Ruqayya bint Ibrahim Niasse رقية بنت إبراهيم نياس

Shaykha Ruqayya bint Ibrahim Niasse, rahimahullah, was one of West Africa's most renowned Islamic scholars and a daughter of the celebrated Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse of Kaolack, Senegal. She was born at the end of 1930 on the night her father moved with his nascent community to Madina in the north of Kaolack (Sine-Saloum). She was named Ruqayya after the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and her father remarked at her naming that he had never ceased to ascend in the Divine Real. She memorized the Qur'an under her father's Mauritanian disciple Mouhammad Rabbani. She then studied fiqh directly under her father and Arabic grammar from Baye Ahmad Thiam, covering texts including al-Ajrumiyya, Mulhat al-I'rab, and Lamiyat al-Af'al. In the early 1950s she joined her father's advanced classes in al-Alfiyya, al-Ihmirar, and the Maqamat assemblies of al-Hariri. She went on to become a teacher of thousands in both the exoteric and esoteric sciences of Islam.