He is Muḥammad ibn ʿAfīfī al-Bājūrī, popularly known as Shaykh Khuḍarī Bak. He was a scholar of Sharīʿah, literature and Islamic history. He was born in Egypt in 1289/1872 and lived in Zaytūn, a suburb of Cairo. He graduated from Madrasah Dār al-ʿUlūm and surpassed his contemporaries as a scholar, researcher, orator, educator and reformer. During the course of his life he was an Islamic judge in Khartoum, an educator in the Islamic Judicial School in Cairo for a period of twelve years, a Professor in Islamic history at the University of Egypt (now named The University of Cairo), the Deputy-Head of the Islamic judicial school and an inspector for the Ministry of Education.