Arawān is a small town situated some 260 km. north of Timbuktu on the route to Taghāza and Tuwāt. It is said to have been founded c. 1600 by Sī. Aḥmad Ag Adda (d. c. 1634), a holyman from al-Sūq, but it was already known to Leo Africanus, who wrote in 1526. Sī. Aḥmad Ag Adda’s great-grandfather Abū Bakr b. al-Ṭāhir was the first of his family to quit al-Sūq, and he is considered the ancestor of most of the shurafāʾ of the Middle Niger. Sī. Aḥmad’s father lived and died in Timbuktu and is buried there. Aḥmad Ag Adda’s settlement in Arawān marks its beginning as an Islamic centre.…