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This spiritual
succession or tradition is often represented as a tree, whose roots are in
revelation and whose twigs, leaves, and flowers correspond to the spiritual
methods or 'paths' (turuq), founded by the great spiritual master. The
branches of the tree represent the principal lines of succession, and are
sometimes to be interpreted historically, sometimes only symbolically. On
the root of the tree one can read the name Allah; above it, on the trunk,
is the name of the Archangel Gabriel (Jibril), who, in the Islamic
perspective is the divine instrument of revelation, and above this is the
name of Muhammad. At that point the trunk divides into two branches, which
bear the names respectively of the first and fourth caliphs (Abu Bakr and
Ali), since they were the first two mediators and masters of the Sufi
tradition.
These two branches
divide into many twigs, which bear the names of the earliest Sufis such as
Hasan al-Basri, Habib al-'Ajami and Sari as-Saqati. Following these come
the names of the greatest spiritual masters of the first Islamic centuries
such as Junayd, the great teacher of Sufi metaphysics, Dhu'n-Nun al-Misri,
the lover, and Abu Yazid al-Bistami, the absorbed in God. All of these
masters lived in the Islamic east, although Sufi mysticism appeared as the
'inner dimension' of Islam wherever Islam prevailed. From about the fourth
Islamic century onwards (the ninth century A.D.), the blossoms of mysticism
also appeared in the Far West, firstly in Spain and immediately thereafter
in the Maghrib, where the name Abu Madyan stands at the origin of a whole
segment of new twigs and leaves. This name appears at the top of the tree
at about the same level as other famous names from which henceforth almost
all subsequent spiritual orders spring.
The Spiritual
Succession Abu Madyan
For it was at that
time-the twelfth century A.D.-that there appeared 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani
in the Near East (his influence was to sweep across the whole Islamic
world); Mu'in ad-din Chishti in North India and, a little later, Jalal
ad-din Rumi in Asia Minor. From this time onwards the Sufi tradition became
organized in the form of spiritual orders or brotherhoods that took the
name of their founders.
Abu Madyan Shu'ayb was
born in Seville of Arab parents in 1126. He was orphaned at a tender age,
and was apprenticed to learn the weaver's craft. He fled from his brother's
house, however, with a view to quenching his thirst for knowledge. After
much wandering, he finally reached Fez, where he took instruction from
several of the masters of 'outward' and 'inward' science, while he made a
living from weaving. It was at this time that the works of al-Ghazali
reached Fez. The scholar Abu'l-Hasan ibn Harzihim (Harazem in Moroccan
dialect) condemned them publicly. During the following night he dreamt that
the author had com- plained about him to the Prophet and the first four
Caliphs and that he had been sentenced to so many blows with a whip. He
awoke and found whip- marks on his body. He withdrew his condemnation and
immersed himself in the writings he had proscribed. Thanks to Ibn Harzihim,
Abu Madyan became acquainted not only with al-Ghazali's Revivification of
the Religious Sciences, but also with the works of al-Muhasibi and other
Sufi masters...
Abu Madyan died at 1198
at 'Ubbad near Tlemsen, not far from the Moroccan border, His grave which a
mosque was built, has remained a leading place of pilgrimage . Text avaliable
The Way of Abu Madyan- Doctrinal and Poetic Works of Abu Madyan Shu'ayb ibn
al-Husayn al-Ansari
Two of Abu Madyan's
indirect disciples were to a lasting influence throughout the spiritual
world of Islam. The first was Arab Muhiyd din ibn Arabi was born in 1165 in
Murcia Spain and migrated via Fez, Bujaya and Tunsia to the Isalmic east.
Because of his unsurpassed metaphysical expositions he was called 'the
Great al-akbar' (ash-shaykh al-Abkar). The other was Abu'l-Hasan
ash-Shadhili, the founder of spiritual order (tariqah beraing his name,
Shadhiliyyah.
Muhyid-din Ibn Arabi
learns about Abu Madyan
Muhyid-din Ibn Arabi
grew up in Seville, when Abu Madyan, as an old man, still in Bujaya. Ibn
Arabi wrote ……. One day the master (Abu Yaqub ben Yakhlaf al-Qumi al-Abbasi
who had been a companion of Abu Madyan ) mounted his horse, and bade me and
one of my companions follow him to Muntabar , a mountain that was about an
hour's ride from Seville. As soon as the city gate was opened, my companion
and I set out on foot. My companion carried in his hand a copy of
al-Qushayris's Epistle, of which has I have said I knew nothing.
We climbed the mountain
and at the top we found our master , who with a servant, had gone ahead of
us. He tethered his horse, and we entered a mosque at the top of the
mountain in order to pray. After the prayer, we sat with our backs towards
the prayer-niche (mihrab). The master handed me Qushayri's Epistle and told
me to read from it. I was unable, however, to utter a single word. My awe
of him was so great that the book even fell from my hands. Then he told my
companion to read it, and he expounded on what was read until it was time
for the afternoon prayer, which we said.
Then the master said:
'Let us now return to town. He mounted his horse, and I ran alongside him,
holding on to his stirrup. Along the way he talked to me of the virtues and
miracles of Abu Madyan. I was all ears, and forgot myself entirely, keeping
my eyes fixed on his face the whole time. Suddenly he looked at me and
smiled and, spurring his horse, made me run even more quickly in order to
keep up with him.
I succeeded in doing
so. Finally he stopped, and said to me: 'Look and see what thou hast left
behind thee.' I looked back and saw that the way along which we had come
was full of thorn bushes that reached as high as my tunic, and that the
ground was also covered with thorns. He said: 'Look at thy feet!' I looked
at them and saw on them no trace of the thorns. 'Look at thy garments!' On
them too I found no trace. Then he said: 'That comes from the grace
engendered by our talking about Abu Madyan-may God be pleased with him-so
persevere, my son, on the spiritual path!' Thereupon he spurred his horse
and left me behind . . .
(Ruh al-Quds fi
munasahat al-nafs by Muhyidd-in Ibn Arabi) Muhyidd-in Ibn Arabi books .....
Ibn Society
Abu'l-Hasan
ash-Shadhili more on the life, At the beginning of the thirteenth century
of the Christian era, about twenty years after Muhyi'd-din Ibn 'Arabi had
left Fez for the east, the Moroccan Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn 'Abdallah, a scion
of the Hasanid branch of the Fatimids, who later achieved fame under the
name of Abu'l-Hasan ash-Shadhili, also migrated to the east in order to
seek the spiritual pole of his time. In Baghdad a Sufi informed him that
this pole was to be found in his own homeland, on Mount al-'Alam in the Rif
mountains. He therefore returned home, and found in the place described a
disciple of Abu Madyan, namely the spiritual master "Abd as-Salam ibn
Mashish:
Abdas-Salam ibn Mashish
more on the life.
As I approached his
place of refuge, which was a cave near the top of the mountain, I made a
halt at a spring which gushed forth a little beneath it. I washed myself
with the intention of casting off all my previous knowledge and actions,
then, as one completely poor, I made my way up to the cave. He came out
towards me, and when he saw me, he said: 'Welcome,"All, son of
"Abdallah, son of 'abd al-Jabbar . . .' and he named all my ancestors
right back to the Prophet, whom God bless and greet.
Then he said: 'O,
"Ali, thou comest up to me here as one poor in knowing and doing to
seek from me the riches of this world and the next.' I was smitten with
fear out of awe for him. Then I remained with him for a number of days,
until God opened my inward eye and I beheld wonders and things that far
exceeded the ordinary realm, and I experienced the goodness of God's grace
. . . One day, as I sat by my master, I said inwardly to myself:
'Who knows, perhaps my
master knows the Supreme Name of God.' At that moment the young son of the
master spoke from the depths of the cave: 'O Abu'l-Hasan, it is not a
question of knowing the Supreme Name of God, it is a question of being the
Supreme Name.' Thereupon the Shaykh said: 'My young son has seen through thee
and recognized thee!' (al-Anwar al-Qudusiya fi tariaq ash-shadhiliya
Muhammad Zafir al-Madani )
'Abdas-salam ibn
Mashish was murdered in 1228. His tomb on Mount al-'Alam, is a place of
pilgrimage to this day.
Only one text has come
down to us from Ibn Mashish, a metaphysical paraphrase of a widely known
prayer, in which the believer calls on God to bless the Prophet as if to
thank him for having received Islam through him. called
As-Salatul-Mashishiyyah Ibn Mashish sees in the historical Muhammad an
expression of the one Spirit from which all revelation comes and which is
the eternal mediator between the ungraspable Godhead and the world. This is
the Logos, the first manifestation of God and, as such.
His universal symbol as
well as His highest veil. By the very fact that in this way the Absolute
reveals itself in a relative and multiple fashion, it also conceals itself.
This eternal mediator is called the 'Muhammadan Spirit' (ar-Ruh
al-Muhammad), not because it is embodied only in Muhammad-for all God's
messengers and prophets manifest it-but because in the Islamic perspective
Muhammad is its most immediate expression. Divine Truth, the Sufis say, is
in itself unlimited and inexhaustible, so that every religious form in
which it deigns to clothe itself for the salvation of men can be no more
than one possible form amongst others.
Sufi mysticism is
predominantly founded on gnosis, and this finds expression in the saying of
Abu'l-Hasan ash-Shadhili: 'Know and be as thou wilt, he once said, and
meant by this that the man who has realized what he is before God can do
nothing else but act rightly. He taught his disciples to look on the world
with the eye of eternity:
'Attribute the actions
of creatures to God as Agent; this will bring no harm to thee; whereas it
will bring harm to thee if thou regardest creatures as the authors of their
actions.' The spiritual attitude corresponding to this angle of vision is
that of 'vacare Deo', unconditional self-abandonment to God: The servant
will not attain to God as long as he harbours any desire or ulterior
motive. If thou wouldst please God, renounce thyself and thine environment
and thy power over it. But this abandonment is not mere in-action: each
moment is a sword, if thou cuttest not with it, it will cut thee (i.e.
cause that moment to be lost for the remembrance of God).
(al-Anwar al-Qudusiya
fi tariaq ash-shadhiliya Muhammad Zafir al-Madani)
Shaykh Jazuli -author
of Dalail al Khayrat
toward the end of the
fifteenth century and begiinning of the sixteenth, Muahmmad Abu Abdullah
al-Jazuli a man from the far south of Morocco, founded a Shadhili order.
The order later played an important role in the defence of the Sus againest
the Portuguese, which is why the Saadians brought the body of the founder
to Marrakesh in order to inter it there. Al-Jazuli is famous throughout
Morocco to this day for his work 'The proofs of Goodness' (dalail
al-Khayrat), a collection of blessings on the Prophet in the form of a
litany in which Muhammad (peace be upon him) the receptacle of revelation,
appears as the summation of all positive and God reflecting aspects
creation. From the spiritual posterity of Al-Jazuli several spiritual
orders emerged whic hstill exist in Morocco today. The most popular is
undoubtedly the one found in Meknes towards the end of the sixteenth
cenutry by the Sharif Muhammad Ben Isa al-Mukhtari. Biographical Note of
Shaykh Jazuli
Abu'l-Hasan
ash-Shadhili inaugurated a spiritual method for the acquiring of spiritual
poverty and for the practising of it in the midst of worldly cares. Amongst
the disciples that came to him during his lifelong peregrination from the
Islamic West to the Islamic East, there were rich and poor, educated and
uneducated, government ministers and day labourers.
His first successor was
Abu'l-'Abbas al-Mursi, who lived in Egypt, and the one after that was the
famous Ahmad ibn Ata'illah of Alexandria, whose 'Spiritual Aphorisms'
(Hikam) became the breviary of almost everyone who followed the Sufi path,
whether in the Far West (Morocco) or the Far East (Java and Sumatra). Ibn
Ata'illah died in 1309. In addition to the Shadhili line of spiritual
masters who-like Ahmad az-Zarruq al-Bamussi, bom in Fez in 1441 and died in
Tripoli in 1493- expounded Sufi doctrine with logical precision, there were
always spiritual personalities who broke every rational framework, as if
they incorporated some secret essence of the doctrine which transcended
ordinary reason. One such was the master Ali as-Sanhaji, who lived in Fez
in the first half of the sixteenth century.
As-saqalli
The link with the
Islamic east was maintained by the pilgrims who travelled to Mecca. And
thus it occurred that eastern spiritual orders like the Qadiriyya, the
Khalwatiyya and the Naqshbandiyya spread to the Maghrib. In the middle of
the eighteenth century a Fez man, from the noble family of the Saqalli
brought the Naqshbandi spiritual method from Egypt to Fez.
Shaykh Ahmad at-Tijani
Towards the end of the
eighteenth century Mulay Ahmad at-Tijani, who had studied in Fez and then
lived for a long time in the east where he had contacts with the
Khalwatiyya, founded a new order which henceforth was to bear his name. His
doctrine and his method held the balance between the Sufi tradition and the
generally accepted theology. For this reason his order always lived on the
best terms with the ruling house. The principal centre of the order is 'Ayn
Madi in the south of Algeria, but the sepulchral mosque of the founder is
in Fez, in the al-Blida district, where it is easily recognizable by its
richly decorated doorway. Inside it is completely covered with blue and
green arabesque mosaics. For a long time the order dominated the caravan
routes through southern Algeria to the Sudan. It is well represented in
Black Africa, and one can often meet Sudanese Muslims who have come to Fez
to visit the tomb of the founder of the order.
other Tijani links
Shaykh al-'Arabi
ad-Darqawi
The pure Shadhili
tradition, which is representative of the earliest form of Sufism, was
revivified at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the
nineteenth century by Mulay al-'Arabi ad-Darqawi. His spiritual radiance
extended well beyond the Maghrib. He was descended from a Hasanid family
that lived amongst the Banu Zerwal, in the hills to the north-east of Fez.
As a young man he
studied in Fez, and it was here too that he met his spiritual master, the
Idrisid 'Alt al-Jamal, who roughly rebuffed him several times before
accepting him as his disciple. In one of his letters, Mulay al-'Arabi tells
how his master tested him by ordering him, a young scholar of noble
lineage, to carry a load of fresh fruit through the town:
The first lesson that
my master gave me was as follows:
he ordered me to carry
two baskets full of fresh through the town. I carried them in my hands, and
did not wish, as the others told me, to put them on my shoulders, for that
was unwelcomed to me, and consticted my soul, so that it became agitated
and fearful a d grieved beyond measure till I began to weep And, by God, I
still had to weep for all the shame, humillation, and scorn that I had to
undergo as a result. never before had my soul had to suffer such a thing,
so I was not conscious of its pride and cowardice.
I had not known whether
it was proud or not, since no professer, amongst all those that I had
frequented, had ever taught me about my soul. While I was in this state, my
master, who perceived my pride and my inner distress, came up to me, took
the two baskets from my hands, and placed them on my shoulders with the
words:'Distinguish thus between good and evil'.
Thereby he opended the
door for me and led me on the right way, for I learned to dicriminate
between the proud and the humble, the good and the bad, the wise and the
foolish, the orthodox and the heretical, between those who know and
translate their knowledge into deeds, and those who do not. From that
moment no orthdoxy person ever overpowered me with hiss orthdoxy, no
heretic with his heresy, no scholar with his knowledge, no pious man with
his piety, and no fasting man with his asceticism. For my master, may God
have mercy on him, had taught me to distinguish truth from vanity, and
wheat from chaff.( Rasil al-'Arabi ad-Darqawi)
Letters of a Sufi
Master The Shaykh ad-Darqawi sections of this book are available online
from here also the book can can be purchased from this link picture of a
Darqawi Muqaddam and a Darqawi Shaykh Ali Darqawi
One of the effects of
Divine Bounty, Grace, and Geerosity is that one finds the Master who can
grant spiritual education; without Divine Grace no one would find or
recognize him, since, according to the saying of the saint Abu'l Abbas
al-Mursi (may God be pleased with him): 'It is more difficult to know a
saint than to know God/ Again, in the Hikam of lbn "Ata'illah, it is
said: 'Exalted be He who makes His saints known only in order to make
Himself known and who leads towards them those whom He wishes to lead
towards Himself.'
The heart of man cannot
attach itself to the Divine Essence unless his ego has been effaced,
extinguished, destroyed, annihilated ... As the saint Abu Madyan has said:
'Whoever does not die, does not see God.' A the masters of our way have
taught the same. And take care that you do not think that it is the things
of the body and the soul that veil God from us. By God, what veils Him is
nothing other than illusion, and illusion is vain.
As the saint Ibn
"Ata'illah has said: 'God did not veil Himself from thee by some
reality coexisting with Him, since there is no reality other than He. What
veils Him from thee is naught but the illusion that some- thing outside Him
could possess any reality.' . . .
Know that the faqir can
only kill his soul when he has been able to se( its form, and he will only
see its form when he has separated himself from the world, from his
companions, from his friends, and from his habits. One faqir said to me:
'My wife has got the better of me.' To which I answered: 'It is not she but
your own soul that has got the better of you; we have no other enemy; if
thou couldst dominate thy soul, thou woulds dominate the whole world-not
merely thy wife.'
. . . The soul is
something immense; it is the whole cosmos since it is a copy of it.
Everything that is in the cosmos is in the soul and everything that is in
the soul is in the cosmos. Therefore, whoever masters his soul masters the
world, and whoever is mastered by his soul is mastered by the world. . . .
Spiritual intuition is
very subtle. It can only be fixed spatially by concrete symbols and
temporally by interior prayer (dhikr), holy company, and the breaking of
habits. . . .All things are hidden in their opposites-gain in loss, gift in
refusal, honour in humiliation, wealth in poverty, strength in weakness,
abundance in restriction, rising up in falling down, life in death, victory
in defeat, power in powerlessness, and so on. Therefore, if a man wish to
find, let him be content to lose; if he wish a gift, let him be content
with refusal; he who desires honour must accept humiliation, and he who
desires wealth must be satisfied with poverty; let him who wishes to be
strong be content to be weak; let him who wishes abundance be resignec to
restriction; he who wishes to be raised up must allow himself to be cas
down; he who desires life must accept death; he who wishes to conquer must
be content with impotence . . . (Rasa'il)
Shaykh Ahmed Al-alawi
Ahmed al-'Alawi is
Ahmed ibn Mustafa ibn 'Aliwa, Abu al-'Abbas al-'Alawi, born in Mostaghanem,
Algeria, in 1291/1874. He was a Sufi, Maliki scholar, Koranic exegete,
poet, and the sheikh and renewer of the Shadhili tariqa, of which he
founded the 'Alawi-Darqawi order that bears his name. His teachingstressed
the threefold nature of the Muslim religion (din) as mentioned in the
Gabriel hadith: Islam, represented by one's inward and outward submission to
therules of Sacred Law; true faith (iman), in the tenets of faith of Ahl
al-Sunna; and the perfection of faith (ihsan), in the knowledge of Allah
which the way ofSufism provides the means to. He authored works in each of
these spheres, though his most important legacy lay in the spiritual way he
founded, whichemphasized knowledge of Allah (ma'rifa) through the practice
of solitary retreat (khalwa) under the supervision of sheikh, and the
invocation (dhikr) of theSupreme Name.
Europeans visited the
sheikh, but some who met him later wrote works that tried to assimilate him
to a sort of perennialist philosophy thatwould consider all religious
traditions as valid and acceptable reflections but a single truth,
substituting traditional spirituality versus modern materialism for
Islamversus unbelief. The sheikh's own works emphatically deny their
philosophy, and the reason Allah afficted them with it would seem to be
that they did notremain with the sheikh long enough to absorb his state or
become as he was, a follower of the way of the prophets and purified ones,
rather taking theiraffiliation with him as a means to legitimize opinions
they had from the first and were unwilling to ever relinquish, remaking the
master, as it were, in their own image.
The true measure of a
spiritual way, however, does not lie in books produced by writers, in the
wrong or in the right, but in hearts it opens to knowledgeof divine
realities conveyed by prophetic revelation, and in the Sheikh Ahmed
al-'Alawi, whose order has spread to the farthest reaches of the Muslim
world, certainly stands as on of the greatest Sufi masters of Islamic
history. He died in Mostaghanem in 1353/1934.
The Life of the Shaikh
Ahmad Al-Alawi By Himself Translation and commentary by Martin Lings in his
book A Sufi Saint of the twentieth century - Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi - his
Spiritual heritage and Legacy. (Chapter, Seen from within) the full book
can be purchased from this link ...Picture of Shaykh Al-Alawi 1 &
Shaykh al-Alawi 2
The main text was taken
from this book called Fez, City of Islam
Pasred From :
http://sajadaliuk.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-golden-chain-of-shadhiliyyah.html
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