Abu 'Ali Husayn, the shape-shifter Sufi of Bulaq

Abu ʿAli Husayn al-Sufi, buried on the Bulaq shore. Al-Manawi, in his "Tabaqat," says that he was a master of transformations, a complete Sufi and a shaykh of all kinds of gentleness and perfection, of handsome appearance, showing the marks of sainthood in full. He often changed form: a visitor would find him as a lion, then another would find him as a soldier, then another as a peasant or an elephant, and so on. Others said that changing form was his constant practice, by night and by day, even in the form of beasts of prey and cattle.

His enemies came to kill him, cut him down with swords at night, and threw him on a distant heap. In the morning they found him standing and praying in his lodge. He stayed in seclusion in a field outside the Bab al-Bahr gate for forty years, eating and drinking nothing. The door of the seclusion was built closed, with only an opening through which air came in, and people said that he practised alchemy and magic. Afterwards he came out and displayed marvels and extraordinary acts. Whenever someone asked him for something, he would bring it out of the air and give it to him. His followers would take in the sons of the Nammus and raise them, and they came to be called the Nammusiyya. Qaytbay had some of them executed when they became ecstatic and uttered what contradicted the law. This is the end of al-Manawi's account ¹.

He died around 891 AH ¹.