Al-Qutb al-Kamil Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir Dar'i (d. 1085/1670)

 

The Succour of people, Shaykh Ibn Nasir,

    by whom Allah helped the Shari'a of Ahmed.

He restored the radiant face of the religion,

    and the radiance of the source of every unifier.

He established the roof of its structure which is above

    all roofs over the unshakeable warners.

He removed doubt from every dark night,

    as well as misguidance, error and harshness.  

-Al-Allama Shaykh Sidi Abul Hassan al-Yusi 

The great Shadhilite Nasiri order was founded in the beginning of the eleventh/seventeenth century by the Pole of Poles, the Helper of the Time, Sidi Abu Abdellah Mhammed ibn Mohammed Ben Nasir ad-Dar'i al-Aghlabi (d. 1085/1670) in the village of Tamgrut, which lies near the southern end of the Dar'a river valley in central Morocco on the eastwest route from Tindouf to Tazrerwalt and coastal Algeria. Contemporary to the Qutb Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa Simlali al-Hassani (d. 991/1576) and the Qutb Moulay Abdellah Sharif Wazzani (d. 1089/1674), the Shaykh Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir became attached to the Shadhilite Ghaziya branch in 1052/1646 at the hand of Sidi Abdellah al-Hussayn ar-Raqi ad-Dar'i (d. 1045/1630). The initiatory spiritual line of the latter is raised to Sidi Ahmed Zarruq (d. 899/1493) through Sidi Ahmed ibn Ali Hajji Dar’i (buried in Zagoura), Sidi Abul Qacem al-Hassan ibn Ahmed al-Ghazi, Sidi Ali ibn Abdellah Sijalmasi, and Sidi Ahmed Ibn Yusuf Rachidi Malyani (d. 929/1523).  

Allah Almighty gave Ben Nasir to the people of his time and he made the religion firm in them and revived the Islamic Shari'a through him. The students of the Nasiri zawiya made journeys and excursions among the tribes of the Suss and all the regions of the south. The first of their goals was to guide people and to found schools, mosques and Nasiri zawiyas where there was devotion to service and invocation, especially the prayer on the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) on Thursday nights and Friday mornings. The people were intent on doing them in the thousands. That included all circles, including groups of blind men who occupied themselves with it from the morning prayer until the time of Duha. The prayer they used was: "Allahuma, salli 'ala Sayyidina Mohammed wa 'ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam." The blessing of that appeared in that land in the abundance of water and the spread of inhabitation and crops. Credit goes to Ibn Nasir and his students for what we can see to this day of clear religious commitment in all the rural areas of the Suss. He also has the credit for heating the wudu' water in all the mosques in the towns and desert.

Tamgrut has been a religious centre since the eleventh century. Only its zawiya was founded in the seventeenth century. Ben Nasir established the zawiya that soon became a scholarly community, which to this day has one of the most important manuscript libraries in the realm. While the Nasiriya did spread to the cities, it first secured a solid backing in the countryside, allying itself with the local tribes. Shaykh Ben Nasir combined his spiritual gnosises and religious sciences with marriages into important Dar'a families and gradually built up his authority in the valley. The curriculum that was to be read by disciples in the zawiya matched in depth the standards of the al-Qarawiyyine University of Fez. Among the major ulama who graduated from the zawiya are Sidi Mohammed ibn Said as-Susi Mirghiti (d. 1089/1674), Sidi Abdelmalik at-Tajmu'ti (d. 1118/1703) and Sidi al-Hassan ibn Masoud al-Yusi (d. 1102/1687). The zawiya not only initiated students into the esoteric and religious sciences but also practiced charity and provided followers shelter and protection in times of crisis. Tamgrut became thus the 'mother zawiya' of the Maghreb with several branches in different parts of the region, like for instance the zawiya of Irazan in the Suss valley where 500 students were financed by the brotherhood. Yet the mother zawiya remained in fact very much as rural one.  

As a disciple of Shaykh Ben Nasir, the noted scholar, Sidi Abul Hassan ibn Masoud al-Yusi was instructed into the Tariqa of Sidi Abul Hassan Shadhili (d. 295/880). He was not only concerned with Shaykh Ben Nasir from the point of view of knowledge, but he was also concerned with him in respect of the science of the ego and what it includes in the way of feelings and thoughts about life in this world and the Next World, and the different judgements of the times of night and day. So through all of that he was aware of his own astonishment and the astonishment of others respecting his Shaykh's rectitude, gravity and certainty. Sometimes his Shaykh Ibn Nasir disclosed to him that which was transpiring in himself and he made it clear and explained it to him so that no uncertainty remained about it. Al-Yusi says about him in al-Fihrist,

"He was involved in many areas of knowledge such as fiqh, Arabic, logic, tafsir and Sufism. He was a man of worship and of great devotion, scrupulous, and an ascetic, a man who established the Tariqa and drank from the source of the Reality. May Allah have mercy on Him - as well as busying himself with the sciences of the people of Sufism and following the Path, he was not niggardly with outward knowledge regarding teaching, writing, recording and precision. May Allah benefit both groups through him. People from east and west kept his company and posterity benefited through him. He taught his disciples through word and deed. His himma was lofty and his state pleasing. He had sound knowledge and illuminated insight as well as mastery and self-assurance. When he spoke his words were engraved on people's hearts."

Abul Hassan al-Yusi praised Ibn Nasir in his poem in dal (Daliya) which disclose clear veneration to the Shaykh.  Sidi Mohammed ibn Jaafar al-Kattani (d. 1345/1930) mentions the Daliya qasida in Kitab Salwat al-anfas wa mu’hatatatu al-akyas bi dhikr man uqbir’a mina al-ulama wa sulaha bi-madinat Fes (The Delight of inhalation and symposium of elite in the recollection of the doctors and most virtuous buried in the city of Fez) when he deals with Shaykh Ibn Nasir,  

Important imams like the scholar al-Yusi studied with him. He praised him in his famous and unrivalled poem in dal which the people of literature compare to the poem in dal by al-Busairi in praise of Abul Hassan Shadhili and Abul Abbas al-Mursi. It has 300 verses and he wrote an excellent commentary on it. It is not easy to imagine anyone getting the better of Imam al-Yusi were it not for the esteem he himself held for the position of the Shaykh. The Susi divided it over the days of the week, and they used to recite a part of it with the regular hizb every evening as they do with the Burda of al-Busairi in the evening and his Hamziya poem in the morning. There are none of his students who have not memorised these three poems by listening to them when regularly attending the recitation of the hizb.  

Al-Imam Sidi Abu Salim al-'Ayyashi (d. 1090/1675), the student of al-Yusi, said in his book, “The Gift of the Close Friends”, that Shaykh Ibn Nasir was scrupulous about following the Sunna in all his states, even in respect of his clothes and food, and in all forms of worship and daily life. In that he followed the path of other great righteous men such as al-Marjani, Ibn Abi Jamra, and Ibn al-Hajj. He went on hajj and to visit the Prophet twice, and on his journeys he met notable Imams. He transmitted from them and they took knowledge him as well. So his paths of riwaya were as extensive as his method in understanding was proficient. According to Abu Salim al-'Ayyashi,

“He (Ibn Nasir) took from his Shaykh Sidi Abdellah ibn Husayn Raqqi. When his death was near, he left him in the care of his brother in Allah, Sidi Ahmed ibn Ibrahim. When, in turn, his death drew near, he commanded him to care for the madrasa and zawiya and to marry his widow." That happened. He himself undertook to teach the sciences of Arabic to his children because he considered their instruction to be part of 'ibada. He taught the book at-Tashhil in grammar by Imam Ibn Malik (d. 672/1257). He had memorised it. It is said that the copy which he read is still extant in the Tamgrut Archives.” (Imam al-Yusi said: “It was reported to me that his teacher, Sidi Abdellah Husayn ar-Raqi, who is not the Sidi Abdellah ibn Husayn al-Wamghari who is buried in Tamasluht near Marrakech, said to the fuqara, 'When the nafs of one of you asks for a drink of water, he should let it wait a time, not because there is any harm in drinking water, but so that the nafs does not become accustomed to speedy gratification in receiving what it wants.'")  

Shaykh Ben Nasir is best remmebered for his Supplication (Du’a Nasiri). The poem, which begins, "O you who flee to His mercy," was written during the crusade attack on the shores of Morocco. It is the greatest evidence of Ibn Nasir's love for jihad and reliance on Allah in hardships, as well as showing courtesy of a servant of God, and his humbleness before His hardship, and encouraging jihad against the unbelievers and praying to Allah against them. The people of Fez call it, "The Unsheathed Sword of Ben Nasir" since they taught it to their children in schools and madrasas and they repeated it after recitation of the Holy Quran every day after the Friday prayer in the call to jihad. Shaykh Ibn Nasir, moreover, instituted a hizb in the Suss region known as the "Hizb of the Shaykh" which is attributed to him. It is the famous hizb which is recited in a group morning and evening in many mosques, although this Shaykh used to cancel the hizb on Thursday nights and replace it with Surat al-Kahf in since there is a sound hadith that if anyone recites this sura on Thursday night, Allah will preserve him until the end of the week. He also cancelled the Friday morning hizb and replaced it with Surat Yasin, ad-Dukhan, al-Waqi'a, al-Mulk, al-Insan, al-Buruj and about five thousand prayers on the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him). This was for the students involved in teaching and learning. As for the disciples, sometimes they did ten or twenty thousand prayers on the Prophet on Friday night and morning. Those replaced hizbs exceeded the period of a normal month and so the whole Quran was completed in about 35 days. In this way during the conclusion of the Quran always coincided with a Sunday night and always began on Monday morning. That was to take advantage of the benefits of the sound hadiths and what the Shaykh saw of the baraka entailed in reciting of those suras at those times. Would that this hizb had spread everywhere!

Many of Ben Nasir’s virtues involved firasa (clairvoyance). It is narrated that once al-Yusi was sitting before Ibn Nasir he was wondering about how the Shaykh had earned the wealth which he had used to get married, go on hajj, and buy books when the property of the zawiya was a waqf over which he had no right of disposal. Then the Shaykh turned to him and explained for him the normal means of earning and cultivation by which he had earned all of that. That was mentioned in a selection of what has been transmitted from the lectures and index of al-Yusi. As he revealed his actions to him, he explained to him what was right and wrong in them and guided him when he was afraid of him wavering or deviating from the path. That is how al-Yusi, who was called "the Lightning-Bolt of Knowledges", bowed his head before Shaykh Ibn Nasir out of respect and esteem. Part of his insight was also that he became aware that the scholar Sidi Mohammed ibn Said as-Susi al-Mirghiti– who lived in Marrakech and wrote al-Muqanna' on the times of the prayer—had the idea that the people of the Nasiri zawiya were giving the adhan of Maghrib before the time. The zawiya had a minaret but the adhan was often given from a high hill nearby. So Ibn Nasir suggested to his guest Sidi Mohammed ibn Said that they climb the minaret at the time of sunset. When they were relaxing in the gathering, Shaykh Ibn Nasir said to his guest, "Perhaps it is the time of Maghrib." Almost as soon as the other said to him, "Yes," the mouadhin of the zawiya, the uncle of Ahmed ibn Abderrahman gave the adhan. Shaykh al-Mirghiti used to say after that that the uncle of Ahmed ibn Abderrahman knew the times of the prayer like he knew his own sons. 

The Nasiriya differed from other Sufi orders as its leaders and followers adapted to the social and political exigencies of the seventeenth century. One of the most important of these differences was how Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir viewed his students and followers as a coherent social group with duties to perform in society. For Ben Nasir, his followers constituted both spiritually advanced Muslims and of members their communities. Also unlike most other Sufi leaders, Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir never claimed direct descent from the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) and stressed that "All saints who are close to God had equal access to him and the Prophet." The Nasiriya also differed from other groups in its early leaders approach to political action and the central government (makhzan). Early on, they gained a reputation for remaining distant from the struggles of temporal authorities over the throne a position that attracted many followers and allies, and helped to protect the order from makhzan 1660's persecution. 

 Though students enrolled at Tamgrut and other Nasiri zawaya received licences (ijaza) that frequently included a formal affirmation of allegiance (bay'a), affiliation seems to have required little more than the permission of a Nasiri Shaykh or muqaddam to recite a series of comparatively conservative Shadhili-derived prayer litanies and a promise to obey the orders of Nasiri leaders. Donations (nafaqa), more than any other single factor, seem to have determined status within the Nasiriya and access to the resources the order could offer. These gifts took a wide variety of forms and included donations of money and goods, labour, specialized knowledge and news, and legal rights over property. These donations, most of which Nasiri leaders redistributed to build the Tariqa, signalled an allegiance to both Nasiri leaders and to the Nasiri ethos and grew with the order's prestige and spiritual renown.

The Nasiriya appealed to people on several different levels. At one level, the simplicity of Nasiri teaching (tarbiya) and the perceived baraka, or spiritual Sirr (secret), of its shaykhs drew a wide diversity of followers. As its fame and assets grew, access to material and social resources emerged as a second motivation for becoming part of the Nasiriya. Access to credit and to its 0byab and granaries, as property holdings, including land, water resources, as well as to enhanced social connections, offered fuqara additional opportunities for production and investment. Increased social status and political power became a third point of attraction for potential followers. In the context of Moroccan Sufism, participation in the Tariqa through charitable gifts or donations of labour provided pious ways of maintaining a web of relationships that sustained both the marketing system and the larger community. The order's land had tax exceptions as endowments (hubus) and was a considerable landowner in the area. It also took part in and protected the trade going on across the Sahara, and was for this purpose at times more efficient than the Sultan. By supporting the Nasiriya, members affirmed the ties between them while helping to expand the material resources of the order. But donations also bolstered an individual's or a group's prestige in the eyes of other believers, which could give them moral leverage in the market, in kinship disputes or in political action. As Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir himself put it, "My path is easy, and its benefits are large". This growing prestige, however, also promoted the economic and political power of Nasiri leaders. Over time, the growth of the Nasiriya made a dramatic impact on everyday life in central Morocco, particularly on the costs of production and distribution.  

Shaykh Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir demanded absolute obedience, not only from his students and muqaddams but also from the members of their communities. He directed one muqaddam, for example, to read the following message aloud to the wayward residents of one village:  "You must respect and obey my muqaddam. He has his orders directly from me and is my representative. You must work for him because it is like working for me. If you do not carry out his order, then you defy me. And if you defy me, you defy the Prophet. And if you defy the Prophet, then you defy God and you have no hope." This political influence spread far beyond local affairs, however. The Alawi sultans themselves occasionally relied on Nasiri leaders to solve political difficulties and recognized the order's wide appeal. Their expansion inspired concern among the Alawi sultans, who had won the throne by defeating other politically powerful Sufi brotherhoods, and relations with the makhzan remained tense since Moulay Ismail's death in 1139/1727. But the broad-based nature of the Nasiriya's appeal earned them allies among religious officials in government, who in turn protected the Nasiriya. They convinced the sultan and others that the Nasiriya provided social stability and promoted prosperity, and even Sultan Moulay Ismail, renowned for his violent repression never went beyond occasionally harassing leaders of the order.  

As the influence of the order grew, Nasiri leaders roles as local mediators expanded. Early on, Nasiri leaders arbitrated local disputes over land inheritance and marital difficulties. Local communities also increasingly entrusted Nasiri officials with volatile mediation over access to water. In the Dar'a valley, where successful irrigation depended on segues that channelled water to individual plots, Nasiri muqaddams oversaw the water-clocks and sluice gates that measured allotted portions of water. In turn, they received payments in water rights, land or labour, and over a relatively short period of time came to oversee or own significant portions of the Dar'a river's irrigation systems. Nasiri leaders' growing control over water and its expanding political authority in the region drew hostility from rivals. As one Nasiri source attests, "the people have stopped going to the marabouts (murabitun), and instead seek Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir.” The murabitun are jealous."

The Nasiriya in many respects seem similar to the Wazzaniya order  in the north, in that they stood between the traditional image of the maraboutic local order and the scholarly, urban centres, but they were important differences. The Wazzani family were sharifs and drew much authority from their sharifian descent, while the Nasiris only could claim descent from Sidna Uthman ibn Affan (may Allah be pleased with him), the third Caliph of the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him). They also worked within a larger urban environment, Suss-Massa-Dar’a, which they came to dominate. However, Shaykh Ibn Nasir did not confine himself to establishing zawiyas in Fez and southern Morocco. Despite the solid presence of Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa (d. 991/1576) in Tazrerwalt, Sidi Mohammed Bou'abid Sharqi (d. 1010/1595) in Tadla, Sidi Ahmed ibn Abdellah (d. 1129/1714) in Fez, and Moulay Abdellah Sharif Wazzani (d. 1089/1674) around Wazzan, he opened zawiyas in those places and beyond.

Sidi Abul Hassan al-Yusi, alone, spread the Nasiri word among imminent scholars of Fez, namely, Sidi Abul Hassan al-Nuri, Abu Abdellah Tazi, Sidi Abu Abdellah Ibn Zakur, Sidi Mohammed ibn al-Arabi al-Qadiri, Sidi Mohammed ibn Abdellasam Bannani, and Sidi al-Hassan ibn Rahhal al-Maadani. As an advanced scholar, Abul Hassan al-Yusi studied under the greatest Maliki legists of his age including Ahmed ibn Said al-Majildi (d. 1094/1643), Ahmed ibn Ali al-Fasi Salisi (d. 1065/1650), Abdellaziz ibn Mohammed Rasmuki (d. 1065/1650), Ahmed ibn Mohammed Tajamu’ti (d. 1080/1665), and al- Imam Sidi Abu Salim Abdellah ibn Mohammed al-'Ayyashi (d. 1090/1675) who, according to the Qutb Sidi Mohammed ibn al-Arabi Sayeh Tijani (d. 1309/1894), approached the Qutbaniya al-Udhma but did not reach it. Al-'Ayyashi lived for 53 years. He is credited for his jihad leadership. We read in Ahmed Nasiri's (d. 1312/1897) Kitab al-Istiqsa, "Abdellah Ayyashi remained firm in jihad against the enemy, being familiar with military tactics, taking an advanced position against the enemy in attacks. He was taciturn, not given to speaking much. He constricted the Christians of El Jadida to much extent that he kept them from planning and grazing their animals. The Christians sent the Sultan gifts and he, in turn, dismissed the shaykh, and sent an army and ordered him to be imprisoned and killed."

In his travels in search of knowledge, al-Yusi journeyed from Fez to points as far as Dukkala, Marrakech, and Suss. In 1060/1645, he settled down in the Zawiya of Sidi Mohammed ibn Abi Bakr Dilai (d. 1046/1631) and he stayed there for twenty years. The Zawiya Dilaiya was founded by Sidi Abu Bakr Majjati Dilai (d. 1021/1620), the student of Sidi Abu Amr al-Qastali (d. 974/1559), a well-known disciple of al-Qutb Sidi Abdelkarim al-Fallah (d. 933/1518), who was himself a student of al-Qutb Sidi Abdellaziz Tabba'a (d. 914/1499), who took the Tariqa from al-Qutb Sidi Mohammed ibn Sulayman al-Jazouli (d. 869/1454). In 1668, the Sultan Moulay Rachid ibn Mohammed (d. 1087/1672) forced the leaders of the Dilaiya into exile in Fez and destroyed the zawiya of al-Qutb Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa of Tazrerwalt in 1670. By time, al-Yusi became a disciple of Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir. It is reported that when he arrived at Tamgrut where ibn Nasir was teaching, he found Ben Nasir critically ill with a loathsome disease, perhaps, from the sound of it, smallpox. The shaykh called his students to him, one by one, and asked them to wash his nightshirt. But each was so repelled by the sickness, so disgusted by his and the nightshirt's appearance, as well as afraid for his own health, that he refused to do it, or indeed to come any more into the shaykh's presence. Al-Yusi volunteered. He took it to a spring where he rinsed it and, wringing it out, drank the foul water thus produced. He returned to the shaykh, his eyes aflame, not with illness, for he did not fall sick, but as though he had drunk a powerful wine. Thus all knew that al-Yusi was not, or anyway not any longer, an ordinary man. He became a holy man and miracle worker. The following scene occurred while the sultan Moulay Ismail was busying himself with the construction of Meknes, his new city’s wall,    

When al-Yusi (…) arrived in Meknes, Moulay Ismail received him as an honored guest, fed him and housed him, and brought him into his court as his spiritual advisor. The Sultan was at the time building a large wall around the city, and the people working on it, slaves and others were being treated cruelly. One day a man fell ill while working and was sealed into the wall where he fell. Some of the workers came secretly to al-Yusi to tell him of this and to complain of their treatment generally. Al-Yusi said nothing to Moulay Ismail, but when his supper was brought to his chamber he proceeded to break all the dishes, one by one, and he continued to do this, night after night, until all the dishes in the palace had been destroyed. When the sultan then asked what had happened to all his dishes, the palace slaves said, “that man who is our guest breaks them when we bring his food.” (…) The Sultan ordered al-Yusi to be brought to him:
- “Salam ‘Alykum.”
- “‘Alykum Salam.”
- “My Lord, we have been treating you like the guest of God, and you have been breaking all our dishes.”
- “Well, which is better—the pottery of Allah or the pottery of clay?” (…) and he proceeded to upbraid Moulay Ismail for his treatment of the workers who were building his wall. (…) The Sultan was unimpressed and said to al-Yusi, “All I know is that I took you in, gave you hospitality [a deeply meaningful act in Morocco], and you have caused me all this trouble. You must leave my city.” Al-Yusi left the palace and pitched his tent in the graveyard just outside the city near where the wall was being built. When the Sultan heard of this he sent a messenger to the saint to ask why, since he had been told to leave his, the sultan’s city, he had not in fact done so.
- “Tell him,” al-Yusi said, “I have left your city and I have entered God’s.” Hearing this, the Sultan was enraged and came riding out himself on his horse to the graveyard where he found the saint praying. Interrupting him, a sacrilege in itself, he called out to him, “Why have you not left my city as I ordered?” And al-Yusi replied, “I went out of your city and am in the city of God, the Great and the Holy.” Now wild with fury, the Sultan advanced to attack the saint. But al-Yusi took his lance and drew a line on the ground, and when the sultan rode across it the legs of his horse began to sink slowly into the earth. Frightened, Moulay Ismail began to plead to God, and he said to al-Yusi, “God has reformed me! God has reformed me! I am sorry! Give me pardon!” The saint then said, “I don’t ask for wealth or office, I only ask that you give me a royal decree acknowledging the fact that I am a sharif, and that I am a descendent of the Prophet and entitled to the appropriate honors, privileges, and respect.” The Sultan did this.

 

 

دعا الشيخ ابن ناصر للعلامة الحسن بن مسعود اليوسي قائلا:" جعلك الله عينا يستقي منك أهل المشرق والمغرب".

When al-Yusi and his son Mohammed went on hajj in 1098/1683, they did not take anything from the scholars of the Muslim lands where they travelled. It is said that because they did not find anyone with more knowledge than them so that they could take from them. One of the desires of the great Maghribi scholars when they go on hajj and to Madina is to meet other scholars in the Muslim lands and take knowledge from them and their reports do not omit any scholar in that. The scholarly position of al-Yusi must be recognized here from the fact that he did not take from anyone in his hajj journey and, therefore, we must, in turn, recognise the position of his Shaykh Ibn Nasir before whom al-Yusi was so humble and with whom he studied and boasted of the fact that he was one of his shayks. 

Shaykh Sidi Mohammed ibn Nasir died in 1085/1670 and was succeeded by good descendants whose excellence had appeared during his lifetime. That was due to the excellence of his good guidance and exemplary teaching. Sidi Mohammed ibn Nasir Dar'i, his eldest son who died in 1126/1711, was a great scholar, as was his brother Sidi Ahmed Ben Nasir, who died in 1129/1723 and was buried in the Tal'a district in Fez. He succeeded his father in taking charge of the zawiya by teaching and instructing dhikr through his appointment. He made six pilgrimages to Mecca and made each of these pilgimages into a journey of several years. Sidi Ahmed ibn Nasir travelled to the Hijaz, Egypt, Iraq, Persia, and Ethiopia. During his travels he took the opportunity of establishing new branches of the Nasiri brotherhood. Among his student at Medina the impecable saint Sidi Ahmed ibn Abdellah al-Hindi (d. 1187/1773), whom al-Qutb al-Maktum, Sidna Shaykh Abul Abbas Tijani (d. 1230/1815) contacted in the pilgrimage of 1187/1773 and received from him all his secrets, endowments, cognition, and illuminations, through a special envoy, without meeting with him. Sidi Ahmed ibn Nasir wrote a voluminous series of memoirs of his journeys called the Rihla (partly translated by A. Berbrugger in 1846). Since there is a telling episode for the Moroccans' love of books from the East, Sidi Ahmed brought back numerous works from all parts of the Islamic world. When Sidi Ahmed ibn Nasir died, the library of Tamegurt, with its thousands of manuscripts was one of the richest in the Maghreb. Fine examples of the collection of manuscripts (now 4200) are still on display in the zawiya today and attract many researchers and tourists from Morocco and abroad. Among them are a 14th century Koran with beautiful calligraphy in Kufic script, writings of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), El Khwarizmi, a translation of Pythagoras, treatises on theology, astronomy, geography and pharmacology.

In time, Nasiri shaykhs began to protect the periodic market system in the Dar'a valley region and the transport links between these markets and neighbouring regions. Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir and his muqaddams provided shelter and food to traders who conducted business within the security of zawiya walls and left gifts in return. These zawaya also appear to have become important sources of information on markets and prices, the movements and activities of bandits, wells that had gone dry, taxes, who to contact for protection and supplies along their route and how much they charged. A growing number of traders apparently tried to pass themselves off as Nasiriya to get access to zawaya. Shaykh Ben Nasir warned his muqaddams in some places, for example, to beware of certain unscrupulous traders who came to them claiming to be Nasiris and demanding food and lodging: "Do not help them; do not associate with them!" The effectiveness of Nasiri protection depended on a combination of social prestige and spiritual though Nasiri leaders also frequently paid for armed escorts and caravan guides. The growing popular perception of Nasiri leaders as mediators between God and men, combined with their expanding ties to leaders along the desert edge, helped guarantee the safety of Nasiri clients and promoted the Nasiriya in business and religious circles. 

In one instance, a commercial agent acting for the third paramount Shaykh of Nasiriya Sidi Ahmed Ben Nasir left Tamgrut for Timbuktu with a thousand-man caravan. Not long into the journey, a large group of nomads appeared and threatened to attack. The agent claimed that Sidi Ahmed Ben Nasir suddenly appeared in a vision, promised that he would 'utterly destroy' anyone who dared to attack the caravan and told the agent to seek out a certain Shaykh from among the nomads. He did and discovered that the nomads Wuld Dlim had ties with the Nasiriya. On learning of the caravan's origins, the Wuld Dlim leaders let the caravan buy food, use their wells and rest. The zattab (passage toll or protection charge), administered widely by Nasiri leaders and others, also illustrates the social processes of trade and mediation in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Merchants paid the zattab to the Nasiriya for spiritual or physical protection and safe border crossings, which Nasiri leaders in turn used to pay off Saharan and pre-Saharan pastoralists who occupied areas through which trade routes. It constituted much more than a protection payment and included rituals that bound payer and payee together by both law and sacred power in a variety of social relationships. As interregional and long-distance trade increased, the zattab came to imply a temporary surrendering of identity to one's protector. This also established a cultural modus vivendi that made trading easier, not to mention safer.

Sidi Ahmed Ben Nasir became renowned for his legal stance that equal protection charges should be made among followers, rather than by the value of each follower's baggage, a common practice at the time. As more groups affiliated with the Nasiriya, including powerful Ida ou Blal, Wuld Dlim and Wuld Yahya, Nasiri protection expanded to the routes between Saharan and desert-edge markets, as well as to the roads to Mecca. Stories about which circulated widely. Although paying Nasiri leaders for coordinating protection services did not guarantee safety, it helped lower the costs that trans-Saharan travellers paid. By appealing to nomadic groups' interests in increasing merchant traffic and their protection revenues, Nasiri leaders seem to have convinced many to treat their growing numbers of followers with care expansion of property holdings.

As Nasiri prestige grew, its leaders became recognized authorities through whom parties guaranteed contracts and agreements and settled disputes. By the 1670s, its leaders' widespread reputation for generosity during environmental and political crises, as learned judges, interpreters of Islamic law and miracle workers placed them at the pinnacle of Dar'a society. Although the reality of Nasiri economic control and partiality did not always match this pious popular reputation, many had little choice but to turn to the order's leadership for third-party mediation. By tapping into Nasiri leaders' reputations as simultaneously Sufi masters and jurists those with both the spiritual power and legal authority to interpret and enforce Islamic law clients symbolically put the seal of God on contracts that, if broken, could have severe consequences. To many, the Nasiri Shaykh, as God's executor on earth, became in every sense of the word the eternal arbiter.

Not all Nasiri leaders approached commerce and politics the same way. Many considered the larger Nasiri movement as simply an activist revival of the teachings of Imam Shadhili. Sidi Mhammed Ben Nasir managed to keep these differences from fracturing the order, partly by distributing resources and income among branch zawaya and partly by balancing commercial interests with openness towards differing attitudes and practices among leaders. Sidi Ahmed's successors, however, had different priorities. Sidi Moussa Ben Nasir (d. 1135/1729) went so far as to close the famous school at Tamgrut. He and his two immediate successors distributed gift payments less frequently, and some branch zawaya and affiliates broke away from contact with Tamgrut altogether. Individual Nasiri zawaya continued to maintain ties, particularly with those with whom they had common trade interests. But after Sidi Ahmed Ben Nasir's death, the Nasiri network gradually lost its dynamic, centralized quality while its Shaykhs' involvement with politics, especially following the death of Sultan Moulay Ismail in /1727, tarnished the Nasiriya's pious reputation.

Although the order retained its reputation, identifying oneself as Nasiri gradually lost its advantages in long-distance trade as traders used other distribution networks and social connections to move goods, enhance their status and improve their access to resources. Further, over this period the Nasiriya became increasingly atomized as a Sufi movement, while other turuq, including the Wazzaniya, the Kunta-led Qadiriya and the Tijaniya, gained political and economic power. The Nasiriya remained an important religious force and source of protection, mediation, information, capital, social connections and spiritual power. But as markets and commercial networks shifted towards the makhzan, Jewish middlemen and Europeans, strategies for accumulating, mobilizing and distributing capital resources for commerce also changed.  

The Nasiriya retained its popular symbolic importance and following at the hand of Sidi Yusuf ibn Ali Ben Nasir (d. 1189/1783), the sixth Shaykh of the order. He took the Nasiriya from al-Allama  Sidi Mohammed ibn Abdessalam Bannani (d. 1163/1748), who had it from Sidi Ahmed ibn Nasir. Among his noted disciples, Shaykh al-Jama'a, the Crescent of the Maghrib, Shaykh al-Tawdi b. Suda (d. 1209/1794-95), one the most influential teacher of  Sultan Mawlay Abu Rabi'a Sulayman ibn Sultan Moulay Mohammed ibn Abdellah. 

Moulay Mohammed ibn Abdellah (d 1204/1790), for instance, called on Sidi Yusuf ibn Ali Ben Nasir to help inaugurate Essaouira's opening to foreign trade in 1767 and had the largest of the city's mosques built in Shaykh Yusuf's name. Further, Moulay Mohammed gave the Nasiri zawiya at Tamgrut an allotment of the incoming duties collected at the port. But by the late 1100/1700s, Nasiri identity and connections could not guarantee traders access to European markets and no longer provided coordinated trans-Saharan insurance, protection or information that leaders in Tazrerwalt and Arawan could. A serious blow to Nasiri independence came in 1138/1783 with the death of Sidi Yusuf Ben Nasir. While accepting the sultan's gifts and authority, Sidi Yusuf had attempted to re-connect Nasiri zawiya and affiliates, build new Nasiri zawiya and develop contacts with other religious scholars. He had also tried to stop Nasiri followers and allies from joining rival orders. His death gave the Sultan Moulay Mohammed the opportunity to influence one of the largest religious at a time when Sufi orders were becoming organizations in his realm increasingly important as political allies and opponents.  

  Gradually the Ahmediya Mohammediya Tijaniya order came to be preferred by masses in the Suss region. Some long established Nasiri zawiyas attached themselves to the school of Sidna Shaykh Abul Abbas Tijani (d. 1230/1815); this includes the figures Sidi Mohammed b. Ahmed Akansus (d. 1294/1879), Sidi al-Hussein al-Ifrani al-Hassani (d. 1328/1913), Sidi Mohammed b. Abdelwahid Nadhifi (d. 1370/1951), Sidi Ali Isiki Susi (d. after 1370/1951), Sidi Ali Drarki Susi (d. after 1370/1951), and Sidi Taher b. Mohammed Susi Bakri (d. 1374/1959), who deserted their Nasiriya attachment and joined the Tijaniya for obvious reasons. The Tijaniya has a much border-based following than the Nasiriya. Tijani leaders, like al-Allama Sidi Mohammed ibn Mohammed al-'Hajuji al-Fasi (d. 1371/1952) allocated to Suss and appointed new muqaddams in various areas, and this way the Tijaniya continue to spread. Today the graves of eight Nasiri masters attract the visit of patients from all parts of the country, some of which remain in Tamegurt for months and sometimes even for years, hoping for healment and redemption by the baraka of the Nasiriya. Nasiri zawaya are also host to some of Morocco’s famous saints and scholars. Indded one of the leading scholars of Sal’e, Sidi Abdellah ibn Khadra Salawi (d. 1306/1891) was entered into the Nasiri lodge of Fez. The building of the Tamegurt Zawiya, as it stands now with its green tiles, dates from 1284/1869, when it was rebuilt after a fire. As for the Nasiriya itself, the recognition of its preeminence by the Sultans of Morocco ensured that it would remain remembered as the most influential Zawiya in central Morocco.