Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi

Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi (Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Umar al-Ansari) was a Sufi master of the Shadhiliyya, a Sufi order (tariqa) founded by his teacher Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili. He is traditionally said to have been born in Murcia in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) around 616 AH / 1219 CE, the source of the name "al-Mursi."

Biographical sources report that his family left Spain around 640 AH / 1242 CE amid the Christian reconquest, intending pilgrimage; the manaqib (devotional biographies) relate that a shipwreck off the Tunisian coast killed his parents while he and his brother survived. In Tunis, in his early twenties, he met al-Shadhili and became his close disciple (murid). He accompanied his master eastward to Alexandria in Egypt, the order's enduring center.

Tradition holds that al-Shadhili, while on the pilgrimage road, designated al-Mursi as his successor before dying at Humaythira (in Egypt's eastern desert) in 656 AH / 1258 CE. Al-Mursi then led the Shadhiliyya from Alexandria for roughly three decades, teaching until his death there in 686 AH / 1287 CE.

His best-known student, Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Iskandari, recorded his teachings and carried the order forward; much of what is known about al-Mursi comes through that devotional literature rather than independent documentation. In Egyptian popular piety he is counted among the great saints of Alexandria, where the mosque bearing his name stands over his tomb.