A clever politician and charismatic leader of the Tijaniyya Islamic brotherhood in Chad, Koulamallah campaigned in different times and places as a member of the Baguirmi nobility (he was an estranged son of the sultan), a radical socialist leader, or a militant Muslim fundamentalist.
He was a Sufi, or Islamic mystic, of the Mevlevî order, and his poetry is often considered exemplary of the "Indian style" (سبك هندی sebk-i hindî) of Ottoman poetry, a movement which flourished beginning in the 17th century.
However, in Turkish culture such a neat division into Sufi and Shi'a is scarcely possible: for instance, Yunus Emre is considered by some to have been an Alevi, while the entire Turkish aşık/ozan tradition is permeated with the thought of the Bektashi Sufi order, which is itself a blending of Shi'a and Sufi concepts.
When young, Mahmud Qabadu left Tunisia to study at a sufi center in Tripolitania, that of the Madaniyya tarika, a branch of the Darqawa.