Aḥmad al-Badawë (, ), also known as al-Sayyid al-Badawë ( ), was a 13th-century Arab Sufi Muslim mystic who became famous as the founder of the Badawiyyah order of Sufism. Born in Fes, Morocco to a Bedouin tribe originally from the Syrian Desert, al-Badawi eventually settled for good in Tanta, Egypt in 1236, whence he developed a posthumous reputation as "one of the greatest saints in the Arab world". As al-Badawi is perhaps "the most popular of Sufi saints in Egypt", his tomb has remained a "major site of visitation" for Sufis in the region.
He was born in and brought up in Fez. According to several medieval chronicles, al-Badawi hailed from an Arab tribe of Syrian origin. He was referred to as a Sharif as he traced his genealogy to Ali. His father was called ÿAlë al-Badrë and his mother was a North African Berber called Fatima. A Sufi Muslim by persuasion, al-Badawi entered the Rifaýi sufi order (founded by the renowned Shafi'i mystic and jurist Ahmad al-Rifaýi [d. 1182]) in his early life, being initiated into the order at the hands of a particular Iraqi teacher. After a trip to Mecca, al-Badawi is said to have travelled to Iraq, "where his sainthood believed to have clearly manifested itself" through the karamat "miracles" he is said to have performed. In Iraq, he visited the tombs of Adi ibn Musafir and Al-Hallaj.
Eventually al-Badawi went to Tanta in the Sultanate of Egypt, where he settled for good in 1236. According to the various traditional biographies of the saint's life, al-Badawi gathered forty Sufi disciples around him during this period, who are collectively said to have "dwelt on the city's rooftop terraces," whence his spiritual order were informally named the "roof men" (aṣḥÃÂb el-saá¹Âḥ) in the vernacular. al-Sayyid al-Badawi died in Tanta in 1276, being seventy-six years old.
As with every other major Sufi order, the Badawiyya proposes an unbroken spiritual chain of transmitted knowledge going back to Muhammad through one of his Companions, which in the Badawi's case is Ali (d. 661). In this regard, Idries Shah quotes al-Badawi: "Sufi schools are like waves which break upon rocks: [they are] from the same sea, in different forms, for the same purpose."