Sīdī Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b.

ʿAbd Allāh Maʿan

(d.1062)

Masters of the Shādhili Path Series

Translated by Sidi Idris Watts

He was born in 978. His family line goes back to Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūr
al-Muwaḥḥidī or some have said his line goes back to Muḥammad b. al-
Qāsim b. Idrīs II. Even though he was a descendent of the Prophet , he
counselled his children not to make mention of it before the people,
but rather to conceal it for the next life.

He memorised the Book of God at an early age and then studied

the art of recitation of Warsh and Qālūn from a number of different
teachers such as al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Darāwī1. Afterwards, he
dedicated his time to the study of Islamic sciences and managed to
acquire a broad knowledge of the sciences in general. Then he spent
his time earning a living and dedicated his free time to worship. At the
age of thirty, after visiting the shrine of ʿAbd Allāh at-Tawdī, beseeching
God to send him a master of the path, he met Sīdī Yusūf. He submitted
himself to him entirely and benefited immensely for the next four
years. Once his master had passed away, he took his spiritual heir, Sīdī
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān as a teacher. He remained under his instruction for the
next twenty-three years. He spent his life in his service and Sīdī ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān refined and perfected him. Sīdī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān would praise
him saying, “There is no-one like him in the east or the west; there is
no-one like him under the sun.”

One day after someone had ill-treated him, he said about his
student, “He is like a thorn in the mud.” (I.e. whoever mistreats him,
will be inflicted just as one unwittingly steps on a thorn hidden in the
mud.)

When Sīdī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān passed away, Sīdī Muḥammad

remained in his house having not been given permission to give
instruction to others in the path. One day, he went to visit Moulay ʿAbd
1
al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Darāwī (d. 1006) One of the great scholars of Fez. A
master of Qurʾān and its variants, theology, Arabic, and logic. He was a student of Sīdī
Riḍwān al-Jinwī and loved to sit with Sīdī Yūsuf al-Fāsī. He is buried outside the gate
Futūḥ on the east side of the shrine of Sīdī ʿAlī al-Ḥirzahim.

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as-Salām and was granted permission as he relates regarding himself.
When he returned, he sat in his master Sīdī Yusūf’s zāwiyah in the
Makhfiyyah District where he too lived. Suddenly out of the blue,
people from all around began to visit to take from him. Upon which, he
said with his eyes full of tears, “Take board on this nape of mine for I
have been warned that if I do not come out to you all, I will have this
gift taken away from me.” After this, he began giving instruction even
to the Jinn-kind who would serve him. Sīdī Muḥammad remained in his
master’s zāwiyah for the next six months until he had built his own at
the top of the Makhfiya district on the bank of the River Zaytūn in
1038.

He used to warn the people of the sheikhs of the time, saying,

“No sheikhs or sheikhdoms remain. The poverty that you hear does not
remain in this time.” He also said, “The people of God have become
concealed.” He stated once, “He whose state gets the better of him is
like he whose wife gets the better of him. Is it fitting that a man’s wife
gets the better of him? The Prophet  was never overcome by his state.
The closer one is to the state of the Prophet  he will be as he is and
not vice-versa.”

Sīdī Muḥammad heavily stressed the regular invocation of ‘There

is no god but God’ ‘Prayers and blessings on the Prophet ’ and ‘Asking
God for forgiveness.’ He used to say that one must hold fast to asking
for God’s forgiveness especially in these difficult times of tribulation,
sending prayers and blessings around five hundred times and
repeating ‘There is no god but God’ an unlimited amount of times in
the day. He forbade his students from using the names of God in
invocations to gain worldly benefit. He would say that this brings about
one’s destruction. He advised his students not to mix with others in
general, especially the pseudo-sufis of his time and those chasing after
the matters of the world. He was quoted as saying, “Whoever sits in
our company, even if he does not acquire some of the inner divine
realities, he will gain uprightness and focus in his religion.”

One day one of his companions asked him, “Sir, have you ever
seen the Prophet ?” He replied, “Yes, I have seen him, and he wiped
his hand over my face, and that is why whoever sees me falls in love
with me.”

On another occasion, he told Sīdī ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān, “The Prophet 

never leaves my side.” So Sīdī ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān asked, “Do you see him
in spirit or in body?” Sīdī Muḥammad replied, “In spirit.” On this Sīdī
ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān fell silent. A few days later, he asked whether he still
saw him. “Yes sir, for the attribute never leaves the one it is ascribed

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to.” On hearing this, Sīdī ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān was overjoyed. Sīdī
Muḥammad was also known to tell of the fruits of the Paradise and
their qualities as if he were seeing them face-to-face and many other
things that had never been heard of before.

He used to say to his companions, “If any of you have a need,

then let him sit in-front of me with his need in mind without needing to
mention it to me.”

He passed away in 1062 and was buried on the right, close to the
shrine of Sīdī Yusūf. His son, Sīdī Aḥmad, was to take up the teachings
of his father.