Ahmad b. Ja`far al-Hajrazi Abu al-`Abbas al-Sabti (sometimes called Sidi Abu al-`Abbas) was born in Ceuta in 1145, the son of a potter who died when the child was young. He studied in Tetuan under a disciple of the famous Qadi `Iyad before moving to Marrakesh at the age of twenty. For forty years he lived on a hill (Guéliz) outside the city without ever entering its walls, until the Almohad Sultan Yaqub al-Mansur (1184-1189), gave him a house and buildings to run a madrasa and a zawiya. This was part of the Sultan's efforts to encourage sufi teachers to come to Marrakesh. Another version has it that he had entered the city sometime before Yaqub's reign and lived by teaching mathematics and grammar. In any vent he was famous for his austerity and his trips round the madina trying to persuade people to perform the required prayers every day and collecting money for the poor and particularly the blind. So famous was his work with the blind that it was said that Marrakesh was the only city in Morocco where the blind did not go hungry. He was credited with numerous miracles, but he also attracted the opposition of `ulama who resented his popularity and what they called his unorthodoxy. Protected by the Sultan they were unable to do him much harm, and he died of old age in 1205.
His popular appeal developed later - as patron of commerce, of eye doctors, soap makers and so on, and his zawiya became the centre of an annual mawsim. Above all he was a popular figure among the poor and the blind. His fame - and sanctity - spread beyond Marrakesh as far as Algeria, where his name was evoked at harvest time. He was popular among Jews. (Deverdun, 1:272-4)
The mosque and its attached madrasa were built by the Sa'di Sultan Abu Faris who briefly held power in Marrakesh after the death of his father Mawlay Ahmad al-Mansur (1578-1603). The `Alawi Sultan, Mawlay Isma`il (1672-1727) built a mausoleum to Sidi bin al-`Abbas. It was particularly popular with merchants, agricultural workers and the blind and charity was distributed to the poor from its door every evening.(Guide Blue, 323)
