Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b.ʿAbd Allāh b. Masarra b. Naŷīḥal-Qurṭubī al-Ŷabalī (883-931) was the first Sufi master of Al-Andalus. In the third century of the hegira, Ibn Masarra founded the first known mystical movement created on the Iberian Peninsula. It was a reference for continuity, an acknowledged line for handing down information which made it possible for the later Sufis of Al-Andalus, as is the case with Ibn Arabi (who so greatly appreciated Sufism, as he states in several of his works), Ibn Al-Marfia and al-Shushtari, to consider him a great master.

Pilar Garrido Clemente (Plasencia, 1976) has a PhD in Arabic Philology from the University of Salamanca and is a full professor with the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Murcia’s School of Letters, where she has done research and taught classes since the 2007-08 school year. Prior to this, she was also an educator at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora in Brazil, the University of Yarmuk (Irbid, Jordan), Mohammed V University in Rabat and the University of Seville. As an Arabist who specializes in Islamology and the Arabic language, she has given conferences, courses and seminars at universities and centers in Germany, Yemen, Brazil, the United States, England, France, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Morocco, Algeria, etc., and she has directed several international congresses. Her publications include articles and books on Islamic thought and Sufism, the history of the Arab world and Al-Andalus, the Arabic language and its teaching, modern Arabic poetry and comparative literature through Arabic love poetry. She recently published the Obra completa conocida del sufí Ibn Masarra de Córdoba (Completed Known Works of Sufi Ibn Masarra of Cordoba, Almuzara, 2017), as well as publishing and editing a study with Mehmet Bardakci on the work of Ibn Khamis de Évora, K. al-Garib al-muntaqà fi kalam ahl al-tuqà: The language of the Sufis (University of Extremadura, 2010).