Sufi Sage of Arabia

This unique biography of the saint Imam Abdallah al-Haddad takes readers into the fascinating world and spiritual life of 17th-and early 18th-century Yemen. The life of this great spiritual master—whose teachings and personal example continue to influence lives around the world—is examined, from his early attraction to Sufi poetry and visit to the tomb of the prophet Hud - to his rise as a Sufi master and his Hajj journey to Mecca.

The biographical facts of al-Haddad's life are interspersed with his spiritual teachings, including his take on the nine stages of certainty, the five investitures of taqwa, the stages of gnosis, and supernatural events. Sufi practitioners, historians, and anthropologists will come to a deeper understanding of this timeless and enduring tradition with this fascinating record of a seminal Sufi master’s life and death.

Imam Abdallah Ibn-Alawi Al-Haddad (d. 1720), lived at Tarim in the Hadramaut valley between Yemen and Oman, and is widely held to have been the ‘renewer’ of the twelfth Islamic century. A direct descendant of the Prophet, his sanctity and direct experience of God are clearly reflected in his writings, which include several books, a collection of Sufi letters, and a volume of mystical poetry. He spent most of his life in Kenya and Saudi Arabia where he taught Islamic jurisprudence and classical Sufism according to the order (tariqa) of the Ba'Alawi sayids.

Mostafa al-Badawi author of the Fons Vitae Imam al-Haddad Spiritual Masters series is a disciple in the Sufi order of Imam al-Haddad. Mostafa al-Badawi is one of the world's premier translators of Islamic spiritual texts. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist and member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He studied under many shaykhs, foremost among whom is the late Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad. His other translations include: Book of Assistance, The Lives of Man, Two Treatises, The Prophetic Invocations, and Degrees of the Soul. He is also the author of Man and the Universe: An Islamic Perspective, recently published. He resides in Madinah.
 
 
Foreword by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
 
Two paths to God exist for the people of this world, the path of salvation and the path of sanctification. For those who seek more than the minimum, who desire more than the average man, who want and yearn for intimate knowledge of their source and ultimate destiny, sanctification allows them that possibility. The Prophets are sanctified souls that are specially prepared by their Lord, not only as a vessel of divine knowledge but also as the means of conveying it to others. For the men and women who take from them and come after them heeding their call, it is through the path of sanctification that the prophetic path is continued in this world for others to walk the path of salvation. Without sanctified souls in the world, the path would eventually be lost, and those seeking salvation destroyed. For those who the saints call, sanctification is a process that continues throughout one’s life on earth and is finalized with a purified soul that is content and ready to return to God in a sanctified state. These souls are then able to act as milestones for those on the path of salvation. They inspire us and direct us to strive on and keep the goal of God’s presence in our hearts. Imam al-Haddad was such a soul. He, through his own teachers, tended to his soul and journeyed on the path of sanctification in order to realize the true alchemy of the hearts, turning the self from a base element, susceptible to corruption, into pure spiritual gold, free of the corrosive elements of this world.

This book, while a biography of one of the greatest saints in Islamic history, is more than that. It is a book of alchemy itself, filled from start to finish with the science of tasawwuf, which is and has always been the heart of the Islamic tradition. It was written by a practitioner of the outward science of psychology and the inward science of the nafs or soul, which, in the path of salvation, works to confine itself to the laws of the sacred order as articulated by the prophets, and, in Islam’s case, by the last and final messenger, Muhammad (peace be upon him), and, in the path of sanctification, works to move through the well-established states and stations of the wayfarer until true knowledge of God is realized.

Dr. Badawi was a student of a direct descendant of Shaykh ‘Abdallah al-Haddad, Habib Ahmad Mashshur al-Haddad, who those of us fortunate enough to have known him personally consider a realized spiritual master and sanctified soul, and none can sanctify save God. Habib Ahmad Mashshur was an antidote for the insanity that accompanies so much religious imbalance in our times. Just as his ancestor, the subject of this book, brought renewal and light to the Islam of his time, today’s masters maintain that same light in a time that might be referred to as ‘the endarkenment’. This book is a compelling testimony to the spiritual power and influence of the sanctified soul on the world. It is, perhaps more importantly for us, a step toward reintroducing the desperately needed path of sanctification. If there was ever a time that saints were needed, it is this time.
                           -Shaykh Hamza Yusuf