Sidi Abu Madyan al-Qadiri (1873-1957), the master of Sidi Hamza
Sidi Abu Madyan al-Qadiri al-Boutchichi (1873-1957), also named Sidi Boumediene ben al-Mnawwar, is the master who reintroduced the spiritual secret (sirr) into the Boutchichi line, after generations in which the family path had been no more than a way of blessing. Without him there would be no Sidi Hamza and no Qadiriya Boutchichiya path as it exists today: it was he who transmitted the initiation to Sidi al-Hajj al-Abbas and to his son.
He is not to be confused with his illustrious namesake, Abu Madyan Shu’ayb (1126-1198), the great master of Béjaïa to whom the Shadhiliyya line goes back.
A prestigious line that was not enough
Born in 1873 at a place called Tarharabt, in the Taghjirt region of north-eastern Morocco, the son of Sidi al-Mnawwar, Sidi Abu Madyan belonged to a line of saints and founders of zawiyas: a sharif, descended from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he did his schooling at Madagh and in the 1900s took the Qadiri teaching from his cousin Sidi al-Mukhtar (1853-1914), the third of that name. He stood at his side in 1907, in the resistance to the French army’s penetration of the Beni Snassen led by Lyautey. For long years afterwards he led an intense but outward practice of worship, persuaded that he had only to hold to the way of the ancients, living withdrawn in the mountains.
Sidi Hamza tells the turning point this way. Sidi Abu Madyan used to visit the Darqawa fuqara of the area around the zawiya of Sidi al-Habri, not to learn from them, but touched by their hospitality. Most of them were illiterate; yet their conversation held such subtle meanings about the Reality of Being that he grew more and more attentive. ‘One day he became suddenly aware of the sleep in which he was wrapped. These people, he said to himself, have reached such heights of spirituality, while we are plunged in complete heedlessness.’ From that moment, he said, a fire had been kindled in him.
The quest for the secret
He then sought long and hard for a master able to instruct him in that knowledge, heedless of the prestige he himself enjoyed: only one thing mattered to him, drawing near to the Truth. From encounter to encounter, several masters transmitted to him what was destined for him. Two played a decisive role: Sidi Ben Ariane, of the Tijaniyya, whose sanctity was so well concealed that he was counted among the Malamati, the ‘people of blame’; and Sidi Ahmed Lahlou, the disciple of the Shadhili shaykh Sidi Muhammad ben Ali.
His search ended in the acquisition of full access to the sirr and the authorisation (idhn) to transmit the initiation. He made the synthesis of those teachings and revived the Qadiriya path of his forebears: the Boutchichi line became once more a path of the secret, after long having been a path of tabarruk, of blessing without the function of guidance.
A demanding master
Sidi Abu Madyan had no love of the multitude. ‘A handful of bees is worth more than a swarm of flies,’ he used to say, and also: ‘This dear secret, I have toiled for it, and I shall give it only to those who truly deserve it.’ His teaching stood under the sign of Majesty (jalal): preliminary trials, exacting demands, the prohibition of any reading about Sufism apart from the Hikam of Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah, for it is better to experience things than to form a preconceived idea of them, which might itself become a veil.
The transmission at Madagh
In 1942 he came down from the mountains to settle at Madagh, at the invitation of Sidi al-Hajj al-Abbas. Father and son became his disciples a month apart. His way of teaching was direct: he would ask the notable Sidi Abbas to serve tea to the fuqara in order to free him of his ego, and he said of this method: ‘We entered through the gate of Majesty and wearied ourselves; you entered through the gate of Grace and Beauty.’
For the young Sidi Hamza he felt a particular affection: ‘This love I have for you is the love the Prophet Jacob felt for his son Joseph.’ He would sometimes knock at his door simply to see him for a moment, and he would allude to what ‘his time’ would be and to the role the young man would assume in it.
At his death he had clearly designated Sidi Abbas as heir to the secret, though it was not yet publicly known. The rest of the story, the three years of silence and then the leadership assumed in 1960, belongs to the life of Sidi al-Hajj al-Abbas.