The spiritual testament of Sidi Hajj Abbas
Sidi al-Hajj al-’Abbas, born in 1890, was the spiritual guide of the Qadiriya Boutchichiya tariqa from 1960 to 1972. The son of Hajj Mokhtar al-Qadiri Boutchich, an eminent figure in the resistance to the French invasion of eastern Morocco, he became, together with his son Sidi Hamza, the disciple of Sidi Abu Madyan al-Qadiri Boutchich, their cousin.
Moved by a deep spiritual aspiration, Sidi al-’Abbas was looking for a master able to answer it. On the advice of a man enraptured in God, whom he had approached at the age of seventeen in search of spiritual guidance, he waited thirty-five years for that master to come and knock at his door, which happened in 1942.
Sidi al-’Abbas followed the spiritual teaching of Sidi Abu Madyan until the latter’s death in 1957. Although designated by his master to succeed him, Sidi al-’Abbas, feeling unworthy of the office, preferred to keep Sidi Abu Madyan’s will secret. It was only in 1960 that he consented to reveal this inheritance to the disciples of the brotherhood and to assume the spiritual direction of the Qadiriya Boutchichiya tariqa. At his death, in 1972, Sidi Hajj al-’Abbas transmitted that direction to his son Sidi Hamza. This spiritual transmission was the object of a testament, in which Sidi al-’Abbas recalls the foundations and the aims of the path. The text is reproduced below.
The charge of the path
From the servant, humble before his Lord, the poor, the needy, al-Hajj al-Abbas al-Qadiri al-Boutchichi, to his children and his brothers in God.
You know that I love silence and that my discreet nature inclines me not to speak much.
All the same, you ask yourselves a certain number of questions which deserve further counsel and explanation, concerning this responsibility that divine providence entrusted to me some years ago.
My children, my brothers in God:
You will have understood, through our earlier discussions, that the Sufi path followed by our ancestors for a century and a half is the Qadiriya path, which is a grace among the graces of the knower of God, the one schooled in the divine secret, the one who enjoys the assistance of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), our most elevated grandfather, our master Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, may God grant us the benefit of his grace.
You may know that at the time when destiny was to call me, among the members of the family, to carry the responsibility of perpetuating the path of our ancestors, I was still absorbed in the affairs of this world and worked in agriculture.
In truth, the preoccupations of life prevented me from satisfying my desire to study the religious sciences when I was young. I contented myself with knowing the obligatory prescriptions of the shari’a and reading the Qur’an. Thanks be to God, I was not deprived of understanding the beauty of the verses and the hadiths, of knowing the conduct of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), his behaviour and the states of his companions, together with the deeds and words of the saints.
You will understand that I am not someone who boasts, nor a scholar who can allow himself the fatwa, nor even someone who can guide people by the light of the Book and the sunna: that is the work of scholars specialised in the study of the texts, who devote themselves to their analysis. What binds me to you is spiritual and educative, founded on companionship and the love of God, on gathering to invoke Him and to expose ourselves to His graces, on the ardent desire to know Him, on generosity with the assistance of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), all of this so as to aspire to purity of heart, to the strengthening of the being and to its illumination by the light of faith, and to all that follows from it in spiritual practice, education and conduct; for when the inside of a being is pure, it shines through on the outside.
Indeed, according to a hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): ‘There is a part of the body which, when it is sound, makes the whole body sound, and when it is corrupted, makes the whole body corrupt: that part is the heart.’ It is for this noble cause alone that the sincere servant must strengthen his will and turn towards God, without seeking to guess what He has chosen for him.
Succeeding Sidi Abu Madyan
God and His angels are my witnesses that on the day I came to see my shaykh and spiritual father Sidi Abu Madyan, may God’s mercy be upon him, it never once crossed my mind that one day I might be worthy of inheriting his secret and succeeding him. I had come to him sincerely, entrusting him with the reins of my soul, so that he might help me to know its reality and lift the veil that separates the servant from his Lord.
But veils are not lifted so easily: for that, a sincere intention is indispensable, and to be educated by an authentic master. The fact of finding myself in the Qadiri path, the path of my ancestors, and of having had a man of God for a father did not prevent me from wanting to meet an educator of souls, knowing that this is the only way of transforming one’s behaviour and drawing gradually nearer to God. My great-great-grandfather was in this respect a good example: God opened his heart by making him take the same road as me, and he entrusted his soul to a great shaykh of his time, although he himself belonged to a Sufi and Qadiri family. He thereby attained, by God’s grace, the degree at which he was permitted to invoke the supreme Name (ism al-a’dham), and then became a shaykh in his turn. Some time before his death, he advised his son to cease the practice of the path and the invocation of the supreme Name and to return to the path of ‘tabarruk’, for the latter had not reached the maqam of spiritual education. In the light of this story one can see that before being able to educate spiritually, one must first have reached the maqam that authorises the invocation of the ‘ism’ (Allah). The spiritual masters have always advised those of their disciples who had not yet arrived at the goal to follow in their footsteps and take their conduct as a model after their death. It is for this same reason that I advise you to follow the one who will come after me (after my death), so that your nafs does not stop you in the middle of so good a road: for whoever seeks his Lord sincerely seeks him anywhere, and hopes to know him first of all with those upon whom God’s grace is manifest.
Yes, I accompanied Sidi Abu Madyan, may God’s grace be upon him, with sincerity and faithfulness, without the shadow of an interest or an expectation. I recovered my (original) soul and peace in his company, for I loved him, I loved him like my father or even more. I do not recall having disobeyed him or taken his counsel lightly. Among his qualities were humility and contentment with what he had; his conduct was founded on the sunna, and he was known to all for his intransigence towards any breach of the shari’a when he witnessed it. He did not accept that his disciples should approach the duties of religion with slackness, or depart from the behaviour of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him).
I shall not hide from you that the most important conversation we had took place when he enjoined me to succeed him after his death. He was an educator of souls made pure through an inner clarification born of the practice of the supreme Name of Allah, counselled in the Qur’an and the Sunna, without limit and without number. That is a majestic station, reached only by disciples who have an elevated maqam, in particular the servants of God, the saints. All this concerns those who have vowed their lives to the Qur’an and the Sunna and who seek to behave according to the conduct of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and his companions. Those, on the other hand, whose intention is corrupted, who doubt this kind of maqam and have not received divine help, must first work to heal their souls and struggle against contrary influences.
The most important discussion I had with Sidi Abu Madyan took place at the end of his life, when he designated me as his successor. I excused myself then, and pointed to those who in my view were fitter to bear that charge. He told me: ‘You will take this mission upon you whether you will or not’; I kept silent out of politeness.
After the death of Sidi Abu Madyan (may God’s grace be upon him) in 1957, nobody knew who would succeed him, for my nature inclined me to silence and pressed me to regularity and continuity in my spiritual work. I also wished to take the time to prepare myself for that responsibility, and I felt a great fear of not measuring up. So I remained silent for nearly three years after his death, and could see in myself no aptitude for educating. I could not see in myself the confidence he had seen in me. On the contrary, I saw myself as the weakest of his disciples and the most in need of mercy and grace: but it is God who willed things so; the servant of God must know that the divine will is stronger than his own and that a force other than his guides him. One of the reasons that obliged me to react and take up my responsibilities in 1960 is that, during a dhikr gathering, I witnessed things that would not have happened had Sidi Abu Madyan still been alive. At that moment I felt the full weight of the responsibility I had to assume, and understood that I would be judged before God for everything that fell within the domain of spiritual education, for I had until then tolerated certain things without attempting to correct them. I then agreed to authorise the practice of the dhikr and of the supreme Name, and afterwards to make known the spiritual testament of Sidi Abu Madyan. That is when ‘the matter’ was revealed to everyone.
The dhikr, way of grace
God had pity on you and on us, and we were not obliged to do as the disciples of old, whose wills were strong and whose exhausting efforts were based on victory over the nafs. God knows our weaknesses and the multitude of our preoccupations in this age; He granted us the grace of summing everything up in the dhikr, and of excelling in the prayers, for practising much dhikr, accomplishing all one’s religious duties and stopping at the limits prescribed by the shari’a help to purify the heart, to vanquish the despotism of the nafs and to lift its veil. That is what Sidi Abu Madyan advised (may God’s grace be upon him). Once he had seen me toiling and doing more than I could: he forbade me, saying: ‘We entered through the gate of Majesty and wearied ourselves; you entered through the gate of Grace and Beauty, so do not stop.’ So things stood. The way of force and seclusion was left aside and replaced by the way of the dhikr and of gathering. Everything went very well, thanks be to God. In a very short time this path of God lit up the hearts of the disciples whose intention was sincere and whose aims were noble: they had not tarnished their intentions with personal interests or worldly objectives. Invoking God and gathering for that purpose is nothing new in Islam. It is something the Qur’an counsels in all situations and in all states (sadness, etc.). The dhikr is done with the tongue, or with the heart, or inwardly, striving not to forget His presence. God said: ‘Those who forget to invoke God will have satan for a companion.’
God said: ‘Do not obey those whose hearts forget to invoke Us and who follow their desires, for their cause is lost.’
He said: ‘In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the succession of day and night, there are signs for those who know how to see, those who invoke God standing, sitting and lying down, and who reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth.’
God said: ‘Men whom neither trade nor barter divert from the remembrance of God.’
And He said further: ‘In the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) you have an excellent model, for those who believe in God and the Last Judgement and who invoke Him much.’
Likewise, the Sunna contains recommendations to invoke God, alone, in company, in silence or aloud.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘God said: I am attentive to My servant when he invokes Me. If he invokes Me within himself, I shall invoke him within Myself. If he invokes Me in an assembly, I shall invoke him in a better assembly.’
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘God has a company of angels who pause above the gatherings of dhikr on earth; take your share of the gardens of paradise! They asked: O Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), what are the gardens of paradise? He answered: they are the gatherings of dhikr; come and go in the remembrance of God!’
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘All those who invoke God are surrounded by angels, enveloped in grace; peace descends upon them and God mentions them.’ As you can see, the Qur’an and the Sunna recommend invoking God, gathering for His sake and loving Him. If there is a secret to be learnt in this path, whatever the age, it lies in sincerity and faithfulness, for God does not look at His servant’s appearance, nor at his deeds or his words, but rather at his heart and his intention. By means of the dhikr the heart is prepared to contemplate the truth. The truth is not outside us, it is not in books, but it is within us, and God speaks through our hearts. Signs are always presenting themselves, and if we have prepared our hearts to understand them with the eye of truth, we progress along the path. If we are not prepared, God in His mercy will send us new signs. Take the case of a trial: for as long as we are not prepared to understand it, it persists; God gives us signs we do not see, we lose time and do not progress towards inner peace.
Question: ‘What happens if one stops going to the gatherings and ceases the practice of the dhikr? Can one have problems?’ Answer: ‘The only thing that will happen to you is that you will not progress; nothing can happen if you do not open your heart, you waste your time.’
The shari’a, framework of the path
Life is a succession of signs. God (exalted be He) seeks only to bring us nearer to Him, in His mercy. It is we who do not know how to read His signs. The trials we undergo, like the blessings we receive, are signs, and we must try to see God in them. The only way to understand His signs is to open our hearts, and the only way to open our hearts is to turn towards our master and practise the dhikr ‘la ilaha illa Llah’. It is this attestation of God’s unity that lets us gradually contemplate Him in all things, seek to understand our life in relation to this quest for God, to know Him. And He is in all things, in every action: when one rocks one’s child, when one prepares a meal, when one works for peace, for the well-being of one’s fellow beings; but the dhikr is indispensable, it is the source that nourishes us and raises us from our ego-bound state of consciousness to a state that transcends us. On the path, it is not enough to dispense advice or to boast of having applied it: that advice and those deeds must become settled in the nafs. In earlier times it was said: ‘(Inward) rectitude is better than a thousand dignities.’ One day a gnostic was asked why certain disciples had parted from him, and he answered: ‘My heart is bound to the shari’a, and whoever does not respect the shari’a parts from me.’ The principles of the Law, thank God, are simple: their origin is found in the Qur’an and the Sunna. The rules are recorded in the books of theology, and a good example of them is found in the work of the men of God, in their words, their deeds and their conduct.
The shari’a is what is best for man, and the Sunna of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is the best guide.
God said: ‘Whatever the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) has brought you, take it; and whatever He has forbidden you, do not do it.’
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘I have left you upon a great white road, by night as by day: it is the Book of God and the Sunna of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Only the astray depart from it.’
Thus my testament might well confine itself to pointing out to you what Islam has recommended and what the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) counselled. From the legal standpoint, one is responsible for the error or the crimes of another only to the extent of the help one could have given him and the counsel one could have offered. The fate of the whole of creation is in the hands of the Creator, and it is He who will judge. If He so wills, He will forgive in His goodness, or He will chastise. In any case, the best state for a believer is that in which he works (spiritually) purely and with integrity, without seeking his personal interest. (…)
A hadith says that ‘the hearts of the servants are between the two fingers of God; He turns them as He wills’. In one of his prayers the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to say: ‘O God, You who turn the hearts, set mine fast upon Your religion!’
Thus no degree of knowledge and no science can alter the destiny fixed by God from all eternity. However high a being’s degree of elevation, it will appear infinitesimal beside the greatness of the Prophet’s station (peace and blessings be upon him).
A hadith says: ‘By God, I do not know what God will do with me, nor what He will do with you, unless He envelops me in His grace.’ It is perhaps this hadith that Sayyidina Omar retained, and which made him pronounce the famous words everyone knows: ‘Would to God that Omar’s mother had never brought him into the world, and that he had seen neither existence nor men!’ (an example of reverential fear). (…)
You have been advised to practise much dhikr, for it purifies the heart and guarantees ‘life and its evening’. What remedy, apart from the dhikr, could avail a heart whose sides are darkened and whose mirror is pitted? And what medicine outside the dhikr can restore to the inside of the being its purity and its stability? Everything has a remedy, and the remedy of hearts is the invocation (la ilaha illa Llah). The dhikr influences the soul and acts upon the senses; it lets the believer live a ‘good life’ and be graced with a better conduct. The dhikr of the heart keeps one from worldly preoccupations and from deviations, and from many things that do not befit the degree of sincere believers. God said: ‘Are those who were dead and whom We revived, and to whom We gave a light to walk among men, like those who are in darkness and will not come out of it?’
Gatherings and companionship
When the dhikr issues from a pure heart illuminated by the light of faith, satan will keep out of its way. All the divine secrets and lights that strike the disciple’s heart and sometimes appear to him plainly and under different forms serve to spur him to persevere in his journey and to increase his thirst for the knowledge of God. Nonetheless one must not dwell on them, for all that happens in the world of the spirit is far above the capacities of human understanding. According to the hadith: ‘Address people according to their capacities of comprehension; would you give God and His Prophet the lie?’ So the reasonable disciple must behave well towards these secrets if he begins to catch sight of them. He must show vigilance, put their importance in proportion and do his best to control himself so as not to step outside the limits to be observed, especially in matters of religion. Absolute sincerity is realised when the outward states are in perfect concordance with the inward states and when every outward feeling is born of an inward feeling. It is on this point that the education of Sidi Abu Madyan excelled, may God’s grace be upon him. (…)
As for the ’imara, it is not an objective in itself. One must not work with a view to it, and it is permitted only to those who can no longer control their feelings, their urges and their states when they hear the dhikr or the reading of the Qur’an, and whose inward states are reflected outwardly without their having willed it. One must leave the person who finds himself in that state (that is his affair) until he comes back to himself and recovers his inner stability. The distinction remains clear, according to whether God is the cause of that outward manifestation or the disciple provokes it artificially.
I also advise you to attend many gatherings, for there is no education without companionship, without love and without the company of the brothers. Through regularity in attending the gatherings, purity and life are transmitted between brothers. It is then possible to vanquish one’s nafs and improve one’s conduct. Habits can also be broken, and one escapes what would have ruined us, acquiring qualities and habits that lead to happiness and purity. You have known among yourselves young men whose lives had grown dark: they saw nothing positive, and the hell of deviation had descended into their hearts. Vast though it is, life had become narrow in their eyes. Then (thanks to the path) their lives brightened and the nectar of tranquillity and peace came to rest upon their hearts. They tasted the blessings of faith and the peace of the soul, without which all happiness is impossible. It is the truth that man discovers within himself; it is God’s grace, when it touches hearts, that causes this happiness and makes one see in the world nothing but purity and joy, despite all the vices it contains. Likewise, God’s wrath, when it descends, becomes an unbearable hell. The gatherings of dhikr lead to that sanctity when they are pure of all personal or worldly interest and of every vice, for the light of faith is a well-hidden secret that is transmitted only to pure and sincere hearts. By the same token you will learn to put each thing in its place, and you will understand that whatever distances you from God and tends to introduce professional or worldly preoccupations into the gatherings is an obstacle to be watched. At the gatherings the faqir receives only according to the purity of his intention, and no more; the one who comes to the gatherings to do business or out of self-interest has lost where others gain. He who has emptied his heart of all self-interest and has predisposed himself to receive the spiritual influence will find what he seeks, and has succeeded where many lose. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘To each according to his intention: he who emigrates to God and His Messenger truly emigrates to Them, and he who emigrates for some worldly thing to acquire or a woman to marry emigrates only for that.’ My children, my brothers in God, such then is my counsel. Know that when I recommend something to you, I am the first to put it into practice, for God will question me about words I did not mean or about recommendations I did not apply. Know that a man who has passed eighty, who has lost health and eyesight to his advanced age, has no need of notoriety, or money, or anything in this world that would prevent him from telling the truth. It is for this reason that I advise you to apply my directions. The best counsel I give you, standing at the threshold of the grave, is to count on God at all times, in all your states, to practise before you speak, and to be sincere with God in what concerns your spiritual practice and your words. Guide God’s servants with sincerity, faithfulness and poverty towards the religion He has given us. ‘Glory to Him, He knows those who turn towards Him and those who turn elsewhere.’
Sincerity, the proof of the path
Your relations and your (spiritual) works must be founded on sincere counsel for one another, consultation, purity and the desire for good. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘The traditional life is sincere counsel. Towards whom, O Messenger of God? the companions asked him. Towards God, towards His Messenger, towards the imams and towards the believers, whether of high or low rank.’ Take care lest satan make you stray from God’s path and distance you from the fuqara. The men of God have experienced it: sincerity in the path chases out impurities as the bellows chase the dross from the fire. It is the divine will that these secrets be revealed only to those who have a right resolution, a sincere intention, and who come into the path only to heal their souls. God said: ‘God knows whether you have good in your hearts, and He will give you more of it.’
My children, my brothers in God, work upon what has been said and pray to God in this sense. Know that sincerity towards God and His servants is an indispensable quality. It is the basis of the quest for God and of the journey towards His religion. The proof of sincerity is when the outside is in accord with the inside, and when words are in accord with deeds. God said: ‘O you who have faith, believe in God and be with the sincere.’ The communication of the path, rather than succeeding through words, must first succeed through deeds: a good conduct and a good behaviour. Those who exhort towards God with sincerity do so by their work and by a good conduct, before doing so by their counsels and their words. For there is no Islam without work upon oneself and without a good behaviour in which one strives to imitate the conduct of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and his companions. That is the holy war of the Muslims, for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘The last communities will be surrounded by the same care as the first.’ Yes, sincerity is a pledge hung around the neck of every believer, and the quest for God pursued with sincerity, together with the observance of the indications of the shari’a, are conditions as everlasting as the heavens and the earth. Every servant of God who desires to follow the prescriptions of the Qur’an and the Sunna of our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is charged with this responsibility.