Nasir al-Din
Nasir al-Din, whose given name is remembered as Awbek, was the Berber imam who launched the Sharr Bubba, the 'war of Bubba' (also the Char Bouba or Marabout War), among the Sanhaja tribes of the western Sahara and the Senegal valley in the 1670s. Proclaiming himself imam and calling the peoples to repentance and reform, tuba, in a movement known as the Tubenan, he sought to bind the fractious tribes under a single religious authority and to end their raiding and enslavement of fellow Muslims. His defeat and death in 1674 at the hands of the Hassani warriors fixed the enduring division of Bidan society between the sword-bearing hassan and the scholar-saint zawaya, and his memory remains foundational to the self-understanding of the maraboutic clans as the guardians of the faith.
Domains
- conversion and reform
- religious law
Powers
- proclaims the renewal of the faith
Epithets
- ناصر الدين — Helper of the faithH. T. Norris, 'Znaga Islam during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', BSOAS 32 (1969). (secondary)
Sources
- Berber (Lamtuna/zawaya) imam who launched the Sharr Bubba reform movement and jihad c. 1673 against the Hassani warriors and the Wolof states, proclaiming himself imam; killed in battle 1674.: Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (1998), ch. 3. (secondary); H. T. Norris, 'Znaga Islam during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', BSOAS 32 (1969), pp. 496-526. (secondary)