Note 191 — Chapter XII

Mohi-eddin, “he who makes religion revive and flourish,” is a surname borne by several Muselman doctors. The above-mentioned is Mohi-eddin Ibn al Arabi, born in Kordua, in Spain, of an Arabian family, called Tayí, in the year of the Hejira 560 (A. D. 1164). He studied in the academy of Seville, and then visited Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, where he heard the most distinguished Shaikhs of his time. He became the founder of a mystic school from which, among other remarkable disciples, the great Maulana Jelal-eddin Rumí issued; he is called “the Pole of the mystic world.” He died in the year of the Hejira 638 (A. D. 1240), in his seventy-sixth year, and was buried at the foot of mount Cassius, near Damascus, where his sepulchral monument is still well preserved. He left thirty-three works, which are enumerated by Baron von Hammer, the illustrious historian of the Ottoman empire.—(See vol. II. pp. 490. 657 of the German work.)

The Muselmans in India revere, under the name of Mohi-eddin, a saint, son of Zangui and Bibí Fatima, called also Shaikh Saddo. He lived at Sambhal, in Rohilkunt, according to others, at Amroha, in the province of Delhi, where his tomb still exists. There the devotees assemble every year, on the 11th day of the 2nd Rabiâ (the 4th month of the Arabian year) and celebrate the saint’s memory, by particular fatihas, “prayers,” addressed to him, and other acts of devotion.—(See Mémoire sur les particularités de la Relig. Muselm. dans l’Inde, par M. Garcin de Tassy, pp. 46-54.)