The gibla, the south-west of Mauritania, is a monotonous region of gum acacia trees, baobabs, ‘dead’ dunes, and hillocks. This ‘backwood’ is the last refuge of Znāga Berber, once spoken far to the north in whole regions of the Western Sahara. A number of short poems, a cycle of folk-tales, and a handful of masterpieces of extended odes in praise of the Prophet—some 200 years old and written in Arabic script—this is the meagre literary legacy of a proud and cherished tradition.
The scholars who are descendants of Muhammad Aqīt b. ‘Umar b. ‘Alī b. Yahyā al-Ṣanhājī, and who include Aḥmad Baba al-Tinbuktī, are rightly regarded as being among the greatest in the medieval Sudan. Yet, in part due to the fact that the mosque and quarter of Sankuray were the focal point of their scholastic endeavours and in part due to the vague use of the geographical expression Takrūr, which included, as an appendage, areas northwards to the Mauritanian Adrar as well as the Sudanese Sāhil, the essentially ḥanh¯jī and Saharan origin and background of these scholars is sometimes underrated.
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