ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qināʾī (d. 592/1196), a sayyid (descendant of the prophet Muḥammad) from northern Morocco, was one of the spiritual teachers who settled in Ayyūbid Egypt and helped firmly re-establish Sunnism and Ṣūfism in that country. According to al-Udfuwī (d. 748/1347), the…
Dhawq means “taste” in the literal and figurative senses. In the Qurʾān, the damned “taste” punishment, and, in the Sunna, the believers “taste” the sweetness of faith. Philosophers and physicians endeavour to explain the physiology of taste and what can alter it. It is within Ṣ…
ʿAbdallāh Badr al-Ḥabashī al-Yamanī (d. 618/1222) was a Ṣūfī and a highly esteemed disciple of the illustrious Andalusian-born Ṣūfī master Ibn ʿArabī (d. 637/1240). Al-Ḥabashī was a freedman (muʿtaq) of Abū l-Ghanāʾim b. Abī l-Futūḥ al-Ḥarrānī and had already reached a mature ag…
The life and deeds of Abū Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ b. Yanṣāran b. Ghafiyyan al-Dukkālī al-Mājirī (550–631/1155–1234) are inscribed in a triple spatial and cultural context—the Moroccan south, the Magrib of the Almohad period, and the relations of the Maghrib with the Ayyūbid Middle Ea…
Abū Madyan Shuʿayb (d. 589/1193 or 594/1198, near Tlemcen) was a Ṣūfī from the region of Seville, who settled in Fez at the end of the era of the Almoravids (r. 454–541/1062–1147). He still influences the western Muslim world, with his synthesis of Maghribī and Andalusian spir…
Abū l-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Uqṣurī (d. 642/1244) was a Ṣūfī shaykh and is one of the best known popular figures in Upper Egypt. A native of Luxor (al-Aqṣurayn), he was the disciple, in the late sixth/twelfth century, of two Maghribī masters, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm in…
