Aḥmad b. Zaynī b. Aḥmad Daḥlān (d. 1304/1886) was a sayyid of the Ḥasanid line (that is, a descendant of the prophet Muḥammad through his grandson al-Ḥasan) and one of the most influential scholars in Mecca through the 1870s until his death. He was born in Mecca sometime between 1231/1816 and 1233/1818 and died in Medina. He completed his education in the jurisprudential tradition of the four schools of law (madhhab, pl. madhāhib) in Sunnī Islam solely in Mecca, where he also made a career as a scholar of the Shāfiʿī school. A moderate Ṣūfī (mystic) in the style of …