Kuntakounta.org

An Arab tribe of the Sahara

Kunta

كنتة

A lineage that tradition traces to ʿUqba ibn Nāfiʿ; homelands reaching from Walata to Timbuktu and Touat; a heritage of learning, caravans and peacemaking.

Mauritania · Mali · Algeria · Niger

Lineage

Origins and lineage

According to tradition, the Kunta are an Arab tribe descended from ʿUqba ibn Nāfiʿ al-Fihrī (622–683), the conqueror of the Maghreb, whose forebears set out from Qayrawan into the Sahara.

The tribe took its known form in the ninth or tenth century of the Hijra (the fifteenth or sixteenth century CE) in the north-western Sahara. Its unifying ancestor is Shaykh Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay ibn Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti, who died in the early sixteenth century; his tomb at Walata, in Mauritania, remained a place where the Kunta gathered.

A widely told tradition has the name “Kunta” come from a maternal ancestor, Muhammad ibn Kunta. The most detailed record of the tribe's origin and dispersal is al-Risāla al-Ghallāwiyya, also known as Tārīkh Kunta, by Shaykh Sidi Muhammad al-Kunti (1765–1826).

The sources describe a division into western and eastern branches; among the eastern Kunta are the Awlad al-Wafi and the Ahl al-Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar, whose ancestor Sidi ʿUmar al-Shaykh ibn Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay spread the Qadiriyya order in the sixteenth century.

Geography

Homelands

Between the mid-sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries the Kunta spread across what is today northern Mali (Azawad) and southern Mauritania; their homelands later reached the oases of Touat in Algeria and into Niger.

  • Mauritania

    Walata, with the ancestor's tomb; the Hodh; and Tagant, where in 1690 the Kunta founded Ksar el Barka as a caravan station, declared a protected sanctuary in 1753.

  • Mali

    Azawad, Araouane and Timbuktu, where the family of Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar settled from 1818, and Gao, home today to the Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti al-Kabir library.

  • Algeria

    The Touat oases in Adrar Province, where Zaouiet Kounta carries the tribe's name, a caravan station at the northern end of the Tanezrouft route.

  • Niger

    Kunta groups that the sources count within the tribe's spread across Mauritania, Mali, Algeria and Niger.

Schematic map of the Kunta homelands in the Sahara The Atlantic coast on the left and the Niger River along the bottom. Gold-shaded areas: Tagant, the Hodh and Walata, Azawad and Timbuktu, Gao, and Touat in Algeria. Sahara MauritaniaMaliAlgeriaNiger Atlantic OceanNiger River AzawadHodhTagantTouat Walata Néma Tichit Ksar el Barka Chinguetti Boutilimit Nouakchott Timbuktu Araouane Taoudenni Gao Adrar Zaouiet Kounta Niamey
A schematic map, not to scale; the gold-shaded areas are the Kunta homelands named in the sources.
Learning

Scholarship and the Qadiriyya

The Kunta family is among the best-known scholarly lineages in Islam, with an influence felt across Mauritania, Senegambia and the wider Western Sudan, and it is closely tied to the spread of the Qadiriyya order in the region.

In West Africa the Qadiriyya is sometimes called the Bakkaʾiyya, after Sidi ʿUmar al-Shaykh ibn Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay, who spread it in the sixteenth century, or the Mukhtariyya, after Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti, who renewed it in the eighteenth.

Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti

1729–1811 (some sources give 1727 or 1728 for his birth)

Born in Azawad, north of Timbuktu, he was orphaned at ten and raised by his relatives, and began his working life as a helper in the salt trade. He studied under Shaykh Sidi ʿAli ibn al-Najib of Araouane and became Shaykh of the Qadiriyya order at twenty-five, in 1754. He founded his zawiya at al-Hilla in Azawad, north-east of Timbuktu; it became a centre of teaching and the point from which the Mukhtariyya spread across the Sahara.

Works
He is said to have written some three hundred works on creed, law, Sufism and ethics, among them al-Minna fī Iʿtiqād Ahl al-Sunna.
Peacemaking
He mediated between Timbuktu and the Tuareg; a siege of the town was lifted through his intervention in 1770–1771, and he reconciled the eastern and western branches of the Kunta.
Influence
The Mukhtariyya litany reached southern Mauritania and Hausaland; Shaykh Sidiyya al-Kabir (c. 1780–1868) studied with him and with his son before returning to Boutilimit.
Successors
His son Shaykh Sidi Muhammad (1765–1826), who settled in Timbuktu, then his grandsons Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Saghir (d. 1847) and Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay (1803–1865).

In 1853 Shaykh Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay gave the German traveller Heinrich Barth his protection in Timbuktu and refused to hand him over to the ruler of Massina, in a letter that read much like a legal opinion; copies of this correspondence are held at the Library of Congress.

The family's libraries keep part of this heritage today: the Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti al-Kabir library in Gao holds more than three thousand manuscripts, the Zawiyat al-Kunti in the Badjinde quarter of Timbuktu has its own library, and works by the Shaykh are also kept at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu.

Timeline

Through time

  1. 7th century

    ʿUqba ibn Nāfiʿ al-Fihrī

    (622–683) led the conquest of the Maghreb; tradition traces the tribe's lineage to him.

  2. 15th–16th centuries

    The tribe takes shape

    In the north-western Sahara; the unifying ancestor Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay dies in the early sixteenth century and is buried at Walata.

  3. 16th century

    The Qadiriyya

    Sidi ʿUmar al-Shaykh spreads the order, which comes to be known as the Bakkaʾiyya.

  4. 1690

    Ksar el Barka

    The caravan station is founded in Tagant; it is declared a sanctuary in 1753.

  5. 1729

    Birth of Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti

    In Azawad; he becomes Shaykh of the Qadiriyya in 1754, at twenty-five.

  6. 1770–1771

    The siege of Timbuktu is lifted

    Through Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar's mediation between the town and the Tuareg.

  7. 1811

    Death of Shaykh Sidi al-Mukhtar

    His son Shaykh Sidi Muhammad succeeds him, settles in Timbuktu in 1818–1819 and dies in 1826.

  8. 1853

    Heinrich Barth protected

    Shaykh Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay shelters the traveller in Timbuktu and refuses to surrender him.

  9. 1894

    The French in Timbuktu

    Colonial troops enter the town; Ksar el Barka falls in 1905.

  10. Today

    The manuscripts

    The family libraries in Gao and Timbuktu keep thousands of manuscripts.

Values

Heritage

  • Learning

    Teachers, jurists and historians; a scholarly lineage whose influence reached Mauritania, Senegambia and the Western Sudan.

  • Peacemaking

    Mediation between tribes and towns, from lifting the siege of Timbuktu to reuniting the tribe's two branches.

  • Caravans

    The Kunta made learning and trade one road, and in the nineteenth century oversaw dealings in Touat and Taoudenni.

  • Protection

    Sheltering the guest, as Shaykh Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkay did for Barth in 1853.

Present

The Kunta today

The Kunta live today in Mauritania, Mali, Algeria and Niger, in towns and in the desert, and their libraries in Gao and Timbuktu keep thousands of manuscripts that are still being studied.

This page is a modest introduction to the tribe's history; everything on it is attributed to published sources and will be corrected whenever a documented account arrives.

Sources and references