Ahmad ibn ‘Ajiba (1747–1809) was an 18th-century Moroccan Shaykh in the Darqawa Sufi order. He was born of a Hasani sharif family in the Anjra tribe that ranges from Tangiers to Tetouan along the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. As a child he developed a love of knowledge, memorising the Qur’an and studying subjects ranging from Classical Arabic grammar, religious ethics, poetry, Qur’anic recitation and tafsir.
When he reached the age of eighteen he left home and studied in Qasr al-Kabir under the supervision of Sidi Muhammad as-Susi as-Samlali. It was here that he was introduced to studies in the sciences, art, philosophy, law and Qur’anic exegesis in depth. He went to Fes to study with Ibn Suda, Bennani, and al-Warzazi, and joined the new Darqawiyya in 1208 AH (1793), of which he was the representative in the northern part of the Jbala region. He spent his entire life in and around Tetouan, and died of the plague in 1224 AH (1809). He is the author of a considerable number of works and a Fahrasa which provides interesting information concerning the intellectual center that Tetouan had become by the beginning of the 19th century.
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