Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (Arabic: أبو الحسن الشاذلي) was the Sufi founder of the eponymous Shadhili order.
Contents |
He was born in a royal family of a business man in Berber Ghomara, near Ceuta in the north of Morocco in 1196. He studied in Fes. He set out across North Africa and into the Levant in the hope of finding the great living saint of his time (see Qutb). He started his journey in search of wisdom via Tunis[1] and finally arrived in Iraq. There a Sufi named al-Wasiti told him that he could find his Spiritual Master (Sheikh) in the country Abul Hasan had travelled from: ‘Abd al-Salam ibn Mashish, the great Moroccan spiritual master. Under his guidance, Abul Hasan attained enlightenment and proceeded to spread his knowledge across North Africa, especially in Tunisia and Egypt, where he is buried. He advocated a path of moderation in outward actions, concentrating instead on attaining sincerity through constant invocation, heartfelt petitions to God, and invocation of the Name, Allah. He died in 1258 in Humaithra, Egypt, while he was on his way to the pilgrimage in Mecca in 1258. Humaithara is between Marsa Alam and Aswan in Egypt and His shrine there is highly venerated.
When asked who his spiritual master was, he used to reply, ‘I used to be the close follower of ‘Abd al-Salam ibn Mashish, but I am no more the close follower of any human master.’ Shaykh Abul-Abbas al-Mursi (d. 1288), who succeeded Shaykh ash-Shadhili as the next spiritual master of the Order, was asked about the knowledge of his spiritual master and replied, ‘He gave me forty sciences. He was an ocean without a shore.’ He taught his close followers to lead a life of contemplation and remembrance of Allah while performing the normal everyday activities of the world. He disliked initiating any would-be follower unless that person already had a profession. His admonition to his close followers was to apply the teachings of Islam in their own lives in the world and to transform their existence.
A Translation from the Arabic of Ibn al-Sabbagh's Durrat al-Asrar wa Tuhfat al-Abrar by Elmer H. Douglas, Edition, introduction, and notes by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi, SUNY series in Islam, 1993