Ibn Abbad of Ronda

IBN ABBAD OF RONDA A light in the Islam of Morocco.
(1330 -1390)

“Ibn Abbad umma wahdahu”.

His teacher, Ibn Ashir de Salé, also from Jimena de la Frontera, pronounced these words about him: Ibn Abbad is the community alone, and with this he anticipated the future meaning that his disciple would have.
All of Fez was shocked.
As the news of Ibn Abbad’s death spread through the city, people left their neighborhoods and chores to join the funeral of this Andalusian sage of simple and humble life.
At the head of the procession was the sultan and the principals of the city.
The people lived this moment with exaltation, trying by all means to touch the parigüela where this servant of the Most High was led to the cemetery located on the other side of Bab Fetouh, one of the gates of the new wall of Fez.
He was born in the city of Ronda, today the province of Malaga, where he lived until he was nine years old.
His father, Abu Ishaq Ibrahim, transmitted to him the Koran, which he had memorized at the age of seven.
His uncle Abdellah al-Farisi taught him Arabic grammar.
They saw to it that he received a careful education in his childhood and youth, both in Ronda, Tlemecén and Fez.
Being already a well-formed adult, he left Fez for a few years to devote himself to knowledge and the life of retirement, at the hands of the master Ibn Ashir in Salé.
He remained in his company until the latter’s death.
Having been the object of a high and close treatment by his master since he first saw him.
He returned to Fez where he resided until his death, serving for fifteen years as Imam Khatib of the Qarawiyin by direct appointment of Sultan Abul Abbas in 1375.
He was a man who aroused love in his environment.
The door of his house was filled with children waiting for him to come out to see him and kiss his hand, also the great of the city sought his advice and company.
He rejected any kind of gesture of deference and distinction to which he was the object of illustrious people and blushed if anyone asked him to make supplications for him.
He lived a simple life.
She took care of household chores and took care of her clothes.
In private he wore a tunic of patches that he had sewn himself, although he covered himself with other green or white ones when he went out into the street so as not to attract attention and at the same time to live up to the dignity that the sultan had granted him.
Someone mentioned that he was once married, just to fulfill the sunna, although there is no certainty of this.
His great passion was perfumes, which was the only luxury he allowed himself.
He dedicated his time to study and teaching, and it was very difficult to find him in meetings of any kind.
So the people who needed him used to meet him always in solitude.
His advice was very precious to all, for his partiality and gaze fixed on eternity made Ar-rundi a guide for many people in his life.
Their khutbas were preserved with great appreciation and were read in mosques for centuries on the occasion of special occasions.
Al-Maqqari records hearing a khutba from Ibn Abbad in Marrakesh on the day of maulud, the birth of the prophet Allah’s peace be upon him, in 1601. Al Xatibi, as a result of a controversy that arose in the kingdom of Granada about the need to have a living sheikh as a means of advancing in the science of states and divine knowledge, or that this could be found in the books of tasawuf, made a query to which he responded in writing affirming this need.
His work and person were well known and respected in the last century and a half of Andalusian Islam.
In this way it transcended the Moors who remained in the peninsula, as there were two Aljamiada translations of its composition on “the supplications according to the order of the beautiful names of Allah”, a text that has recently been recovered and that at some point was attributed to Ibn al-Arabi of Murcia.
A little more than twenty years had passed since the death of Ibn Ataillah al iskandari, may Allah be pleased with him, when Ibn Abbad was born and a little more than fifty years when the sage from Ronda made his famous commentaries on the aphorisms of the Sufi of Alexandria, Al-Hikam, pouring into them the knowledge he had inherited and the enlightenment that Allah had placed in his heart.
Shadyliyah Ashykh Fasi Ahmad al-Zarruq devotes a large part of his introduction to Al-Hiijam’s commentary to pondering the meaning of Ibn Abbad in the Tariqa and our noble teacher Alim Ahmad ibn Ayiba of Tetouan in 1809 after having read Ibn Abbad’s commentary said: “I abandoned the formal sciences and devoted myself to devotion, the remembrance of Allah and prayer upon the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah upon him.
Four hundred years had elapsed, and the life of his commentary possessed the primal force to produce this effect in so distinguished a man.
From his profound wisdom Ibn Abbad ar-rundi opened the hearts of the ulamas of his time, people traditionally encountered with Tasawf, making the hikam of Ibn Atail-lah introduced into the studies of the Qarawiyin, forming part of the formal studies as a general subject.
This fact is one of the foundations that made Morocco’s Islam a model of integrity in the three sciences of the Deen: Fiq, Aqida and Tasawuf.
A model that in the seventeenth century, Abdel Wahid ibn Ashir Al Ansari expounded, in his famous composition Al Murshid al-Muin.
This is the most memorized text in the history of Morocco after the Koran.
He is a member of the Fiq Maliki, the Aqida Ashari, and the tasawuf Shadili-Yunaidi, to which Ibn Abbad had dedicated his life and heart.
More than six centuries of Islam in Morocco illuminated by the highest science, the one that rinses the hardness of the sciences of forms with the sweetness of the water of Divine knowledge.
May Allah be pleased with him.
When the time came for him to die, he rested his head on the lap of a disciple and began to recite the Ayat al-Qursi.
When the Living One, the Eternal, came to the words, he continued to repeat, “O Allah!
O Living One!
O Eternal!
Someone present called him by name and recited the verses that followed, but he continued O Allah!
O Living One!
O eternal!
As a good believer before he died he bequeathed a large sum of money that he had buried at the head of his bed, to buy a piece of land and establish a habus to help the mosque.
The amount was in line with all the payments he had received from the sultan during Imam Khatib’s fifteen years. Al-Sakkak transmitted to us this verse composed by Ibn Abbad and which speaks for itself of its author’s ideal of beauty:

“MAN DOES NOT ACQUIRE NOBILITY IF HE DOES NOT FIRST COMPARE THE CLAY OF THIS EARTH WITH ETERNITY”

Hajj Khalid Nieto Ixbiliyya, 23rd Anniversary of my first Hajj.
(June 21, 1991).