Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib

1876–1972 CE · FEZ & MEKNES, MOROCCO

The one with whom the path was renewed, Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib ibn as-Siddiq al-Amghari al-Idrisi al-Hasani was born in Fez, Morocco, into a family of scholars and saints. He received a thorough traditional education in the Islamic sciences, studying under a number of the scholars of his age, before being drawn to the Sufi path and receiving the Darqawi-Shadhili transmission. He established his zawiya at Darb al-Pasha in Meknes, near the Zaytuna Mosque, and it became one of the great spiritual centres of twentieth-century Morocco.

Shaykh ibn al-Habib was a poet of rare gifts. His Diwan — The Desire of the Travelling Murids and the Gift of the Wayfaring Gnostics, a collection of qasidas in praise of the Prophet ﷺ and in exposition of the stations of the path — is recited in gatherings of his order across the world to this day. He gathered disciples from Morocco, Algeria, and eventually from Europe and the Americas, and his influence on the transmission of the Shadhili-Darqawi path to the West was profound. He passed from this world in January 1972, in Algeria, while travelling toward the Hajj, and was first buried in a zawiya he had newly inaugurated there. Later that same month his body was returned to Meknes and laid to rest in his own zawiya, where he remains.

Sidi Fudul Al-Huwari

D. 2010 CE · MOROCCO

Sidi Fudul al-Huwari was among the foremost khalifas of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, receiving the full transmission of the Darqawi-Habibiyya path and carrying it into the latter decades of the twentieth century. He embodied the qualities of the masters before him — combining rigorous adherence to the Sunna with a luminous presence that drew seekers to him from across North Africa and beyond.

Sidi Fudul al-Huwari is the namesake of the Mawlid al-Fudul, the celebration of the birth of the Prophet ﷺ that forms one of the central devotional practices of this order. His passing in 2010 marked the end of an era, yet the baraka of his transmission continues through those who received the path from him and who carry it forward in fidelity to the masters of the golden chain.