The Ba Alawi are the sayyid families of the Hadramawt, tracing descent from the Prophet through a line that settled in the valley in the tenth century. Their tariqa is unusual among Sufi orders in being carried by descent as much as by initiation, and in being tied to a particular landscape: the towns of Tarim, Seiyun and Shibam, the tombs along the valley floor, and an annual round of visiting.
Its character is deliberately sober. There is no music and no dance in the gathering, the emphasis falls on the study of law alongside the interior work, and the model held up is the ordinary conduct of the Prophet rather than any extraordinary state. Al-Haddad is the writer who set that out most clearly, in the Book of Assistance and in a large body of letters and short treatises addressed to correspondents who were often not scholars at all.
He was born near Tarim in 1634 and lost his sight as a small child, which the tradition connects to smallpox. He taught, wrote and received visitors at al-Hawi outside Tarim until his death in 1720. His descendants and students continued the teaching, and Tarim became a centre to which students travelled from across the Indian Ocean, a role it kept into the modern period and, after a long interruption, holds again.