ʻAbd al-Salām ibn Mashīsh al-ʻAlamī (Arabic: عبد السلام بن مشيش العلمي) (b. ?–1227), was a Moroccan Sufi saint who lived during the reign of the Almohad Caliphate.

Biography

Virtually nothing is known about him except that he was assassinated in 1227/1228 by the anti-Almohad rebel ibn Abi Tawajin.^[1]

His genealogy was traced through several ancestors to Idris I and the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. It is said that he was born to the Banu Arus tribe in the neighbourhood of the Jabal al-'Alam, and that at the age of 16 he travelled to the east to study. On his return, in Béjaïa, he followed the instructions of the Andalusian mystic Abu Madyan. He come back to stay in his native country, where he withdrew to the mountain to live an edifying life as an ascetic. He was the murshid "spiritual guide" of al-Shadhili, his only disciple.^[2]

Works

He is the author of a collection of reflections about religious and political life in his time, and of a famous eulogy of Mohammed (taṣliyah), The Salutation Upon The Best Of Creation, on which a commentary was written by Ahmad ibn Ajiba. He also wrote a metaphysical paraphrase of a widely known prayer called al-Salat al-Mashishiyah, in which the believer calls on God to bless the Prophet to thank him for having received Islam through him. In it, ibn Mashish sees in Muhammad a person of the one Spirit from which all revelation comes and which is the eternal mediator between the ungraspable God and the world.

Notes

• Muhammad Bennani, Mulay Abd Es Selam El Machich, ed. by África Española – Madrid, 1913 (In Spanish)
• Titus Burckhardt, "The Prayer of Ibn Mashish", Studies in Comparative Religion, Winter-Spring, 1978, Pates Manor, Bedfont, Middlesex
• Titus Burckhardt, "The Prayer of Ibn Mashish (As-Salat al-Mashishiyah)", Translation and commentary, Islamic Quarterly, London, 1978, vol. 20-21-22, no3, pp. 68–75

References