Ahmad bin Sumayt was a Hadrami sayyid of the Ba 'Alawi lineage (Alawiyya tariqa) and the most important Shafi'i scholar of the western Indian Ocean of his generation — the subject of Anne K. Bang's standard study 'Sufis and Scholars of the Sea'. Educated by his father and then in Hadramawt, Istanbul (under Abdülhamid II) and al-Azhar in Cairo, he was appointed qadi of Zanzibar by Sultan Barghash in 1883 and served as Grand Qadi (chief Shafi'i judge) of Zanzibar from 1907 until his death. He authored at least nine treatises printed in Cairo, Beirut and Mecca, including a commentary on al-Haddad's Lamiyya. He died on 13 Shawwal 1343 / 7 May 1925 in Zanzibar City. NOTE: he is distinct from his son Habib Umar bin Sumayt (d. 1976), who is buried in Moroni, Comoros. (Sources: Anne K. Bang, 'Sufis and Scholars of the Sea', Routledge 2003; German Wikipedia 'Ahmad ibn Sumait', citing Bang 2003)