Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Muradi al-Hadrami

Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Murādī al-Ḥaḍramī or el Mûradi Al Hadrami or al-shaykh al imâm Al Hadrami was an 11th-century North African Islamic theologian and jurist. He died in 1095.

Biography Al-Hadrami was born in the city of Kairouan in present-day Tunisia to an Arab family with origins in the Hadramawt region of southern Arabia. In his native town he received his education, studying with a number of scholars, including Abu Imran al-Fasi. Ibn Bashkuwāl reports, that al-Hadrami stayed in 1094 for a brief of study in Córdoba.

After the Almoravid conquest of Azougui, close to Atar in present-day Mauritania by Abu Bakr ibn Umar, al-Hadrami followed him to that city. In Azougui he served as Qadi until his death in 1095.

He wrote several political and theological treatises.

From the second half of the 17th century, the memory of al-Hadrami began to reappear in Mauritanian local oral tradition, launched by the “rediscovery” of his grave at Azougui. In these folktales he is portrayed as a mystic Marabout and thaumaturgist.

Works Al-Hadrami has written several treatises in the field of theology and politics. His sole surviving work is Kitâb al-Ishâra (Book of politics or guidance on the administration of the principality), an ethical treatise of the mirrors for princes genre. It provides guidance on a range of topics such as good governance, the selection of advisers and companions, leadership on the battlefield, and occasions for clemency and pardon.

Beyond the eschatological significance of the “rediscovery”, scholars believe a strategy of legitimation in a territorial conquest, which pitted against each other the Smasside who had arrived from Chinguetti, and the local Idaysilli tribes.