Shaykh al-Hājj ʿUmar b. Sa’id al-Fūti (1796-1864) was among the most prominent West African Tījāni Sufi figures of the 19th-century. His magnum opus, the Kitab Rimāh Hizb al-Rahim ‘ala Nuhur Hizb al-rajim (“The book of the lances of the league of (Allah) the Merciful against the necks of the league of (Satan) the accursed”) is normally approached as a mystical text written on the margins of Ali Harāzem’s Jawāhir al-Ma’ani – the Tijaniyyah’s seminal text. My paper approaches the Rimah as a text that is concerned with the islāh of the beliefs and practices of the community of Muslims in 19th century West Africa and beyond. His negative position on the madhāhib points to new readings on the topic of ijtihād as it relates to mystical experiences. Though anti-madhabism has today been normatively paired with “Salafi” or Wahhabi ideology, Hajj Umar’s text complicates this narrative. I argue that for al-Futi and other adherents of the Tarīqa Muḥammadiyya, which flourished in the 19th-century, the goal of taḥqīq (spiritual realization) supersedes that of taqlīd (imitation) of earthly ʿulamāʾ. Manifestations of such spiritual realizations include the experience of direct access to the Prophet, in which the mystic is able to clarify legal matters via visions in both a waking and a sleeping state. Al-Futi’s Sufi epistemology for Islamic law opens new understandings on the agency of the ʾawliyā (friends of God); in the words of the great mystic al-Dabbagh, “even if all the madhahib were to perish”, the Sufis would be able to restore it, as they are living embodiments of the shar’iah.