Among the prominent disciples of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani (d. 935/1520), Sidi Abdellah al-Habti (d. 963/1548) was clearly the most successful at combining social activism and Sufi reformism in a single career. Born near Tangier and orphaned early in life, he spent his childhood in the care of his elder brother, who had suffered twenty years of privation and torture in Portuguese prisons. After being ransomed from the Portuguese, the elder al-Habti moved to the city of Chefchaouen, where he joined the holy warriors gathered around the sharif Sidi Ali ibn Rachid. Previous Jazoulite efforts to raise the level of education in rural areas allowed Sidi Abdellah al-Habti to master the sciences of fiqh and Quranic exegesis within the region of Chefchaouen itself. Upon reaching maturity, he moved to Fez, where he completed his formal studies under the theologian Sidi Abu Ahmed Tilimsani (d. 931/1516) and the legist Sidi Ahmed Zaqqaq (d. 939/1524).
According to the Jazulite Sufi and biographer Ibn Askar (d. 986/1571), al-Habti spent his youth studying under Sufi Shaykhs in both northern Morocco and the region of Marrakech. Besides Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani, these includes the Qadiri mystic and poet Sidi Mohammed ibn Yajbash Tazi (d. 920/1505) and Shadhilite master Sidi Abu Amr al-Qastali (d. 974/1559), a well-known disciple of Sidi Abdelkarim al-Fallah (d. 933/1518), who was himself a student of Shaykh Jama'a Sidi Abdellaziz Al-Tabba’a (d. 914/1499). Studying under these Shaykhs gave Sidi Abdellah al-Habti the opportunity to draw from the most important sources of Sufi doctrine then available in Morocco: the Al-Tabba’aiya approach to Jazulite Sufism via al-Qastali, the Ghazwaniya approach via Ghazwani himself, and Qadiriya method via Tazi. Of these there individuals, Ghazwani was by far the most important to al-Habti's formation as an intellectual. References to al-Habti in the pages of An-Noukta al-azaliyya reveals that Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani was so fond of his young pupil that he treated him as a son.
Upon returning to Chefchaouen, Sidi al-Habti sought out his old friend and classmate, Sidi Mohammed ibn Khajju (d. 956/1541), who served as a judge for the sharifian clan of Banu Hassan. At first, Ibn Khajju was horrified that al-Habti had embraced Sufism and exclaimed, "I would rather see you a Jew or Christian before I see you attach yourself to the errors of that folk!" In time, however, he too became a disciple of Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani and even went so far to write a treatise defending the Jazulite doctrines he once opposed. Sometime after 917/1511, al-Habti and Ibn Khajju sat down together and mapped out a programme of social and religious reform for the lands under the control of the Banu Rachid sharifs. The unique team was assisted by al-Habti's wife Lalla Amina, who was Ibn Khajju's sister. As a fully trained legist in her own right, Lalla Amina bint Khajju presided over a zawiya next to that of her husband, where she taught the fundamentals of Islam and Sufism to the women of Chefchaouen.
Sidi al-Habti's critiques of Moroccan society are perceived in a remarkable didactic poem entitled Alfiyya as-saniyya fi tanbih al-'amma wal khassa 'ala man awqa'a mina taghyir fil milla al-islamiyya (The Exalted Poem in one thousand verses awakening the masses and the elites to the deviations that have occurred in the Islamic community). The thousand-verse (alfiyya) format that Shaykh al-Habti employed in this work had long been used in Morocco as a method for teaching grammar, and was first introduced as a way of distributing the doctrines of Qadiri-reformist Sufism by the Sidi Mohammed Ibn Yajbash Tazi. In Shaykh al-Habti's hands, the Alfiyya form was used as propagandistic device that recalled the booklets and missives then being printed by Protestant activists in Europe. This propagandistic use of the Alfiyya form was facilitated by the repetitive nature of the genre's rajaz rhyme pattern, which eased memorisation and hence dissemination in a society that had not yet discovered the printing press.
Shaykh Sidi al-Habti believed that the main cause of the social ills besetting Morocco was the loss of faith. This was worsened by ignorance and illiteracy, contact with Portuguese soldiers and merchants, and excessive loyalty to tradition (taqlid). In particular, Sidi al-Habti criticises the religious and political elites of his town Chefchaouen—located in northern Fez—for their luck of concern about the moral decay surrounding them. The worst of these offenders were the official ulama, whom al al-Habti calls "rabbis" (Jewish ahbar) because of their concern for the letter rather than the spirit of the Shari'a.
Sidi al-Habti fully agreed with Sidi Abdellah Ghazwani's on women's education. He was concerned that mothers, as the initial teachers of their children, were unprepared to install a knowledge of Islam in their offspring. Rather than blaming these women for their ignorance, however, he instead focused on their husbands and fathers, accusing them on abandoning their responsibility to teach. According to Sidi al-Habti, each married man bore responsibility for the moral and intellectual upbringing of his family. This was part of his role as imam of the family, which constitute an Islamic umma in miniature. Uneducated women raise ignorant children, and ignorant children become sinful adults. This sinfulness undermines the moral basis of society. To ensure that mothers were equipped to teach their children the proper values, certain of Sidi al-Habti's disciples, such as the sharifs Sidi Moussa ibn Ali Wazzani (d. 970/1555), even went so far to make prospective brides pass tests in Islamic dogma before witnessing their marriage contracts. Another influencing student of al-Habti is the Patron Saint of Salé, the Idrissite sharif, Sidi Abul Abbas Abdellah Benhassoun (d. 1013/1598).
Sidi al-Habti's educational programme emphasised instruction in the Shari'a and the development of a reading knowledge of the Arabic language. As a first step, he and Sidi Ibn Khajju would go to a village or tribal camp and convince its leaders of the need for a change. Next they would assemble the inhabitants of the village and quiz them on what they knew about the teachings of Islam. Subjects that were stressed in these sessions included Islamic history, the concept of monotheism, the Five Pillars of Islam, bodily hygiene and purification, and the rules pertaining to the monthly periods of women and taboo period ('idda) after the death of a woman's husband. Sidi al-Habti and Ibn Khajju would remain in the village until its leaders signed a contract, swearing that they would forbid usury, encourage daily prayers, and follow the Sunna. If a mosque did not exist in the village, Sidi al-Habti would supervise its construction himself and stay long enough to see that it was properly maintained. If alcohol were sold, he would convince its purveyors to leave the locality or go into another line of business. He was more severe with tattoo artists, however; these were ostracised and expelled from the region of Chefchaouen altogether.
Although Shaykh al-Habti focused most of his attention on social reform, he did not overlook the obligation of jihad against the Portuguese. He and Sidi Ibn Khajju travelled widely around northern Morocco, calling for Muslim unity in the face of Christian threat. They also sent admonitory letters to the rulers, jurists, students of Shari'a, and official notaries of the region. Shaykh al-Habti was especially concerned that the authorities resist the conversion of Muslims to Christianity, which had began to occur in the border areas near the Portuguese enclaves of Tangier and al-Qasr as-Saghir. Like Sidi Mohammed ibn Yajbash Tazi, he saw Iberian expansionism as a threat to the survival of Muslim society. He was also concerned about the large Andalusian refugee populations of Chefchaouen and Tetouan, who, while providing a welcome source of reinforcements for Jihad, also introduced European customs that undermined traditional Moroccan-Islamic values. Sidi al-Habti efforts to purify Islam in the region of Chefchaouen were strongly resisted by the city's ruler Ibrahim ibn Rachid, who repeatedly had the Shaykh imprisoned. Sidi al-Habti was to enjoy a free hand only after 948/1541, when the Banu Rachid sharifs finally abandoned the Wattasids and pledged their allegiance to the Saadians. By this time, however, the injuries he had suffered from repeated beatings were so severe that he was so barely able to walk.
© 2008 Dar Sirr