Muḥammad ʿAbduh was born in 1849 to a father with
Turkish ancestry and an
Egyptian mother in the
Nile Delta. ʿAbduh suffered from acute spiritual crises in his youth, similar to those experienced by the medieval
Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic
al-Ghazali. He was heavily dissatisfied with the traditional education and representatives of mainstream
ulama of his time. Under the influence of Shaykh Dārwīsh al-Khadīr,
Tasawwuf provided an alternative form of religiosity which would profoundly shape ʿAbduh's spiritual and intellectual formation. As ʿAbduh would subsequently emerge as a towering scholarly intellectual in Egypt, he concurrently assumed his role as a traditional Sufi Muslim.
Tasawwuf as taught to ʿAbduh by Shaykh Dārwīsh transcended the perceived limitations and superficialities of traditional Islamic learning, and was based on an Islamic religiosity led by an intellectual, charismatic authority. For ʿAbduh, Shaykh Dārwīsh and his teachings represented orthodox Sufism, which was different from the Sufi folklore and the charlatans prevalent in rural Egypt during the
early modern era. Explaining his conversion to Sufism under the training of Shaykh Dārwīsh, 'Abduh wrote: "On the seventh day, I asked the shaykh:
What is your tarîqâh? He replied:
Islam is my tarıqa
. I asked:
But are not all these people Muslims? He said:
If they were Muslims, you would not see them contending over trivial matters and would not hear them swearing by God while they are lying with or without a reason. These words were like fire which burned away all that I held dear of the baggage from the past." In 1866, ʿAbduh enrolled at
al-Azhar University in
Cairo, where he studied
logic,
Islamic philosophy,
theology, and Sufism. He was a student of
Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, a Muslim philosopher and religious reformer who advocated
Pan-Islamism to resist
European colonialism. During his studies in al-Azhar, ʿAbduh had continued to express his critiques of the traditional curriculum and traditional modes of repetition. For him, al-Afghānī combined personal charisma with a fresh intellectual approach which the
ulama of al-Azhar couldn't provide. As a young 22 year-old Sufi mystic seeking a charismatic guide and alternative modes of learning and religiosity, ʿAbduh chose al-Afghānī as his
murshid. Their
murid–
murshid relationship would last for eight years and al-Afghānī was able to meet the expectations of his young disciple. Under al-Afghani's influence, ʿAbduh combined journalism, politics, and his own fascination with Islamic mystical spirituality. Al-Afghānī enriched ʿAbduh's mysticism with a philosophical underpinning and thereby drew him to a rationalist interpretations of Islam. Al-Afghānī's lessons merged his Sufi mysticism with the esoteric and theosophic tradition of
Persian Shīʿīsm. He also taught ʿAbduh about the problems of Egypt and the
Islamic world, and about the technological achievements of the
Western civilization. In 1877, ʿAbduh was granted the degree of
ʿālim ("teacher") and he started to teach logic, Islamic theology, and
ethics at al-Azhar University. In 1878, he was appointed
professor of
history at Cairo's teachers' training college
Dar al-ʿUlūm, later incorporated into
Cairo University. He was also appointed to teach
Arabic at the Khedivial School of Languages. ʿAbduh was also appointed editor-in-chief of
al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya, the
official newspaper of Egypt. He was dedicated to reforming all aspects of Egyptian society and believed that education was the best way to achieve this goal. He was in favor of a good religious education, which would strengthen a child's morals, and a scientific education, which would nurture a child's ability to reason. In his articles he criticized corruption, superstition, and the luxurious lives of the rich. He travelled a great deal and met with European scholars in
Cambridge and
Oxford. He studied the
French law and read many great European and Arabic literary works in the libraries of
Vienna and
Berlin. The conclusions he drew from his travels were that
Muslims suffer from ignorance about their own religion and the despotism of unjust rulers. ʿAbduh died due to
renal cell carcinoma in
Alexandria on 11 July 1905. ==Thought==