The Tijāniyya ṭarīqa was founded by the North African Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1815) and spread widely in North and West Africa. It entered the western and northern provinces of the present Sudan Republic in the mid-nineteenth century (see Karrar (1992), 120-24 and Abun-Nasr (1965), 158-59).

By the end of the nineteenth century there were three main centres of Tijānī activity in the Sudan: Kursī in Kordofan associated with the Dardīrī family; Umm Harāhīr Island near Shendi associated with Muḥammad b. al-Mukhtār al-Shinqīṭī (q.v.),…