Sayyid Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. ʿAbdallāh Bā Shaybān — in Dutch scholarship Sajjid Abu Hafs Umar Ba Sjaiban — was a Sufi shaikh of Ḥadrami descent but born in India, the spiritual master of Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī and of Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar. He was initiated into the Rifāʿiyya by Muḥammad al-ʿAddārs at Surat and lived chiefly at Bījāpūr, where he enjoyed the protection of the ruler Muḥammad ʿĀdilshāh. He died in 1656 at Bilgrām. His role in the spiritual genealogy of two of the principal Malay-Indonesian Sufis of the seventeenth century makes him one of the key links between the Ḥadramī-Indian Sufi network and the Achehnese-Makassarese world.
Origin and training
Bā Shaybān was of Ḥadrami descent — that is, of the Arab families of the Ḥaḍramawt valley in South Arabia — but born in India. He studied in Arabia but later settled again in India, where he was received into the Rifāʿiyya by Muḥammad al-ʿAddārs at Surat. The Rifāʿiyya — founded by the saint Ahmad Rifa’i, whose tomb at Mocha is reverenced — was the silsila into which Bā Shaybān initiated both Raniri and Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar, and through which the authority of the Gujarati-Ḥadramī Sufi network was transmitted to the Malay-Indonesian world.
Residence at Bījāpūr
Bā Shaybān lived chiefly at Bījāpūr — the capital of the ʿĀdilshāhī sultanate of the Deccan — where he enjoyed the protection of the ruler Muḥammad ʿĀdilshāh. The ʿĀdilshāhī court of Bījāpūr was in this period one of the principal centres of Arabic and Persian scholarship in India, and the protection that Bā Shaybān enjoyed there is a measure of his standing as a scholar and a Sufi. He died in 1656 at Bilgrām, in present-day Uttar Pradesh.
The two Malay-Indonesian disciples
Two of the principal Malay-Indonesian Sufis of the seventeenth century studied with Bā Shaybān. The first is Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī, who — as Voorhoeve records in the introduction to the 1955 edition of Raniri’s two Malay treatises — “was initiated into the Rifāʿiyya” by Bā Shaybān, having been his disciple before his departure for Acheh in 1637. The second is Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar, who — as Voorhoeve notes — “in 1644 left Celebes for Mecca” and “is among the disciples of the same Sayyid ʿUmar Bā Shaybān; he also numbers Raniri among his teachers.” The two Malay-Indonesian Sufis, who never met one another in Acheh, were nonetheless joined in the same spiritual genealogy through their common Indian shaikh.
Significance
Bā Shaybān is one of the key figures of the Ḥadramī-Indian Sufi network from which the orthodox reaction of Acheh was to draw its principal Malay-Indonesian agents. His initiation of Raniri into the Rifāʿiyya gave Raniri the authority of an orthodox Sufi shaikh by which he was able to confront the Wujudiyyah mystics of Hamzah Pansuri’s school at the court of Iskandar Thani in 1637. His initiation of Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar in the same silsila extended the same authority to the Makassarese world, where Shaikh Yūsuf was to play a role in the religious and political history of Makassar in the second half of the seventeenth century. Bā Shaybān’s death in 1656 removes the last of the spiritual masters who had formed Raniri in the Gujarati-Ḥadramī network of the Rifāʿiyya.
See Also
- Ahmad Rifa’i
- Bilgram
- Bijapur
- Gudjarat
- Mocha
- Muhammad al-Addars
- P. Voorhoeve
- Raniri
- Rifa’iyah order
- Surat
- Yusuf Makasar
Source
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §1 (“De auteur”), pp. 5–6, where Bā Shaybān is named as Raniri’s shaikh and the shaikh of Yūsuf al-Makassar.
Al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athār III, p. 214 ff., cited by Voorhoeve for the death of Bā Shaybān at Bilgrām.
Sayyid Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. ʿAbdallāh Bā Shaybān — in Dutch scholarship Sajjid Abu Hafs Umar Ba Sjaiban — was a Sufi shaikh of Ḥadrami descent but born in India, the spiritual master of Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī and of Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar. He was initiated into the Rifāʿiyya by Muḥammad al-ʿAddārs at Surat and lived chiefly at Bījāpūr, where he enjoyed the protection of the ruler Muḥammad ʿĀdilshāh. He died in 1656 at Bilgrām. His role in the spiritual genealogy of two of the principal Malay-Indonesian Sufis of the seventeenth century makes him one of the key links between the Ḥadramī-Indian Sufi network and the Achehnese-Makassarese world.
Origin and training
Bā Shaybān was of Ḥadrami descent — that is, of the Arab families of the Ḥaḍramawt valley in South Arabia — but born in India. He studied in Arabia but later settled again in India, where he was received into the Rifāʿiyya by Muḥammad al-ʿAddārs at Surat. The Rifāʿiyya — founded by the saint Ahmad Rifa’i, whose tomb at Mocha is reverenced — was the silsila into which Bā Shaybān initiated both Raniri and Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar, and through which the authority of the Gujarati-Ḥadramī Sufi network was transmitted to the Malay-Indonesian world.
Residence at Bījāpūr
Bā Shaybān lived chiefly at Bījāpūr — the capital of the ʿĀdilshāhī sultanate of the Deccan — where he enjoyed the protection of the ruler Muḥammad ʿĀdilshāh. The ʿĀdilshāhī court of Bījāpūr was in this period one of the principal centres of Arabic and Persian scholarship in India, and the protection that Bā Shaybān enjoyed there is a measure of his standing as a scholar and a Sufi. He died in 1656 at Bilgrām, in present-day Uttar Pradesh.
The two Malay-Indonesian disciples
Two of the principal Malay-Indonesian Sufis of the seventeenth century studied with Bā Shaybān. The first is Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī, who — as Voorhoeve records in the introduction to the 1955 edition of Raniri’s two Malay treatises — “was initiated into the Rifāʿiyya” by Bā Shaybān, having been his disciple before his departure for Acheh in 1637. The second is Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar, who — as Voorhoeve notes — “in 1644 left Celebes for Mecca” and “is among the disciples of the same Sayyid ʿUmar Bā Shaybān; he also numbers Raniri among his teachers.” The two Malay-Indonesian Sufis, who never met one another in Acheh, were nonetheless joined in the same spiritual genealogy through their common Indian shaikh.
Significance
Bā Shaybān is one of the key figures of the Ḥadramī-Indian Sufi network from which the orthodox reaction of Acheh was to draw its principal Malay-Indonesian agents. His initiation of Raniri into the Rifāʿiyya gave Raniri the authority of an orthodox Sufi shaikh by which he was able to confront the Wujudiyyah mystics of Hamzah Pansuri’s school at the court of Iskandar Thani in 1637. His initiation of Shaikh Yūsuf al-Makassar in the same silsila extended the same authority to the Makassarese world, where Shaikh Yūsuf was to play a role in the religious and political history of Makassar in the second half of the seventeenth century. Bā Shaybān’s death in 1656 removes the last of the spiritual masters who had formed Raniri in the Gujarati-Ḥadramī network of the Rifāʿiyya.
See Also
- Ahmad Rifa’i
- Bilgram
- Bijapur
- Gudjarat
- Mocha
- Muhammad al-Addars
- P. Voorhoeve
- Raniri
- Rifa’iyah order
- Surat
- Yusuf Makasar
Source
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §1 (“De auteur”), pp. 5–6, where Bā Shaybān is named as Raniri’s shaikh and the shaikh of Yūsuf al-Makassar.
Al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athār III, p. 214 ff., cited by Voorhoeve for the death of Bā Shaybān at Bilgrām.