Sheikh Muhammad Rashid Bilal

Sheikh Muhammad Rashid Sheikh Bilal (1907?- October 31, 1988) was one of the famous Islamic Scholars of the Chercher Highlands of Harerghe province whom many people of Harerghe recall as the most authorized source of his time for the ancient history of Islam in Ethiopia. He is also remembered as a saver of indigenous knowledge, a teacher of many Ulama, a poet and author of many books. While his real name had been Sheikh Muhammed Rashid Sheikh Bilal, he appears on his written documents as Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad (shortening his own and his father's name who had been Mohammed Bilal, and adding then his grandfather’s name) and Muhammad ibn Muhammad Al-Bakri Al-siddiqi.

Sheikh Muhammad Rashid was a son of Sheikh Bilal Kabir Muhammad, a prominent Sheikh from the Qallu clan of the Ittu Oromo. He was born in 1906 at a rural village called Belbeleti-Chirratti, 15 km south of Gelemso town. His mother, known as Fatima Abdullahi Hammado, had died immediately after she gave birth to Sheikh Muhammad Rashid so that his father married another wife and had a daughter called Khalisa Sheikh Bilal who would become the Sheikh's only sister.

After the birth of Khalisa, Sheikh Bilal had changed his seat to a distant village called Chorre in today’s Guba Qoricha district of West Harerghe Zone where he became one of the early Muslim scholars who campaigned to Islamize the Ittu Oromo in Guba Qoricha. He then settled at that very place and took his assignments as a chief Islamic scholar with many disciples and a Qadi of the area. It was there that the infant Muhammad Rashid had started learning the Qur’an and other Islamic educations. But his father couldn’t live many years, and died and buried at that village of Chorre. So the duty of fostering the two orphans of Sheikh Bilal (Muhammad Rashid and Khalisa) lied on their uncles who brought them to their birthplace (Belbeleti).

After coming to Belbeliti, Muhammad Rashid continued his educational career. There, his chief teacher was his uncle called Kabir Ahmadee (Muhammad Rashid and the rest of his nephews call this uncle of theirs by his nickname Iddiidii). This Kabir (kabir meaning a learned scholar in the traditions of the Somali, Oromo and Harari peoples) was highly known in the area of al-Ilmu Lisan (“Linguistics) al-jabr (Algebra) and “Taarikh”(History). Muhammad Rashid was also educated under his other uncle called Kabir Khalid who was known for his knowledge of “Fiqh”. But these scholars couldn’t quench the young Muhammad Rashid’s thirst for knowledge.

...
Wikipedia