Virtually nothing is known about him except that he was assassinated in 1227/1228 by the anti-
Almohad rebel
ibn Abi Tawajin. His genealogy was traced through several ancestors—some of them with typically
Berber names (from his maternal lineage while his paternal lineage was solely Arab)—all the way to the Prophet of Islam,
Muhammad. It is said that he was born to the
Beni Arouss tribe in the neighbourhood of the Jabal al-'Alam, and that at the age of 16 he travelled to the east to study. On his return, in
Béjaïa, he followed the instructions of the
Andalusian Sufi mystic
Abu Madyan. He came back to stay in his native country, where he withdrew to the mountains near
Fnideq to live an edifying life as a
Sufi ascetic. He was the
murshid (spiritual guide) of
Al-Shadhili, and his only disciple. ==Notes==