Kunta family

The Kunta family (the Awlad Sidi al-Wafi) is among the best-known examples of a lineage of Islamic scholarship with widespread influence throughout Mauritania, Senegambia, and other parts of the Western Sudan, and are closely associated with the expansion of Qadiriyya.

The Kunta shaykhs and the family or clan they represent, are an outgrowth of the Kounta Bedouin Arab peoples who spread throughout what is today northern Mali and southern Mauritania from the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries (CE).