Abul Hasan al-Shadhili

Sidi Abul Hasan ash-Shadhili ابو الحسن الشاذلي
Mausoleum of Imam ash-Shadhili in Humaithara (in the background)
Title	Nour ad-Addin نور الدين
Born	1196 Near Tangiers/Ceuta
Died	1258 Humaithara, Egypt
Resting place	Mausoleum of Imam ash-Shadhili
Religion	Islam
Denomination	Sunni
Jurisprudence	Maliki
Creed	Ash'ari
Sufi order	Tariqa ash-Shadhiliya
Disciple of	Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish al-Alami
Influenced by Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish al-Alami
Influenced Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi Ibn Ata Allah Busiri Imam al-Jazuli al-Darqawi Imam al-Fassi

Abu al-Hasan ash-Shadhili (Arabic: أبو الحسن الشاذلي‎‎) (full name: Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn ʿAbd Allaah ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbaar al-Hasanī wal-Husaynī ash-Shadhili) also known as Sheikh al-Shadhili [593 AH/1196 AD – 656 AH/1258 AD] is an influential Moroccan Islamic scholar and Sufi, founder of the Shadhili Sufi order.

He was born in a royal family of a business man in Bani Yafrah among the Berber Ghomara tribe, near Ceuta in the north of Morocco, also known as the Rif region, in 1196. He was a Maliki who wandered far afield in search of knowledge. Immensely learned, even as a young man, he was famous for his ability to engage in legal argumentation with the religions scholars of his day. As a young man, Abul Hasan was hesitating between living the life of an ascetic in the wilderness in order to give himself up totally to worship and invocation, or to return to the towns and settlements to be in the company of the scholars and the righteous. He studied in Fes and moved to Alexandria in 1244. In Iraq he met the Sufi master al-Wasiti, who advised him that he could find his Spiritual Master (Sheikh) in the country Abul Hasan had travelled from: Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish, the great Moroccan spiritual master. Under his guidance, Abul Hasan attained enlightenment and proceeded to spread his knowledge across North Africa, especially in Tunisia and Egypt, where he is buried. He founded his first zawiya in Tunis in 1227. He died in 1258 in Humaithra, Egypt, while he was on his way to the pilgrimage in Mecca in 1258. Humaithara is between Marsa Alam and Aswan in Egypt and his shrine there is highly venerated. When he heard of a saintly man teaching Islamic sciences in the Al-Qarawiyyin university of Fez he hastened to meet him and his life changed. This man was the Sufi and scholar Mohammed ibn Harazem (d. 633/1218), grandson of Abul Hassan Ali ibn Harzihim (d. 559/1144) and student of Abu Salih Mohammed Majiri (d. 631/1216), who had been instrumental in the orientation of Abul Hassan to seek the spiritual Pole of the time (Qutb az-Zaman).