Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi
c. 1219 CE–c. 1287 CE · Murcia
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.
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Murcia
What they did here
Traditionally held to have been born in Murcia in al-Andalus around 616 AH / 1219 CE, which gives him the nisba 'al-Mursi.' The birthplace and date come from later Shadhili biographical tradition rather than contemporary documentation.
About Murcia
Murcia (Mursiya), in southeastern Spain, was founded as a city in 825 under the Umayyad emirate of Cordoba and became the capital of a taifa kingdom in al-Andalus. It is the birthplace of the great mystic Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), the 'greatest master' (al-Shaykh al-Akbar) of Sufi metaphysics, and of the Shadhili Sufi Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi (d. 1287), who took his nisba from it.
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