Mai Ali b. Umar in the Fazzan

While revisiting el-Hesnawi's Fazzan under the Rule of the Awlad Muhammad. A Study in Political, Economic, Social and Intellectual History, we came across one document from 1652 included in the second volume. This volume, consisting of a plethora of Arabic texts from the 1600s, 1700s and early 1800s, with many untranslated, are manuscripts kept by families in the Fazzan. The aforementioned document form 1652 surprisingly refers to Ali b. Umar of Borno (r. 1639-1677). The illiterate people recorded by the scribe apparently used the "first coming of Sultan Mai Ali" to testify when they began farming plots in the region of Aqar. It is not clear if these farmers used the pilgrimages of Ali b. Umar to mark time due to the presumably impressive sight his group made. It is also unclear which pilgrimage they are referring to. Since Ali b. Umar traveled to Mecca multiple times, this 1652 account could be referring to either the 1642 hajj or the 1648 passage, though 1642 seems more likely. Part of the confusion stems from the problematic way Girard alluded to Ali b. Umar going to Mecca with his father, Umar, in 1642. Since Lange's chronology suggests Umar b. Idris was dead by 1639, the first hajj of Ali b. Umar as mai may have been the 1648 hajj. It is also interesting to consider why, despite many pilgrims passing through the Fazzan, Ali b. Umar's was more meaningful or distinct. 1652 was the year of rapprochement between the Pasha of Tripoli and Ali b. Umar, but one finds it hard to imagine illiterate peasants in the Fazzan were closely following that development. The mai of Borno was not the onlhy black king who traveled through the Fazzan or Libya, either. Is it possible the mai was celebrated and revered in the Fazzan and probably well-treated by the Awlad Muhammad sultans?