Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti, called al-Kabir, 'the Great,' was the pre-eminent saint of the Kunta of the Azawad and the renewer of the Qadiriyya brotherhood across the western Sahara and Sahel. Rising from a helper in the Taudenni salt trade to the acknowledged head of the order, he became a wali, a living friend of God, whose karamat, or wonders, and whose baraka, or transmissible blessing, drew students, scholars, and pilgrims from Timbuktu and beyond to the oasis country north of that city. A prolific author credited with hundreds of treatises, he reshaped the Qadiriyya into the dominant devotional current among the Bidan; after his death in 1811 his tomb became a place of visitation, and his blessedness was held to descend upon his sons and successors.