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A contribution to the biography of Shaikh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd-al-Karīm ibn Muḥammad (ʿUmar-aʿMar) al-Maghīlī, al-Tilimsānī
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
Extract
Few African scholars have had such an impact on both North and West Africa as al-Maghīlī (d. 1503/4 or 1505/6). This biographical sketch begins by assessing his part in the theological debate preceding the persecution of the Jewish community at Touat (conventionally dated to 1492), which was largely instigated by him, and relates it to his unsuccessful campaign against the Banū-Waṭṭāş whom he opposed because of their incapacity to check the growth of Christian power and Jewish influence in Morocco. After his failure against the Banū-Waṭṭāş, al-Maghīlī went to the western Sudan, where in Air, Takidda, Kano, Katsina and Gao he exerted a more peaceful and scholastic influence as a great renovator of Islam. The death of his son at Touat led him to return there C. 1503, and to resume his active campaigning against the Jews and their influence until his death a year or two later.
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References
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10 Ibid
11 Ibid
12 Ibid
13 Ibid The story is told that al-Maghīlī antagonized the fuqahā of Fez by deputing one of his six learned negro slaves, al-Faqih Maymūn, to discuss the question of the Jews with them. Humiliated by this gesture, the fuqahā are reported to have hastened to the sultan and aroused his hostility towards al-Maghīlī, saying to him that al-Maghīlī desired to incite the people against him, neither intending to prescribe good nor to forbid evil but his overriding desire was for the sultan's throne.
14 Ibid fol. 73. Sultan Muhammad al-Shaikh is said to have accused al-Maghīlī of conspiring against the throne, whereupon al-Maghīlī retorted that the sultan's palace and the latrine were the same to him.
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38 Ibid fol. 153.
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59 Ibid. The primary sources do not provide a clear chronology of the massacre of the Jews of Touat. However, H. M. P. de Ia Martinière and N. Lacroix, op. Cit. 353, date it as 1492, but without mentioning their source.
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78 Ibid.
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