The guides of the Qadiriya Boutchichiya path
A Sufi path is not defined by a body of doctrine in books but by a living chain of transmission. The Sufis like to say: ‘the Path is the Shaykh.’ For the Tariqa Qadiriya Boutchichiya, that chain binds each guide to the one before him, disciple upon disciple, back to the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him): it is the silsila, the initiatic chain.
Here are the guides who have carried this path, from the eponymous ancestor to the current guide.
Sidi Ali ‘al-Boutchich’: the ancestor (eighteenth century)
In the mid-eighteenth century, Sidi Ali al-Qadiri, a descendant of ’Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani come over from Iraq, built his zawiya in the Beni Snassen massif. During a famine he had dshisha, a crushed-barley soup, distributed to the poor: the people nicknamed him ‘the soup man’, and that name, Boutchich, has remained attached to the family and to the path.
After him the spiritual secret was lost, and the line kept only a sainthood of blessing. Sidi Ali’s biography.
Sidi Abu Madyan al-Qadiri: the quest for the secret (1873-1957)
A distant cousin withdrawn into the Beni Snassen mountains, Sidi Abu Madyan spent years among the Darqawa fuqara before setting out in quest of the sirr with Tijani and Shadhili masters. He received it together with the authorisation to transmit, and revived the path of his forebears. A demanding master, he used to say: ‘A handful of bees is worth more than a swarm of flies.’
Sidi al-Hajj al-Abbas: the patience of the notable (1890-1972)
A great landowner of the Berkane region, Sidi Abbas waited thirty-five years for the guide foretold by a majdhub of Oujda. He took the pact from Sidi Abu Madyan in 1942, a month before his son Sidi Hamza, and served tea to the fuqara to free himself of the ego. After his master’s death he said nothing for nearly three years before assuming the leadership, around 1960.
It was he who formulated the identity of the renewed path: ‘a path of spiritual states, of knowledge and of renewal’, beginning the passage from Majesty to Beauty. Sidi Abbas’s biography, his spiritual testament and a few of his sayings.
Sidi Hamza: the way of Beauty (1918-2017)
A disciple of Sidi Abu Madyan from the age of twenty, Sidi Hamza directed the zawiya of Madagh from 1972 to 2017 and turned the path into a tariqa of worldwide reach, present in Europe, West Africa and America. His method: no preliminary trial, the dhikr from the outset, beautification before stripping away, excellence of conduct in ordinary life. ‘There is no trial in this path,’ he used to say; ‘the trial is replaced by the invocation.’
Sidi Hamza’s biography, his maxims, his sayings and his spiritual testament. Two pieces in the Moroccan press of 2000 describe him in his lifetime: ‘Sidi Hamza, the living saint’ and ‘A Sufi sage among us’, an interview with Faouzi Skali.
Sidi Jamal: the master of the Meetings (1942-2025)
Sidi Hamza’s son, Sidi Jamal guided the path from 2017 to August 2025. A teacher of French and then an inspector of the Qur’anic schools of the Berkane province, he had a taste for transmission and supported the World Meetings of Sufism organised by his son Sidi Mounir at Madagh. His spiritual testament designates Sidi Mounir as his successor.
Sidi Jamal’s biography and his spiritual testament.
Sidi Mounir: the current guide
The son of Sidi Jamal and a doctor of Islamic studies (EPHE, Paris), Sidi Mounir directed the World Meeting of Sufism for nearly twenty years before taking charge of the path in August 2025, in accordance with the testaments of his father and grandfather.
Sidi Mounir’s biography · The rectitude of the heart and of deeds: his video teaching on the examination of conscience.
Transmission, not heredity
Though the guidance has passed from father to son from Sidi Abbas to Sidi Mounir, the tradition insists: it is not blood that makes the guide, but the deposit of the secret and the authorisation to transmit. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘God will send, each century, someone to renew your religion.’ Each guide in this line received the sirr from his master within an unbroken silsila, which crosses three great filiations: the Qadiriyya of ’Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, the Tijaniyya and the Shadhiliyya.
For the practical business of finding a guide today: Finding a Sufi master in France. For the texts of the tradition: Words of the masters, the anthology of Sufi sayings gathered by tariqa.fr.