Location: Medeenat Damanhoor (Damanhoor City)
He is the Shaykh Attia Izzudeen bin Yahya alias Abu al-Reesh whose lineage goes back to the Imam Idrees bin Abdul Allah bin al-Hasan al-Alawy who established the Idreesy Dynasty in the far Western fringes of the Muslim world (Morocco and al-Andalusia).
He (may be pleased with him) was born in the city of Medina in the year 394 AH where he spent most of his childhood and early adult life. He acquired knowledge from the scholars of jurisprudence in Medina. In the midst of this scholarly environment established by Imam Malik our Abu al-Reesh began to appear. Perhaps the reason for Attia choosing the school of Imam Malik at that time instead of other schools was because Imam Malik rested his methodology on two foundations: The sayings of the pious predecessors and the actions of the dwellers of Medina. Imam Malik left for us the Muwatta and in it he gathered together hadeeth from ninety-five men of reliability who are all from Medina save six. He did not narrate too many hadeeth from those six men anyway.
Due to his great interest in rediscovering the traces of Imam Malik, he followed them via an indirect route i.e. following one of Imam Malik’s direct students, Asad bin al-Furat. Asad bin al-Furat gathered together 36,000 jurisprudential questions and traveled to Iraq seeking answers. So Shaykh Attia followed him to Baghdad but was unable to remain there for long since the security situation was unstable so he voyaged to Egypt. In Egypt he was treated honorably and with generosity in the city of Cairo. From Cairo he trekked to the Delta of Egypt jumping from one place to another until he settled in the city of Damanhoor. There he took to seclusion and dedicated himself only to worship. He was taken back to his Lord (may God be pleased with him) in the year 484 AH and was buried in the same place he worshiped.