Khalil Moore's account of meeting Murabit al Hajj

(Murabit al Hajj with a visitor)


When I first arrived at the village in which I was to live my life for the next three weeks, I found the great and noble scholar al-Murabit al-Hajj taking his mid-day rest. He is well into his mid-nineties, is of average height, his body being quite weak and feeble. His skin has a warm, dark complexion, from years of exposure to the hot desert sun of the sub-Saharan region, and he has an intense look of simple, but powerful, nobility. There is an aura of dignity and piety that emanates from his presence, an aura that can only be truly captured by direct observation, it just cannot be written about with words on paper. I finally had seen the spiritual father of the pupils that I had been so deeply affected by thus far.

Al-Murabit al-Hajj is a great man of sacred learning and spiritual wisdom and guidance, whom mostly all of Mauritania’s people respect and honor. He spent many years in the study of the various branches of the religious sciences of Islam and their many ramifications. He comes from a great lineage of scholars of both men and women of wondrous piety and austere asceticism. When he was younger he used to move from cave to cave in hopes to avoid the disturbance of the other students and youth in his village. It was finally said to them that they should leave him be: “He is fighting his lower-self [nafs]. When he finishes, then you will see him.” Here he was now, right in front of me. Those hours and days of solitude that he spent in his younger years were necessary for his spiritual training and religious edification. He arrived to his goal years ago. Now we could reap the fruits of his labor and taste something of the blessings that God had bestowed upon him."