Biography of the eminent, erudite scholar, Qurʾanic exegete and legal theorist Muḥammad al-Amīn al-Shinqīṭī (1)

First: His name and lineage
He is Muḥammad al-Amīn son of Muḥammad al-Mukhtār son of ʿAbd al-Qādir son of Muḥammad son of Aḥmad Nūḥ son of Muḥammad son of Sayyidī Aḥmad son of al-Mukhtār. He belongs to the clan known as the descendants of al-Ṭālib Awbak, who in turn descend from Krīr ibn al-Mawāfī ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Jākan al-Abr, the forefather of the well-known tribe of the Jakanīyyīn, whose line traces back to the ancient Himyar.

Second: His birth and upbringing
The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—was born in 1325 AH at a watering place called Tanbah in the district of Kiffa, Mauritania.

He grew up an orphan, for his father died while he was still a small boy, reciting only Juzʾ ʿAmma (the thirtieth part of the Qurʾān). The child was therefore raised in the household of his maternal uncles, who were also his paternal cousins, as his mother was her husband’s cousin. That home in which the Shaykh was brought up abounded in learning, over and above what already characterized the general milieu of Shinqīṭ as a whole—namely the widespread