Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (Arabic: أبو الحسن الشاذلي) (full name: Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Ḥasanī wal-Ḥusaynī al-Shādhilī) also known as Sheikh al-Shadhili (593–656 AH) (1196–1258 AD) was an influential Moroccan Islamic scholar and Sufi, founder of the Shadhili Sufi order.

As a young man, Abulhasan was hesitating between living the life of an ascetic in the wilderness in order to give himself up totally to worship and invocation, or to return to the towns and settlements to be in the company of the scholars and the righteous.

Then he wished to ask his master if it was necessary for him to live in solitude, or in the desert, in order for him to be in the right station (maqām) to perform his religious tasks, or whether he should return to the towns and inhabited places to seek out the company of scholars and virtuous people.

But I, O God, beg You to turn Your creatures from me so that I may have no refuge except in You.The next morning, when he greeted his teacher to be, he asked him of his state (kayf al-hal), to which Ibn Mashish responded, "I complain unto God about the coolness of contentment and submission (bard al-rida wa al-taslim) just as you complain unto Him about the heat of self-direction and choice (harr al-tadbir wa al-ikhtiyar)."

When he saw the astonishment on his student's face at hearing his words, he added, "Because I fear that the sweetness of such an existence would make me neglectful of my duty towards Allah."

He entered a new retreat in a cave on top of Jabal Zaghwan close to Shadhila accompanied by his first companion Abu Yahya Abdellah ibn Samala al-Habibi.

On one of his trips to the East, an Ayyubid sultan conferred on him and his descendants, by way of a religious endowment, one of the enormous towers that arose from the walls formerly encompassing the city of Alexandria in Egypt.

Abu'l Hasan remained in Tunis for a number of years until one day God Most High brought him a young man who was to become his successor and the inheritor of his station and his holy line, Abul Abbas al-Mursi (d. 686/1271), from Murcia in Spain.

Abu'l Hasan said: I saw the Prophet in a dream and he said to me, "O Ali, go to Egypt and raise the ranks of forty true followers (siddiqun) there.

In the year 646/1248, he lost His vision, and it was in that state that he participated in the Battle of Al Mansurah in Egypt, which stopped the Seventh Crusade headed by Saint Louis of France.

Shortly before Sheikh Abu'l Hasan started on his last pilgrimage to Mecca, the city of Baghdad fell to the conquering Mongols, thus ending the long reign of the Abbasids there and ushering in a new epoch in the history of Islam.

The sheikh was accompanied by a mass of his disciples; but he fell ill in the eastern desert of Egypt, in Humaithara, and there he died in the year 656/1258.

When asked who his spiritual master was, he used to reply, "I used to be the close follower of Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish, but still I am drinking the water of wisdom from five ponds Jibril, Mikhail, Israfil, Izra'il, Rooh."

He taught his close followers to lead a life of contemplation and remembrance of Allah while performing the normal everyday activities of the world.