Born in Alexandria around 1259, first formed in the classical religious sciences — exegesis, law, ḥadīth — around the age of twenty he met Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mursī, the master of the Shādhilī way in Alexandria. That meeting overturned his life. He became his direct disciple, then his spiritual heir.
He would teach at al-Azhar in Cairo until his death in 1309. His tomb there is still visited.
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258)
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Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mursī (d. 686/1287)
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Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 709/1309)
Three masters, a silsila that becomes the backbone of the way. An attention given to sobriety, to shukr, to adab, and to living companionship — not to the dazzle of miracles or to withdrawal from the world.
كتاب الحكم
Kitāb al-Ḥikam — The Book of Aphorisms
The best-known work. 264 brief aphorisms (according to the chosen edition), arranged in 24 chapters, followed by four letters and the Munājāt. A compact speech, to be reread a whole life long without exhausting it.
التنوير في إسقاط التدبير
al-Tanwīr fī Isqāṭ al-Tadbīr — The illumination in laying down the false self-governance
The founding treatise on active trust: not to vie with the divine decrees, not to mistake responsibility for agitation.
لطائف المنن
Laṭāʾif al-Minan — The subtleties of grace
A living account of the Shādhilī way: the teachings and graces of Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mursī and of his master Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī. An initiation through transmission.
Seven centuries on, his aphorisms still speak — to anxiety, to control, to the need to plan, to weariness, to anger, to the temptation to believe oneself the cause of what grows. His way is not a system; it is an attention. An attention to the moment, to the gesture, to the word, to what depends on oneself — and to what does not.