Kabir Khalil

Kabir Khalil or "Great Khalil" was a 19th-century scholar and one of the three head Ulama in the Emirate of Harar. He was a member of the Qadiriyya order which was prominent in the Horn of Africa at the time.
Biography.
Kabir Khalil was fluent in both Harari, and Arabic. During the reign of Emir Ahmad Ibn Abu Bakr the European explorer Richard Burton would visit the Harar in 1855 and Khalil was described as the leading religious figure in the city. 
Khalil advised his pupil Sheikh Madar to establish a Qadiriyya tariqa commune in present-day Hargeisa and spread the tariqa and it's values. One of which being to try and reduce the tribal conflict along the trade route between Harar and Berbera which was damaging livelihoods and causing unnecessary death. This led Sheikh Madar and his companions to found the Big Commune (Jama’a weyne) of Little Harar (Hargeisa) in circa 1860. Sheikh Madar also started sorghum plantations in the vicinity of the town to maintain self-sufficiency as well as taking care of the sick and elderly inhabitants of the growing settlement. This cultivation soon spread and was taken up eagerly across the region by Somalis.