZION
