At a glance
Era 7- Dates
- 1556-1627 CE
- Who
- Jurist and author, the best-known scholar of Timbuktu
- Era
- West Africa
ProfileAhmad Baba al-Tinbukti
Ahmad Baba was born in 1556 into a family of jurists in Timbuktu and studied under its leading teachers. He became a scholar of Maliki law and wrote dozens of works, including a biographical dictionary of Maliki scholars and legal opinions on questions of his day.
He had a large library, about 1,600 volumes, and he said it was one of the smaller ones among his relatives. When Morocco conquered Songhai in 1591, the new rulers distrusted the scholars of Timbuktu. In 1593 Ahmad Baba was arrested with his family and taken in chains across the Sahara to Marrakesh, and his library was lost.
In Marrakesh students crowded to his lessons, and he taught and wrote there for years. After the death of the sultan Ahmad al-Mansur he was allowed to return home in 1607, and he died in Timbuktu in 1627. A library and research centre in the city bears his name today.
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