Ibn Abbad al-Rundi

Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Nafzi al-Rundi, known as Ibn 'Abbad al-Rundi, was a Sufi (Islamic mystic) and preacher of the 14th century. He was born in Ronda, in Muslim-ruled southern Spain (al-Andalus), traditionally dated to 733 AH / 1332-33 CE, into a learned family; sources report he memorised the Qur'an as a child and studied grammar with a relative. Still young, he crossed to North Africa, studying in Tlemcen and in Fez, the great Marinid-dynasty centre of learning.

He gave up a purely legal career for the Sufi path, becoming associated with the Shadhiliyya, an order founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (d. 1258) that combined sober mysticism with ordinary religious duty. In the town of Salé he became the disciple of the Sufi master Ibn 'Ashir (d. 764/1362-63). Around 776 AH / 1375 CE the Marinid sultan appointed him imam and khatib (Friday preacher) of the Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez, a post he is reported to have held for some fifteen years until his death there in 792 AH / 1390 CE; he was buried at the Bab al-Futuh cemetery.

He is remembered above all for a widely read commentary on the "Hikam" ("Aphorisms") of the Egyptian Shadhili teacher Ibn 'Ata' Allah (d. 1309), and for two collections of spiritual letters (al-Rasa'il al-kubra and al-Rasa'il al-sughra). The Spanish scholar Miguel Asin Palacios proposed that his teaching may have influenced the Christian mystic St John of the Cross, though this remains a debated scholarly suggestion rather than an established fact.