Effendi was from a Kurdish/Arab Sayyid family which originated from Mecca and migrated into Abbasid then Sejuk territory. Abubakr was born in the Ottoman Province of Shehrizur. He is a Sayyid, direct descendant of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad through Zayd ibn Ali, son of Imam Zayn al-Abidin. Other imams in the Cape were mostly teaching the Shafi`i school of Islamic jurisprudence; he was a follower and the first teacher of Hanafi school, for which he also established a madrassa in Cape Town. He gained notoriety in 1869 after ruling that rock lobster and snoek, two staple foods in the Cape, were sinful (haraam). He has often been mistaken for being a Shafi'i on the basis of him being a Scholar of the 4 schools of Sunni Islam, and being able to issue religious edicts according to each one. His ancestors and children practised the Hanafi school of thought.