Zawiya al-Shadhiliyya was founded in Acre in 1868 by Sheikh Ali Nur al-Din al-Yashruti, founder of the Shadhiliyya-Yashrutiyya path. Known in Arabic as…
Zawiya al-Shadhiliyya was founded in Acre in 1868 by Sheikh Ali Nur al-Din al-Yashruti, founder of the Shadhiliyya-Yashrutiyya path. Known in Arabic as الزاوية الشاذلية اليشرطية, it is a zawiya: a lodge established for worship, teaching and spiritual retreat. From Acre, the Yashrutiyya developed as a branch of the wider Shadhiliyya tradition and established communities across Palestine, the lands of Sham and East Africa. Sheikh Ali Nur al-Din’s journey to Acre Sheikh Ali Nur al-Din al-Yashruti was born in Bizerte, Tunisia. The tradition of the order records that, while performing Hajj, he saw Prophet Yunus (AS) in a dream and was directed to travel to Acre. He reached the Palestinian city in 1850 and initially taught at Masjid al-Zaytuna within its walls. He later established a zawiya at Tarshiha before founding the larger Acre institution in 1868. The Acre zawiya became the centre of the Shadhiliyya-Yashrutiyya path and the setting in which Sheikh Ali Nur al-Din taught his disciples and formed the community that carried his teachings beyond Palestine. His daughter, Sayyidah Fatima al-Yashrutiyya, was raised within the life of the zawiya. She became a teacher and writer, preserving an account of her father and the community around him in her autobiographical writings. The graves of the Yashruti sheikhs Sheikh Ali Nur al-Din al-Yashruti died in Acre in 1316 AH and is buried within the zawiya. Beside him are the graves of his son and successor, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Yashruti, and his grandson Sheikh Muhammad al-Hadi al-Yashruti, who each led the path after him. The complex stands inside the walls of Old Acre, south of the citadel and west of the former Hospitaller refectory. Its position places the nineteenth-century zawiya within one of Palestine’s most closely layered historic cities, beside structures inherited from Acre’s medieval and Ottoman periods.