Abbas Qadiri Boutchich

Sidi Al-Hajj Al ` Abbas Qadiri Boutchich was born in 1890 in Bouyahyi in the south from Ahfir, in the Moroccan North-East. With died of his/her father Al-Hajj Al-Mokhtar in 1914, Sidi `Abbas got busy to make function the zawiya Madagh in company of his/her big brother Al-Makki who succeeded his late father in the spiritual direction of the brotherhood Qadiriyya Boutchichiyya. Sidi 'Abbas occupied as for him agricultural activities.

These last took a relatively important dimension when he became the vice-president of the Marocaine room of Agriculture of Oujda, function which he will occupy until 1951 becoming deputy of this same room to the council of the government. In parallel, and with died of his older brother Al-Makki in 1936, it continued the development of the buildings of the zawiya which had up to that point remained with dimensions of the small house of his/her father, the sheik Mokhtar, died in 1914.

Sidi `Abbas perceived very young person a spiritual dissatisfaction. In spite of its membership in fact to the brotherhood of which it bore the name, her spiritual thirst remained deep. Perhaps it could have chosen to leave its house and to join another brotherhood, in conformity with her desires, but… however, a meeting persuaded it to remain and… to wait.

This man was what one calls in the tradition soufie a " majdhub" , these individuals with the behavior so singular that one them known as insane but which in the traditional Moslem company become the vectors of an allusive teaching of which it returns to each one to include/understand what it can according to its capacities. It is because of this hidden dimension that this " incarnated; Majdhub " that the young person 'Abbas (it was only 17 years old) asked him to guide it.

The disciples of the brotherhood Qadiriyya Boutchichiyya preserve this conversation as follows:

" Sidi `Abbas required of the Majdhub to give him a Dhikr. This one asked to him whether he wanted to become insane. And Sidi `Abbas to answer him: “Isn't it already insane that which is dominated by its ego? ”. After information, the man advised to him to turn over to his business and not to worry as for his research about a sheik. This one would strike itself with its porte."

The example is enough eminent to illustrate, in this context of a family of soufis, all the interest carried to the men of God and in fact to the majdhub, carrying truths dissimulated with the great number even reserved for a person only.

Thus, and in spite of its dissatisfaction spiritual and its deep thirst to find a teaching which really transforms it, If `Abbas were held paradoxically with the injunction of an unknown, with the recommendation of a " insane of Dieu" to remain where it was, at the side of his/her brother to be dealt with his business very while waiting for that the key of its search come to present itself.

This waiting will last 35 years (of 1907 to 1942). 35 years of work and enrichment for a peasant become contractor but also 35 years of patience during which it will expect each day that its sheik presents himself. Perseverance that it have is besides, today still, a high subject of teaching for the members of the brotherhood.

This experiment of waiting is completely comparable with those of the large mystics whose more good example undoubtedly remains that of Yunus Emré (Mr. in 1321). This poet soufi originating in Anatolia whom due, failing to receive a direct teaching, of visu, to be satisfied to sweep the court of his Master during many years before setting out again, depity, without realizing of the colossal work of évidage which it had then carried out and which will have led it to a great state of holiness, publicly confirmed by charismas that it will express thereafter.

This reading enables us to see being carried out the premonition of the majdhub for which the 35 years of waiting are symmetrically the amount of time necessary to the future Master of If `Abbas, If Boumediene Qadiri Boutchich to be formed itself with the spiritual guidance and this, by achieving a true initiatory tour, completely concrét that one.

However thus, this tour will be completed completely in 1942, when If Boumediene met If 'Abbas, who was besides her cousin, and who will become his successor direct.

Precisely, If Boumediene initially heard of If Hamza, wire of If 'Abbas. The Hamza young person then finished his formation with Islamic sciences with Madagh. If Booumediene invited it at his place to check the praises which it already collected of the old men will fûqaras of the zaouïa. It is little of time after, at the time of the funeral of one of the sisters of Sidi Hamza that the destiny of the old sheik (it had then nearly sixty ten years) was tied definitively with that of those who will be its successors: Sidi `Abbas and her son Sidi Hamza.

Sidi Hamza tells this event in the terms which follow:

“1942 are the year during which my father and me took Sidi Boumediene as spiritual Master. My father preceded me one month in practice of spiritual education. During the fourteen years when we remained close to our Master, we devoted ourselves to the acts of devotion, mainly with the reading of Coran and the invocation (dhikr). We thus, in company of Sidi Boumediene, crossed the various stages of the spiritual way. ”

Sidi Al-Hajj Al `Abbas at 52 years is an already ripe man when his/her 19 year old son joined it near the same Master. The best age to return in the way soufie was traditionally the medium of the life, when, seeing his/her children leaving the family hearth and his/her parents gradually to leave this world, the men consequently prepared to die in their turn and thus to join the teaching of a Master for, according to the prophetic proverb, “to die before dying”. The age of Sidi Hamza is thus a rare exception in the tradition soufie.

It is true that the direction of the brotherhood under If Boumediene is relatively hard. The application of the law (Shari' a) is drastic and any variation is severely condemned by pure and simple exclusion. Teaching is deserved and the disciples should never forget that he addresses above all to some " élite" spiritual.

Sidi `Abbas, which was eminently aware of it, was at this point upset by the meeting with its sheik who it required of him that it settles at his place, in the zawiya of Madagh, and has all his goods and richnesses. Sidi Boumediene will go even until marrying one of the young girls of its host, Lalla Zyneb.

If `Abbas thus accepted the spiritual heritage of Sidi Boumediene, dead on February 17th, 1955, not without testing this one like a heavy burden. It is on this subject not rare to find this feeling in other brotherhoods at the time when the Master chooses a disciple (when it is not his/her son) to deal with the spiritual direction of the brotherhood. For If `Abbas the impression not to be with the height were so strong that it pushed it with silence during nearly five years. It expressed the wishes of the late Master only in 1960. At this point in time it will recommend to the other disciples “to take the dhikr” its hands.

It is starting from its direction that a first readjustment of teaching to the sociocultural context appears towards the beginning of the year 1960. Si' Abbas explains in a letter why the gnostic teacher, holder of the supreme name (Allah) “(…) frees itself from the methods former by the control of the means of spiritual education (…). ”

Thus, according to Sidi Al-Hajj Al `Abbas, spiritual education is not based by on a preset receipt, valid for all, without factors of time and space not entering in account. This irrefutable fact reference with various designations that, in the Sufism, the spiritual guide revêt symbolically: The “doctor of the hearts” (tabib Al qulub) of his disciples and also the “Master of times” (mûl Al-waqt).

Its relation with its candidates (murid*) of this fact is personalized and transhistoric because it adapts to the spiritual configurations of the moment.

This adaptation also will relate to a lightening of the spiritual exercises. Indeed, if the way of If Boumediene were in a direction rather rigorous, the sheik were binding despite everything good more on itself that on its disciples and had, seems you it, intuition of the evolution of its brotherhood, passing from a way of majesty (Jalal) to a way of beauty (Jamal). An anecdote brought back by If `Abbas confirms it besides:

“Once, he had seen me paining and to make more than what I could: he prohibits it to me while saying: " We entered by the door of the majesty and we tired ourselves, you entered by the door of the grace and of the beauty, then pas" does not stop you;. ”

As from 1960, Boutchichiyya will change method and will start to touch more world resulting from extremely various social categories, until in the intellectual mediums. If Boumediene revivified the tarîqa. It passed thanks to him of a dimension of piety limiting itself to the prayer and/or the book deepening of the way soufie, with a fully educational dimension (tarîqa tarbawiyya) equipped with the spiritual secrecy (Sirr). For as much, this transformation was not, under its authority, really expressed from an external point of view.

It is under If `Abbas that the tarîqa to some extent will revive the flame of the Sufism while becoming dice the beginning of the year sixty, the first brotherhood of Morocco Oriental.

The expansion of the tarîqa will move gradually towards the West where some helped disciples Boutchich family members will work to diffuse it in the big cities of the coast. Then, in the years 1967-68, If `Abbas carries out a round (will ziyara) zawiyas, on the basis of the East towards the Moroccan West, visiting the towns of Taza, Fez, Salé, Casablanca, Rabat, Agadir, Ouarzazate, until the South.

It is about on this date that one can locate the first great expansion of the brotherhood at Morocco. To the eyes of the sheik `Abbas, the great development of Qadiriyya Bûtchichiyya went from is and even seemed to be placed in the continuity of its evolution:

“Thus were the things. One left side the way of the force and insulation and one replaced it by the way of the dhikr and the meeting. Very happened very well, thanks to God. In very little time, this way of God illuminated the heart of the disciples who had a right intention and noble objectives: They did not tarnish their intentions by personal interests or objectives society men, to call upon God and to meet for that is not a new thing in Islam. ”

It is thus very an other form of Sufism which that of the “way of rigor” re-established by If Boumediene. This phenomenon is however not new since already, in the history of the brotherhoods, it was many Masters soufis (choyoukh) who initiated in great number and this in a manner completely comparable with that of If' Abbas. Thus it for example of Egypt of XVIe century is when one sees choyoukh agreed to give the pact to whoever asked it all while prescribing to them only the formulas of the Dhikr. One could explain this control by saying that by it, the choyoukh applied a brake at the expansion of brotherhoods hétérodoxes while making penetrate the Sufism in broad layers of the population. While transposing, we can see that the same attitude consequently applies either to the religious groupings heretics but well rather with the drifts of certain political groupings and more particularly with those of the fundamentalist movements.

In parallel, Qadiriyya Boutchichiyya did not position officially as an antidote against Islamism. Its action and its reputation, which residence to date is well rather based on work on oneself and estimates it of all.

The Sufism, one will have included/understood it, speaks especially about education of the behavior. If the person even of the sheik is in the middle of this initiatory process allowing the transformation of the disciples, that is expressed for the example, where humility has a choice place there:

“You will understand that I am somebody who praises himself, neither a scientist who can allow the fatwa, nor even somebody who can guide people in the light of the Book and of Sunna: That is the work of the scientists specialized in the study of the texts and which consider their analysis.

My relation with you is a spiritual and educational relation, based on the company and the love of god, the meeting to call upon It and expose themselves to Its graces, (…) on the purity of the heart, on the reinforcement to be it and its illumination by the light of the faith and all that results from it as regards spiritual practice, of education and behavior, because when the interior of a being is pure, that flashes back on outside. ”

Sidi Al-Hajj Al `Abbas Qadiri Boutchich is deceased on February 22nd, 1972 with Oujda and was buried in the mausoleum (darih) of the zawiya of Madagh after reading of its spiritual will (wassiyya).

We note with surprise that our initial communication was completely modified in additions of words and other fittings of sentences directing the thought of the forger. We thus rectify to find our text - though its greater part was withdrawn - by putting between-brackets the malignant additions of those which would like to bring back Tariqah Bûtchichiyya to their only reading. With due respect to these individuals we will be there to uncover their cheap play.

(foreign addition with our initial intervention: " For certains" ), Zâwiya Bûtchîchîyya remained extremely discrete exists in Algeria and is represented by fire Shaykh Sîdî Hajj Mûhammad As Been enough Al Hassanî. (addition: Bûtchîchîs located on the Moroccan slope, although recognizing it shaykh of a way " Boutchichiya 'Alawiyya" consider that its spiritual chain (silsila) is a kind of sythèse of several lesson, of which Sidi Boumedienne Boutchich and Ahmad Al 'Alawi de Mostaganem.) Shaykh Sîdî Mûhammad As Been enough, which was one of the closest disciples of Shaykh Sîdî Mûnawar Bû' Madîân Bûtchîch of 1937 to 1955, recalls that its Shaykh, Sîdî Mûnawar Bû' Madîân Bûtchîch met Shaykh Sîdî Ahmad Ibn Mûstapha Al Alawî in its Zawîya de Mûstaghânîm auprès of which it accepted, (addition: according to have-Been enough Muhammad,) Initiation in Târîqâh (addition: for others, this meeting is not concluded by a catch from initiation). (addition: According to the followers of have-Been enough Muhammad, income in Morocco, Sîdî Bû' Madîân left Bûtchîchîyya of its aïeux and founded Zawiya 'Alawiyya. For the followers of the shaykh Hamza, this is impossible, since one knows, colonial sources with the support, that Sidi Boumedienne settled with the zawiya of Madagh (held by the future shaykh al' Abbas) since 1942, thus revifiant the " Boutchichiya pure" (i.e. not 'Alawie). It is the shaykh Hamza which is still Master of the zawiya of Madagh.

A dedicated work with the History of Târîqâh Bûtchîchîyya was published by a Moroccan Academic, which work insists on the fact that Târîqâh Bûtchîchîyya was affiliated in the 'Alawiyya. This perception is disputed by Boutchichis current Morrocans, of which the sociologist Karim Ben Driss or Rachid Ben Rochd, or of the family members close to sidi Boumedienne (its second wife, for example). Here of very broad extracts of this work in French language: http://berkanecity.free.fr/zaouia1.htm

In the design soufie, however, it is very possible that sidi Boumedienne was at the origin of several ways. The turuq are complementary and cancel themselves by no means. The polemic, for the soufis carried out, is the business of the men who have their mental discursive (Al 'aql) for yoke. A purely historical approach of the ways soufies can only finish by incomprehension, so much the paradoxes emerge at every moment. One should not forget only mental perplexity belongs to the teaching of an authentic Master soufi. A practitioner of the way soufie can only relativize the human squabbles, because it knows, above all, that " Seul God is Savant".

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