Ibrahim Niass

His father, al-Hajj Abdullah Niass (d. 1922), was the Tijaniyya's main representative in the Saloum region. Ibrahim memorised the Qur'an under him, in the Warsh recitation, studied under no one else, and moved with him to Kaolack, where his father founded the zawiya of Lewna Ñaseen. After his father's death his elder brother Muhammad al-Khalifa succeeded, while Ibrahim taught at Kóosi Mbittéyeen. He received ijazas from several scholars, among them Ahmed Skirej, who authorised him on 23 Safar 1358 AH, and Muhammad Abd al-Hayy al-Kattani.¹²

In 1929 Niass announced that he had been given the key to the secrets of divine knowledge and had become khalifa of Shaykh Ahmad Tijani in the order — the Fayda, or flood. After a clash with opponents in 1930 he founded a new zawiya at Medina Baye in Kaolack. On his first Hajj in 1937 the Emir of Kano, Abdullahi Bayero, gave him allegiance, bringing most of northern Nigeria's Tijani leaders with him, and his branch, the Niass Tijaniyya, became the largest of the order worldwide. In 1961 he led the Friday prayer at al-Azhar — the first West African to do so — and was styled Shaykh al-Islam; he was vice-president of the Muslim World League and an adviser to several leaders of his time.²³

Niass left some seventy-five books, among them Kashif al-ilbas on the Fayda of the Seal Abu al-Abbas, Ruh al-adab, written at twenty-one, Jawahir al-rasa'il and the Dawawin al-sitta, and he travelled through the Hijaz, Egypt, Morocco, India, Pakistan and elsewhere spreading the order.¹

The French article calls him in its text a renowned Sufi master and a spiritual leader within the Tijani brotherhood, and the English article describes his leadership of the Tijani Sufi order in West Africa. His jurisprudence is named in no article's text: the English infobox, referenced to Brigaglia's 2013 study, gives Maliki jurisprudence and Ash'ari creed, and the Arabic infobox gives Maliki jurisprudence and a creed of Ahl al-Sunna wa'l-Jama'a, the Ash'aris, while Wikidata's value is Islam only. He died in London on 26 July 1975 and was buried at Medina Baye.³²¹⁴