Sidi Abdellah al-Ghazwani (d. 935/1520)

llamado Moul EL Ksour, es originario de la tribu Gazouane. Consolidó el renacimiento sufí iniciado por Sidi Ben Slimane Al Jazouli. Después de haber proseguido sus estudios en Fes, luego en Granada, se instala en Marrakech para completar su formación. Su reputación no tarda en hacerle sombra al sultán Sidi Mohamed Cheikh, que le encarceló en Marrakech. El sultán Watasi lo libera más tarde y le construye una Zaouïa en Fes con el fin de alejarlo y aislarlo. Pero muy rápidamente, el santo hombre vuelve de nuevo a Marrakech. Construye una Zaouïa en el barrio de El Ksour. Muere en 1528 y está enterrado cerca de la Mezquita Mouassine. Tuvo desacuerdos con el sultán meriní por haber predicho el final de la dinastía.

Sidi Abu Mohammed Abdellah al-Ghazwani (d. 935/1520), one of the Seven Patron Saints of Marrakech, the successor of Sidi Abdellaziz Al-Tabba’a (d. 914/1499) as Shaykh al-jama'a of the Jazouliya and one of Marrakech' Sab'atu Rijal Saints, was born among the Banu Ghazwan tribal segment of ash-Shawiya region near the modern Moroccan capital of Rabat. He inherited a taste of mysticism from his father, Sidi Abul Barakat Ajal Ghazwani (d. after 910/1495), a Malammati Sufi and holy warrior who preached jihad and religious revival at tribal markets. The younger Ghazwani joined the Jazouliya in Fez, where his father has sent him to acquire a legal education at Madrasat al-Wadi on the Andalusian side of the city. While there he met a group of Jazouli Sufis who stopped by the Madrasa and invited its students to hear the words of their master Sidi Ali Salih al-Andalusi (d. 903/1488). To encourage the students to join them, the fuqara allowed them to take part in their Wadifa and give them all the couscous they could eat. That very night, Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani "placed himself between the hands" of Shaykh Ali Salih and asked to be accepted as his disciple. After receiving the assent of other Sufis, Shaykh Ali Salih agreed to Ghazwani's request and clasped the young man's hands in his own, saying in his original Granadan dialect: "This is a powerful bedouin!" (huwa 'arbi guwi).

Soon afterward, Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani went to Marrakech and joined Sidi Abdellaziz at-Tabba’a, who put him to work cultivating crops and tending his orchard. Extant sources tell us little about the so-called prophetic training (tarbiya nabawiya) that Shaykh Al-Tabba’a provided for his pupil. Instead, these sources tell us about the outward aspects of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's education, such as cutting wood and watering Shaykh Al-Tabba’a's flocks. These activities were designed to foster a sense of discipline in the headstrong young bedouin and to restrain an overdeveloped attitude of self-confidence. Shaykh Sidi Mohammed al-Arbi al-Fasi (d. 1052/1637), the author of Mira't al-Mahasin (The Mirror of exemplary qualities), hints that Shaykh al-Tabba’a's consolidation of the activities of the Jazouliya under his direction was motivated by a desire to involve the order in regional politics.

After training al-Ghazwani for ten years, at-Tabba’a told his pupil to go to Mohammed ibn Dawud (d. before 940/1533-4), the leader of the Shawlya Arabs, and deliver the message, "We need some fat (iddam)." The tribes of ash-Shawiya were bitter enemies of the Wattasid ruler Mohammed Shaykh (d. .910/1505) who had seized Fez from the Idrissids in 876/1471. After establishing himself in Fez, Mohammed Shaykh saw his most important task to be the punishment of the Arab tribes who had re­fused to support his accession to power. The nearest of these tribes to Fez was the ash-Shawiya confederation. This group of Banu Hilal Arabs was hounded mercilessly by Wattasid troops and their Banu Ma'qil allies and forced to flee westward to Tamesna, inland from present-day Rabat. The aftermath of this campaign was vividly described by Mohammed al-Kussari (fl. 950/1534), the official chronicler of the Wattasid regime:

When al-Ghazwani delivered at-Tabba’a’s summons to Mohammed ibn Dawud, the Arab chieftain exchanged his rich clothes for the simple garb of a Sufi, turned his lance point downward as a sign of submission, and went to Marrakech, where he pledged his loyalty to the leader of the Jazouliya. Ibn Dawud was welcomed with great respect by at-Tabba'a, who told him to return to Tamesna and create a ribat for the Jazouliya in that region. A short time later, al-Ghazwani was again called to his master's presence and was ordered to recruit disciples among his own tribe of Banu Ghazwan.

At first glance, at-Tabba’a opposition to the Wattasids seems illogical, given Mohammed Shaykh's stated intention to wage jihad against the Portuguese. The ruler of Fez had ample reason to be concerned about the Iberian threat, for his wives, daughters, and son had all been captured by the Portuguese and held for ransom after die conquest of Asila. For at-Tabba'a, however, this course of events merely confirmed his belief that Mohammed Shaykh was so power-hungry that he was even unwilling to protect his own family, for it was widely held that Asila (and later that same year, Tangier) had fallen only because the sultan had been more con­cerned with securing the throne than with defending Islam. This trade-off of Asila and Tangier for Fez was seen by the shaykhs of the Jazouliya as the lowest example of adventurism and self-indulgence. Even worse, im­mediately after assuming power Mohammed Shaykh had concluded a twenty-year truce with his Christian enemies. Although this pact was pro­moted as a way of providing breathing space for the preparation of a new of­fensive, it was widely suspected that its real purpose was to buy time for the Wattasid ruler to consolidate his power. Mohammed Shaykh's subse­quent campaign against the Arabs of Dukkala did nothing to dispel this no­tion. Although hagiographical accounts do not mention the year in which at-Tabba’a made his overtures to the Shawiya Arabs, it’s likely that this took place around 896/1490-1, when the sultan extended his treaty with the Portuguese or another five years.

Whether it was intentional or not, Mohammed Shaykh's truce with Lisbon did give the mujahidun of northern Morocco time to organize themselves. During this period, four bases were created for a counterattack against the Portuguese forts at Asila, Tangier, and al-Qasr as-Saghir. These four were: Shafshawan, founded in 876/1471-2 by the Banu Rashid family of Idrissid sharifs from Jabal al-'Alam; Tetuan (Ber. titawin, "springs"), an abandoned town that was reoccupied in 888/1483 by Andalusian refugees under the Granadan amir Mohammed al-Manzari; al-Kharrub located in the Jabal Habib region midway between Tetuan and Larache and occupied by a collectivity of tribes that were loyal to the Banu Rashid; and Targha, lo­cated east of Tetuan on the Mediterranean coast, which guarded the region between Shafshawan and Badis.

Shafshawan was the most important of these garrisons, since its strate­gic location made it the most suitable site for a base of operations. The town was built near the village of Ghuruzim, which, in the latter half of the fifteenth century was home to several families of legists who claimed descent from Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish (d. 622/1207). In 876/1471-2, the most senior of these scholars, al-Hassan ibn Jumu'a al-Alami, resolved to build a command and supply centre for a future offensive against Portuguese-held Tangier. However, no sooner had he begun to assemble groups of Banu Zajal Berbers and Andalusian refugees than the Portuguese, who were aware of the threat that he posed to their interests, contrived to have him assassinated. He was succeeded by his nephew, Ali ibn Rashid (d. 917/ 1511-12), who actually built the town of Shafshawan and founded its dy­nasty of Banu Rashid amirs.

As ruler of Shafshawan, 'Ali ibn Rashid demonstrated such political and military acumen that conflict with the Wattasids became inevitable. During his reign the population of the town grew to over 10,000 inhabitants, in­cluding 6,000 Moroccan Muslims, 3,000 Andalusian Muslims, and 1,000 Jews.59 He was lionized as Morocco's most successful fighter against the Portuguese and in the popular imagination was hailed as the just ruler that was sought by Sidi Mohammed ibn Yajbash Tazi (d. 920/1505) in Kitab al-Jihad. He was particularly successful in recruiting military contingents from al-Andalus to help his cause, a policy that led to the repopulation of Tetuan in 888/1483.60 He enhanced the pres­tige of the 'Alami sharifs by promoting the cult of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish and appointing members of the clan of al-'Alami as local imams and judges. In addition, he secured for himself important symbols of polit­ical autonomy, such as a flag, distinctive court traditions, a bureaucracy, and a tax administration. In short, Ali ibn Rashid was developing into the Wattasids' worst nightmare: a just ruler whose virtues as a defender of the faith were well-proven and whose potential for making trouble could not be ignored.

In the end, however, Ibn Rashid was undone by his own ambition. The anticipated conflict between the Banu Rashid and Wattasids came about at the end of the year 900 (July-August 1495), when the sharif of Shaf­shawan egged on by the Idrissids of Fez, proclaimed himself the Renewer (mujaddid) of the tenth Islamic century. Fearing for his throne, the sultan of Fez sent an emissary to the Portuguese captain of Ceuta, who, in ex­change for unspecified concessions and the delivery of one of Mohammed Shaykh's sons as a hostage, agreed to assist him in a joint attack against Shafshawan. Seeing that he was not powerful enough to fight two enemies at once, Ali ibn Rashid fled into the Rif mountains and saved his neck by recognizing his Wattasid sultan as his sovereign.

Thus, at the dawn of the tenth century A.H., neither sharifian alternative in northern Morocco—the Idrissids of Fez nor the Banu Rashid of Shaf­shawan—posed much of a threat to the Wattasids. This must have come as a great disappointment to Shaykh Abu Faris Sidi Abdellaziz at-Tabba'a, who looked upon the family of the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) as prime candidates for religious and political leader­ship. The rapprochement between the Banu Rashid and the Wattasids took an even more troubling turn after 917/1511-12, when Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn Rashid (d. 947/1539) succeeded his father as the ruler of Shafshawan and married the daughter of the Wattasid sultan Mohammed al-Burtughali (d. 931/1524). Wattasid interests in northern Morocco were also protected at this time by a third group of Idrissid sharifs, the Banu Arus of Qasr Kutama (present-day El Ksar El Kebir), who kept an eye on the activities of Sufis and holy warriors at al-Kharrub and their original homeland, the Idrissid tomb centre of Jabal al-'Alam.

In 910/1505, the Wattasid sultan Mohammed Shaykh died and was succeeded by his son Mohammed al-Burtughali, who was given his un­usual nickname (the Portuguese) because he had spent seven years as a hostage in Lisbon. The good news for the Jazouliya was that the new sultan had no taste for the accomodationist policies of his father. Within the first four years of his reign, al-Burtughali conducted several offensives against the Portuguese in the Gharb and Dukkala regions. These actions were in response to earlier offensives by the Portuguese themselves, who had moved south from their bases in Tangier and Asila in order to eliminate Muslim resistance at al-Kharrub. The unfortunate result of these raids and counter-raids was the nearly total depopulation of the Atlantic coastal re­gion between Asila and Qasr Kutama, whose Banu Arus rulers now found themselves responsible for large numbers of refugees. Unfortunately, Mohammed al-Burtughali was by nature an uncompro­mising autocrat, whose love for jihad was mitigated by a tendency to ruth­lessly suppress any hint of dissent. The weapon he used to punish his op­ponents was his brother Moulay an-Nasir (d. 9.30/1523), who was called al-Gaddid (Old Dried Meat), because of his cruelty toward his victims. As governor of Meknes, Moulay an-Nasir's main task was to keep a watchful eye on the Arab tribes who lived along the caravan routes linking Fez to the port city of Sail.

The year of al-Burtughali's accession found Shaykh Sidi Abdellah al-Ghazwani in northern Morocco, although conflicting reports make it difficult to deter­mine exactly where he was at any given time. According to Mira't al-Mahasin, when Shaykh Sidi Abdellaziz al-Tabba’a died in Marrakech in 914/1499 Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani was still among the Banu Ghazwan, for Sidi Mohammed al-Arbi al-Fasi claims that Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani travelled to Marrakech to his last respects to his master Al-Tabba’a with a group of ash-Shawiya Arabs. After returning to his homeland, he was visited by a group of Jazoulite Sufis who informed him that, while making their invocations, they had heard their voice leading their assembly. From this they concluded that Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani had been chosen by God to be Al-Tabba’a's successor. Upon receiving this news, Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani sent one of his disciples to leaders of the northern Arabs to see whether they would support him. Upon receiving a favourable response, he moved north to the region of al-'Habt. Although it was nominally within the borders of what Spanish and Portuguese called the "Kingdom of Fez," al-'Habt was beyond direct Wattasid control and was ruled independently by local tribal leaders. One of these leaders, the head of Banu Fazankar clan near Jabal al-Alam in the Jbala county,  donated land outside the village of Tassurt for the Shaykh's zawiya. Every coy about what was clearly a political decision to live within the saintly penumbra of Moulay Abdessalam ibn Mashish, al-Fasi states that after moving to Tassurt Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's fortunes "increased greatly."

It is difficult to get a complete picture of Shaykh Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's activities in al-'Habt. Some information can be obtained from oral tradition, while a little more can be found in letters reproduced in Kitab An-Nukta al-Azaliya fi Sirr adh-Dhat al-Mohammediya (The Eternal point in the secret of the Mohammedian essence), a volume of essays, letters, poems and aphorisms written by Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani and published after his death. Local traditions in the Jabal al-Alam region claim that Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani was instrumental in popularizing the cult of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish and institutionalising the pilgrimage that now terminates in the yearly mawsim (festival of the saint) on the fifteenth day of the Islamic month of Sha'ban. As part of these efforts, Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani established zawaya along the route from Marrakech to Jabal al-Alam and encouraged his disciples to use the mawsim of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish as a substitute for the pilgrimage to Mecca. This emphasis on visits to Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish was in part due to the fact that the pilgrimage centres of the Mashriq were often inaccessible to sixteenth-century Moroccans. The Falls of Sabta, Asila, al-Qasr as-Saghir, and Tangier to the Portuguese, the dissolution of governmental authority in the central and western Morocco, and increased corsair activity in the western Mediterranean all conspired to cut off most of the sea and land routes used by North African pilgrims on their journeys to the East.

 According to the present muqaddam of tomb complex of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish, Shaykh Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani made repeated visits to Jabal al-Alam, determined the exact location of the saint's grave, and constructed the open-air rawda that now crows the hill where the patron of Moroccan Sufism is buried. Although tradition also asserts that Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani was the first to institutes the annual pilgrimage (called al-Hajj al-Asghar) to this site, it is know from written sources that the mawsim of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish actually dates from the fourteenth. soon after the Shadhiliya was introduced into Morocco by the Sufi and 'alim Moulay Abd an-Nur Amrani (b. 685/1286) who brought it from Tunisia.  By making the tomb of Sidi Abul Hassan Shadhili's teacher an object of pilgrimage for Jazulite Sufis, Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani helped to ensure the primacy of the Shadhili perspective in Jazulite Sufism and linked the political agenda of Tariqa Jazouliya to that of the Idrissite sharifs. Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's promotion of the pilgrimage of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish was a part of a wider plan to integrate the ideology of sharifism with the doctrines of Jazouliya. The time was ripe for such a move because the most important sharifian families of Jabal al-Alam, the Banu Rachid and Banu Arus, had lost face by siding the Wattasids. The Shaykh had exchanged letters with his disciples Sidi Abdellah al-Habti (d. 963/1548), Sidi Abderrahman ibn Raysoun (d. 950/1536), and Sidi Mohammed ibn Khajju (d. 956/1541), who asked the Shaykh to support the amir of Chefchaouen, Ibrahim ibn Ali b. Rachid (d. 947/1532). In his reply. Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani is openly skeptical about the motives of the Banu Rachid sharifs. It is the duty of the sharifs, he says, to support the Jazouliya, not the duty of the Jazouliya to support the sharifs.

Tell our lords the sharifs, as well as their legal scholars and fuqara: We love you with all of our heart and soul, and desire to look upon your faces. But we have smelled the scent of unbelief overcoming and impairing faith. The ambition of salihin is to dispel its oppression  so that you may magnify the exalted word of God and attain the baraka of the Messenger of God (peace and blessing be upon him). Verily the word of God is exalted, while that of the unbelievers is lowly! We have not seen any counsel given ]by the sharifs] to the people of Tamesna or [about] conditions in Marrakech that is not of benefit to the Wattasid rulers of this Maghreb of ours (may God maintain it and guide it to uphold the authority of the Sunna!). Yet we have not, God willing, altered our regard to you despite what we have mentioned. We and all of brothers the fuqara are happy about your dedication to invocation, friendship, self-sacrifice, and generosity. May God maintain ourselves and you in the manifest way of His saints—through the axial sainthood (Qutbaniya) that is the legacy of your ancestor Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish, the path of honour (tariqat al-ikram) of Sidi Abul Hassan Shadhili, who chose it for our lord (sayyidina) and source of grace (barakatina) Sidi Mohammed Jazouli, out of all the Sufi paths. He inspired us with the truth and passed it on to us as a legacy from the lord of the God-fearing and the people of his age, the force of truth in all of God's manifestations, Sidi Abdellaziz Al-Tabba’a. These Shaykhs are our true means to God and our exemplars in loving the Messenger of God, our Prophet Sidna Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him), both outwardly and inwardly.

The submission of Banu Rachid to Wattasid authority precipitated a conflict among the Idrissites of northern Morocco. Those who were opposed to a rapprochement between Chefchaouen and Fez either became disciples of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani or allied themselves with the Shaykh's successors in resisting the accommodationism of Ibrahim ibn Ali. Idrissite sharifs from this region who were disciples of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani included Sidi Omar ibn Abdelwahhab Alami (d. 958/1551) and the Ibn Raysoun brothers: Sidi Abderrahman, one of the recipient of the letter quoted above, and his more politically active sibling, Moulay Ali ibn Raysoun (d. 963/1548). The evidence of both sacred biography and Ghazwani's own words in An-Nukta al-Azaliya suggest that he aspired to be both the paramount Shaykh of Moroccan Sufism and the axial saint of Morocco in general. This conclusion is supported by numerous statements in which Shaykh Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani makes it clear that the Imamate of Justice (imamat al-'adl), which reformers such the Qadiri master Sidi Mohammed ibn Yajbash Tazi desired, was to be found in him alone. On one occasion, while in Fez, after hearing a woman make the distinctive "yoo-yoo" cry of greeting (Moroccan Arabic. Zgharat) for Sultan Mohammed Burtughali, Shaykh Ghazwani reprimanded her, saying: "I am the Sultan of this world and the next"! Also, during his sojourn among the Banu Fazankar, his disciples were instructed to respond to the question, "Who is your sultan?" by saying: "Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani."

Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's understanding of Sufi praxis like that of most Moroccan mystics was based on the principles of chivalry (futuwwa). The themes of brotherhood and social consciousness that made up this doctrine gave Moroccan Sufism the activist complexion that set it apart from other regional varieties of Islamic mysticism. The central motif of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's futuwwa-based populism was the rejection of all form of elitism. This is expressed in the following aphorism: "Oh fuqara, chose the fuqara among the fuqara!" Association with the so-called sons of the world (abna' ad-dunya)—the ulama, amirs, and others who held posts in government—was to be avoided at all costs. This was done so that the Sufis of the Jazouliya would not become the "apostles" of their  patrons and forget the common people whose interests they were duty-bound to protect. 

More than any other issue, it was this defacto repudiation of the official ulama that aroused the ire of juridical Sufis such as Sidi Ahmed Zarruq al-Fasi (d. 899/1484). However, there was more than one side of this argument. To Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani, the real issue was not whether one should respect the ulama, but rather which ulama one should respect. Given the low standard of ethics and accommodation toward its enemies that characterized the Marinid-Wattasid state in its final years, it is no surprise that the Shaykhs of the Jazouliya would be skeptical of those on the government payroll. From the Jazulite perspective, Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's arrogation of leadership to himself was no more than an expedient way of preserving the integrity of Islamic values and institutions. As part of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's attempt to take on the responsibilities of the ulama, a number of centres of religious education were established in the Moroccan countryside in the first decades of the sixteenths century. This policy filled an educational vacuum in the rural areas and at the same time created an alternative to urban centres of learning, such as the mosques and madaris of Fez. If the right kind of scholar could not be found in the cities, then  such a person would have to be produced in the countryside. The fruits of this Jazulite educational programme would eventually be seen in the administration of the Saadian state, which was staffed with locally trained scholars from 'Haha, the Sus, and the caravan centres of Moroccan Southern Sahara.

Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani was able to introduce such innovations because, as a Qutb saint and possessor of the Mohammedian Inheritance, his interpretations of Islamic doctrine were divinely legitimised. To further demonstrate his worthiness of this station, he displayed a passionate love for the Prophet Sidna Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him), whom he called the "Bridegroom of the Universe" ('arus al-akwan). Like his predecessor Imam Jazouli, he spoke of himself in superlatives and allowed himself to be addressed by such politically charged titles as "Exemplar of Our Salvation" (qudwat sadatina), "Possessor of Solicitude and Power" (dhu al-'inaya wa saltana), "Possessor of Justice and Authority" (dhu al-'adl wal 'hukm), and "Symbol of [the divine] Light" (ayat an-nur). Also like Imam Jazouli, he was the recipient of divine addresses (mukhatabat), which he attributed to the "purifications of mind, conscious, insight, inspirations, secrets, and innermost being." Many of these discourses expressed states that on the surface were as just exalted as those of Imam Jazouli himself and at times came perilously close to the proscribed doctrine of ittihad, proximity between the mystic and his Creator:

Oh My slave, you are My essence and I am your essence without distinction or fusion; were it not for My essence, you would not exist.

 Oh My slave, you are the Name and I am the one named; your essence is Mine and My essence is yours.

Oh My slave, if you searched for Me, you would find only yourself.

Oh My slave, I have made for every saint an ocean from which to ladle, and every ocean that I make for him is a power through which he may repel evil. But I repel evil from your ocean Myself, for the sake of your privileged calling and even greater intimacy. One who is not established by means of your confirmation will never escape the oppression of the body and be purified from the appetites of the senses.

Oh My slave, be as I am so that I may be as you are. Oh My slave, be as I was that I may be as you were. Oh My slave, return to your source so that I may return to My source. If you are in need of Me, I will fulfil your needs. But f you feel independent from Me, I will make sure that you need Me.

Oh My slave, I have manifested My essence through My essence, so that you may see your essence in My essence; and I am the Most High!

Oh My slave, I have made you a slave in the Lord and a lord among slaves. If one of My slaves acts as a lord toward you, then be as a slave to him; and if one of them acts as a slave toward you, then be as a lord toward him; for I am the All-Powerful Lord!

Oh My slave, I am All-Merciful (ar-Rahman), and mercy (rahma) belongs to the All-Merciful. Therefore, you must be that mercy and I will be a bestower of mercy (rahiman) on human beings through you.

Oh My slave, all that exists is from your existence, all that lives is from your life, everything everlasting is from your everlastingness, everything persistent is from your persistence, all glory is from your glory, all wealth is from your wealth, every miracle is from your generosity, every act of mercy is from your mercy, all knowledge is from your knowledge, every secret is from your secret, all light is from your light, all speech is from your speech, every vision is from your vision, all hearing is from your hearing, all glory is from your glory, all beauty is from your beauty, all perfection is from your perfection, everything desired is from your wish, and everything possible is from your ability!

The doctrine of Mohammedian sainthood that was disseminated by the shaykhs of the Jazouliya stimulated an Islamic revival throughout Morocco in the sixteenth century. It is easy to imagine how threaten­ing the ideology of saintly authority that these shaykhs advocated (espe­cially given the millenarian terms in which it was expressed) must have ap­peared to the rulers of the time. At the end of the sixteenth century, the popular image of the Sufi master that grew out of the Jazulite model of saint­hood was expressed by Sidi Ridwan ibn Abdellah al-Janwi al-Fasi (d. 991/1583), who served Shaykh al-Ghazwani in the latter's final years and recorded some of the earliest accounts of his activities. Remarking on his first impression of al-Ghazwani, he said: "There was a splendour and a radiance about him, as if I had seen a man with an enormous body. His complexion was ruddy, as if it were made of light. When I looked at him, I said [to myself], 'He is he'.

After approximately five years among the Banu Fazankar, while travelling beyond the protection of his tribal allies, al-Ghazwani was arrested by Talha al-'Arusi, the Idrissid ruler of Qasr Kutama, who delivered the shaykh to Sultan Mohammed al-Burtughali. Reflecting a topos that is fre­quently found in Moroccan hagiographical literature, the blame for al-Ghazwani’s arrest has been laid by historians at the feet of a jealous faqih named Abdelkabir as-Sufyani. According to the most commonly ac­cepted version of this story, the shaykh responded meekly to this turn of events, saying, "Obedience to the Sultan is obligatory." To his companions, however, he exulted, "My desire has come to pass!"

The most detailed account of al-Ghazwani's incarceration and interro­gation in Fez is provided on the authority of Sidi Abdelwarith al-Yaslouti (d. after 960/1554), a disciple of Sidi as-Sughayyir as-Sahli (student of Shaykh Tabba’a) who acted as al-Ghazwani's advocate. According to this tradition, which is reproduced in Mir’at al-Mahsin, al-Ghazwani was first thrown into prison in the old Almoravid fort near present-day Bab Bujlud. Because of public pressure on his behalf, he was moved a few days later to a mosque in the Darb as-Su'ud quarter in the Idrissid city of Fas al-Bali. Here he was questioned by a qadi who is identified by al-Fasi as "Abu Abdellah al-Miknasi." When " the qadi asked al-Ghazwani, "What is this that people say about you?" al-Yasluti answered for him: "This man settled in a land of great evil; indeed, it is one of the most evil of all. Then this man started to forbid people from doing evil. God has allowed him to guide whomever he wills and punishes those who reject him!”

The next day, the qadi escorted al-Ghazwani to the palace, where he was interrogated before Mohammed al-Burtughali and his son Ahmed, who was then governor of Taza. When questioned by the Sultan's secretary, the shaykh refused to answer and replied disdainfully, "Do not speak to me un­til you have cleansed yourself of your sexual impurities (janabatika)”. At this, the amir Ahmad al-Wattasi intervened: "What these people mean by janaba is different from what is understood by the rest of us." When the Sultan asked his son how he had come to know this, Ahmed replied, "From Sidi Mohammed ibn Yajbash Tazi. " Upon hearing this information, Mohammed al-Burtughali immediately called off the interrogation. Al­though the reason for this decision is not given by al-Yaslouti, Ahmed al-Wattasi’s mention of at-Tazi's name suggests that the doctrines of Sufi pop­ulism had already penetrated the Sultan's entourage. To be on the safe side, al-Burtughali ordered al-Ghazwani to remain in Fez, where the shaykh ac­tivities could be monitored by his officers.

The problem with al-Yaslouti's account of al-Ghazwani's arrest and inter­rogation is that his "eyewitness" testimony disagrees in several important details with that of his near-contemporary, Mohammed ibn 'Askar. The most significant disagreement between the two accounts concerns the date of al-Ghazwani's arrest and hinges on whether the shaykh was interrogated by the qadi al-jama'a of Fez, Abu 'Abdellah Mohammed al-Miknasi (d. 915/ 1509-10), or someone else. According to Ibn Askar, al-Ghazwani was not met by the qadi al-jama'a but by the shaykh al-jama’a and mufti of Fez, who was also named Abu Abdellah al-Miknasi. This latter person was the noted legist and historian Mohammed ibn Ghazi al-Miknasi, whose death is known to have occurred in 919/1513. In Ibn Askar's version of the story Ibn Ghazi accompanies the previous ruler, Mohammed Shaykh al-Wattasi, on a military expedition against the Portuguese at Asila, after which al-Ghazwani is arrested and brought to Fez in chains. Now in his final illness, the aged mufti is brought back to Fez in a litter and feels excruciating pain as he passes by the city's prison. Believing this to be the baraka em­anating from someone inside the prison, Ibn Ghazi orders his bearers to investigate and receives the news that al-Ghazwani has been incarcerated. Af­ter receiving the blessing of al-Ghazwani, Ibn Ghazi announces to his companions that he will die the following day. When they object to his pre­diction, he says, "God has promised me that He would not take my soul un­til I had seen one of His saints. He has just shown me one of them."

Both of these accounts are problematical. In the first place, Ibn Ghazi could not have accompanied Mohammad Shaykh in the year proposed by Ibn Askar, since the founder of the Wattasid state died in 910 /1505, a full nine years before Ibn Ghazi himself. However, it is equally unlikely that al-Ghazwani was brought to Fez in 915/1509-10, when the qadi al-jama'a died, because he visited the grave of Sidi Abdellaziz al-Tabba’a in Marrakech in 914/1508-9, while living among the Shawiya Arabs. Dating his arrest to 915 means that al-Ghazwani would have spent less than a year at Jabal al-‘Alam, which is highly improbable, given the extent of his involvement in devel­oping the cult of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mashish. The key to this problem, can be found in the letter, quoted ear­lier, to al-Ghazwani's disciples al-Habti, Ibn Raysun, and Ibn Khajju. This document could not have been written before 917/1511-12, the year in which Ibrahim ibn c All ibn Rashid succeeded his father as amir of Shafshawan. It is apparent from the text of the letter that al-Ghazwani was in full liberty at the time and probably living at Jabal al-‘Alam. It is difficult to be­lieve that the shaykh would have felt free to criticize both the Banu Rashid and the Wattasids if he had been under house arrest in Fez. Thus, it seems most probable that al-Ghazwani was arrested and brought to Fez sometimes after 917, and perhaps in the year 919, as Ibn Askar suggests. Does this mean that Abdelwarith al-Yaslouti had as faulty a memory for names as Ibn Askar apparently had for the details of dynastic succession? Not nec­essarily. The most likely scenario is that Mohammed al-Arabi al-Fasi, the hagiographer who transmitted al-Yaslouti's more up-to-date account, was confused about the two Abu 'Abdellahs from Meknes: the qadi al-jama'a and the shaykh al-jama'a. Since al-Fasi died in 1052/1643 more than a century after the events he describes, it is reasonable to conclude that he stumbled into one of the aporias of tradition by confusing one Abu Abdellah al-Miknasi with the other.

Upon being confined to Fez, al-Ghazwani ordered his students to join him and established a zawiya inside of Bab al-Futuh at a place called Bab al-Qall'a. One of his disciples was the Fez native Sidi Mohammed al-Harwi al-Talib (d. 964/1557), whose Wadhifa al-Jazouliya al-Ghazwaniya (The daily office invocation of the order) appears to be the only original version of a Jazulite litany still in existence. The manuscript of this work, which was copied in the year 1011/1600, can be found at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Its opening passages, translated below, provide a rare, firsthand glimpse of the exalted terms in which Jazulite Sufis con­ceived of themselves and their place in Moroccan society:

Beneath the Banner of Praise with our Prophet and noble master Mohammed (may the most excellent blessings and purest greetings be upon him)! Allah elevates whomever He wills through His mercy, for Al­lah's is the greatest excellence. All praise be to the Planner, the All-Wise, the Conqueror, the All-Knowing, the opener of the hearts of His saints to the knowledge of His grace and blessings! [The saints] are happy in His blessings upon them and bear witness to none but Him alone, putting all of their aspirations in Him devoting themselves to praising and glorifying Him, and happily awaiting the day when they will depart from the world by meeting Him on the carpet of His goodness and in His heaven, calling and urging humankind to listen to them and accept them.

[Allah's saints] are the Crowns of the Kingdom (tijan al-mamlaka) and the Moons of Existence (aqmar al-wujud), illuminating [the earth] with the light of their inheritance from and adherence to the honest and trustworthy Messenger. They are the followers of [Allah's] Straight Path and guides to the Most Noble Master. He who agrees to follow and serve them will attain the full recompense of the One who gives birth to no sons; but he who rejects them and falls from their way has fallen into a great ocean and a bottomless pit and has brought upon himself a griev­ous punishment and a terrible calamity!

Allah has made us immune to both outward and inward strife, has rewarded us with the most beautiful of doctrines, and has made us impervious to the depravity of our egos and the evil of arguments and criticisms through His beneficence, generosity, excellence, compassion, power, and might; for He is the master of everything and the All-Powerful who does as He wills. He is the protector of the believers, the recourse of the fearful, the goal of the seekers, and the answer of those who call upon Him.

(…) The souls of those who know Him take on the attribute of low­liness and maintain the station of supplication with reverence and self-abnegation, placing themselves between the hands of the Mysterious, the Unique, the Conquering, the Glorious, the AB-Powerful, the Compel­ling. They take pleasure in the different varieties of invocations and sup­plications for forgiveness (istighfar), and use as their means to Him the Pure, the Purified, the Intercessor, the Chosen [Prophet Mohammed] (may God bless him and his family).

Al-Ghazwani probably spent only five or six years in Fez, for a late sixteenth-century manaqib work, Shams al-ma’arifa fi sirat ghazuth al-mutasawwifa (The Sun of gnosis in the biography of the nurturer of the Sufis), by Ahmad al-Halfawi (d. after 1000/1590), puts him in Marrakech in 921/1515, where he prevents the conquest of the city by the Wattasid amir Moulay an-Nasir. In consolation for the Wattasid defeat at Marrakech, he is said to have "given" Mohammed al-Burtughali, the Sultan of Fez, victory over the Portuguese at Ma’mura Sabu (present-day Mahdiya), a fort on the Atlantic coast of Morocco between the regions of Shawiya and al-Gharb. This tradition is transmitted by Sidi Abu Amr al-Qastali (d. 974/ 1566-7), a third-generation Jazulite shaykh and the subject of the above-mentioned work, whose own teacher (and al-Ghazwani's principal Jazulite rival) Sidi Abdelkarim al-Fallah (d. 933/1518), also claimed some of the credit for this miraculous trade-off.

Both of the events mentioned in Shams al-ma’rifa —Moulay an-Nasir's abortive siege of Marrakech and the subsequent Wattasid victory over the Portuguese at Ma’mura— are well-known and can be dated with precision. Moulay an-Nasir's expedition to Dukkala and the Sus, of which the siege of Marrakech was but a sideshow, is confirmed by the Wattasid chronicler al-Kurrasi as occurring in 921/1515.94 Apparently, Moulay an-Nasir believed that the defenders of the Marrakech would give up without a fight, for the previous year a Portuguese raiding party had been able to approach the city's gates at will. The defeat of the Portuguese at Ma'mura, which was hailed as the greatest Moroccan victory since the relief of Tangier in 841/ 1437, also occurred in 921/1515 and resulted in the capture of more than fifty cannons and hundreds of Christian prisoners.

The dates of these battles also agree with the most widely accepted ac­count of al-Ghazwani's departure from Fez, which is said to have occurred in a year of severe drought. Such a drought did, in feet, occur in 921/1515 and precipitated one of the two major famines that Morocco would un­dergo in the first half of the sixteenth century. According to Mohammed al-Mahdi al-Fasi, Shaykh Abdellah al-Ghazwani used a canal that drew water to the outskirts of Fez from Wadi al-Laban, whose Bani Ma’qil inhabitants had supported the Jazulite cause a generation earlier. Seeing that the shaykh's canal always flowed with water while the others in the area had dried up, Moulay an-Nasir (the perennial nemesis of al-Ghazwani in hagiographical literature) sought to commandeer it for the state. In the bargaining that followed, Sultan Mohammed al-Burtughali consented to the shaykh's departure from Fez in exchange for this canal. As al-Ghazwani and his companions left the Marinid-Wattasid capital for the last time, the shaykh took his burnous (mantle) in his right hand and pointed it first toward Fez and then to­ward the south, saving solemnly: "Go with me, oh sultanate, to Marrakech!" (Ayaa ya saltana, ila Marrakech).

Upon leaving Fez, al-Ghazwani burned all of his bridges to the Wattasids and the Idrissids and cast his lot once and for all with the lesser-known Saadian sharifs of the Dar’a valley in southern Morocco. Unlike northern Morocco, which had long suffered from the depredations of Arab pastoralists and Christian invaders, the lands south of the Atlas mountains still maintained stable social and economic structures. The strategically important regions of Haha, Sus, Gazula, Haskura, and Dar'a had been independent from the Marinids since the end of the thir­teenth century and shared similar patterns of culture, trade, and social organization. The original inhabitants of these regions consisted of both sedentary and transhumant tribes of Berbers and their Jewish or sub-Saharan African clients.  

Because of the segmentary and "acephalous" social organization of the tribes of southern Morocco, local murabitun had long played an impor­tant role in the maintenance of social and economic life. These saintly lead­ers were particularly concerned with maintaining the trans-Saharan trade, which tied the oases of the Sus and Dar’a valleys to markets as for away as Tlemcen in western Algeria. When the regional balance of power was upset by the creation in 911/1505 of the Portuguese stronghold and feitoria of Santa Cruz do Gabo de Gu6 (now the modern city of Agadir), the Berbers of these regions looked to their saintly patrons to help them deal with this new threat. By the first decade of the sixteenth century, four Sufi zawaya all located in towns or tribal homelands that were associated with the trans-Saharan trade had become centres of anti-Portuguese activity.

The easternmost of these centres was Zawiyat Mdaghra, which was lo­cated in the region of Tafilalt, not far from the old mercantile city of Sijilmasa. Its founding shaykh, Sidi Abdellah ibn Omar al-Mdaghri (“Lamdaghri”; d. 927/1521), allied himself with the senior sharifian family of southern Morocco, the "Sijilmasis" (today's Alawites), whose influence extended from Haskura in the west to Figuig near the present Moroccan-Algerian border. Zawiyat M'daghra was also allied with the sharifs of Zawiyat Tagmadert in the middle Dar'a valley, which had begun to expand its influence under the leadership of Sidi Mohammed ibn Abderrahman az-Zaydani (d. 923/1517). Although the sharifs of Sijilmasa and Tagmadert were said to be distantly related, they were by no means equal. On the contrary, the more senior Sijilmasis not only looked down on their Banu Zaydan "cousins," but even claimed that they had falsified their Prophetic genealogy.

The most important religious centre of the Sus valley proper was Zawiyat Tidsi, located south of the city of Taroudannt in a town that served as a source of sugar and indigo for the Saharan trade. Its paramount shaykh, Barakat ibn Mohammed at-Tidasi (d. 917/1511), had gained con­siderable prestige as a holy warrior who skirmished with the Portuguese near the feitorias of Massa and Santa Cruz. Along with his prosecution of jihad, he also ransomed prisoners and kept the peace between feuding tribes. Despite his local reputation as a murabit who could get things done, he was unable to convince the Portuguese to enter into relations with him. To their mind, a murabit such as Sidi Barakat did not have royal status and thus could not validate a treaty. This tendency of the Portuguese to con­fuse Moroccan social structure with their own brand of feudalism and to equate murabitun with minor officials of the Catholic church caused them to misinterpret indigenous structures of authority and hence to miss im­portant political opportunities.

Perhaps the greatest murabit in the lands south of the Atlas mountains was Mhammed u-M'barak al-Aqqawi (d. 924/1518), a Berber from the emporium and mining centre of Aqqa in the lower Dar’a valley. This shaykh ensured the economic stability of the region of Gazula in the lower Sus by instituting a commercial truce of three consecutive days per week called the "Days of Sidi M'barak'' (ayydm Sidi M'barak). On these days tribespeople were forbidden from feuding, bearing arms, or harming any liv­ing creature. According to Ibn 'Askar, one could even witness the unheard-of sight of a man trading with the person who had killed his father or his son. The sixteenth-century Jazulite Sufi and biographer Mohammed al-Ba’aqili reports that the fear of Sidi M'barak was so great that the Arabs of Gazula even policed themselves, lest the actions of one of their kin bring misfortune upon the entire tribe: "It was God's will that a bedouin caught a jerboa [a type of squirrel] on one of those days. A friend of his said, 'Let it go, for today is one of the Days of Forgiveness (ayydm al-‘afiya) and it be­longs to the murabit.' Then his friends set upon him because of his action and accused him of breaking the rules." Al- Ba’aqili also informs us that the staff (‘aukkaz) that Sidi M'barak used to punish truce breakers was so laden with baraka that after his death the merchants of Gazula would place it in front of their treasures to protect them from thieves.

When the Berbers of the Sus and Dar’a regions turned to Sidi M'barak and Sidi Barakat for help against the Portuguese, Sidi M'barak suggested that they rally instead behind Sharif Sidi Mohammed ibn Abderrahman of Tagmadert, who had already sent his sons Ahmad and Mhammed to Fez to gain official authorization for a jihad. According to the eighteenth-century historian Mohammad al-Ifrani, in the year 915/1509 the sharif of Tagmadert, who now adopted the mahdist title of al-qaim bi-amri'llah (He Who Has Arisen by the Command of God), was instructed by Sidi M'barak in the tradition of the just ruler. In 916/1510, at the zawiya of Sidi Barakat at Tidsi, Mohammed al-Qa'im received the submission of the Ber­ber tribes of the Sus and promised to lead them in an attack against the Portuguese of feitoria of Fonti (Tafatant).

Thus was born the "Saadian" dynasty of Morocco, which, in a little over forty years, was to politically unify Morocco for the first time since the Almohad.  Much speculation, none of it very satisfactory, has been devoted to the origin of this name, which differs from the family's actual nisba, "az-Zaydani." The historian al-Ifrani, an apologist for the Sa’adians, dis­cusses the controversy about their sharifian origins in considerable detail and cites the Alawite assertion that they were of the tribe of the Prophet's wet nurse, the Banu Sa'ad ibn Bakr, rather than of the Prophet's family; hence the designation "Sa'adi." By way of rebuttal, he also cites the Jazulite shaykh Sidi Ahmad ibn Musa as-Samlali ("Sidi Ahmad u-Musa"; d. 971/1563-4), who believed in the sharifian origins of the Sa’adians and called his disciple, the Saadian sultan Abu Abdellah al-Ghalib Billah (d. 981/1574), the "Ruby of the Sharifs" (yaqutat a-shurafa). On another occasion, Sidi Ahmad ibn Musa declared that his royal protégé" was more of a sali’h than a sultan— a strong testament, as al-Ghazwani might have said, to the Sa’adians nobil­ity by ‘hasab if not by nasab.

If the Sa’adians were indeed sharifs, as Sidi Ahmad ibn Musa claimed, and not from the tribe of Banu Sa’ad, as asserted by their Alawite opponents, what might have accounted for the term "Sa'adian"? A possible answer can be found in the Sa’adian dynasty's use of millenarian discourse. One of their favourite terms was sa’ada, which can be translated into English as "happi­ness," "bliss," or "salvation." This term appears often in Sa’adian-era texts, and it can also be found in such appellations as Dar as-Sa'ada (House of Bliss), which, following Ottoman usage, was the official name for the royal palace of the Sa’adian rulers in Marrakech. Significantly, sa’ada also figures prominently in the writings and sayings of Sidi Mohammed b. Sulayman al-Jazouli (d. 869/1454). An important example of such usage can be found in a statement of Imam al-Jazouli: "Past nations have asked to be included in our polity. Yet no one can be included in it unless he has already attained salvation (sa’ada). Our polity is the state (dawla) of those who strive and struggle in the path of Allah— fighters against the enemies of Allah." Mohammed al-Qa'im, the founder of the Sa'adian polity, used the region of Haha as his base for jihad against the Portuguese. This was the same region that provided a base for al-Jazouli in the final years of his life. As a leader of the anti-Portuguese jihad, Mohammed al-Qa’im associated himself so closely with the memory of al-Jazouli that he ordered himself to be interred next to the shaykh upon his death in 923/1517. Could it be that he saw himself as the founder of the state of salvation that al-Jazouli advocated?

For the greater part of its history, the Sa’adian state could arguably be called a jihad state of the type sought by Imam al-Jazouli, since the official reason for its existence was the liberation of the Dar al-Islam (specifically Morocco) from foreign domination. As a jihad state, the Sa’adian state would have been by definition a salvation-oriented polity (Ar. dawlat as-sa'ada); first, because its goal was the salvation of Morocco as a political en­tity, and second, because those who fought in its armies were absolved from their sins by participating in a holy war. Although this brings us a step closer to a possible solution for the origin of the name "Sa'adi," the phrase dawlat as-sa’ada (State of Salvation) is still not the same as ad-dawla as-sa’adiya (The Sa’adian State). However, if the Arabic noun sa’ada is made into an adjective on the pattern of the English word "salvific," an interesting possibility arises. One form that this adjec­tive might take is the neologism sa’adi, which is all but unheard-of in the Arabic language. Another alternative, however, is sa’adi, which is in feet how the Sa’adians referred to themselves. If this latter term were used, the phrase dawlat as-sa’ada (State of Salvation) would become semantically equivalent to ad-dawla as-sa’adiya (The Salvific State), which is the name by which the Saadian dynasty appears in Moroccan history. Those who lived in such a state, both rulers and ruled alike, would be known as as-sa’adiyun (The "Sa’adians," or Those Who Are Saved).

The significance of this exercise in philology is that it links the political ideology of the Sa’adian dynasty to the religiopolitical ideology of the Jazouliya Sufi order. Insofar as it reflected popular aspirations for a new or­der of faith and justice, the Sa’adian state might also be seen as a "city (or polity) of God". The fact that the Sa’adians were descendants of the Prophet Sidna Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him) made their claim to be the leaders of such a polity all the more logical. The Sa’adian attempt to establish an ideology of royal authority by divine right is best illustrated by the example of Mohammed al-Qaim's younger son, Mhammed ash-Shaykh "al-Mahdi" (d. 964/1557), the man who finally unified Morocco under the white and gold Sa’adian banner. According to the sixteenth-century Portuguese Chronicle of Santa-Cruz, this sharif was venerated by his followers as "a great sorcerer" who could perceive hidden realities and whose presence in battle was crucial to the morale of his troops. If this testimony were not enough, the inscription engraved on Mohammed ash-Shaykh's tomb in Marrakech leaves little doubt as to the aura of divine legitimation that surrounded his public persona:

Pay your respects to a tomb enveloped in mercy,

Mohammed Shaykh as-Sa'adi could not have become the unifier of Morocco, however, if Shaykh al-Ghazwani and his followers had not helped him. But before he could become a power behind the Sa’adian throne, Sidi Abdellah al-Ghazwani first had to assert his authority over the other shaykhs of the Jazouliya in Marrakech. Since none of these were clearly superior to the others in terms of doctrinal or spiritual knowledge, they were undecided as to who best exemplified the Prophetic inheritance. This problem was particularly acute at the time of Shaykh al-Ghazwani arrival in Marrakech because Sidi Abdelkarim al-Fallah (d. 933/1518), who had managed at-Tabba'a's zawiya and supervised its kitchen, he began to promote himself as the next Shaykh of the Jazouliya. To bolster his case, al-Fallah claimed that at-Tabba'a had predicted the next shaykh al-jama'a would come from among the latter's disciples in Marrakech. Believing that this prediction referred to himself, al-Fallah summoned the shaykhs of al-Jazouliya to a meeting at at-Tabba'a's tomb. Sidi Mohammed al-Mahdi al-Fasi (d. 1109/1694) reports in Mumti'a al-asma’a: 

After dinner, he (al-Fallah) announced: "You will not leave here until you have told us about yourselves. The Shaykh has sworn that his successor will be one of us and that his secret is among us, yet we will not recognize him. Therefore we will bestow the authority of the Shaykh on the one who attributes most closely resemble those of Shaykh Tabba'a and can prove to be his heir. He should make himself known to us, for the Shaykh has said: 'Neither a secret that that is hidden nor wealth that is divided shall separate the fuqara from one another." The first to speak up was Sidi Said ibn Abdelmoumin al-Hahi (d. 953/1546; founder of 'Hahiya branch of the Jazouliya) who recounted the paranormal states that he shared with Shaykh Tabba'a and the consideration he had been given during Shaykh Tabba'a's lifetime. The second to make a claim was the Malammati Sufi Sidi Rahhal al-Kush (d. after 945/1530, founder of Gnawa order) who announced: "I am the vehicle of bridegrooms (rikab al-'arais). He who has not ridden his bridegroom is not meant to ride. Verily I am the Nurturer (sahib al-ighata) on land and sea!" Then Sidi Ali ibn Ibrahim Bouzidi (d. 956/1549) said: "I am the most worshipful among you; he who desires knowledge of both outward and inward states should come to me, for I have mastered them." Finally al-Fallah spoke, and said, "I am your provision (maidatukum), he who desires nourishment should come to me, for neither the sharecropper nor the common labourer is excluded from my blessing!" Throughout all these speeches Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani remained silent. "Each of you has said what he possesses," al-Fallah stated, "but you, Sidi Abdellah, what do you possess and what do you have to say?" Sidi Ghazwani replied, "I am your Sultan and the ruler of your silence; with me alone you are minted. He who stamps his own dirham or dinar will succeed; if not, he will not (wa man la fa la)!" The assembled Shaykhs were stunned by the apparent haughtiness of Sidi Ghazwani's statement. "Why are you silent?" he asked. "Do you dislike my words?" "Yes" they replied. Then Sidi Ghazwani stretched out his hand and said, "God is directing this!" and grasped the empty air. Next he balled his fingers into a fist. "What do you say?" he asked, "and what each of you now possess?" After Sidi Ghazwani's dramatic assertion of divine legitimation, most of those who were present accepted him as the heir to Shaykh Tabba'a. The main exception was Sidi Rahhal, who protested so insistently that al-Ghazwani said: "Ei­ther you leave this to me or I will leave it to you. Two serpents cannot live together in the same hole!" Realizing that he could count on little support for his leadership, Sidi Rahhal gathered his disciples and left for Anmay, a day's ride east of Marrakech, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Shaykh al-Ghazwani spent the final years of his life in Marrakech, where he used his authority and reputation to lend credibility to the Sa'adian cause. This effort was particularly necessary after the Sa'adian takeover of Marrakech in 930/1524, which resulted in the murder of the city's Hintati amir. The less than noble circumstances of this coup cost the sharifs dearly in terms of lost prestige, and the leaders of the Sa'adian movement, the brothers Ahmed al-A'raj (d. 964/1557) and Mohammed Shaykh, needed an ally whose reputation was unassailable. As it turned out, the final and most dramatic of al-Ghazwani's miracles also took place in 930/1524 and involved his intercession on behalf of the Sa'adians when their occupation of Marrakech was contested by the Wattasid sultan Mohammed al-Burtughali. 

According to Ibn 'Askar, the Wattasid forces laying siege to Marrakech were so successful in bombarding the city's walls with their cannons that the in­habitants of the city began to fear for their lives. Seeing that the situation was critical, al-Ghazwani and his most senior disciples rode out of the Gate Sidi Abul Abbas Sabti (d. 6o1/1186), in order to arrange a truce. Stopping at a point midway between the opposing forces, the shaykh found himself targeted by Wattasid arquebusiers. One of the balls that they fired struck Shaykh al-Ghazwani just above the heart and tore a hole in his woolen tunic. Miraculously, it flattened itself against his chest without penetrating the skin and left no more than a minor burn. Taking the hot fragment of lead between his fingers, al-Ghazwani exclaimed, "This is the end of their war!" and turned back toward the city. The next day, Mohammed al-Burtughali received word that his nephews had risen against him in Fez. Fearing for his throne, he turned his army back toward his cap­ital and never threatened Marrakech again.

'Al-Jaras', al-Ghazwani's theory of Sainthood

The overriding theme of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's An-Nukta al-Azaliya was the explications of the point of "complete knowledge" ('ilm al-kamil)—a term first coined by Imam Mohammed Jazouli and later used by later used by Sidi Ali Salih al-Andalusi (d. 903/1488) to describe the epistemological basis of the Muslim saint's authority. Although Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's writing can thus be seen as complementary to al-Andalusi's Kitab Sharh rahbat al-aman (Commentary of the Terrain of Safety"), Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani does more than merely state al-Andalusi's premises. Instead, he proposes his own theory of sainthood that takes al-Andalusi's model more than fully into the socio-political arena. The centrepiece of this more engaged theory of sainthood is the concept of Tariqa Mohammediya, which Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani called the "Method of Mohammedian Sunna" (Madhab as-sunna al-Mohammediya), the "Way of the Mohammedian Sunna" (Tariqat as-sunna al-Mohammediya), and the "Technique of Archetypal Perception" (suluk an- nadra al-azaliya).

Clearly, Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani saw himself a doctrinal innovator. This is proven by the first treaties in An-Nukta al-Azaliya, which is called by its redactor "The Religious Manifesto (al-hizb al-milli) of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani." This essay was written in response to questions from two scholars in Cairo who were popular teachers of North African Sufis at the end of the ninth/fifteenth century: the Moroccan Ahmed ibn Abderrahman al-'Hintari, whom Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani calls the "exemplar of Maliki futuwwa at al-Azhar mosque," and the Egyptian mufti, Sufi, and Quranic exegete  Mohammed Laqani (d. 935/1520). Perhaps reflecting criticisms of the Jazouliya Sufi order that were then being voiced by the disciples of Laqani's master Sidi Ahmed Zarruq, al-'Hintari questions Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani about the nature of spiritual insight (kashf) and asks him to explain the doctrines of his followers, who call themselves the "Folk of Reverberation" (ahl- al-Jursiya). These queries provide an excuse for Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani to give a detailed explanation of his theory of the "Bell" (al-jaras), a term he used for the axial saint, in a place of the more widely employed Qutb az-Zaman or the Ghawt (Helper of the Time). Finding a new way of describing the axial saint was necessary at this time because the interpretive circularity of the concept of the Perfect Human Being (al-insan al-kamil) allowed multiple claimants to ultimate spiritual mastership (mashyakha) to appear at the same time in different places—sometimes even within the same country. Because of this development, the paradigm of al-Insan al-Kamil, like that of the khalifa after the tenth century, was reduced in practice to a model of regional rather pan-Islamic applicability. A way had to be found to make the idea of paradigmatic sainthood regain its original uniqueness and universality. 

Although Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's use of the bell as a symbol for paradigmatic sainthood appears unusual for a Muslim, it was in fact in complete agreement with Islamic tradition. The metaphor of the bell was legitimised by a well-substantiated hadith in which the Prophet Sidna Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him) describes revelation as coming to him like the "clanging of a bell" (salsalat al-jaras). For Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani, the pre-existent bell is the Logos, which "peals out" (ajrasa) the Mohammedian Reality to the world: "The Axial Saint (al-Qutb) is light, the Generative Helper Saint (al-ghawt) is a secret, and the Bell (al-jaras) is a piercing sound (sarasir)." This piercing sound, the "pealing" or reverberation of the divine archetypes on the verge of their actualisation, creates a subtle music  or harmonic that it is heard by each Muslim saint according to his or her rank and ability. The "melody" of this harmonic is understood most fully by the Jazulite Shaykh al-Wasil, who uses it music to guide disciples toward Tariqa Mohammediya. At its conclusion, this path leads to what Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani calls the "Sovereignty of Saintly Authority" (sIyyadat al-imama). Here the saint inherits the authority of the prophets through his assumption of the "Prophetic Inheritance" (al-wiratha an-Nabawiya). "If you know the truth of what lies deep within you, " Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani asserts, "you would be a messenger (rasul) to your peers and a leader (qaim) because of the rights you possess over the one who seeks you out… the people of your time would appoint you caliph (istakhlafuka)… and you would attain the perfection of the Mohammedian Sunna.

The terminology employed by Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani in An-Nukta al-Azaliya suggests that this bedouin gnostic may have been responsible for the sharifian aspects of Jazulite doctrine. This hypothesis is confirmed in passages where Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani describes the Bell is ways that are clearly reminiscent of the "Idrissite" doctrine of the Imamate. Depending on the role that the Qutb performs in his community, he may be called King (malik), Exemplar of His Time (qudwat ahl zamanihi), Viceregent of God on Earth (khalifat Allah fil ard) Lord Imam (as-sayyid al-imam), the One Who Has Arisen (al-qaim), the Commander (al-amir), the Disposer of Affairs (sahib at-tasrif), the Supreme Paradigm (al-matal al-a'ala), or the Mirror of God (mir‘ at Allah). In addition, the Bell is granted the following prerogatives:

• He is protected (ma'sum) from the faults of tyranny or son;
• His abilities are beyond those of ordinary human beings;
• His understanding and perception are greater than those of his contemporaries;
• Everything on earth invoke his name, either intentionally or otherwise;
• When he attains his ambition (himma), it is through his own agency alone;
• Everything depends on him, whereas he is dependent on nothing and no one but God.

Since the chief responsibility of the Bell saint is to uphold the Mohammedian paradigm in lieu of the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him), he must actively participate in worldly affairs and guide others according to what Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani calls the saint's "inspirational dictate" ('hukm al-anba‘). The Qutb is thus a "messenger" and a "witness" for his peers (wa yakunu ar-rasulu 'alaykum shahidan) and is confined by God as a worker of miracles and a leader of men (sahib at-tasrif). He exercises authority directly and on his own behalf, without needing to justify his actions by analogy (qiyas) and without authorisation from the ulama. God alone is the guarantor of the Bell saint's judgments and makes His wishes known through divine addresses (mukhatabat) and inspirational revelations (wa'hy al-ilham). Because of the Bell saint's divine election (istifaiyya), he is the hope (aman) of every seeker and the imam of every saint. He is the proof of God's salvation (sa'adat Allah) on earth, the proof of God's guidance (hidayat Allah) in heaven, the proof of God's favour (rida‘ Allah) toward His domination, and the proof of God's glory ('izz Allah) in his knowledge. The knowledge of the Bell saint legitimises his authority over his fellow human beings and encompasses both the exoteric and the esoteric aspects of the Mohammedian Sunna. Following him is thus obligatory (wajib), and his disciples are bound to him by an oath of loyalty that ensures ultimate salvation (bay'at as-sa'ada).

To say that Shaykh al-Ghazwani drew from the doctrine of Idrissid Sharifism is not to say that he always agreed with the political agenda of the Idrissid sharifs. On the contrary, relations between al-Ghazwani and the Idriss­ids were mixed at best.  What is more, the text of An-Nuqta al-Azaliyya makes it clear that the Bell saint does not have to be a blood relation of the Prophet Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him). This was not the case for al-Jazouli, however, whose claim of sharifian descent was an important argument for his au­thority. The importance of a Prophetic genealogy was also acknowledged by al-Ghazwani's shaykh, Sidi Abdellaziz at-Tabba’, even though the latter was not generally acknowledged as a sharif. These views are reflected in the following lines of poetry, where at-Tabba’a appears uncomfortable with his given name, al-Harrar (the Silk Weaver), and asserts that, in reality, he too belongs to the Prophet's family by attribution if not by descent:

For al-Ghazwani, who was of bedouin origin and thus could not realis­tically claim to be a genealogical descendant of Sidna Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him), at-Tabba’a’s assertion of sharifian status was metaphorical rather than literal. Although al-Ghazwani accepts the Alid maxim that "whoever is not related to the Messenger of God cannot uphold die rights of God," he qualifies this assertion of sharifian authority by claiming that according to the "most ex­alted imams" (khusus al-aimma). Muslims are ennobled not only through their birth but also through their piety, words, and deeds. In the end, al-Ghazwani’s final position on nobility is decidedly non-Alid: "Those who are ennobled by reputation are better than those who are ennobled by birth." (Shurafa al-hasab afdal min shurafa an-nasab).

It is here that al-Ghazwani's doctrine of the Prophetic Inheritance de­parts most conclusively from the Alid doctrines that provided so much of its terminology. Although sharifs were well represented among the Sufis of the Ghazwaniya branch of the Jazouliya, they were intrinsically no better than anyone else. For al-Ghazwani, the nobility of Prophetic descent was a potential that could only be proven by visible acts of piety and virtue. In­deed, he asserted, anyone who fully assimilated the Mohammadian arche­type has the right to call himself a "sharif" and aspire to die highest spiri­tual rank: "We have earned the right to act as witnesses for the Messenger of God because we took the oath of righteousness (al-‘ahd al-mustaqim) as part of the pre-eternal covenant (al-‘ahd al-qadim).... [We] took as our means to this end the manifest wisdom and eternal life of the Mohammadian Sunna and, independently of our own choice, found it to be all-inclusive. [We] make the Shari'a obligatory for ourselves, but add die refinement (adab) that comes from the complete assimilation of the Sunna."

 Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's approach to axial sainthood is characterised by the notion of the "complete assimilation of the Sunna" to which he refers gives rise to revelatory states that are usually considered to be the prerogative of the prophets alone. This is because the Bell saint, in fulfilling his role as al-insan al-kamil and heir to the prophets, attains his rank through "absolute fusion" (jama' al-mutlaq) with the Mohammadian Image. As Sidi Qadi Abul Fadl Iyyad (d. 544/1129) had remarked nearly four centuries previously, the assimilation of this archetype is heralded by miracles that mimic the Prophet's own. These miracles may include divine inspiration (ilham), the direct perception of God (mushahada), or even revelation itself. Although Shaykh Sidi Abdellah is careful to point out that the revelation of God's word (wahy al-kalam) had ended with the death of Sidna Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him), he nonetheless maintains that inspirational revelation (wahy al-ilham) has not ceased but continues in the postprophetic era. This latter type of revelation is most clearly manifested in the illuminative states (ishraq) of God-intoxicated saint (majdhub) and is a direct consequence of the saint's identification with the Mohammedian Image. This convergence of Prophet and saint is illustrated by Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani in the following poem:

For the student of Sufism who is used to the metaphysical discourses of Sidi Muhyi'd-Diin ibn al-Arabi (d. 636/1221), Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's writings may at times seem uncomfortably socio-political. His model of Mohammadian sainthood was not only theoretical but was meant to be actualised in practise as well. Perhaps the most "modern" aspect of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's Sufism was the view that sainthood is as much as a social reality as it is a metaphysical concept. In An-Nukta al-Azaliya the sainthood of authority (mashyakha) is dependent on other people's knowledge (or recognition) of the saint, not on the saint's own knowledge. According to Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's theory of sainthood, a candidate for sainthood first states a claim to be a Wali of Allah on the basis of public attention. However, sainthood is confirmed only when the prospective saint is recognised as such by his Sufi peers. But the possess of legitimation does not end here. Only when the greatest Sufis of one's generation (al-khusus al-khassa) acknowledge the prospective saint does the saint attain the state in which authority on earth is confirmed by closeness to God. 

Perhaps of the more "modern" aspects of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's approach to Sufi reform was his insistence that membership in the Jazouliya not to be restricted to men alone. Because of this policy, the first half of the sixteenth century stands as a high-water mark of women's participation in the religious life of Morocco. Jazulite hagiographers mention several women who distinguished themselves as authorities in Sufism. One of these was Lalla Aicha bint Ahmed al-Idrissiya (d. 696/1563), a disciple of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani who was the mother of the hagiographer Ibn Askar ("Mohammed ibn Ali ibn Misbah Shafshawni", d. 986/1571). True to the activist example of her Shaykh, Lalla Aicha al-Idrissiya was to play an important role in the Saadian takeover of Chefchaouen. On at last one occasion,  Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani also inducted all of the women of a single village into the Jazouliya. This act precipitated a flurry of missives from the official ulama decrying the dangers of men and women mixing during sessions of invocation. In the following generation, two of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's most important disciples, Sidi Abdellah al-Habti (d. 963/1548) and Sidi Yusuf ibn al-Hassan Talidi (d. 950/1535), maintained separate zawaya of their female disciples. These were identical in form and function to the zawaya used by men, and differ from the latter only in the gender of their muqaddamat, who were women trained in the methodology of usul al-fiqh.

In strictly doctrinal terms, however, the extent to which the saint can wield power over others depends on his closeness to God and his ability to receive and transmit divine knowledge. The authority of the saint is not only validated by one's peers, hut it must also he validated by God Himself. This is illustrated in Shaykh al-Ghazwani's writings by a hierarchy of signs of inti­macy with God, which reveal the nature of the saint's sainthood. The lowest level of sainthood is heralded by the onset of divine inspirations (walayat al-ilham). Next, the saint acquires the ability to interpret these inspirations (walayat al-fahm). Third, he is imbued with the divine Logos and speaks with the words of God Himself (walayat al-kalim). Finally, after arriving at the stage of the "sainthood of the people of the Logos" (walayat ahl al-kalim), the wall Allah perceives Reality without the need to extinguish his sense of self (walayat an-nazr bila fana). He hears the "reverberation" of the divine discourse at all times (walayat as-sam’a bila ta’hdid), and answers the needs of his petitioners with miracles that are bestowed on him as di­vine tokens of intimacy (walayat al-istijab wal-istihab).

After reaching the level of walayat al-istijab wa'l-istihab, the saint is now empowered to exercise authority on Earth (wilaya). This is first expressed as the authority to interpret the laws of God (wilayat al-hukm). Next the saint is granted the authority to issue his own commands (wilayat al-amr). Finally he is given the authority to dispose of the affairs of others (wilayat at-tasrif). This penultimate level of wilaya sainthood is manifested in every dimension at once: outwardly, in the world of visible reality (dhahir); in­wardly, in the world of invisible reality (batin) and subtly, in the essence of reality itself (batin al-batin). Here, authority is a function of the saint's role as a spiritual and behavioural paradigm. Paradoxically, however, the penultimate stage of wilaya is called by al-Ghazwani the "Sainthood of Contingency" (wilayat at-tamkin). This is because the powers of the saint are not universal, but remain qualified by time (tamkin al-waqt) and limited by space (tamkin mahdud). The saint whose "contingency" is unlimited or universal (tamkin munazzah) is at a still higher level: that of the jaras, the Bell saint. This truly paradigmatic figure is characterized by infallibity (ismaa) and his authority over others is comparable to that of the Prophet himself.

The Bell saint of me Jazouliya-Ghazwaniya was the most potent mani­festation of sainthood in Moroccan Sufism. Combining the Idrissid concept of the imamate with the imitatio Muhammadi as expressed through Ibn al-'Arabi's theory of the Mohammadian Reality and al-Jili's corollary of the Mohammadian Image, this supreme shaykh and paradigmatic saint was tailor-made to assume the role of both political leader and saviour in a region that had fallen into a state of economic dependency, social turmoil, and po­litical prostration. According to the model of sainthood that was formulated by Sidi Ali Salih al-Andalusi (d. 903/1488) and al-Ghazwani, all popularly legitimated holy persons, from the educated shaykh at-taifa to the ecstatic and even illiterate majdhub, could claim a significant share of the Mohammedian paradigm. By actualizing a portion of the Mohammedian Inheritance that was latent in every human being, each saint could be compared by analogy with the Prophet Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him), the Messenger of God. The widespread acceptance of this model in early-modern Morocco made it difficult for the ulama to oppose the political agenda of the Jazouliya Sufi order. This was especially die case because most of these scholars shared the Jazulite shaykhs' desire for reform and jihad against the Por­tuguese. More than at any other time since the late Almoravid period, the Sufis of this era involved themselves politically as mujahidun, moral cen­sors, and agents of the collective will. It is to this "worldly" aspect of Jazulite Sufism that we will turn in the final chapter of this book.

Post Ghazwani activism

Al-Ghazwani's death in 935/1528-9 marks a watershed in the history of Jazulite Sufism. Although subsequent Jazulite shaykhs, such as Abu Amr al-Qastali, would embellish the concept of at-tariqa al-Mohammediya by adding such innovations as a hierarchy of Prophetic visions, there were no major changes in the central doctrines of the Mohammadian Way or in the paradigm of religiopolitical authority that went with it. This does not mean, however, that third-generation Jazulite shaykhs were in agreement on all doctrinal matters. On the contrary, Shaykh al-Ghazwani's rival Sidi Abdelkarim al-Fallah took pains to distance his more charismatic and politically neutral "Tabba'iya" approach from the pro-Sa'adian activism of the al-Ghazwaniya. Add to these two factions the Isawiya Sufi order of the patron saint of Meknes, al-Shaykh al-Kamil Sidi Mohammed al-Hadi ibn Isa al-Fahdi al-Hassani, whose followers also regarded their shaykh as the rightful heir to at-Sidi Abdellaziz Al-Tabba’a.

The existence of intra-Jazulite factionalism also problematizes the no­tion of a common Jazulite political agenda. In the first half of the sixteenth century one can find Jazulite shaykhs supporting both the Sa’adians and their enemies, the Wattasids. Such was the case, for example, in 940/1533-4, when two Jazulite shaykhs from the region of Meknes, Sidi Omar al-Khattab of the Tabba’aiya (“master of Sidi Abderrahman al-Majdub”; d. ca. 943/1536) and Abu Ruwayin ibn al-Mahjub of the Isawiya (d. before 960/1553), brokered (he treaty that formally divided Morocco between the Wattasid "Kingdom of Fez" in the north and the Sa’adian "Kingdom of Marrakech" in the south. While Abu Ruwayin remained a supporter of the Sa’adians throughout his life, Sidi Omar al-Khattab was so an­gered by the sharifs' arrogance and naked ambition that he vowed to prevent them from entering Fez "as long as he was on the face of the earth."

In the decades after Shaykh al-Ghazwani’s death, the doctrinal perspective of the Ghazwaniya faction of the Jazouliya was most often expressed in terms of two different yet complementary strategies: the reform of political and so­cial life in Morocco and the reform of Sufi practice. One of the most influen­tial proponents of the latter approach was Sidi Abdelwarith al-Yalsuti, whom we have already met as al-Ghazwani's advocate at the latter's interrogation in Fez. Al-Yasluti's most important work, the didactic poem Sullam al-murid (Ladder of the Aspirant), constitutes a refutation of the less doctrinally sophisticated and charismatic approach to sainthood advocated by Abdelkarim al-Fallah and the shaykhs of the Tabba’aiya faction of the Jazouliya, and sub­stitutes in its place the orthodox-mystical Ghazwaniya emphasis on mass education and respect for the Law. These themes are present in the follow­ing passage from Sullam al-murid, where al-Yaslouti decries the low moral and intellectual standards of Sufis in his day and proposes a greater inte­gration of the Shari'a into Sufi practice:

In 956/1549 the Sa'adian sharif Mohammed Shaykh occupied Fez and began the political reunification of Morocco that would eventually be completed in 961/1554. Although al-Ghazwani and his disciples had played an important part in this victory, its aftermath proved to be a bitter disap­pointment for the shaykhs of the Jazouliya. Rather than seeing his Sufi mentors as the imams and guardians of Islam as they had hoped, Mohammed ash-Shaykh prevented the Jazouliya as an institution from entering the circle of power and asserted his own, exclusive claim to authority of divine right of birth. In doing so, he revived the early ideology of Hassanid Sharifism that had prevailed under the Idrissids. As a descendant of the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) and qaim in the line of Mawlana al-Hassan ibn Imam Ali (may Allah be pleased with both of them), he portrayed himself as the Just Ruler, Mahdi, and Imam of the Age, who would unify the Maghrib under his authority, expel the Christians from al-Andalus, and eventually free the Arabs of the Mashriq from the Turkish yoke. Instead of the Sufi Bell saint, Axis of the Age, or Jazulite shaykh al-jama’a, Mohammed Shaykh now claimed the sole right to appropriate the Mohammadian Inheritance.

By also demonstrating the power of his baraka on the battlefield, Mohammed Shaykh took the ideological high ground away from the Jazouliya and promoted Sa'adian ideology in a way that was difficult to con­test. The shaykhs of the Jazouliya may have seen themselves as the axes of the spiritual realm, but in the material world—the dunya that they as Sufis purported to reject—they were compelled to cede primacy of place. Al­though they could still be influential behind die scenes, the outward arena of political life was not traditionally seen as a proper environment for either scholars or saints. Here, it was the man of the sword (and increasingly the cannon or arquebuse) who had the advantage. This realpolitik of the conditteri was succinctly expressed by Mohammed Shaykh in a verse of his own composition:

No sooner had Mohammed ash-Shaykh seized power in Fez than the Sufis of Morocco realized that they had been outdone by a monster of their own making. In 956/1549, the sharif ordered all of the shaykhs of northern Morocco to formally pledge their allegiance to him in the conquered Wattasid capital of Fez. Those called to Fez included the Ghazwaniya Sufis al-Yastuti, al-Habti, and Ibn Khajju, as well as the Zarruqiya shaykh Sidi Mohammed Shutaybi (d. after 960/1553). Only al-Habti and Ibn Khajju saw fit to demonstrate their loyalty by complying with Mohammed Shaykh's command. As it turned out, al-Habti had to return to Shafshawan alone, for Ibn Khajju died in Fez of natural causes.

In 958/1551 sharifian suspicion fell on the followers of the Jazuilite shaykhs Sidi Abdelkarim al-Fallah and Sidi Abdelmumin al-Hahi who were accused of withholding from the state the valuables entrusted to them by Wattasid officials. The resulting persecution of the Tabba'aiya faction of the Jazouliya was especially hard on the Ha’hiya. Many of this branch's most important figures were either executed by the Sa'adians or driven out of Mo­rocco on the pretext of heresy. Although the initial excuse for this assault on the Jazouliya was pecuniary, the real reasons for sharifian opposition appear to have been twofold. In the first place, the charismatic populism of Tabba'aiya doctrine posed a threat to the Sa'adian state, despite this faction's professed aversion to politics. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the most famous follower of Abdelkarim al-Fallah to be persecuted by the Sa'adians was Abdellah al-Kush (d. 961/1553), a shaykh of sub-Saharan African origin who enjoyed a broad following among the lower classes of Marrakech. Second, both the Tabba'aiya and the Hahiya were charged by the Sa'adian ulama with rejecting the authority of the four Sunni schools of law. Although this accusation did not represent the actual views of the Tabba'aiya, Hahiyya reformism did pose a threat to the hegemony of the Maliki school of jurisprudence, because it advocated abandoning the precedent of a single madhhab in favour of unanimity among the four Sunni schools in general.