Abu Madyan al-Ghawth

The singular gnostic Abu Madyan Shu'ayb b. al-Husayn al-Andalusi, shaykh of the people of the Maghrib; he settled at Tlemcen, a man of works and striving, unmatched in worship and devotion, far-famed — Shaykh Muhyi al-Din Ibn 'Arabi calls him the shaykh of shaykhs. ¹

Men of merit took their formation from him, such as Abu 'Abdallah al-Qurashi, and many verifying scholars and virtuous men of excellence reached him, Ibn 'Arabi among them. The sultan of the Maghrib summoned him; reaching Tlemcen he dismounted, faced the qibla, recited the tashahhud and said "Here I come, here I come — I hasten to You, Lord, to please You," and died. He was buried in the cemetery of the worshippers nearing eighty; his grave there is a well-known shrine. He died in 590. ¹

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) entry, signed by G. Marcais in the printed text, describes Shu'ayb b. al-Husayn al-Andalusi, known as Abu Madyan, as a famous Andalusian mystic. He was born about 520/1126 at Cantillana, near Seville, into a modest family, and learned the trade of weaver before he turned to the Qur'an and went to North Africa to complete his education. At Fez he was the disciple of ascetic masters, among them Abu Ya'azza al-Hazmiri, 'Ali b. Hirzihim and al-Dakkak, who gave him the khirqa; his real initiator into mysticism seems to have been Abu Ya'azza. With his permission he went to the East, where he absorbed the tradition of al-Ghazali, and he may have met 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani at Mecca. ²

He returned to the Maghrib and settled at Bougie, where his teaching and his life were admired. The Almohad caliph Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur summoned him to Marrakesh, probably wary of such religious prestige outside the Almohad movement. Falling ill within sight of Tlemcen, he died there in 594/1197 and was buried, as he asked, at al-Ubbad, a village outside Tlemcen which ascetics already frequented. ²

His surviving writings are a few mystical poems, a wasiyya (testament) and an 'aqida (creed), so his place rests on the memory kept by his disciples and on the maxims attributed to him, which praise asceticism, renunciation, humility and absolute trust in God. The article says that he was not original in mysticism, but that his success came from a synthesis of influences that his hearers could understand, adapting the moderate Sufism of al-Ghazali to the mentality of the North African believer; R. Brunschvig is quoted for this. Hagiographies attribute miracles to him, and Tlemcen adopted him as patron. His tomb became the centre of a complex at al-Ubbad, including a mosque (737/1339) and a madrasa (747/1347) built by the Marinid sultan Abu l-Hasan. ²