The Other Leg: Why Moroccan Sufism Is Incomplete Without Aḥmad Zarrūq
Shaykh Aḥmad Zarrūq al-Fāsī (d. 899/1493) fixed Sufism's broken compass and sent Morocco its wildest saints. The architect behind al-Dabbāgh, the Darqāwiyya, and the Tijāniyya — buried in an unknown grave in Libya, unvisited by the civilization he built.
Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Tijānī: Seal of Saints, and the Final Flowering of a Moroccan Civilization
A study of Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad al-Tijānī (1735–1815) — founder of the Tijāniyya, claimant to the Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood, and the last great spiritual figure produced by a thousand-year Moroccan Sufi civilization. Born in the Eastern Sahara, buried in Fez, followed today by fifty million across Africa and beyond — his path conquered a continent through channels Morocco had been building for centuries, and left a prayer in the city that resisted him.
The Murābiṭūn Did Not Invent the Ribāṭ. They Just Enforced it.
This study argues that ribāṭs represent the earliest form of institutional Islam in Morocco, emerging in the 3rd/9th century as a spatial and social response to Idrīsī political fragmentation rather than as juridical institutions shaped by Mālikī orthodoxy. By re-centering ribāṭs as foundational Idrīsī structures, it reframes Moroccan Islamic history around continuity, genealogy, and territorial legitimacy.