Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani (may Allah be pleased with him) was born in 1737 (1150 AH) in the town of Aïn Madhi in southern Algeria, into a family with a reputation for learning and piety. He was raised in an environment where the Islamic sciences — Qur'an, hadith, and fiqh according to the Maliki school — were part of daily life, and he began his own study of these disciplines while still young.

As a young man, Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani traveled widely across North Africa in pursuit of knowledge and spiritual companionship, spending significant time in Fez, Morocco, a center of Islamic scholarship. There he studied under a number of teachers and was affiliated for a time with more than one Sufi order, including the Qadiriyya and the Nasiriyya, before receiving instruction from Sidi Ahmad ibn Abd Allah al-Habib.

In the early 1770s, Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca, a journey that took him through Egypt and the Hijaz, where he met and studied with scholars of the Haramayn. This period of travel and encounter with the wider Islamic world is described in the Tijani tradition as formative to his later spiritual station.

It was some years after his return from hajj, in the Algerian desert near Boussemghoun (Samghun), that Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani experienced the spiritual opening (fath) that the Tijani tradition regards as the founding moment of the Tariqa Tijaniyya — an authorization received, according to Tijani doctrine, without the mediation of a living shaykh. Accounts differ slightly on exact dates, and readers seeking a precise chronology should consult primary Tijani biographical sources, such as Jawahir al-Ma'ani, for a fuller account.

Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani eventually settled permanently in Fez, where he lived under the protection of the Moroccan sultanate and where his tomb (zawiya) remains a site of visitation to this day. From Fez, he began sending deputies (muqaddams) to teach the order's litanies and principles, a process that would eventually carry the Tariqa Tijaniyya across North and West Africa. He passed away in Fez in 1815 (1230 AH).

Unverified: some biographical particulars above — exact dates of specific journeys and the full chronology of his teachers — vary between sources and should be confirmed against primary Tijani biographical texts before use in formal publication.