Shaykh bin Ali bin Muhammad Mawla al-Dawila was a member of the Ba Alawi family of Tarim. Al-Mashra al-Rawi records that he was born in Tarim, memorised the Qur’an and kept the company of Abd al-Rahman al-Saqqaf and other religious figures of his time.
The biography remembers Shaykh for an intense devotional life and describes extended periods of withdrawal in the open country around Tarim. It preserves reports associated with his worship and contemplative practice as part of the traditional biographical record.
Al-Mashra al-Rawi records that Shaykh remained in this state until his death on a Thursday in the middle of Rajab 813 AH. It says that he was buried at the Zanbal cemetery in Jannat Bashar.
Lineage and source note
The printed heading in Al-Mashra al-Rawi, volume 2, identifies him as Shaykh bin Ali bin Muhammad Mawla al-Dawila. The same printed biography contains a genuine internal inconsistency: one early sentence calls Abd al-Rahman al-Saqqaf his father, while later passages repeatedly call Abd al-Rahman his uncle.
An independent genealogical witness resolves the immediate lineage. Shams al-Zahirah fi Nasab Ahl al-Bayt min Bani Alawi, first edition, 1404 AH / 1984 CE, printed page 332, explicitly names Shaykh bin Ali, with the continuation bin Muhammad Mawla al-Dawila, and records his death in Tarim in 813 AH. The same family section places al-Saqqaf in the parental generation as Ali’s brother, supporting Abd al-Rahman al-Saqqaf as Shaykh’s paternal uncle.
This biography therefore follows the independently corroborated lineage Shaykh bin Ali bin Muhammad Mawla al-Dawila while retaining the conflicting father wording in Al-Mashra al-Rawi as a textual or transmission discrepancy. The separate Shaykh bin Abd al-Rahman al-Saqqaf remains a different person and is not merged with this biography.
Scholarly connection
Al-Mashra al-Rawi states that Shaykh kept the company of Abd al-Rahman al-Saqqaf. The source describes companionship rather than an unambiguous formal teacher-student relationship, so no teacher-student claim is inferred from that wording.