Sufism reaffirmed itself in a decisive fashion in the seventh/ thirteenth century, which allowed the works of Ibn 'Arabī (d. 638/ 1240) and the new Sufi orders of the day to come to the fore. The political and dynastic readjustments made in both the East and the West of the Islamic world provided a new social framework or political state of affairs within which Sufism could exert a revitalizing spirit within the community as a whole. In the West the end of the Almohades gave rise to several dynastic regimes. Under one of these, the Hòafids of Tunis, the Shādhilī Order of Sufism began its existence. ¹ In the middle of the century, the Ayyūbid power in the East disintegrated and there came upon the scene the great Mamlūk state. The Mamlūks stopped the westward march of the Mongols and transplanted to Cairo the caliphal institutions that had been eradicated by the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 656/ 1258, some months before the death of the founder of the Shādhiliyyah, the Imam Abu'l-Hòasan al-Shādhilī. His order would flower under the Mamlūks in Egypt and elsewhere in the Near East in the latter part of that century. But the origins of the Shādhiliyyah were in the same Maghrib (Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and parts of Libya) that saw so many other great manifestations of the Sufi way of life. More or less contemporaneous with the founder of the Shādhilī Order were such luminaries as Abū Madyan Shu'ayb al-Maghribī (d. 594/ 1197), Ibn 'Arabī (d. 638/ 1240), ' Abd al-Salām ibn Mashīsh (d. 625/ 1228), Ibn Sab'īn (d. 669/ 1271), and al-Shushtarī (d. 688/ 1270), just to mention a few.

The role of the Maghrib in the spiritual life of Islam prior to the seventh/ thirteenth century remains a largely unstudied question, ² but its role after that epoch seems clear enough. Practically all of the previously mentioned Sufis wound up in the East. The Shādhilīs themselves, after their initial start in the Maghrib, put out new roots in the East in the very lifetime of the founder. For centuries after, down to the present day, the order would furnish a steady stream of shaykhs moving from the Maghrib to the eastern or other parts of the Islamic world. The brilliance of the personalities and schools of the seventh/ thirteenth century makes us aware of the eastward migration of Sufism almost as if it had suddenly begun in that time. The paucity of records for the period from the third/ninth to the sixth/twelfth centuries accounts in part for the lack of historical studies of Maghribī Sufism in the early days. But also the concentration of attention on the eastern types of Sufism has stymied the understanding of what actually took place in Maghribī Sufism prior to the days of Ibn al-'Arīf (d. 536/ 1143). ³ The foundations of Sufism in the Maghrib came, of course, from the East, as did Islam. Yet the peculiar genius of Islam in the West, its life-style, its calligraphic art, its mosque architecture, and the lucidly crystalline nature of its urban architecture--to say nothing of its Mālikism--existed from the very early generations of Islam. These general traits were reinforced when, with the rise of the Abbasids in the second/ eighth century, the West cut itself off from the East and began to develop organically in its own fashion. It was in such an ambiance that Shādhilism arose in the seventh/ thirteenth century.

In the history of Islam, there are numerous Sufi types. The universality of the Sufi tradition balks at any attempt to reduce it to a single, controllable pattern. Nominalistic and antinomian Sufism have always coexisted. Over the centuries, however, there has emerged a type of Sufi master who embodies in his person what one could call "normative Sufism." This Sufi is characterized by a kind of spiritual sobriety, so to speak, that excludes all flamboyance and singularity. While his mind is fixed on the Real (al-Hòaqq), he affirms nevertheless the relative validity of both the Law and the dogmas of Islam. Such a Sufi tends to be self-effacing and to pass unnoticed by ordinary Muslims. It is he who is the characteristic flower of Sufism and the one who typifies the contemplative path throughout the centuries. Altogether of a different stamp is al-Hòallāj (d. 309/ 922), who is well known outside the Islamic world but who can in no way be considered as embodying the normative Sufi typology before or after his time. ⁴ The agonies, the persecutions, and the eventual martyrdom on the gibbet of this great Sufi saint contrast with the absence of all drama and pathos in the lives of the Sufis who follow the usual way. It is this normative Sufism, nevertheless, that furnishes the real measure of the spiritual path in Islam. That is the kind of Sufism that characterizes the founder of the Shādhiliyyah, who nonetheless exercised a tremendous influence on the world around him and, through his order (or his Tòarīqah, "spiritual path," "Sufi order"), on the history of Islam.

He was born in the region of Ghumārah, near present-day Ceuta, in northern Morocco, in the year 593/1197, at a time when the Almohades had reached the end of their vigor. ⁵ A sharīf of Hòasanid descent, he was a Mālikī who wandered far afield in search of knowledge. Immensely learned, even as a young man, he was famous for his ability to engage in legal argumentation with the religious scholars of his day. It was in a hermitage on top of Jabal al-'Alam, near Tetuan, that he met the shaykh who was to have the greatest influence on his life, ' Abd al-Salām ibn Mashīsh (d. 625/ 1228), subsequently known as "the Pole of the West," just as 'Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/ 1166) would be called "the Pole of the East." Remaining with his master for a while, Abu'l-Hòasan then departed for Shādhilah, in Tunisia, on orders from his teacher; and from there he received the name of al-Shādhilī. After intense spiritual exercises in the Jabal Zaghwan region, he was ordered in a vision to teach Sufism.

Accordingly, he set up his first zāwiyah in Tunis in the year 625/ 1228, just when the new governor and future founder of the Hòafids, Abū Zakariyyā', arrived there too. His new tarīqah was a stunning success, drawing masses of people from all walks of life, including the sultan's family. On one of his trips to the East, an Ayyūbid sultan conferred on him and his descendants, by way of a religious endowment, one of the enormous towers that arose from the walls formerly encompassing the city of Alexandria in Egypt. In the year 642/ 1244, the shaykh, once again in obedience to a vision, left the Maghrib for the last time and, accompanied by other Sufi shaykhs and many of his own disciples, moved to Alexandria, where he established both his residence and the zāwiyah of his order in the tower the Ayyūbid sultan had given him. On the top floor he lived with his family; another floor was converted into a tremendous mosque where he gave public instruction; and yet another floor was turned into a great zāwiyah for his disciples, with cells for meditational retreat. In Egypt, likewise, his order met with great success, drawing into its ranks many court officials, great religious scholars like 'Izz al-Dīn ibn 'Abd al-Salām (d. 660/ 1262) or the Shāfi 'ī traditionist al-Mundhirī (d. 656/ 1258), a host of Sufi figures, and individuals from different levels of society. In the year 646/ 1248, he became blind, and it was in that state that he participated, in his own way, in the Battle of al-Manhūrah in Egypt, which stopped the Seventh Crusade headed by Saint Louis of France, one of the few instances in history where saints in opposing armies actually clashed without knowing of one another's presence. Shortly before Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan started on his last pilgrimage to Mecca, the city of Baghdad fell to the conquering Mongols, thus ending the long reign of the Abbasids there and ushering in a new epoch in the history of Islam. The shaykh was accompanied by a mass of his disciples; but he fell ill in the eastern desert of Egypt, in a place called Hòumaythirah, and there he died in the year 656/ 1258.

The shaykh never composed any books or treatises on Sufism, but he did compose litanies (ahòzāb, pl. of hòizb), which are prayers of a mystical origin containing Quranic formulations as well as particular Sufi inspirations. ⁶ These were immediately diffused throughout the Islamic world. Since then, they have become some of the most widely used litanies in Islam and are considered to possess special graces. They have names that he or others gave to them, such as Hòizb al-bahòr (Litany of the Ocean) or Hòizb al-anwār (Litany of Lights), and the like. Well over a dozen of them are famous and have been glossed by eminent Sufi teachers of later times. They are said to possess certain theurgical properties, and the shaykh claimed that he received them from the mouth of the Prophet in visions. Their fundamental teaching has to do with the Oneness of Allah (tawhòīd) and the spiritual consequences that flow there from in the soul of the believer. Both mystical and nonmystical Muslims can find their own levels within the litanies, and that is no doubt why they have been so popular over the centuries. But apart from that pedagogical function, they seem to have been used by the early and later Shādhilīs as themes of meditation on death, the hereafter, purification, vigilance, detachment, patience, and the Attributes of God. We read in one Sufi text that they were used three times a day--in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening--which implies that they functioned as part of the Shādhilī methods of concentrating the mind on the Divinity. It was perhaps in relation to these meditations that the other compositions by the shaykh, the dawā'ir (pl. of dā'irah, "circle"), are to be situated. These were geometric representations, generally of circles within squares or vice versa, containing Quranic verses or Divine Names or the names of the archangels, which seem to have been used as visual supports of meditation. The same dawā'ir had theurgical functions too, as protective amulets and talismans, and the shaykh prescribed them for some of his disciples. They were transmitted by later Shādhilīs through a regular chain of authorities going back to the founder of the order. The Shādhilī biographer, Ibn 'Iyādò, in his al-Mafākhir al-'Aliyyah ( Lofty Glorifications) gives examples of these dawā'ir. A considerable amount of the material found in the cosmological work called Shams al-āfāq fī 'ilm al-hòurūf wa 'l-awfāq (The Sun of the Horizons concerning the Science of Letters and Harmonies) by 'Abd al-Rahòmāan al-Bustòāmī (d. 858/ 1454), goes back to Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan through one of his greatest disciples, Shaykh Abul-'Azā'im, who died in Tunis at the age of 116 (718/ 1318). The cosmology in question is purely esoteric and related to the Divine Names of Allah and a number of disciplines, such as alchemy and astrology, in their symbolic meanings. This cosmological, talismanic, and theurgical development of the dawā'ir, in conjunction with the symbolism of the Arabic letters, must not be confused with either black magic (al-sihòr al-aswad), which is sorcery, or with white magic (al-sihòr al-abyadò), which is more positive in nature, to be sure, but is still not of a purely theurgical characteristic, for this has spiritual graces and blessings as its fruits. Moreover, all of this constitutes a secondary development of the symbolism of the dawā'ir anyway, a kind of popular extension of what must have had meditational values or higher meanings for Sufi adherents.

The tòarīqah that Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan established was based on the metaphysical and spiritual contents of the Islamic doctrine of the absolute Oneness of Allah (tawhòīd). The goal of his path was the gnostic realization of Allah, gnosis (ma'rifah) implying perfect wisdom and sanctity of soul in the contemplative. The ma'rifah he preached reposed on simple faith, on the strictures of the Law (Sharī'ah), and on the dogmatic formulations of Ash'arism as regards creed ('aqīdah). Although the gnosis in question also had cosmological implications in a spiritual sense, it was in no way enshrouded in the complex philosophical notions of wahòdat al-wujūd ("Oneness of Being") propounded by Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan's contemporary, Ibn 'Arabī (d. 638/ 1240), ⁷ although the Shādhilī masters defended the Shaykh al-Akbar against his detractors, particularly against Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728/ 1328), the Hòanbalī canonist of later times. Moreover, the tawhòīd taught by Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan carried with it the implication of "remembering God" (dhikru'Llāh), or the invocation of the Divine Name Allāh, the prime spiritual art of concentration in Sufism. The two, tawhòīd and dhikr, constituted the essential pillars of his way, the former with respect to doctrine, the latter with respect to spiritual methodology. Yet it was not in these two elements that one can discern a difference between his Sufi order and the others of his day or earlier: they were all more or less based on the same Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet, on the same Islamic teachings and practices as seen from an esoteric viewpoint, varying only in emphases or accents and applications. True, the gnostic teachings of the Shādhiliyyah set them apart from the orders that stressed devotionalism and asceticism carried to great lengths; but there were, of course, other orders of the day, such as the Qādiriyyah, the Suhrawardiyyah, and the like, that were gnostic also and that approached things from an intellectual, not an emotional or sentimental, attitude. ⁸

Rather, it was in the external self-effacement of the early Shādhilīs that we must look for differences and contrasts with other Sufi communities of the times. The Shādhilī Order was not discernible from the outside. Although its masters gave public lectures on taṣawwuf from time to time, which made their presence in a given locality obvious, the members of the order, the rank and file, were not distinguishable from the generality of Muslims. In the days of Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan, a number of his disciples became eminent shaykhs in Tunisia and elsewhere in the Maghrib. All of them had disciples, as one can well imagine; but their tracks in history cannot be pinpointed because they had no visible signs of adherence to the Shādhiliyyah. If we did not know through one of the biographical accounts of the early masters of the order that the Sultan al-Malik Mu'izz al-Dīn (d. 655/ 1257) had been a disciple of Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan, there would have been no way of discovering this either from the practices of the sultan or from his external garb.

Likewise, the zāwiyahs of the order were nowhere obvious, the masters very often holding forth in their own homes, as did Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan himself when he founded his path in Tunis or when he later moved to one of the towers of the wall surrounding Alexandria. For the zāwiyahs of the Shādhilīs had none of the semi-official characteristics of the imposing khānqāhs built by the rulers of the day for the other Sufi orders. In a similar effort toward discretion, the fuqarā' of the order wore no distinctive garments, such as the khirqah or the muraqqa'ah, which were the coarse, patched-up woolen garments of the other orders. They had no bowl or staff, nor did they lead wandering, eremitical lives as mendicants. Quite the contrary, they dressed like all other Muslims did; and some of them, like the founder of the order himself, very often wore magnificent clothing, so that more than one ascetic would have reason to wonder if he were in the presence of a genuinely spiritual person or not. Their garments reflected the particular social class to which they belonged, whether it was that of a shoemaker, a doctor of the Law, a minister, a professor, or some other group. There was a reason for that effacement of the faqīr in the professional world around him: the rule of the early Shādhilīs was that all members of the order must gain their livelihood through the exercise of a trade or a profession. They were not to flee from the world to lead a contemplative life as recluses; rather, they followed the contemplative life in the very midst of society, in their actual professions or trades. Those disciples who had no means of livelihood were frowned upon. All in all, the Shādhilī way was a kind of remanifestation of the tawhòīd or dhikr of the early Islamic community in the time of the Prophet, when there were no distinguishing marks among the Muslims that separated the contemplatives from the faithful who followed a life of action: the inner life of the Spirit was accentuated, while externally everyone seemed to follow his own particular calling in the world. It is for this reason that the historical traces of the Shādhilīs in early times are practically impossible to track down in Spain, Morocco, Algeria, and elsewhere, unless one already knows in advance the names of certain masters or of their disciples.

Shortly before he passed away, in 656/ 1258, Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan designated Abu'l-'Abbās al-Mursī as his successor in the order. The latter was born in Murcia, Spain, in the year 616/1220, the same city that witnessed the births of Ibn 'Arabī and Ibn Sab'īn, this last coming into the world only a few years before al-Mursī himself. At the age of around twenty-four, al-Mursī set out for the pilgrimage to Mecca with his family, but his ship foundered off the Algerian coast. He lost his parents in the calamity, and he narrowly escaped death by swimming to shore with his brother. After wandering for a while in North Africa, they finally encountered Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan and joined his order. Shortly afterward, in the year 642/ 1244, the shaykh moved the center of his tòarīqah from Tunis to Alexandria. In Egypt, al-Mursī proved to be what the shaykh had anticipated and became a teacher of the path himself. After Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan's death, in 656/ 1258, al-Mursī moved into the great tower that the founder of the Shādhiliyyah had used as residence, mosque, and zāwiyah, and remained there until his death ( 686/ 1288) some thirty years later, seldom moving out to travel about in Egypt. Whereas Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan al-Shādhilī had no compunction of mind in mingling with the officials of state in his days, if he felt that some just cause could be served thereby, Shaykh Abu'l-'Abbās al-Mursī was made of a different cloth altogether and would have nothing to do with officials of any kind, refusing all provisions or stipends offered him by the Mamlūks. Occasionally, he ventured forth to Cairo, like his teacher, to lecture on taṣawwuf before the principal religious scholars of his day, but in general he occupied himself with the affairs of the Tòarīqah until his death. Also like his master, he wrote no books or treatises on Sufism and considered all such works to be nothing but foam cast up on the shores of the infinite ocean of spiritual realization; but, like his teacher, he did compose ahòzāb, some of which are still in circulation. Perhaps the most widely known of his disciples in the Islamic world at large is the legendary al-Būṣīrī (d. 694/ 1295), the Egyptian poet of Berber origins who is famous for his two great poems in praise of the Prophet, the "Mantle Poem" (al-Burdah) and the Hamziyyah, both of which are recited every year on the Prophet's birthday. The other great Sufi disciples of al-Mursī are not well known in the Islamic world, but they play an important role in Near Eastern Sufism. Among them is Shaykh Yāqūt al-'Arshī (d. 732/ 1332), the Alexandrian teacher of Abyssinian origins whom Ibn Batòtòūtòah visited in 725/ 1325 during his travels in the East. Still another was the incomparable Shaykh Najm al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (d. 721/ 1321), the Persian disciple of al-Mursī, whose long residence at Mecca spread the Shādhilī Order among the pilgrims. He was the Shādhilī teacher of the Sufi al-Yāfi'ī (d. 768/ 1367), and it was through the latter that the Shī''ite Sufi order of the Ni'matu'llāhiyyah is connected with the Shādhiliyyah. Finally, there was Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh (d. 709/ 1309), who is the third eminent Shādhilī master in most of the chains of transmission for the order, but who is also the first of the early teachers to write down the doctrines of the order in books that have since become indispensable for understanding the perspectives of the Shādhiliyyah in those days.

Shaykh Abu'l-'Abbās al-Mursī's long tenure as guardian over the affairs of the Shādhiliyyah was contemporaneous with the reign of al-Malik al-Zòāhir Baybars ( 658/ 1260-676/ 1277), who brought the Mamlūks to the pinnacle of power and success in Egypt and Syria. The time for a fresh outpouring of Sunni Islam was at hand. The old caliphal seat at Baghdad was transferred by him to Cairo in 659/ 1261, converting Egypt into the prestigious center of the Islamic community. Then, turning his attention to Sunnism, he consecrated the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence as having equal voice with the ruler, thus sounding the death knell for other schools, such as the Zòāhirī and the Shī'ite. He crushed once and for all the power of the so-called Assassins (the Ismā'īlīs) of the Near East; he regained numerous lands from the Christians of the Levant; and, by reuniting Egypt and Syria, he laid the foundations for the brilliant Mamlūk cultural manifestations in the arts and architecture that were to have such lasting influences in the region. But the Mamlūks were also the patrons of Sufism, and it was in that regenerated sociopolitical atmosphere that the influence of the early Shādhilī masters made itself felt on the world around them.

The early Shādhilīs were concerned not only with the teachings and practices of Sufism but also with the Law of Islam and the creedal forms of belief, or with what is usually called exoteric Islam. They were Sunni Muslims, and, although Sufism as such has nothing to do with theological dogmatism, they nevertheless tended to favor the Ash'arite school of theology, one of the important currents of creedal formulations in Islam. But the Ash'arism they adhered to was perhaps not quite the same as that preached by Abu'l-Hòasan al-Ash'arī (d. 324/ 935), since by the seventh/ thirteenth century other great figures, such as al-Ghazzālī (d. 505/ 1111), had added their own contributions to the school, changing its nature somewhat. When all is said and done, Ash'arism was not too far removed from the rather strict system of beliefs embodied in Hòanbalism. Ash'arism allowed for a limited use of reasoning, whereas the Hòanbalī school of thought rejected all speculative theology and defended its particular interpretations of the Quran through a powerful display of dogmatic voluntarism. Although the Shādhilīs of those days were Ash'arites, this does not mean that their Sufism was Ash'arite dogmatism, nor does it mean that they themselves were dogmatists. In the eyes of the early teachers, Ash'arism was perhaps a better approach to the articles of belief than Hòanbalism. But they did not require their disciples to be Ash'arites, nor can their Sufism be reduced to a merely theological program of studies. Thus, the fact that Abu'l-'Abbās al-Mursī studied the Irshād of Imam al-Hòaramayn al-Juwaynī (d. 478/ 1085), the Shāfi 'ī theologian of Ash'arite inspiration, because it contained theology (uṣūl al-dīn), must not mislead us into thinking that Ash'arism was an indispensable element of his tòarīqah.

In many ways, the Shādhilī path was a reform in the spiritual and religious sense of that word. It was not an iconoclastic or puritanical reform that brutally sought to destroy the external institutions of Islam in the name of a return to the ways of the pious ancestors (salaf). But in its own way it did point an accusatory finger at the exaggerated formalism and literalism of the exoteric Islam of those days, just as it also had something to say against the armies of ascetics and wandering fuqarā', who moved under the banners of Sufism and who could not all be sincere treaders of the path, to say the least. Perhaps out of all the great Sufi orders that saw the light of day in the seventh/ thirteenth century, the Shādhiliyyah most conformed not simply to normative Sufism, in the sense previously defined, but also to normative Islam, if only because the Shādhilī initiates, unlike those of other orders, never stood out in the midst of the faithful and could thus easily pass unperceived more or less like the early Muslim contemplatives of Umayyad times, when Islam was still pristine and fresh.

Although Sufism in its Shādhilī guise represents the spiritual path (tòarīqah), it is worth recalling that early Shādhilism was based on the Mālikī school of jurisprudence, and this association between the two would continue largely undisturbed down to the present day. Not only was the founder of the order a Mālikī, but the Maghrib, in which Shādhilism first saw the light of day, was a vast region stretching from Spain to the Libyan desert near Egypt that was uniformly Mālikī in coloration. Although it is not surprising that the origins of Shādhilism, in Tunis, were under the governance of Mālikism, it may come as a surprise to learn that the second center of the order, Alexandria, was likewise a stronghold of Mālikī jurisprudence in Egypt. The city of Alexandria was then second in importance only to Cairo. It was a port city on the Mediterranean, a point of entrance to and exit from Egypt. It was also a great fortress, with immense walls--a double series of them, to be exact--surrounding it, giant towers arising from them at regular intervals. We have already seen that, in one of those towers, Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan al-Shādhilī established his home and zāwiyah. In the Mamlūk period, those towers would often serve as places of confinement for persons deemed to be troublemakers; thus, Ibn Taymiyyah spent some time in one of them, although under comfortable conditions of exile. Alexandria was also a trading mart; Christian merchants and consuls from distant lands had their quarters there; and, indeed, within the symmetrically laid out streets (a plan that was peculiar to the city), a tremendous amount of commercial activity was always going on.

Mālikism was firmly implanted in the city precisely because it was the meeting-place between the West of the Islamic community and the East, and had been for centuries. In the course of time, many Maghribīs had settled in the city and brought with them their Mālikism. A flourishing colony of Muslims from the Maghrib was to be found there, and inevitably influences from both the East and the West joined forces within its walls. The Ayyūbids built madrasahs in the city for the teaching of Mālikism, and great authorities in the madhhab were to be found in the city, some of whom, like Ibn al-Hòājib (d. 646/ 1248) or Ibn al-Munayyir (d. 683/ 1285), were actually disciples of Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan al-Shādhilī. A young Mālikī would begin as a boy with the Quranic school (the maktab), and then go on afterward to a local religious college (madrasah) or to the private home of an Alexandrian religious scholar for further instruction. Like the other schools of jurisprudence, Mālikism had developed its own manuals and textbooks over the centuries, and these formed the fundamental core of instruction. All of the early Shādhilī masters--and this holds true even for the later ones--had studied their Mālikī jurisprudence from such works, and a number of them, including Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan himself, were past masters of Islamic Law. Moreover, as was previously mentioned, some of the eminent authorities of Mālikism were influenced by the early Shādhilī teachers; thus, the famous Mālikī faqīh, Ibn al-Hòājj (d. 737/ 1337), the author of the Madkhal, knew Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh quite well, and he often cites the words of Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan al-Shādhilī. In fact, Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh was himself considered to be one of the foremost figures in Mālikī jurisprudence in his day, thus perpetuating the dynasty of religious scholars founded by his grandfather in Alexandria.

While Mālikism was the dominant madhhab of the early Shādhilīs, their Sufism, as we can see in the works of Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh, was not limited to any one particular school of thought. Shādhilī intellectuality fastened on the gnostic works of earlier teachers, such as the Khatm alwalāyah (Seal of Sanctity) of al-Hòakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. ca. 285/898), or the Mawāqif (Spiritual Stoppings) of the fourth/ tenth century Sufi al-Niffarī. Nor did it recoil at the words and deeds of the martyred Sufi al-Hòallāj (d. 309/ 922), who was viewed as a saintly sage and not as some eccentric in the path. Great respect was held for the Qūt al-qulūb (The Nourishment of Hearts) of Abū Tòālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996), a work that was said to confer spiritual light on its readers. Similarly, the Ihòyā 'ulūm al-dīn (The Revival of the Religious Sciences) by al-Ghazzālī (d. 505/1111) was much appreciated; its author was ranked among the eminent saints of Islam.

It is possible that Shaykh Abu'l-Hòasan al-Shādhilī actually had contacts with Ibn ' Arabī, given the former's numerous travels in the Near East. We are on surer ground when it comes to the Shaykh al-Akbar's disciple, Sòadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/ 1275), author of numerous works in the same spirit of wahòdat al-wujūd as characterized by his master. He came to Cairo to meet the Shādhilī sage, so that we do know that the two Sufi schools of thought--analogous versions of metaphysical tawHòīd, to be sure--met briefly in their early period. Moreover, the Shāhilīs were vigorous defenders of Ibn 'Arabī's teachings, as we see in the tumultuous confrontation between Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh and the Hòanbalī fundamentalist critic of the Shaykh al-Akbar, Ibn Taymiyyah, in the Citadel of Cairo early in the eighth/ fourteenth century. In this connection, it is well worth remembering that the acerbic remarks made by Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh against the doctors of the Law who restrict the meaning of the Islamic message to the level of their own comprehension really apply, first and foremost, to the Hòanbalī canonist.

In the days of Ibn Taymiyyah, it was not unusual for many of the religious scholars to have Sufi masters; we have already seen this in the case of some of the well-known doctors of the Law attached to the early Shādhilī masters. Ibn Taymiyyah was no exception to the general rule; he too had his Sufi teacher. But this must not lead us to believe that the Hòanbalī faqīh was something of an esoterist in his own right, for it is clear from his very writings that the contemplative esoterism of Islam was not altogether to his liking. Even those Sufis of whom he approved, such as the founder of the Qādiriyyah, ' Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/ 1166), were acceptable only to the degree that they embraced Hòanbalī creedal positions, which was the case for Shaykh ' Abd al-Qādir, and not to the extent that they embodied in their teachings or persons the contemplative nature of the Sufi path. For the Shādhilī teachers to defend the Shaykh al-Akbar against the attacks of Hòanbalīs or religious scholars belonging to other schools of jurisprudence is not in the least surprising: his wahòdat al-wujūd, in the final analysis, was the same as their own teachings on tawHòīd. They were themselves intellectuals and highly speculative in their doctrinal elaborations. Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh has left us a kind of catalogue of the only subjects that his master, Shaykh Abu'l-'Abbās al-Mursī, used to speak about: the Great Intellect (al-'aql al-akbar), the Supreme Name, the Names of God, the letters of the alphabet, the circles of the saints, the stations of those who have certitude, the angels near the Throne, the sciences dealing with the inner mysteries, the graces in invocations, the "day" of those in the graves, the question of self-direction, the science of cosmology, the science of God's Will, the question of God's "Grasp" (qabdòah) and of the men belonging to it, the sciences of the "solitary saints" (afrād), the Day of Resurrection and God's dealing with His servants with gentleness and gracefulness, and the existence of God's revenge. In other words, while the first two Shādhilī teachers did not leave behind books, they nevertheless discussed more or less the same subjects we find treated in the works of the Shaykh al-Akbar, who put down in writings inspirations similar to those that the other shaykhs uttered in assemblies surrounded by their intimate disciples. The gnostic positions of Ibn ' Arabī found a ready echo in the teachings of the Shādhilīs, whose intellective way is best summarized in Shaykh Abu'l-'Abbās al-Mursī's rejection of the cult of charismatic phenomena: the greatest miracle, he claimed, was in the purification of the intellect in the heart.

To that body of Sufi literature antedating or contemporaneous with the first two teachers of the Shādhiliyyah, there soon came to be added the works of Shaykh Ibn ' Atòā Allāh himself: Kitāb al-hòikam (The Book of Aphorisms), a summary of the Sufi way in its perennial elements; ⁹ al-Tanwīr fī isqaātò al-tadbīr (Illumination on Rejecting Self-Direction), an exposition of the errors to be found in all egocentric self-direction; Latòā' al-minan (The Subtleties of Grace), a biographical sketch of the first two Shādhilī masters; al-Qaṣd al-mujarrad fī ma'rifat al-ism al-mufrad (The Sole Aim Concerning Knowledge of the Unique Name), an excellent spiritual and metaphysical discussion of the Divine Name Allāh and the other Names; Miftāhò al-falāhò wa miṣbāhò al-arwāhò (The Key of Success and the Lamp of Spirits), a compendium on the remembrance of God in the widest sense of the word dhikr; and a number of other, minor works. The whole corpus of his writings came to be the dominant Shādhilī writings precisely because he was the first of the early teachers to put pen to paper and expound the doctrines of the order. Others later on would also compose works of different sorts; these were added to the ensemble of writings within the Shādhilī tradition that would be referred to and cited by later generations as authoritative expositions of the order's teachings.

The already mentioned trait of Maghribī Sufism to move from West to East in the Islamic world can be seen not only in the life and travels of the Shaykh al-Akbar, who wound up in Damascus, but also in the teaching career of Shaykh Abu'l-Hasan al-Shādhilī himself, who moved from Tunis to Alexandria. Other Shādhilī teachers in subsequent centuries would follow in his footsteps, or else their disciples would settle here and there in the East. How to account for this phenomenon? Of course, one can point to Mecca as the pilgrimage center of the Islamic world, so that it is only natural that Sufis, like other Muslims, should go eastward; but it is one thing to go on the pilgrimage and return, and another thing to go to the East and stay there. Initially, the movement of Sufism was the reverse: it came from different parts of the eastern world of Islam and settled in the lands of the Maghrib with the same waves that brought Islam to the region. We know very little about that earlier period of Sufism, because historians, both Muslim and non-Muslim, tend to concentrate on events and sects or movements that broke out in the Near East, the homeland of the faith. The Maghrib became, in due time, an independent cultural entity, with its own style of life, its own artistic forms, and its own sociopolitical system, which set it off altogether from the eastern regions of Islam, so much so that Ibn ' Arabī, when he arrived in Egypt from the Maghrib, found that the Sufis there were unaware of Sufism in the Maghrib. Perhaps it would be closer to the mark to say that the archaic nature of Islam, its primordial character, had been preserved within the Maghribī bastion and leavened with infusions of Sufism coming from the East until finally the West, by virtue of having maintained a reservoir of spirituality within its ancient forms of Islam, was in a position to reverse the movement and to influence the East, to say nothing of the African South.

We should bear in mind that the Maghrib, more than any other part of the Islamic world, developed an extraordinary Islamic civilization that preserved the earlier Umayyad culture that was purely Arab and gave to it a startlingly original imprint in the course of time. Even after the Christian Reconquest of Spain had come to an end in the ninth/ fifteenth century, North Africa remained a real bastion of Sufi spirituality, ¹⁰ especially when one realizes that, after that epoch, the Near East began a long, slow decline. The gradual weakening of the Ottoman and Safavid empires heralds that coming spiritual decadence. It is within this context that we can understand the movement of Shādhilism, in later times, from the Maghrib to the East, reawakening in the eastern lands the spirit of gnostic taṣawwuf, particularly in the Arab region. The Maghrib, as was said, had changed roles with the East, a process that began with the founder of the Shādhiliyyah, one of the greatest Sufis of Islam, whose tòarīqah would become a powerful force for the regeneration of Islam in century after century down to the present day, testifying in that manner to the central part that Shādhilism would play in the midst of vast areas of the Islamic community.

A great tòarīqah like the Shādhiliyyah can be compared to a tree: as it grows from a sapling to a fully matured tree, it throws out branches, and these in turn sometimes develop still other, lesser branches. The same holds true for the Sufi orders: originally, they are named after their founders, such as ' Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, as mentioned in the last chapter, but as time goes by the main trunk gives rise to branches, likewise named after their founders. It is not a question here of a schismatic movement or of some sort of sectarianism; rather, it is that the new branch, by virtue of some outstanding quality in its founder--or perhaps even a fresh reorientation within the framework of the order--receives a new name. We see this in the eighth/ fourteenth century, in Egypt, with the Shādhiliyyah: a branch emerged called the Wafā'iyyah, founded by Shams al-Dīn Muhòammad ibn Ahòmad Wafā' (d. 760/ 1359), who was known as Bahòr al-ṣafā' ("The Ocean of Purity") and was the father of the illustrious ' Alī ibn Wafā' (d. 807/ 1404). The Wafā'iyyah developed in their own way as the generations passed, spreading into parts of the Near East outside of Egypt. After the ninth/ fifteenth century, they wore their own type of Sufi garments, as if the original unobtrusive style of the Shādhiliyyah no longer was observed or was applicable, for a number of reasons. Likewise, they gradually took on an institutional life that was certainly much more complex and rigid than was the case for the earlier Shādhiliyyah.

Much the same can be said of the numerous other branches that emerged from the parent trunk of the order: the Hòanafiyyah, the Jazūliyyah, the Nāṣiriyyah, the 'Īsawiyyah, the Tihāmiyyah, the Darqāwiyyah, and the like, correspond to readaptations and readjustments of the original Shādhilī message. Very often they arose because historical and social circumstances called for a Sufi response of a special type. It is not easy to determine in every single case what might have been the causal relationship between the historical milieu and the rise of one of these branches. The Jazūliyyah, for example, which goes back to the famous Imam al-Jazūlī (d. ca. 875/ 1470), one of the patron saints of Marrakesh, seems to have arisen largely as a powerful devotional manifestation of love for the Prophet, as we can see in his well-known litany on the Prophet, Dalā'il al-khayrāt (The Signs of Benedictions), which has been recited since his day in great parts of the Islamic world. By then, the spiritual substance of Morocco was in need of a powerful symbol to allow it to dedicate itself once again to the roots of its collective well-being. And what more regenerative a source could be found than the love of the Prophet? Especially was this the case in view of the jihād that was then going on against the Portuguese colonies on the coast that threatened the security of dār al-islām. But also--and this needs to be stressed--the devotional fervor generated by the Dalā'il al-khayrāt was a testimony to its otherworldly origins; and thus it was a kind of celestial message that the Jazūliyyah were destined to spread over other Islamic lands.

If we look at the causes that might have given rise to the Zarrūqiyyah, named after its founder Shaykh Ahòmad Zarrūq (d. 899/ 1493), they probably have to do with the restoration of piety and conformity to the Law. Not only was the shaykh an indefatigable commentator on the Hòikam of Ibn ' Atòā' Allāh, writing something like thirty glosses, but he was also a great traveler. Wherever he went, he inculcated the strict observance of the Law as a necessary accompaniment to the contemplative path. His works on Sufism, like the Qawā'id al-tasawwuf (The Principles of Sufism), demonstrate a meticulous regard for legal rules that strikes one at first glance as inappropriate in a contemplative esoterist; but, after reflection, one discerns here and there in his book that he is seeking to reestablish some kind of balance between the Law and the Path, so that neither of the two will impinge on the other's domain. The Zarrūqiyyah, no doubt, considered the balancing of Sufism and the Law as an indispensable quality in the would-be faqīr, something that he had to be aware of, or something that he had to assimilate.

The branching out of different orders from the original Shādhilī trunk also implied adaptations to a variety of spiritual vocations. Although the Shādhiliyyah retained throughout the centuries a characteristic intellectual orientation, with time, some of the orders, like the 'Īsawiyyah, established by the tenth/sixteenth-century shaykh Muhòammad ibn ' Īsā, were hardly intellectual in nature. Like the Rifā'iyyah of the Near East, the 'Īsawiyyah engaged in practices designed to demonstrate the immunity of their adherents to fire, swords, scorpions, and so on. No doubt all of this had a certain disciplinary function with some of the shaykhs of the order; but sooner or later the pursuit of such immunities became an end in itself, so that the order was reduced simply to a kind of exhibitionism in the minds of many Muslims. It drew into its ranks a particular mentality, not only in Morocco, of course, where it originated, but also in Egypt and elsewhere. It is generally the likes of the Rifā'iyyah and the 'Īsawiyyah that, on a popular plane, give to Sufism a circus like ambiance that was certainly not intended by their founders. But it was easy for the critics of Sufism, particularly the religious scholars of puritanical bent, to point to such orders as examples of the deviations and subversions of Islam which Sufism produces. Nevertheless, and whatever might be the opinions of the straitlaced believers and scholars concerning such orders, they served the purpose of integrating into Sufism various classes of society that might otherwise have been left out of its precincts altogether. In any case, not all such deeds as characterize the 'Īsawiyyah, for example, can be attributed to motivations that are incompatible with the spiritual life: everything depends on the teacher and how such unconventional practices are seen by him within the deeper perspective of the order. Without him, of course, the practices succumb easily to the charge of charlatanism or fraud and lose their real value.

A peculiarity of Moroccan Sufism is something called Maraboutism. ¹¹ In parts of the Moroccan regions, pious hermits or missionaries would establish their hermitages in order to raise the religious standards of the local population. The religious edifice they used was called a ridātò, and the ascetic teacher was a murābitò, from which the French derived the word Marabout. The pious missionary would leave behind a legacy of saintliness and grace (barakah) attaching not only to the place but also to his descendants. Fusion with Sufism turned some of these places into zāwiyahs, presided over by the descendants of the original hermit. When the families were also descendants of the Prophet, or the sharīfs of Morocco, who were mostly of Idrīsid lineage, there was an amalgamation of Sufism, Maraboutism, and Sharīfism revolving around the key term of barakah, the grace that emanates from a person, who can be a holy man or a descendant of the Prophet, or both together at one and the same time. It is at times an inextricable association of Sufism properly speaking, the cult of saints, and the honor due the sharīfs as descendants of the Prophet, for all three categories have something to do with spiritual grace (barakah) in one way or another, not only in Morocco, but elsewhere in the Islamic world. But what makes for Maraboutism, especially as it manifested itself in late medieval Morocco, was the combination of all these elements. Not that Sufism in Morocco was uniquely in alliance with Sharīfism; on the contrary, as in other parts of the Muslim world, it had its own independent existence as a contemplative path and was in no need of Maraboutism. Nevertheless, side by side with that contemplative version of Sufism is the socioreligious phenomenon of Maraboutism that has left its imprint on the Moroccan scene. Even dynasties of a political nature, like the Sa'dians of the tenth/ sixteenth century, came to power with the help of the religious leaders of Sharīfian status. Sooner or later, the entire religiopolitical structure of the country was tinged with Sharīfism. Only the descendants of the Prophet could be entrusted with ruling powers, and this carried over into other domains, affecting even Sufism. While all of this particular blending of Sufism and Maraboutism is a characteristic of Morocco, the fact of the matter is that in other Islamic lands one finds elements that are similar: the cult of Sufi saints' tombs exists all over the Islamic world, as does the notion that the descendants of the Prophet are possessed of a certain grace.

The constants of the Sufi path--its doctrines on tawhòīd, its methods of concentration having to do with the dhikru'Llāh, its initiatic transmission, and the like--can be detected in all ages within the rich variety of its historical forms. The Sufi contemplative way has nevertheless certain essential characteristics without which it ceases to be Sufism. At what point Maraboutism was no longer Sufism, in the strict sense of that word, is something that is not easy to determine. What is evident throughout the centuries of the Sufi tradition is that all kinds of customs and practices grafted themselves onto the core of Sufi teachings and methods and became identified with Sufism as such, whereas in reality they are merely peripheral or tangential aspects of the path and in any case are not central. One can imagine a religiomilitary society, like the medieval futuwwah, being integrated into the Sufi path, just as one can imagine artisanal guilds that function as expressions of Sufism in the arts. Such activities in no way constitute an essential aspect of Sufism, for we know quite well that Sufism can very easily exist without them. Thus, the societal manifestations of Sufism-including the sacred forms of Maraboutism--cannot really be included in a definition of the essential nature of the path. There is Sufi poetry, Sufi architecture, Sufi music, Sufi dance, and so on, but these are outpourings of a contemplative path that is centered on a spiritual realization of Allah through direct knowledge or love. They are the fruits of the path, but not the path itself. Similarly, the numerous practices of a negative characteristic, such as the use of drugs, that crept into some of the decadent orders cannot be ascribed to Sufism as such. These are abuses and corruptions that the eminent shaykhs of the path have always inveighed against because they detract from the reputation of the authentic spiritual way of Islam and tend to confuse the outsider in his estimation of the contemplative life. That the religious scholars of the community have seized upon such corruptions by way of criticizing all Sufism is understandable, for many of the 'ulamā' have never had more than a very limited grasp of the nature of the Islamic message to begin with. In their eyes, the multiple manifestations of Sufism are simply heretical forms of the Islam that they recognize as legitimate. But one must be careful not to include all of the 'ulamā' in this assessment: many of them--including the most illustrious--not only understood that Sufism was the spiritual content of Islam but also were themselves members of Sufi orders. In sum, it is of great importance not to confuse the essential in Sufism with the accidental, not to give the societal elements of the path more than their proper due. There is a historical side to the path, to be sure, but the path as such is intrinsically transhistorical by nature, for the simple reason that its teachings and practices are all centered on the absolutely Real (al-Hòaqq), which transcends the entire creation.

After the gradual collapse of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires in Turkey, Persia, and India, respectively, a period of decadence set in over great regions of the Islamic world. The brilliant cultural achievements of those dynasties in the arts, the sciences, the architectural forms, and in intellectual life in general now came to an end. The inner spiritual resources of the Islamic East had been largely consumed in the intellectual and artistic manifestations of the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries. It is simply not possible for great dynasties to go on indefinitely producing cultural flowerings one after another with no finality to the process. It is true that the fruits of civilization--the arts and architecture, the sciences, literature, great political, military, or economic systems--are not always the result of spiritual vitality: they can also stem from reservoirs of purely psychical powers that lie dormant in people until leaders appear who know how to tap those sources of strength. Such was not the case for the previously mentioned dynasties: their achievements were largely the consequences of strong spiritual currents, as we can see so clearly in their arts, for the arts mirror the collective soul. The same arts also mirror the decline, and this involves the attenuation of the spiritual vitality of a people in different ways.

What made the decadence that came over the Islamic community all the more dangerous was that the process of decline coincided with the coming of the modern Western secular civilization produced by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution of Europe. Western civilization, which had already begun the task of stripping Europe of its Christian culture, now pounced on the Islamic world in the form of colonialist systems that brought secularism and materialism in all their guises to that community. This accelerated the interior decadence of Islamic culture and added a new corrosive and destructive power that could not be stopped altogether but could only be slowed down temporarily or even neutralized partially. Yet the establishment by the West of colonies all over the Islamic world ensured that the traditional civilization there would have to contend unequally with the powerful industrial and materialistic culture coming from the West.

One part of the Islamic world that retained a spiritual vibrancy was the Maghrib, even though in the latter half of the thirteenth/ nineteenth century France would establish its colonial regime in Algeria and Tunisia. ¹² At the very moment that France was beginning to colonialize parts of North Africa, a veritable spiritual rebirth was taking place in the Maghrib, which proved that the decadence existing elsewhere in dār al-islām was not uniform throughout the community. When Western Europe, through the French Revolution, was destroying its own Christian world, the Maghrib was undergoing a spiritual efflorescence under the direction of the Shādhilī masters of the day. Previous Shādhilī regenerations had occurred in the eleventh/ seventeenth century with the Nāṣiriyyah of Shaykh Muhòammad ibn Nāṣir and one or two other branches. But at the end of the twelfth/ eighteenth century, a powerful spiritual rebirth took place under yet another branch of the Shādhilīs, the Darqāwā, founded by the Sharīf Mawlay al-'Arabī al-Darqāwī (d. 1239/ 1823). ¹³ This new branch sought to restore the purity of early Shādhilism through a return to an equilibrated view of the Law (Sharī'ah) and the Path (tòarīqah), which was what characterized the first teachers. ¹⁴ Numerous branches would in turn emerge out of the Darqāwā and have a profound influence not only in North Africa but also in the Hijaz, Turkey, and in the Levant. ¹⁵ These were the Būzīdiyyah, the Kattaniyyah, the Hòarrāqiyyah, and the Madaniyyah, and some of these would in turn give rise to still other branches. Thus, the Madaniyyah, founded by Muhòammad Hòasan ibn Hòamzah al-Madanī (d. 1363/ 1846) of Medina, spread out from Libya, but it created the Rahòmāniyyah in the Hijaz and the Yashrutòiyyah in the Levant. In addition, other Shādhilīs would move southward into Africa. ¹⁶ From all of this proliferation of Sufi orders in different directions, revivals of the inner life of Islam took place. Of course, no revival is permanent, and for that reason history records numerous ups and downs within the annals of the Islamic faith. Nevertheless, the thirteenth/ nineteenth-century revivals here and there in the community were carried out very often under the pressures of European colonialism, which was then beginning to make itself felt in a number of Islamic lands. It is this which confers upon the Maghribī spiritual reformation of the time a good deal of its cyclical importance, for it was being carried out very often under the colonialist systems that the imperialist powers of Europe brought to the Islamic countries.

Among the many branches of the Shādhiliyyah that arose in the past century or so, the one that would have a very impressive flowering is the 'Alawiyyah. This was founded by the Algerian shaykh Ahòmad al-'Alawī, who died in 1934, and whose Shādhilī lineage takes him back to Abu'l-Hòasan al-Shādhilī through Mawlay al-'Arabī al-Darqāwī. ¹⁷ Shaykh Ahmad al-'Alawī was thought to embody in his person the renovator (mujaddid) of Islam for this epoch, in accordance with the words of the Prophet to the effect that a reviver of his community would appear at the beginning of each century.

The Algerian master was at once a great saint, metaphysician, scholar, and poet. He pointed in his teachings to the "transcendent unity" which underlies the formal diversity of religions and respected the truly pious Christians who came to see him. Yet he was fully aware of the false suppositions upon which modernism is founded and spoke against any compromise with the secularist and humanistic tendencies prevalent in the modern world. He combined in himself the manifestation of quintessential Sufism seen in his several works on Sufi metaphysics with the deepening of Islamic ethical norms through an aura of sanctity which attracted a large number of disciples from near and far.

Indeed, the 'Alawiyyah had a direct hand in the regeneration of Islam, not only in the Maghrib but elsewhere in the community, or wherever Shādhilism spread. The shaykhs who emerged from the 'Alawiyyah, most of whom were direct disciples of Shaykh al-'Alawī, wound up in different parts of the Islamic world. Likewise, the order has played an extremely important role in the intellectual revival of Islam along traditional lines. The hundreds of thousands of disciples who were members of the order themselves came from different parts of the Maghrib as well as from other parts of the Islamic world. We do not need much imagination to see how these individuals, once returned to their own lands, were indirectly involved in the reformative work of the founder himself.

It was always in that fashion, as a general rule, that the Sufi masters affected the populations of their day: their disciples, their books, and their own spiritual influence would generate a kind of transformation of the milieu around them, so that a collective psychical substance would result that was receptive to the influences of the Spirit--or at least was much more porous to its presence than had been previously the case. This would result in widespread consequences, not only in the moral attitudes of the population but also in the fruits of their hands, in the arts and architecture, and even in the intellectual lucubrations of the principal thinkers of their time. It was in that way that spiritual rebirths took place in the long history of Islam, and it was in the absence of such influences that we find numerous periods of decline and stultification.

Shādhilism in general has also played a most remarkable role in the revival of Western traditional intellectuality in the twentieth century. We see a clearcut example of this in the famous French thinker, René Guénon, himself a Shādhilī known in the Muslim world as Shaykh 'Abd al-Wāhòid Yahòyā. His numerous works on the metaphysical underpinnings, the cosmological aspects, and the spiritual foundations of the great religions of the world have had an incalculable influence on a large number of Westerners, especially those in search of the spiritual path, since the end of the First World War. Shaykh Ahmad al-'Alawī, for his part, directly influenced yet another Western authority on the traditional spiritual life, Frithjof Schuon, who knew the Algerian master personally. Schuon's own numerous works on Islam and the other great religions of the world have perpetuated into our times the theses of the great medieval Sufis on the universality of revelation and have shed further light on the principal arguments found in the brilliant school of metaphysicians left behind by René Guénon. This entire current of Western intellectual and spiritual life, which continues to vibrate at the present day and to produce many important formulations of doctrine, could not have existed without an initial Shādhilī impetus and guidance. ¹⁸

Given that the Shādhiliyyah have always considered their tòarīqah to possess a central role in the unfolding of the spiritual life of the community--they have actually affirmed that the axial sage of the epoch (qutòb al-zamān) would always be found in their midst--it is clear that the last word on the order cannot yet be said. This is all the more so in that the order has now taken root in Europe and North America and has begun yet another revival of the traditional intellectual spirit, this time based on the Quranic teaching, long dormant, of the universality of revelation, with all that this implies in a metaphysical and spiritual sense.

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