The Kashif al-Ilbas is the magnum opus of twentieth-century West Africa’s greatest Muslim leader, Shaykh al-Islam Ibrahim ‘Abd-Allah Niasse (1900-1975).
Shaykh Ibrahim was a Muslim scholar and sage of the Tijaniyya, a Sufi order which has spread to all corners of the Muslim world since Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani (d. 1815, Fes) established the confraternity in North Africa in the late eighteenth century.
Shaykh Ibrahim had unparalleled success in propagating the Tijaniyya, and those owing their initiation into the order to Shaykh Ibrahim currently number around one hundred million and make up more than half of all the Tijanis in the world.
The distinguishing practice of Shaykh Ibrahim’s movement was tarbiya, or spiritual training. Through tarbiya, aspirants transcended the confines of their ego-selves and “tasted” the directly-experienced knowledge, or gnosis (ma’rifa), of God.
The Kashif al-Ilbas, written early on in the Shaykh’s career in 1931-1932, is primarily a guide for the teaching and learning of the experiential knowledge (ma’rifa) of God on a widespread scale.
Drawing on the concept of the spiritual “flood,” gnosis for all who desired it, Shaykh Ibrahim demonstrates in the Kashif that no believing man or woman should deprive him or herself of spiritual illumination.
Ahmad al-Tijani a translation of Kashif al-ilbas an fayda al-khatm abi' abbas by Shaykh al-Islam al-Hajj Ibrahim b. ‘Abd-Allah Niasse
Biography of Author by Sayyid Ali Cisse Introduction by Shaykh ?asan b. Ali Cisse ?adith Analysis by Shaykh Tijani b. Ali Cisse Translation by Zachary Wright, Muhtar Holland and Abdullahi El-Okene