Tok Kenali

Muhammad Yusuf bin Ahmad (c. 1868 – 19 November 1933), known as Tok Kenali, was a Kelantan scholar who became the leading figure of the pondok system of Islamic education in the Malay Peninsula. There is no English Wikipedia article on him; this account rests on the Malay Wikipedia article and his Wikidata item. ^{1 2}

He was born at Kampung Kenali, Kubang Kerian, near Kota Bharu, to a farming family, and learned first from his grandfather and then at the Muhammadi Mosque in Kota Bharu. In 1887 he travelled to Mecca and studied there for twenty-two years, chiefly under Wan Ahmad bin Muhammad Zain, visiting Egypt with him in 1904. He returned to Kelantan in 1909 and in 1911 founded Pondok Kenali; two years later he was also teaching at the Muhammadi Mosque, then the largest centre of religious learning in Kelantan, and students came to his school from across the Peninsula, Sumatra, Cambodia and Patani. ¹

He sat on Kelantan's Council of Ulama from 1915 until his death, chaired the state's religious education, advised on the founding of the Kelantan Islamic Religious Council in 1915, and in 1918 became the first editor of Pengasuh, the council's magazine; the council also charged him with translating al-Khazin's Qur'an commentary into Malay, a manuscript now lost. He died at Kota Bharu on Sunday 19 November 1933 and was buried in the cemetery now known as Kubur Tok Kenali. Among his pupils were the lexicographer Muhammad Idris al-Marbawi and two later muftis of Kelantan. ¹