Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn

Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn
Title	Sheikh
Born	13th century
Ethnicity	Somali
Era	13th century
Religion	Islam
Jurisprudence	Shafi'i
Main interest(s)	Islamic literature, Islamic philosophy

Yusuf bin Ahmad al-Kawneyn (Arabic: يوسف بن أحمد الكونين‎‎) (b. 13th century), popularly known as Aw Barkhadle ("Blessed Father") , and Shaykh Abu Barakat al Barbari (Blessed Father of Somalia) was a 13th-century Somali Muslim scholar.

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Kawneyn was a Somali scholar who studied in Zayla and later in Iraq. He is also noted for having devised a Somali for the Arabic vowels. This would eventually evolve into Wadaad's writing. A Sharif, he has been described as "the most outstanding saint in northern Somalia".

Before Al-Kowneyn's arrival into this town (now named after him) was called Dogor. The residents were not Muslim, but rather pagan, believing and taking part of a pre-Islamic Somali religion called Wagar. The Wagar itself is thought to be an anthropomorphic representation of a sacred feature or figure, indicating an indigenous non-Islamic religious fertility practice in Aw Barkhaadle. The word wagar/Waĝa (or Waaq) denotes the Sky-God adhered to by many Cushitic people (including the Konso) in the Horn of Africa including the Somali in pre-Islamic times. both before and during the practice of Christianity and Islam.

While completing his studies in Zayla, Al Kowneyn was told of a town in Somalia called Dogor, with an oppressive king called Bu‘ur Ba‘ayr. According to the legend, Bu‘ur Ba‘ayr married couples by sleeping with the bride during the first six nights of the marriage and engaged in acts of paganism and magic. Local people at Aw-Barkhadle attribute the conversion of Somalis to Islam, to the defeat by duel of the previous religious leader, Bu‘ur Ba‘ayr, by the Muslim newcomer Aw-Barkhadle, who heard of the oppressive nature of the king and wanted to stop him. The Saint showed the religious superiority of his beliefs in contrast to the local beliefs of Bu‘ur Ba‘ayr’s followers, whom the former won over in great number.

Furthermore, the Aw-Barkhadle site is also important burial site of the Muslim rulers of Awdal, Al-Kowneyn himself of the Walashma dynasty of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD is buried in this town

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