The Poetic Experience of Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Maghīlī (fifteenth century CE) in His Journey to the South of the Sahara

In this study we attempt to treat the literary aspect, and in particular the poetic dimension, of Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Maghīlī, one of the eminent figures of western Algeria in the ninth century AH, corresponding to the fifteenth century CE. The shaykh was known as a scholar, a jurist, and a Sufi, yet his literary and poetic personality is almost forgotten. We shall therefore try in this conference paper to introduce the shaykh as a poet and to present his Poetic experience, which took on the coloring of life in the south of the Sahara during a missionary journey full of events and fruitful in achievements.

If poetry is a means of expressing the inner emotions, a register that records the events of history, and a missionary and reformist platform, then from this appears the importance of inquiring into the life of al-Maghīlī the poet, for the nature of the human soul is plumbed to its depths only when it is studied from every side; and a soul such as that of Shaykh al-Maghīlī is the more deserving that the seats of poetic giftedness within it be sought out, given the religious, moral, and missionary weight it carries in the history of western Algeria.