Ibrahim al-Desuqi

A Sufi who lived in Egypt and founder of the Dasuqiyya order. His full name was Burhan al-Din Ibrahim b. Abi al-Majd Abd al-Aziz al-Dasuqi; he was also known by the title Abu al-Aynayn. Sufis count him among the four great qutbs, the other three being Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Ahmad al-Rifa'i and Ahmad al-Badawi.

He was born in 633 (1235) at Markus in Lower Egypt; there are also reports that he was born in 644 (1246) or 653 (1255). Because he spent most of his life in the town of Dasuq (Dusuq, Disuq) in the same region, he was known by the nisba al-Dasuqi. His father, Abu al-Majd Abd al-Aziz, was the son-in-law and deputy of Abu al-Fath Abu al-Ghana'im al-Wasiti, one of the Rifa'i shaykhs. Like many saints, he is regarded as a sayyid because his genealogy is traced to Husayn. He began his studies at Dasuq, memorized the Qur'an and studied Shafi'i law.

He first received the Rifa'i cloak from his father; he then took initiation from Najm al-Din al-Isfahani, one of the Suhrawardi shaykhs. He also followed the Shadhili path, and he had a further chain reaching Abu Madyan al-Maghribi. The source states that all this shows he knew orders such as the Rifa'iyya, Suhrawardiyya and Shadhiliyya closely and drew his share from them.

For about 20 years he devoted himself in his retreat cell to spiritual struggle and contemplation. He left it to perform the funeral prayer for his father; he wished to return, but gave up the idea at the entreaty of his companions.

He died in 676 (1277) at the age of 43.

His Circle of Influence — The disciples who had gathered around him in his lifetime followed, after his death, his deputy and brother Shaykh Musa, carried on his Sufi understanding and turned it into an order.

His Poetry and Sufi Line — The source presents him as a Sufi deeply attached to the sharia on one side and extremely enigmatic on the other. He says that disciples must be strongly bound to their shaykhs and that shaykhs must treat their disciples like their own children; he attaches great importance to eating what is lawful, respecting the rights of others and holding strictly to the rulings of the sharia. He seeks to reconcile sharia and reality, the outward and the inward, and understands reality not as description and expression but as taste and lived experience. He also dwelt on the idea of the Muhammadan light and held this light to be an eternal self-disclosure of God. All the sources that speak of him record that he knew Syriac, Hebrew and ancient Egyptian and understood the language of animals and birds.

His Works — It is reported that he wrote some works during his years of seclusion in his cell; yet at his death only a few hizbs (litanies) and his work al-Jawahir remained. The title also appears in the sources as al-Jawhara or al-Haqa'iq; al-Sha'rani quotes from it in his Tabaqat. Besides these there are poems on his Sufi thought.

His Tomb and Complex — At his death he was buried in his retreat cell. The mosque whose construction began beside the cell in his lifetime is known as al-Jami' al-Ibrahimi or Ma'had Dasuq. Restored by Sultan Qaytbay and later altered in some respects, the mosque took its present form in 1885 in the time of Khedive Tawfiq.