Ma al-'Aynayn

Ma al-'Aynayn (1831 – 23 October 1910) was a Mauritanian Qadiri Sufi sheikh and resistance leader who headed the Fadiliyya brotherhood, built the ribat-town of Smara in the Western Sahara, and led the armed resistance to French and Spanish colonisation in the Sahara and Morocco.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ur} The Arabic article corrects the common form of his name: he was Sidi al-Mustafa, named by his father after the father's own shaykh Sidi al-Mustafa ibn Uthman, and "Muhammad al-Mustafa" is an error in common usage.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar} He was the twelfth of the forty-eight sons of Muhammad Fadil, founder of the Fadiliyya, a Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}

He memorised the Qur'an by the age of seven and took his exoteric and esoteric sciences from his father, who formed him in tasawwuf.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar} Singled out among his brothers to study in Fes, he left at sixteen to study under a number of scholars, and in 1858 he performed the Hajj, meeting the heir Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman at Marrakesh and Sultan Abd al-Rahman at Meknes — the beginning of his Moroccan connections.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} On his return in 1861 his father gave him a turban and the title of Shaykh, investing him in the family's brotherhood.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} About 1870 he moved to the Saqiyat al-Hamra and founded the zawiya Dar al-Hamra', and from 1873 he visited Marrakesh and Fes regularly.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} In 1879 a dahir of Sultan Moulay Hassan I appointed him the sultan's representative from the Souss to the Saqiyat al-Hamra and Tarfaya, and his murids came to number more than ten thousand.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar} In 1898 he began building the ribat of Smara with the sultan's craftsmen, materials, financing and arms, moving there in 1902 and building its Islamic library.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} In 1904 he proclaimed jihad against the colonisers, and in 1905 a member of his brotherhood may have assassinated the French officer Xavier Coppolani, as the English article puts it, with the hedge.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} He backed Abd al-Hafid against his brother Abd al-Aziz in 1907, retreated to Tiznit in 1908–09, and in June 1910 marched north with some six thousand men to overthrow Abd al-Hafid; General Moinier's column destroyed his force on 23 June 1910 near Kasba-Tadla, wounding him.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-fr} He died at Tiznit on 23 October 1910 — the Arabic article pairs its Hijri date of 17 Shawwal 1328 with 25 October 1910, a pairing that disagrees with its own Hijri date — and his tomb there remains a pilgrimage site.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar} His descendants, the Ahl Shaykh Ma al-'Aynayn, numbered 363 in a Spanish count of 1974 and have held office in Morocco, the Polisario Front and Mauritania.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}

His biographer and son Mrabbih Rabbu attributes 140 books to him, while Julio Caro Baroja counted 314.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} They include Mubsir al-mutashawwif 'ala Muntakhab al-Tasawwuf, a work on Sufism, and the Arabic article lists some twenty further titles, among them Dallil al-rifaq, Fatiq al-ratq and Adab al-murid.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-fr}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar} The Arabic article notes that many of his manuscripts were burned in the Franco-Spanish attack on Smara.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar}

This section reports what the sources attribute to Ma al-'Aynayn and how they assess him; it is not the museum's own judgement.

His standing rests on his sheikhdom: the English article's investiture of 1861, the Arabic article's account of his murids and of the tariqas he taught them, and the French article's picture of a sheikh and marabout with numerous disciples of the Fadiliyya-Ma'ayniyya line are the attestations on which the museum records his faith as sufi, as his record's faith note sets out.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-fr} The German article adds that he was influenced by Wahhabi and Sanusi teachings — an attributed claim of that article, recorded as such.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-de} The French article states that at Tiznit he proclaimed himself Mahdi; the museum carries that only as the French article's claim.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-fr} The Spanish article has him proclaim himself "Blue Sultan" in 1910, while the English article gives the Blue Sultan title to his son El-Hiba, who continued the resistance; the two attributions are recorded side by side.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-es}{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} The French arabophone newspaper Es-Saada ran a campaign against him, calling him an unscrupulous mendicant and arms smuggler and peddling rumours that his followers were Shia — a hostile colonial press smear, recorded here as the English article presents it, and evidence of nothing about his faith.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en} His marriages are given as 116 by al-Mukhtar al-Susi, with the note that he kept to four wives at a time; Paul Marty counted twenty-one sons and thirty daughters, and the Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara thirty-three sons.{cite:source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en}

• Wikipedia (English), "Ma al-'Aynayn", revision 1379833006 (12 October 2026) — source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-en.
• Wikipedia (French), "Ma El Aïnin", revision 240446469 (17 October 2026) — source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-fr.
• Wikipedia (Arabic), "ماء العينين القلقمي", revision 76581022 (15 September 2026) — source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ar.
• Wikipedia (Spanish), "Ma el-Ainéin", revision 175873057 (17 October 2026) — source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-es.
• Wikipedia (German), "Mā' al-ʿAinain al-Qalqamī", revision 256071288 (17 May 2025) — source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-de.
• Wikipedia (Urdu), "محمد مصطفی ما العینین", revision 9310650 (6 January 2026) — source/wikipedia-ma-al-aynayn-ur.
• Wikidata, Q2520973 — source/wikidata-ma-al-aynayn.