Aḥmad al-Badawī (, ), also known as al-Sayyid al-Badawī ( ), was a 13th-century Arab Sufi Muslim mystic and spiritual adept, immensely revered in Egypt, who became famous as the founder of the Badawiyyah Sufi order. He was born in Fes, Morocco, into a Bedouin tribe originally from the Syrian Desert.ʿAbd al-Wahhab b. Aḥmad al-Shaʿrānī, Lawāqih al-anwār fī tabaqāt al-akhyār and al-Tabaqāt al-kubrā (Beirut 1988), 1:183.

Described as boisterous in his youth, al-Badawī underwent some form of inner conversion around 627 AH, after which he withdrew from ordinary human contact, including marriage, in order to seek God alone. He made pilgrimages to the tombs of several great Sufis, including al-Jīlī and al-Ḥallāj. In 1236 he settled permanently at Tandiṭā (Tanta) in Egypt, where he adopted still more ascetic practices.

Al-Badawī acquired an exceptional posthumous reputation, being described as "one of the greatest saints in the Arab world" and perhaps the most popular of the Sufi saints of Egypt. His tomb consequently remained a major site of ziyara, or devotional visitation, for Sufis in the region.Irving Hexham, The Concise Dictionary of Religion (Regend, 1993), p. 14. After his death in 1276, ʿAbd al-ʿĀl succeeded him as his khalīfa and organized his followers under a strict rule.

History He was born in and brought up in Fez. According to several medieval chronicles, al-Badawi hailed from an Arab tribe of Syrian origin. He was referred to as a Sharif as he traced his genealogy to Ali. His father was called ʿAlī al-Badrī and his mother was a North African Berber called Fatima. A Sufi Muslim by persuasion, al-Badawi entered the Rifaʽi sufi order (founded by the renowned Shafi'i mystic and jurist Ahmad al-Rifaʽi [d. 1182]) in his early life, being initiated into the order at the hands of a particular Iraqi teacher. After a trip to Mecca, al-Badawi is said to have travelled to Iraq, "where his sainthood believed to have clearly manifested itself" through the karamat "miracles" he is said to have performed. In Iraq, he visited the tombs of Adi ibn Musafir and Al-Hallaj.The Passion of Al-Hallaj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam, Volume 2: The Survival of Al-Hallaj, Louis Massignon, 2019, pp. 448,

Eventually al-Badawi went to Tanta in the Sultanate of Egypt, where he settled for good in 1236. According to the various traditional biographies of the saint's life, al-Badawi gathered forty Sufi disciples around him during this period, who are collectively said to have "dwelt on the city's rooftop terraces," whence his spiritual order were informally named the "roof men" (aṣḥāb el-saṭḥ) in the vernacular. al-Sayyid al-Badawi died in Tanta in 1276, being seventy-six years old. Spiritual lineage As with every other major Sufi order, the Badawiyya proposes an unbroken spiritual chain of transmitted knowledge going back to Muhammad through one of his Companions, which in the Badawi's case is Ali (d. 661). In this regard, Idries Shah quotes al-Badawi: "Sufi schools are like waves which break upon rocks: [they are] from the same sea, in different forms, for the same purpose."

See also Ibrahim al-Desuqi, a contemporary and founder of the Burhaniyya. List of Sufis

References

Further reading Al-Imām Nūruddīn Al-Halabī Al-Ahmadī, Sīrah Al-Sayyid Ahmad Al-Badawī, Published by Al-Maktabah Al-Azhariyyah Li Al-Turāth, Cairo. Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine, Al-Sayyid Ahmad Al-Badawi: Un Grand Saint De L'islam egyptien, Published by Institut francais d'archeologie orientale du Caire

External links Pilgrimage/Carnival photos by BBC A short Egyptian documentary on the Mawlid of Al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi A short biography Egypt: Handbook for Travellers : Part First, Lower Egypt, with the Fayum and the Peninsula of Sinai by Karl Baedeker (1885)