Buh Kunta’s father, Sidi Ahmed "Buh Naama" Kunta, belonged to the Hemmal branch of the Kunta confederation, a vast network of scholarly, commercial, and pastoral lineages dispersed across the western part of the Sahara desert. Kunta clerics and merchants were instrumental in bringing the Qadiri form of Islam to the regions south of the Sahara in the course of their travels, following a pattern of peaceful dissemination through trade. Shaykh Ahmed al-Bekkaï Kunta and his descendant Shaykh Sidi Mukhtar al-Kunti gained renown for their piety and intellectual brilliance throughout the southern Sahara in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries respectively. Sidi Mukhtar (born c. 1729) attracted a large community of followers through his exceptional learning, his successful mediation of disputes, and his pious example (seen as the result of his spiritual training). Although he lived simply, he actively furthered Kunta commercial activities. He developed his religious community into a hierarchical public institution organized through kin ties, religious bonds with non-kin disciples, and a network of Sufi religious centers (
zawaya, sing.
zawiya). Sidi Mukhtar was its undisputed leader and gave it its own unique character so that it came to be known as the Qadiriyya-Mukhtariyya (Brenner, 1988). He left a vast corpus of scholarly writings and prayers.
Buh Naama Kunta grew up in the desert north of Timbuktu and received his religious education in the
zawiya of Shaykh Sidi Mukhtar. He was sent to Senegambia at the end of the eighteenth century to conduct business and spread the faith. (For the oral tradition surrounding the trip, see
Buh Muhammed Khalifa Kunta Interview 1.) Having demonstrated his spiritual powers in his interactions with the ruling family of the Wolof kingdom of Kajoor, he asked the king for a plot of land where he could settle and teach. The king granted his request and Buh Naama founded the village of Ndankh Narr in 1800. (Ndankh is a few kilometers from Mékhé on National Road 2 to Saint-Louis.) Buh Naama returned to the desert in 1811 to present his condolences on the death of Shaykh Sidi Mukhtar. He also sought, and was granted, permission from his spiritual guide to settle permanently in Kajoor in order to propagate the faith. He married local women, established a family, and remained in Ndankh until his death in 1840.