Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu

We truly wish Mahmoud A. Zouber's Ahmad Baba de Tombouctou (1556-1627), sa vie et son oeuvre was available in English translation. Zouber's work appears to be the best general overview of one of the best-known West African Islamic scholars of the precolonial era, based on his own works, the references from his disciples and contemporaries and the established modern scholarship. Although one wishes there was a deeper analysis of more than 8 of what Zouber considers Baba's most important, representative works, he undoubtedly succeeds in portraying the life of a Timbuktu scholar whose family were a key part of the Timbuktu intellectual scene. 

And yes, to a certain extent, the hyperbole surrounding the scholastic achievements and reputation of Timbuktu compared to the rest of the Muslim World finds some justification in the respected position of Baba during his Moroccan exile. That he was able to teach prominent Moroccan scholars and be taken as an equal attests to, at least in his case, the exemplary level of Islamic instruction achieved by some at Timbuktu and probably Jenne and other cities in the Western Sudan. Certainly, Ahmad Baba's principal teachers in Timbuktu, such as Muhammad Baghayogho, would have likely been perceived as excellent scholars if they had lived in Morocco. In light of this, Zouber suggests Timbuktu's comparable standing to other centers of Islamic learning like North Africa and Egypt but carefully avoids any firm conclusion on the question. After all, it was during his period in Morocco that Baba was most prolific, perhaps attesting to the greater availability of books in Marrakech and, though we cannot prove it, a more stimulating environment for intellectual production than the declining Songhay Empire?

In addition, Zouber's study dispels some of the myths and assumptions about Baba. For instance, the assumption that he was "black" or identified as such (despite one of his students in Morocco asserting he was not "black"), although Zouber pushes a strong patriotic or "national" identity based in the region of the Western Sudan on the part of Baba against the Moroccan invasion. Moreover, though only focusing specifically on 8 of the 56 works attributed to Baba, Zouber establishes the main areas of study he specialized in: grammar, fiqh, biography, morality, theology, history, and fatwas. Clearly, the Islamic sciences occupied most of his attention and to truly understand him or the intellectual scene in Timbuktu under Songhay rule requires some comprehension of Islamic learning and the connections with Egypt, the Maghreb, and earlier Islamic literature. 

But to know that several of Baba's works survived and his education in Timbuktu might shed light on comparable methods of education and curriculum for those of us interested in Hausaland and Borno during the same period. Perhaps, to a certain extent, Ahmad Baba's "Sudanese" upbringing and education can tell us something about Muslim writers from the same era in other parts of West, possibly revealing some of their shared concerns (like questions from Touat and North Africans about emerging discourses of "racialized" West Africans and the widespread illegal enslavement of Muslim West Africans). Perhaps, though Baba was critical of Idris Alooma, one can see possible influences of Timbuktu in the Birni Gazargamo of Ahmad b. Furtu in Borno and vice versa through the confluence of Songhay and Borno influence in Hausaland and Air.