Ibn Arabi’s Sheikh Abu Madyan Shuayb and His Life and Works and Circle of Effective

The man who was to become the most influential figure of the developmental period of Maghrib ‎Sufism, Abu Madyan Shu’ayb ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari, who was called by latter biographers the ‎‎“Shaykh of Shaykhs, Imam of the Ascetics and the Pious, Lord of the Gnostics nd Exemplarof the ‎Seekers”. He born around the year 509/1115-16 at the fortress of Castillana in the region of ‎Sevile. He ataached himself to the Study circle and zawiya Ali ibn Hirzihim and Abu’l-Hasan Ali ibn ‎Khalaf ibn Ghalib al-Qurashi and Abu Abdallah ad-Dakkak. Abu Madyan’s sufi master was Abu ‎Ya’za Yalannur ibn Maymun ad-Dukkali. Eventually, Abu Madyan became a semi-official ‎spokesman for Abu Ya’za and head of the latter’s zawiya in the city of Fez. Upon completing his ‎Religious Studies and spiritual training, he moved to Bijaya. His fame was great enough for him ‎to be called “Shaykh of Shaykhs” by the local populace and he has got more than one thousand ‎individuals. Almohad Caliph Ya’qub al-Mansur would be summoned to Marrakesh İn order to ‎answer. On his journey, the shaykh succumded to old age and illness not far frm the city of ‎Tlemcen and was buried at al-‘Ubbad.‎

Keywords

Abu Madyan, Maghrib, Morocco, Almohad, Sufism, Abu Ya’za, Fez, Bijaya, Tlemcen, Ibn al-Arabi