Volume Three
Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad by Mostafa al-Badawi
Pre-orders of the 9-Volume Boxset ship at the end of June
For orders from UK please contact photos@petersanders.com
Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad (1907-1995) was a renowned Hadrami scholar-sage who immigrated to East Africa from South Yemen and spent much of his life in the interiors, bringing animist and cannibalistic tribes to the monotheism of Islam. It is said that over 300,000 Africans entered Islam at his hand. During this period, while earning a living as a trader, he would venture out into the jungles of East Africa and build schools, mosques, and clinics for the tribal people he ministered to. Considered in his lifetime as one of the greatest saints of Islam, his compassionate teaching had a profound influence on generations of students, including Ba ‘Alawi sages Habib ‘Umar ibn Hafiz and Habib ‘Ali al-Jifri, as well as many aspirants from the West who later became highly influential advocates of a traditional and compassionate Islam, including Dr. ‘Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Dr. Mostafa al-Badawi, Dr. Timothy Winter (Shaykh ‘Abdal Hakim Murad) as well as Peter Sanders and Michael Sugich. The monograph will be written by Dr. Mostafa Badawi who has dedicated his life to translating and interpreting the teachings of Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad and his ancestor Imam ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Alawi al-Haddad and the sages of the Ba ‘Alawi way.
“Certainty is an immense thing. Each person should be keen to make the faith and certainty in his heart complete, so as to contain all the immutable realities that our Habib, ‘Abd al-Qadir has talked about: those realities that never change or alter, which are the realities of faith; the realities of firmness; the realities of the Hereafter; the realities of the pillars of faith, as you have heard them; the realities of the knowledge that is unchangeable, contrary to these perishable things. We have not been created for evanescent things.
Neither for the fair maidens nor for the songs,
nor for the pleasures of this realm
Nor for anything perishable in any form
but only for all matters sublime
“All these perishable things, why were they called perishable? Money perishes, life perishes, oceans perish, they are all perishable, and God has called it (this world) amusement and play, The life of this world is but play and amusement (47:36), perishable things that you play and amuse yourself with for a while, and then either they leave you or you leave them. This is how this whole life of the world is reduced to amusement and play. When we truly reflect on this matter, we come to know its reality. Therefore, we must do three things: uprightly discharge the matters of Shari’a as best we can, then their courtesies, and then penetrate deeply into this with complete courtesy, so as to reach Haqiqa, such as the faith of Haritha and that of all the other Companions A. Sayyidina ‘Ali said, ‘Were the cover to be removed, I would not increase in certainty!’”
AHMAD MASHHUR AL-HADDAD
From Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad: The Beloved
Mostafa al-Badawi
