{{Short description|16th-century Songhai scholar}}
'''Al Hajj Mahmud Kati''' (or '''Mahmoud Kati''') (1468? ''–'' 1552 or 1593) was an African Muslim Songhai scholar. He is traditionally held to be the author of the West African chronicle ''Tarikh al-fattash'', though the authorship is contested.<ref name="Jr.Akyeampong2012">{{cite book|author=Christopher Wise|author-link=Christopher Wise|editor1=Henry Louis Gates, Jr. |editor1-link=Henry Louis Gates Jr.|editor2=Emmanuel Akyeampong |editor2-link=Emmanuel K. Akyeampong |editor3=Steven J. Niven |title=Dictionary of African Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=39JMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA309|year=2012|publisher=OUP USA|isbn=978-0-19-538207-5|pages=309–312|chapter=Kati, Mahmoud}}</ref>
Kati grew up in Kurmina but lived most of his adult life in Timbuktu. In August 1583, he documented a meteor shower.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hammer|first=Joshua|title=The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year=2016|isbn=978-1-4767-7743-6|location=New York|pages=26–27}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Holbrook |first=Jarita C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4DJpDW6IAukC&pg=PA182 |title=African Cultural Astronomy |author2=Medupe, R. Thebe |author3=Johnson Urama |date=2008 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-4020-6638-2 |access-date=19 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210817020340/https://books.google.com/books?id=4DJpDW6IAukC&pg=PA182 |archive-date=17 August 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> His tomb is the second largest in Timbuktu, after that of Mohammed Bagayogo, and is a site of pilgrimage.<ref name="Jr.Akyeampong2012"/>
==References== {{reflist}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kati, Mahmud}} Category:1468 births Category:16th-century deaths Category:Year of death unknown Category:16th-century African people Category:Historians of Africa Category:16th-century historians Category:Zarma-Songhai people Category:Scholars of precolonial Africa
{{Africa-historian-stub}}