Avis de soutenance - doctorat - Mohamed Salem OULD MAOULOUD

Shaykh Muḥamd al-Mâmi is an important figure in the Western Sahara in the 19th century. He distinguished himself by an atypical journey marked by a trip to the South while his contemporaries traveled to the North in search of knowledge. He was also distinguished by the fact that he has no known master despite the extent of his knowledge with an abundant work. His magnum opus, the Kitâb al-badiya, is a work apart. He endeavored through this work to open the doors of ijtihâd which the majority of the fuqahâ of the West Saharan considered necessary to close because the period was empty of jurisconsult who met his conditions. In an argument in which he displays an encyclopedic knowledge of the legal texts of Sunnism, he tries to demonstrate that if we forbid ijtihâd, particularly at-takhrîj (interpretation) and at-tarjîḥ (preference) to the best followers (amthalu al-muqalidūn) this would lead to a legal vacuum. His goal is to open the door to founding a specific fiqh for the badiya because, according to him, the questions which are specific to it have been ignored by the fuqahâ who are mostly city dwellers. He thus puts Muslim law to the test of nomadism and its nawâzil (problematic cases posed). He primarily refers to the Malikite rite and to its reference works such as the Mukhtaṣar of Khalil and its numerous commentaries. We presented the author's life and its different peripheries in an introduction which also presented the work, its context, motivations and content before providing an annotated translation. We also noted the enigma of the studies of Shaykh Muḥamd al-Mâmi. How did he acquire this large extent of knowledge without having a known master? He wrote hundreds books in all the known fields of his time.