Biography
Shaykh Aḥmadu Bàmba Mbàkke was born in the village of Mbacké (Mbàkke Bawol in Wolof) in the Kingdom of Baol, the son of a marabout from the Xaadir (Qadriyya) brotherhood, the oldest in Senegal.
A religious prayer leader, poet and monk, Ahmadou Bamba founded the Mouride brotherhood in 1883 and the city of Touba. In one of his numerous writings, Matlabul Fawzeyni (the quest for happiness in both worlds), Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba describes the purpose of the city which he founded in 1887. In his concept, Touba should reconcile the spiritual and the temporal. Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba intended to have the spiritual capital of his brotherhood showing all the characteristics of a Muslim city.
Ahmadou Bamba is also known to have invented Café Touba. Bamba traditionally mixed coffee and spices together for medicinal purposes, and served it to his followers.
Read more about this topic: Amadou Bamba
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)