Being the written reply of a shaykh to a seeker’s letter concerning the BāʿAlawī way’s kinship to the Shādhuliyya, the Qādiriyya, and the path of Abū Madyan
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
The Question
A seeker wrote to his shaykh, seeking clarification, and asked:
“O my master, I have read that the Sādah BāʿAlawī are described, as some have said, that their bāṭin — the hidden work of the heart, the very substance of their sulūk — is Shādhulī? And if this is so, does the Shādhuliyya itself not stand upon some root deeper still, upon the path of Abū Madyan, and beyond him upon the Quṭb ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī? I do not ask this to multiply names upon names, my master, but because I wish to know: when a son of the BāʿAlawī house turns inward to seek his Lord, upon what single road does his heart in truth walk?”
The Answer of the Shaykh
The shaykh wrote in reply:
الفصل الأول: في ظاهرهم وباطنهم
I. On What Is Said of Their Ẓāhir, and What Is Said of Their Bāṭin
You have asked well, my son, for you have set the garment apart from the body. This is the first adab of one who seeks knowledge of the ṭarīqa: not to mistake the outward form for the inward reality, nor to think that because two paths wear different cloth in the sūq of this world, their hearts do not drink from the same spring.
Know, then, that the elders of the Sādah BāʿAlawī did not leave this matter to inference. They did not merely carry a chain of transmission from some Shādhulī shaykh among their forebears, as a man carries a coin in his pocket without ever spending it. They spoke of it plainly, as a description of what they themselves are and do. Their own Imām, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Bālfaqīh, said it thus:
غَزَالِيَّةُ الظَّاهِرِ، شَاذُلِيَّةُ الْبَاطِنِ
“Ghazālī in the ẓāhir; Shādhulī in the bāṭin.”
And he explained what he meant, saying:
فَظَاهِرُهُمْ مَا شَرَحَهُ الْإِمَامُ الْغَزَالِيُّ مِنَ الْعِلْمِ وَالْعَمَلِ عَلَى الْمَنْهَجِ الرَّشِيدِ، وَبَاطِنُهُمْ مَا أَوْضَحَتْهُ الشَّاذُلِيَّةُ مِنْ تَحْقِيقِ الْحَقِيقَةِ وَتَجْرِيدِ التَّوْحِيدِ
“Their ẓāhir is what Imām al-Ghazālī set out of ʿilm and ʿamal upon the rightly-guided path; their bāṭin is what the Shādhuliyya made plain: the realization of the Truth, and the stripping of tawḥīd to its essence.”1
What follows these words is not ornament but a description of the labor itself:
فَجُلُّ مُجَاهَدَتِهِمُ الِاجْتِهَادُ فِي تَصْفِيَةِ الْفُؤَادِ، وَالِاسْتِعْدَادُ لِلتَّعَرُّضِ لِنَفَحَاتِ الْقُرْبِ فِي طَرِيقِ الرَّشَادِ، وَالِاقْتِرَابُ إِلَى اللَّهِ بِكُلِّ قُرْبَةٍ فِي صُحْبَةِ أَهْلِ الرَّشَادِ
“So the greater part of their striving is the labor of polishing the heart, the readying of the self to stand in the way of the breaths of nearness upon the path of guidance, and the drawing near to God by every means of nearness, in the company of the people of guidance.”2
This is not a genealogy. It is a description of what the heart does when it prays, when it fasts, when it sits in dhikr. It is Shādhulī not because a certificate declares it, but because the labor itself, taṣfiyat al-fuʾād, the polishing of the heart, is the Shādhulī labor.
The BāʿAlawīs’ own manual of their uṣūl, al-Manhaj al-Sawī, written by their own Ḥabīb Zayn b. Ibrāhīm b. Sumayṭ, carries the same testimony, as a description of the ṭarīqa by its own people rather than a label placed upon them by strangers:
لَقَدْ كَانَتْ طَرِيقَةُ آلِ بَاعَلَوِي تَحْتَضِنُ الطُّرُقَ الْأُخْرَى وَتَتَأَدَّبُ مَعَهَا وَلَا تُنْكِرُ عَلَيْهَا بَلْ وَتَسْتَقِي مِنْ مَعَانِيهَا حَتَّى صَرَّحَ أَئِمَّتُهَا أَنَّهَا غَزَالِيَّةُ الظَّاهِرِ شَاذُلِيَّةُ الْبَاطِنِ
“The ṭarīqa of Āl BāʿAlawī opened its arms to the other paths and kept adab with them, and did not disown them; indeed it drank from their meanings, until its own imams declared, in plain speech, that it is Ghazālī in the ẓāhir and Shādhulī in the bāṭin.”3
الفصل الثاني: في أصل الشاذلية، ويد ابن مشيش، ويد أبي مدين، ولقائه بالجيلاني
II. On What Stands Behind the Shādhuliyya: the Hand of Ibn Mashīsh, the Hand of Abū Madyan, and the Meeting with the Quṭb al-Jīlānī
You may wonder, too, whether the Shādhuliyya itself stands upon nothing, like a house built on the face of water. Every river has a spring, my son, and the Shādhuliyya’s spring did not open from bare rock. Hear the hands through which it passed, one shaykh forming the next, as a potter’s hand forms one vessel before it forms another:4
ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī met Abū Madyan Shuʿayb → Abū Madyan formed ʿAbd al-Salām b. Mashīsh → Ibn Mashīsh formed Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhulī
It is written of this:
أَبُو مَدِينَ التِّلِمْسَانِيُّ أُسْتَاذُ وَشَيْخُ عَبْدِ السَّلَامِ بْنِ مَشِيشٍ، أُسْتَاذُ وَمُرَبِّي أَبِي الْحَسَنِ الشَّاذُلِيِّ شَيْخِ الطَّرِيقَةِ الشَّاذُلِيَّةِ
“Abū Madyan al-Tilimsānī was the teacher and shaykh of ʿAbd al-Salām b. Mashīsh, who was himself the teacher and spiritual formator of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhulī, master of the Shādhulī ṭarīqa.”
And of Abū Madyan himself, beyond what he gave to Ibn Mashīsh, it is written:
وَقَدِ الْتَقَى أَبُو مَدِينَ التِّلِمْسَانِيُّ بِسَيِّدِي عَبْدِ الْقَادِرِ الْجِيلَانِيِّ أَثْنَاءَ الْحَجِّ، وَأَثَّرَ كُلٌّ مِنْهُمَا فِي الْآخَرِ
“Abū Madyan al-Tilimsānī met Sayyidī ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī during the Ḥajj, and each left his mark upon the other.”
The two waters met, then, not by al-Shādhulī’s hand touching the Quṭb’s hand, for that meeting never happened, but by Abū Madyan’s hand touching both. He carried something of al-Jīlānī’s water into Ibn Mashīsh, who carried it into al-Shādhulī. It is also written how al-Shādhulī, seeking the Quṭb of his own age in Iraq, was told by the shaykh Abū al-Fatḥ al-Wāsiṭī: “Do you seek the Quṭb in Iraq, when the Quṭb is in your own country?” He returned home, and found Ibn Mashīsh waiting for him there.5
الفصل الثالث: في الطريق الواحد تحت الأثواب الكثيرة
III. On the Single Road Beneath the Many Cloaks
Let me draw this together plainly, then, for a true saying needs no heavy hand to hold it up.
The BāʿAlawīs did not merely inherit a Shādhulī certificate among their ancestors’ papers. Their own imams named their inward labor Shādhulī, the polishing of the heart, the breaths of nearness, the stripping of tawḥīd to its root, as a description of what their sulūk is, not as a decoration of what it once touched.
And that Shādhulī labor which they named does not float free upon the water like a leaf with no stem. It is held by a hand that was itself held by a hand: Ibn Mashīsh’s hand, which received from Abū Madyan’s hand, which had itself been touched, at the House of God during the Ḥajj, by the hand of the Quṭb ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī.
So when a son of the BāʿAlawī house turns his face outward, he wears the wide and courteous garment of the sharīʿa as al-Ghazālī taught it, open to every lawful path, disowning none. But when he turns his face inward, he does not scatter his heart among many roads. He walks one road, named by his own fathers, and that road does not begin with al-Shādhulī. It runs, hand to hand, back through him to a meeting at the House of God between two men whose names the ages have not let fall.
This is what I mean when I say they are singular in their bāṭin though generous in their ẓāhir.
Go, and God grant you tawfīq.
On the Sources Cited in This Treatise
- ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Bālfaqīh, in ʿAqd al-Yawāqīt al-Jawhariyya (attrib. al-ʿAydarūs b. ʿUmar al-Ḥabshī), vol. 1, p. 34, as reproduced in “عالم الصوفية… الفقيه المقدم ولد في حضرموت,” Jarīdat al-Nahār (Kuwait), 23 July 2014. annaharkw.com
- Continuation of the same passage in the same article (the description of taṣfiyat al-fuʾād, nafaḥāt al-qurb). Same source as note 1.
- Zayn b. Ibrāhīm b. Sumayṭ, al-Manhaj al-Sawī: Sharḥ Uṣūl Ṭarīqat al-Sādah Āl BāʿAlawī (Dār al-Fatḥ, Jordan, 6th printing, 1445 AH / 2024 CE), ISBN 978-9957-23-662-5. groups.google.com
- Nūr al-Dīn Abū Laḥya, Jamʿiyyat al-ʿUlamāʾ al-Muslimīn al-Jazāʾiriyyīn wa-l-Ṭuruq al-Ṣūfiyya wa-Tārīkh al-ʿAlāqa baynahumā (Dār al-Anwār), section “المطلب الأول: الطريقة القادرية.” aboulahia.com
- Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, Durrat al-Asrār wa-Tuḥfat al-Abrār, p. 22 — for the account of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhulī’s encounter with Abū al-Fatḥ al-Wāsiṭī in Iraq, cited via “المبحث الأول: التعريف بشيخ الطريقة الشاذلية.” dorar.net
