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Mashrabaمشربة

Atlas

Chains of transmission from the Prophet, read as the sources give them.
About this atlas

The atlas holds the chains of transmission from the Prophet as the standard references and the classical sources record them: the Sufi orders, the chains of Qurʾān recitation, the teachers of the schools of law and ḥadīth, and the lines of the Prophet's family, with the places they spread and the living houses and teachers who carry them today. Every link shows its sources; where they differ, both readings are shown, and we do not rule on any community's claims. Ibn ʿArabī's own life, teachers and readers are on their own page.

Change chain set

Tijāniyya الطريقة التجانية

Sufi orders · Aḥmad al-Tijānī · 1196/1782 · Abū Samghūn (Bou Semghoun) · 1 route to the Prophet recorded

Order of Aḥmad al-Tijānī (1737-1815), born at ʿAyn Māḍī and buried in Fez. By the order's own account he received the ṭarīqa from the Prophet at Abū Samghūn in 1782 (TDV relays it as a dream; the order's literature speaks of waking), after Khalwatī and other affiliations. It spread across North and West Africa.

How to read the marks
  • Two sources: a solid rule. Two independent references give the same link.
  • One source: a lighter rule, so labelled.
  • The community's own account: a dotted rule. The order tells it; we have not yet read it against a reference source.
  • A gap in the rule: the sources omit names between the two. The label says which.
  • The sources differ: tap the ≠ to read each reading with its source.
  • A ring: a spiritual link, without a meeting (uwaysī).

Dates are given where the sources give them. Years are CE; the Hijri year is in each name's detail.

  • two sources
  • one source
  • the community's own account
  • names omitted
  • sources differ
  1. 632

  2. two sources · spiritual link, without meeting

    1815

Order of Aḥmad al-Tijānī (1737-1815), born at ʿAyn Māḍī and buried in Fez. By the order's own account he received the ṭarīqa from the Prophet at Abū Samghūn in 1782 (TDV relays it as a dream; the order's literature speaks of waking), after Khalwatī and other affiliations. It spread across North and West Africa.

How to read the marks
  • Two sources: a solid rule. Two independent references give the same link.
  • One source: a lighter rule, so labelled.
  • The community's own account: a dotted rule. The order tells it; we have not yet read it against a reference source.
  • A gap in the rule: the sources omit names between the two. The label says which.
  • The sources differ: tap the ≠ to read each reading with its source.
  • A ring: a spiritual link, without a meeting (uwaysī).

Branches (8)

Each opens as a side-chain from the founder, with the same marks.

ʿAyn Māḍī (mother zawiya)زاوية عين ماضي19th c. · ʿAyn Māḍī · 3 names
  1. أحمد التجاني1815

  2. two sources

    محمد الكبير التجاني1827

  3. the community's own account · omits: the holders of the Aïn Madhi office between 1827 and 2020 (not traced)

Tamalhat / Tamasinتماسين19th c. · Tamasin (Temacine)

No chain is recorded for this branch in the sources read.

Fez zawiya (burial place of al-Tijānī)الزاوية التجانية بفاسfrom 1789 · Fez

No chain is recorded for this branch in the sources read.

Ḥāfiẓiyya (Mauritania)الحافظيةd. 1830 · Mauritania · 3 names
  1. أحمد التجاني1815

  2. the community's own account

    محمد الحافظ1830

  3. the community's own account

    مولود فال
ʿUmarian (al-Ḥājj ʿUmar Tal)العمريةc. 1829-1864 · Dinguiraye · 2 names
  1. مولود فال

  2. the community's own account

    الحاج عمر تال1864
Ḥamāliyyaالحمالية20th c. · Nioro du Sahel · 2 names
  1. حماه الله1943

  2. one source

2 more
Ibrāhīmiyya / Fayḍa (Niassène)التجانية الإبراهيمية (الفيضة)from 1930 · Kaolack (Medina Baye) · 4 names
  1. عبد الله نياس1922

  2. the community's own account

    إبراهيم نياس1975

  3. one source · omits: the 1st to 3rd khalifes after Ibrāhīm Niasse (not named in the sources read); link drawn from Ibrāhīm Niasse below

    2020

  4. two sources

Sy line (Tivaouane)from 1902 · Tivaouane · 2 names
  1. مالك سي1922

  2. one source · omits: the khalifes of the Sy house between Mālik Sy (d. 1922) and Serigne Babacar Sy Mansour (not named in the source read)

Living today

Public roles only, as the communities and the press report them, dated.

How to cite

Mashraba Reader, Atlas of transmission, “Tijāniyya”, https://www.mashraba.org/atlas/tijaniyya (data of 31 October 2026).

Not yet confirmed (7)

These links are told by an order or a secondary source and still have to be read against a primary or reference source.

  • (Tijāniyya) TDV: in Medina he received the Sammāniyya licence from Ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Sammān.
  • (Tijāniyya) TDV: became a Tijānī in Fez and carried the order to the ʿIdaw ʿAlī of Mauritania.
  • (Tijāniyya) TDV: Mawlūd Fāl, a khalīfa of Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ, was among those who spread the Tijāniyya in Senegal.
  • (Tijāniyya) Wikipedia (tertiary): Mawlūd Fāl initiated ʿUmar Tal; TDV mentions him among key West African figures.
  • (Tijāniyya) TDV: ʿUmar trained under Muḥammad al-Ghālī in Mecca, who appointed him khalīfa c. 1829.
  • (Tijāniyya) Wikipedia (tertiary): father and son; Ibrāhīm's initiation chain not confirmed.
  • (Tijāniyya) Algerian state press (APS, 6 Aug 2020) calls Cheikh Mohamed Ben Ali El-Arabi the calife général of the Tijānī confraternity at Aïn Madhi (Laghouat). Kinship and the intermediate holders of the office are not stated.
Where the sources differ (4)
  • (Tijāniyya)
    • TDV: al-Tijānī says the litanies were taught to him by the Prophet in a dream (rüya); TDV elsewhere calls the event a spiritual unveiling. Members date the order's founding to 1782.
    • The order's own literature (e.g. ʿAlī Ḥarāzim's Jawāhir al-maʿānī) describes the meeting as in a waking state (yaqẓatan), not in sleep. This wording is not in the TDV entry and was not read in an open source for this atlas.
    • TDV: he first taught as a Khalwatī shaykh after receiving khilāfa from Maḥmūd al-Kurdī; Ottoman Sufi sources list the Tijāniyya as a Khalwatī branch, while ʿAlī Ḥarāzim records that Khalwatī chain as taken only for blessing (tabarrukan) and the order's sources begin the silsila with the Prophet and al-Tijānī.
    • TDV: in Fez the scholar Ibn Kīrān rejected his claim to be a shaykh. TDV also reports, from his disciples' books, that he saw himself as heir to the stations of quṭb, quṭb al-aqṭāb and khatm al-wilāya (ideas TDV traces to Ibn ʿArabī), that ulema criticised him for this, and that he answered them forcefully.
    • Trimingham (1971, p. 107, citing Jawāhir al-maʿānī i. 43) quotes the order's account as permission given "in a waking and not sleeping state", which supports the reading attributed to ʿAlī Ḥarāzim above; he places the call at Tlemcen in 1196/1782 and the final fatḥ at Abū Samghūn in 1200/1786, where TDV puts the unveiling at Abū Samghūn in 1196/1782.
  • (Tijāniyya)
    • The order's own Jawāhir al-maʿānī names Maḥmūd al-Kurdī al-Miṣrī as al-Tijānī's shaykh in the isnād of one litany, so the contact is attested in the order's own text; Trimingham notes only that al-Tijānī took the Khalwatī line at first for his chain.
  • (Tijāniyya)
    • Trimingham (1971, pp. 109-10): on ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā's death the leadership went to Aḥmad's son Muḥammad al-Ṣaghīr, then back to ʿAlī's line; his chart numbers al-Ṣaghīr among the heads and lists al-Kabīr only as a son. The atlas (TDV) has al-Kabīr leading ʿAin Māḍī first.
  • (Tijāniyya)
    • Echorouk (Algerian daily), as summarised in a short extract: Sheikh Ali Tidjani is the general caliph of the brotherhood in the Aïn Madhi area. Undated, not read in full.
    • The Algerian state, in an APS report of 18 May 2026 on a Senegalese visit, speaks of 'the seat of the general caliphate of the Tijaniyya' at Aïn Madhi without naming its holder. Moroccan sources describe the Fez zāwiya as the order's spiritual centre. Each is that side's own account.