When there was a Tijani Zawiya in the Courtyard of al-Aqsa
A Brief History of the Tijaniyya in Palestine from Izz al-Din al-Qassām to the Present Day
The Tijaniyya took root in Palestine somewhat later than in North and West Africa. It is recorded that Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani (d. 1815) himself had wanted to migrate from Morocco to Palestine but was commanded to stay by the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in a vision after the saints of Fez came together asking for him to remain there. Numerous great masters of the tariqa visited Palestine in the 19th and early 20th centuries (such as al-Hājj Umar al-Fūti), so there may have been isolated groups of Tijani disciples there, but no notable zawiya or muqaddam is known. The mujāhid of Palestine Izz al-Din al-Qassām (d. 1935) was in all likelihood a Tijani—as will be explored below—but his primary occupation was with social reform and anti-colonial resistance, so the tariqa did not have a chance to spread prior to his martyrdom.
The first muqaddam to establish a notable Tijani presence in Palestine was Shaykh Ahmad al-Dādsi al-Maghrebi (d. 1981), whom all modern Tijanis in Palestine consider the one who truly brought the Tariqa to that blessed land. Born in 1901, Shaykh al-Dādsi originally hailed from the Dadès River valley in Morocco. He was from a Shilha Berber background, and his ancestors were of the shurafā’ — descendants of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. He memorized the Qur’an in his youth and dedicated himself to studying the scriptural and intellectual disciplines of the Islamic tradition. This pursuit brought him to Cairo, where he stayed with the family of his paternal aunt. While in Egypt, he studied with numerous scholars from al-Azhar, although he was not a formal Azhari graduate.
It was likely during this time that he first met the Egyptian muhaddith Shaykh Muhammad al-Hāfiz al-Misri, who was just four years his senior. Both men were already devoted adherents of the Tijani tariqa. In fact, both had received initiation in the Tijāniyyah from Sidi Muhammad al-Kabīr, the great-grandson of Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and his main khalīfa in Aïn Madhi in the early 20th century.
After completing his studies in Egypt, Shaykh al-Dādsi returned to his home in Morocco. In the early 1930s, he departed with his family to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. It was the custom of Muslims at that time — after visiting the Prophet’s ﷺ grave in Medina — to travel to Islam’s third holiest site, al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (a visitation called taqdīs). After completing his visit, however, Shaykh al-Dādsi was prevented from returning home to Morocco due to heightening regional tension leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War. He and his family decided to settle in Jerusalem in the neighborhood of Hārat al-Maghāriba (“The Moroccan Quarter”), located near the Western Wall. This was a historic Arab district of the city that would later be destroyed following the city’s occupation and the founding of the Zionist state.
After settling in Jerusalem, Shaykh al-Dādsi became a respected scholar and taught regular classes in the Islamic sciences inside the al-Aqsa Mosque. He even established a Tijani zawiya in one of the domed Ottoman structures within the courtyard of the al-Aqsa complex called “The Dome of Shaykh al-Khalili,” located beside the Dome of the Rock near the stairs leading to the Gate of Ablution (Bāb al-Maṭhara). The shaykh’s descendants and disciples report that the Tijani litanies were recited regularly in this zawiya until at least the 1950s. Numerous great Tijani masters visited Palestine during this period, including Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975), who may have met with Shaykh al-Dādsi.
In 1967, as a result of the Six-Day War, Israel occupied East Jerusalem as well as the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the Naksah (the 1967 Palestinian Exodus). As part of this exodus, Shaykh al-Dādsi and his family fled as refugees to Jordan, where they stayed for some time until things stabilized. At that time, the Shaykh moved to the ancient city of Jericho (Arīhā), in the now-occupied West Bank, where he established a new zawiya. He was accompanied by some of his family members and disciples, including his senior student Sidi Abu’l-Hassan al-Maghrebi. The Shaykh’s eldest son, Sidi Muhammad Ahmad al-Dādsi, remained in Jordan rather than returning to Palestine.
From this new base in Jericho, Shaykh al-Dādsi maintained strong relations with Tijani masters throughout the world, especially Shaykh Muhammad al-Hāfiz, whom he had known while studying in Egypt. The shaykh purchased agricultural land in Jericho and made considerable halal income from growing and selling produce. Muhammad Ahmad al-Dādsi narrates that his father was a very ascetic man who was generous in distributing his wealth. In particular, he used to provide funds to Shaykh Muhammad al-Hāfiz to support his extensive activities calling to Islam and the Tijaniyya throughout Africa.
Shaykh al-Dādsi remained the primary Tijani shaykh of Palestine until he passed away in 1981, and had many disciples in Jordan as well. He was buried in the historic Muslim cemetery beside the now closed Bāb al-Rahma gate to al-Aqsa Mosque, near the graves of two companions of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, Ubāda bin al-Sāmit and Shaddād bin Aws (may God be pleased with them). Numerous miracles are attributed to Shaykh al-Dādsi by his followers, and he inherited many spiritual secrets from his master Sidi Muhammad al-Kabīr, including special esoteric meanings of the famed Tijani prayer, the Salat al-Fatih.
Shaykh al-Dādsi’s eldest son, Muhammad Ahmad, remained an important member of the Tijaniyya in Jordan, maintaining a close relationship with the Palestinian Tijanis under their subsequent leadership until he passed away several years ago. Shaykh al-Dādsi’s youngest son, Sidi Muhammad al-Amīn (Abu Bashīr), settled in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank, where he worked as a doctor. He remains highly respected among the Tijaniyya in Palestine today.
Sidi Abu’l-Hassan al-Maghrebi and a New Generation
Like many of the Moroccan branches of the order, the Tijaniyya in Palestine are very conservative in giving taqdīm, or authorization to be a muqaddam (representative and transmitter) of the tariqa. There is a general belief that more than one muqaddam should not be appointed in a given location, even if multiple people would be worthy of the position.
Despite being his closest disciple, Shaykh al-Dādsi did not authorize Sidi Abu’l-Hassan to be a muqaddam in his own lifetime. Shaykh Ayoub Abu Deeb narrated to me that Shaykh al-Dādsi told Sidi Abu’l-Hassan: “You and I cannot exist [as muqaddams] at the same time. When I die, you will inherit all of my spiritual secrets.”
When Sidi Ahmad al-Dādsi passed away in 1981, Sidi Abu’l-Hassan was given taqdim by Shaykh Adam al-Nafati, a renowned saint and scholar from Nigeria, in place of Shaykh al-Dādsi. Shaykh Adam was a disciple of Shaykh Muhammad al-Hāfiz al-Misri and an inheritor of many of his spiritual secrets. He had been working on the orders of Sidi Abd al-Jabbār — the khalifa of the Tijaniyya in Aïn Madhi— to establish zawiyas throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He named Shaykh Abu’l-Hassan “The Khalifa of the Tijaniyya in Bayt al-Maqdis” and told him, “I do not give you this authorization except from the Messenger of God ﷺ.”
Sidi Abu’l-Hassan was known for his great saintliness and humility. He disliked exaggerated deference from his disciples, instead telling them, “I am only your servant.” Like his teacher Shaykh al-Dādsi, many miracles are reported concerning Shaykh Abu’l-Hassan by those who kept company with him. Once, a group of his murids, including Shaykh Ayoub Abu Deeb (see below), asked their master if he had ever seen the Prophet ﷺ in a waking state. He began to weep and told them, “Yes. I asked God by His Greatest Name to bless me with a waking vision of the Prophet.” They asked him why he was crying, and he responded, “Because [I feel that] it was bad manners with God for me to ask such a thing; who am I to deserve to see the Messenger ﷺ?”
Another notable disciple of Shaykh al-Dādsi is Shaykh Muhammad Mahmūd Muslih, known as “Abu Salāh.” Abu Salāh lived in a refugee camp in the West Bank before moving to Amman in Jordan, where he established a Tijani zawiya and became a renowned muqaddam with many disciples. Shaykh Abu Salāh did not visit the occupied West Bank after this and thus was not personally close with Sidi Abu’l-Hassan. It is said that he once made a dismissive statement concerning his authority in the tariqa many years later in the presence of Shaykh Adam al-Nafati. Shaykh Adam rebuked him for this, saying, “You don’t know his spiritual station. Truly, Abu’l-Hassan is from the people of Tasrīf” (“free disposal” in creation, in which God acts directly through the will of his beloved saints). He was asked, “Even after his death?” and responded, “Yes, even after his death.”
Besides scattered disciples in Jerusalem and elsewhere, most Tijanis in Palestine in the late 20th century lived in the West Bank or had moved across the river to Jordan. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, this began to change when several former members of the Islamic Movement in Israel (similar to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) embraced the Tijaniyya, a development that would shape the order’s future there.
The first of these were Shaykh Ayoub Abu Deeb and Shaykh Abu Hilel, two young imams from the Haifa area who encountered the tariqa while making the Umrah pilgrimage in 1999. While visiting the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, they met Shaykh Adam al-Nafati — the same shaykh who had given taqdīm to Sidi Abu’l-Hassan. Despite having no prior association with Sufism, they had a powerful experience with Shaykh Adam. Since they were from Palestine, Shaykh Adam asked them to bring a letter to Sidi Abu’l-Hassan in Jericho, which he dictated to them. The pair continued on from Medina to Mecca but remained deeply affected by their meeting with Shaykkh Adam. They decided that they wanted to accept the oath of the Tijaniyya but were unsure if they would have the opportunity to meet the Shaykh again.
While in Mecca, they came across a group of West African Tijanis. Viewing this as more than a chance encounter, they accepted the tariqa from them in case Shaykh Adam had departed from Medina by the time they returned. However, when they came to Medina, they found Shaykh Adam waiting for them in the mosque. They approached him, and he said, “I renew for you [your oath] in the tariqa,” although no one had informed him that they had accepted it. Surprisingly, he also gave both of them taqdim — though they did not understand the significance of this at the time.
Shaykh Adam placed Ayoub and Abu Hilel under the spiritual care of Abu’l-Hassan al-Maghrebi in Jericho, who became their shaykh. Over the next several years they visited his zawiya frequently, and several of their close friends and family (ten or so) also embraced the Tijaniyya. Shaykh Ayoub established a small zawiya in his village of Fureidis — located in the foothills of Mount Carmel near Haifa — as a place for the group to gather and recite the order’s litanies.
In 2001, Shaykh Ayoub and a delegation from Haifa visited the Grand Tijani Zawiya in Cairo, led at that time by Shaykh Ahmad al-Hāfiz (son of Shaykh Muhammad al-Hāfiz). Shaykh Ahmad appointed Shaykh Ayoub as a muqaddam of the Tijaniyya, which was later reaffirmed by Shaykh Adam al-Nafati. The zawiya near Haifa has continued to grow since then and has been a place of study, dhikr, and illumination for over twenty years.
When Sidi Abu’l-Hassan passed away in 2002, his son, Sidi Abu Abdullah, assumed leadership of his zawiya, having taken the tariqa from Shaykh al-Dadsi himself before his passing. He continues to lead the zawiya in Jericho and is considered the chief muqaddam of Palestine.
Today, the zawiyas of Sidi Abu’l-Hassan’s family in Jericho and Shaykh Ayoub in Fureidis are thriving as the two main Tijani zawiyas in Palestine. The disciples there maintain strong relationships with Tijanis throughout the world—as far away as South Africa, Singapore, and the United States—and frequently host visitors to the blessed land. In 2023, a delegation of Palestinian Tijanis made a historic visit to Medina-Baye (Kaolack), the city of the great Tijani saint Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse in Senegal, affirming their spiritual brotherhood with the largest branch of the Tijaniyya.
As of writing this, some sixty or seventy men and women in Palestine have been formally initiated into the order, and many more have come to love and appreciate it (and Sufism in general) through the beautiful example of the disciples there. There are also several Tijanis in Gaza, though the connection between them and their brothers in the West Bank and within the 1948 borders (Israel) is unfortunately limited.
The Mujahid of Palestine: Izz al-Din al-Qassām
Was the Greatest Symbol of Palestinian Resistance a Tijani?
Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassām is remembered as one of the most important figures of anti-colonial resistance, early 20th-century Islamic revival, and Palestinian national identity. Unknown to many (or most) of his admirers, Izz al-Din al-Qassām was also a follower — and likely even a muqaddam — of the Tijani tariqa.
Originally from the Syrian town of Jableh, al-Qassām moved to Cairo, where he studied at al-Azhar with the well-known Salafi reformists Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida before returning in 1909. Despite now being a traditionally recognized scholar, he had more passion for grassroots activism than academic scholarship and began advocating for Islamic revival and jihad against French colonial rule in Syria as well as the occupying Italian forces in Libya. Wanted by the French army, the Shaykh fled to Palestine in 1921 and settled in Haifa. There he served as a teacher, waqf official, and president of the Young Men’s Muslim Association (YMMA). He was a vocal opponent of the growing threat posed by Zionism and worked tirelessly to strengthen the Islamic identity and practice of Palestinian Muslims. Al-Qassām was eventually martyred in 1935 in a clash with British police near the city of Jenin and is buried today outside of Haifa beside his students and fellow martyrs. His followers (called the Qassāmiyūn) would become the impetus for the 1936 Palestinian Rebellion the following year.
As a beloved symbol of Palestinian liberation, al-Qassām’s religious affiliations have been hotly contested, with Salafis, Ikhwanis, modernists, and various Sufi groups all claiming him amongst their ranks. While it is true that both his father and grandfather were shaykhs of the Qadiri tariqa in Syria (and it is believed that he himself had a Naqshabandi affiliation as a young man), al-Qassām’s closest disciple, Muhammad Hanifi, attested to having taken the Tijaniyya with him at the hands of a notable Algerian muqaddam named Shaykh Muhammad al-Alami.
Abdallah Schleifer, a renowned journalist and Middle East scholar, is among the leading experts in the life and thought of Izz ad-Din al-Qassām. In his work, he identifies the spiritual teachings of the Tijaniyya as being a central part of al-Qassām’s ethos and organizing efforts, even if he did not actively proselytize the tariqa. In his paper “Izz al-Din al-Qassam: Preacher and Mujahid,” he summarizes his relationship with the Tijaniyya as follows:
“In the early 1920s, al-Qassam met the Algerian Muhammad bin Abd al-Malik al-Alami. Shaykh al-Alami was a special roving leader (muqaddam) of the Tijaniya Sufi brotherhood. In the early decades of the twentieth century, he established branches of the Tijaniya throughout the Arab East. Al-Alami had a great impact on al-Qassam and his closest disciples in Haifa. According to [Muhammad] Hanifi, only al-Qassam, Hanifi himself, and three others were initiated into the Tijani tariqa by al-Alami. It was around this small inner core of Tijani disciples that al-Qassam would build the new movement of Islamic patriots (mujāhidīn)…”
Shaykh Muhammad al-Hāfiz also confirms Shaykh Izz ad-Din’s Tijani affiliation in a biography published in his influential Egyptian magazine Tariq al-Haqq (1950–1982). In it, he describes al-Qassām as a “khalifa of the Tijaniyya in Haifa.” Palestinian journalist and researcher Mohsen Saleh also mentions this association in a 2010 article published by Al Jazeera called “al-Qassam and the Qassami Experiment,” though for whatever reason, he does not clearly state that the shaykh was a disciple of al-Alami:
“He studied at al-Azhar and learned at the hand of Shaykh Muhammad Abduh. He was a Salafi in creed, who fought against innovation, deviation, and blind faith. However, he benefited from the Sufi environment that he was raised in as well as from his later relationship with the Algerian Shaykh Muhammad bin Abd al-Malik al-Alami — the muqaddam of the Tijani tariqa — in preparing himself and his brothers with a solid faith…”
More important than external sources, however, is the inherited oral tradition preserved by Palestinian Sufis today, which universally testifies to al-Qassam’s Tijani affiliation. Buried in Haifa, his grave is not far from the Tijani zawiya in Fureidis. Its disciples revere Shaykh Izz al-Din and regularly visit his grave, often bringing Tijani visitors from other countries who seek to honor the great mujahid.
al-Qassām was older than both Shaykh al-Hāfiz and Shaykh al-Dādsi, so it is unlikely they would have met him during his time in Egypt, particularly since he likely did not embrace the Tijaniyya until after his relocation to Haifa. Nonetheless, they were no doubt aware of his activities in Palestine. Sidi Muhammad Ahmad al-Dādsi was very young at the time, but he recalled that when Shaykh al-Hafiz and others visited his father in Jericho, they would make a point of traveling to Haifa (i.e., within the Israeli borders) to visit people there. This was the base of operations for Shaykh Izz al-Din, so it is not unlikely that they were visiting his surviving disciples there, though this is not documented. Other stories tell of Shaykh al-Qassām and his disciples gathering frequently and reciting “prayers” while seated beneath a large tree. This likely refers to the daily Tijani wazifa (communal litany).
With al-Qassām and most of his disciples being martyred by the British, his sanad through Shaykh al-Alami was not able to take root and thus is not extant today. In any case, there is no doubt amongst the Tijaniyya of Palestine and Jordan that al-Qassām belonged to the tariqa. Even the local branches of the Qadiri tariqa in Nazareth— with whom the Haifa-based Tijanis have very good relations — do not deny al-Qassam’s association with the Tijaniyya.
While spirituality was central to al-Qassam’s understanding of jihad and grassroots community-building, his tariqa affiliation doesn’t change his importance as a symbol of Palestinian resistance and liberation for everyone. This is why Muslims of all inclinations have been eager to claim him—his legacy belongs to the entire Muhammadan Ummah.
Nonetheless, it is a source of pride for the Palestinian Tijaniyya that he is among their forebears in the blessed land of al-Aqsa. Naturally, as with all historical matters, some people will hold different views, but written accounts and oral traditions seem to support the conclusion that al-Qassam was, in fact, a disciple of the Tijani tariqa.
May the blessings of the saints never be absent from the land of Palestine, and may it be protected and liberated from its oppressors. Amen.
This paper is part of my ongoing research into the Tijaniyya in Palestine, a topic that deserves a much more thorough presentation. It will be updated and expanded as more information becomes available to me.
I am grateful to all the Tijanis of Palestine who have shared this rich history with me and have welcomed me into their community over the years. I especially thank Shaykh Ayoub Abu Deeb and Shaykh Saeed Abu Rashid of the Zawiya in Fureidis, who have spent countless hours discussing the Tijaniyya with me. Special thanks are also due to Sidi Shaykh Abu Abdullah of the Zawiya in Jericho and his family for their hospitality and graciousness.
I am also grateful to Muhammad Ayman Kamal (Jordan) and a very beneficial Facebook post on the life of Shaykh al-Dadsi, as well as Shaykh Fakhri Owaisi (Capetown) for the constructive notes.
