Georg Stauth, Samuli Schielke (eds.

)
Dimensions of Locality

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 Georg Stauth, Samuli Schielke (eds.)
Dimensions of Locality
Muslim Saints, their Place and Space
(Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam No. 8)

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Table of Contents

Introduction 7
SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

Part 1: Conceptual Spaces

Chapter 1
Sufi Regional Cults in South Asia and Indonesia:
Towards a Comparative Analysis 25
PNINA WERBNER

Chapter 2
(Re)Imagining Space: Dreams and Saint Shrines in Egypt 47
AMIRA MITTERMAIER

Chapter 3
Remixing Songs, Remaking MULIDS:
The Merging Spaces of Dance Music and Saint Festivals in Egypt 67
JENNIFER PETERSON

Chapter 4
Notes on Locality, Connectedness, and Saintliness 89
ARMANDO SALVATORE

Part 2: Contested Places

Chapter 5
Saints (awliya’), Public Places and Modernity in Egypt 103
AHMED A. ZAYED

Chapter 6
Islam on both Sides: Religion and Locality in Western Burkina Faso 125
KATJA WERTHMANN

Chapter 7
The Making of a ‘Harari’ City in Ethiopia:
Constructing and Contesting Saintly Places in Harar 149
PATRICK DESPLAT
Chapter 8
Merchants and Mujahidin:
Beliefs about Muslim Saints and the History of Towns in Egypt 169
SOUZAN EL SAIED YOUSEF MOSA

Abstracts 183

On the Authors and Editors of the Yearbook 189

Introduction
Samuli Schielke and Georg Stauth

The shrines of Muslim saints can be found in a number of similar forms

around the world: a tombstone, often surrounded by a quadratic structure and
covered by a dome, sometimes standing alone, sometimes attached to a
mosque. And around the world, these shrines are special places. Not only do
they mark natural boundaries, roads, and villages, they also constitute places:
i.e. standing on central squares and crossroads, giving names to towns, attract-
ing pious seekers of relief, pilgrims, students, trade, and festivals. The desire
to gain the blessings of the sheikh, to stand—if only for a brief moment—
under his baraka and, in many cases, to gain a sense of the aura of the
sheikh’s place is as prevalent among modern Muslims as it was in earlier pe-
riods. The sheikh’s charisma and the aura of his place seem to incorporate and
radiate divine power. The singularity of the places makes them stand out from
and dominate their surroundings, they appear as intersections of the human
and divine, the religious, and the secular, and of conflicting and contradicting
claims.
The reference to locality forms a very important dimension within all
world religions where the ideas of return to origins and of an imminent physi-
cal presence of the transcendent in specific places play a foundational and
ideological role. Like Judaism and Christianity—and perhaps even more so—
Islam as a world religion is based on a highly abstract and absolute notion of
the transcendent which its followers establish and celebrate at very specific
sites: Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and the vast and complex landscapes of
mosques and saintly places around the world.
This importance of saintly places has, however, become increasingly
complicated and troubled by different currents building on modern modes of
cultural authentication. Modern reformist movements within Islam, particu-
larly those of Wahhabi and Salafi orientation, have denied the possibility and
need for any mediation within the dichotomy of God and His servants and, as
a result, have furiously attacked—in both word and deed—localized cults of
Muslim saints. At the same time, this religious opposition to saintly places has
gone hand in hand with their nationalist valorization as ‘culture’, strongly
aided by modern archaeology and anthropology, which have contributed—
sometimes unwittingly, sometimes willingly—to the belief that local cults are
a separate cultural reality away from and opposed to what they have deemed
orthodox universal Islam. In response, anthropologists have recently tried to
develop more nuanced views on Islamic dogma and practice. It is within this
8 | SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

complex context of the local and local saint cults that we wish to locate the
contributions to this volume.
Looking at localized cults of Muslim saints around the world it is striking
to note that, wherever one goes, they are often described by local intellectuals,
reformist Muslims, and many Western observers as local syncretisms, conti-
nuities of local, pre-Islamic traditions under the cloak of Islam. In Egypt, the
shrines of Muslim saints are sometimes claimed to be superficially Islamized
sites of Pharaonic gods or Christian saints. In the Indian sub-continent, they
are sometimes told as belonging to Hindu deities turned into Muslims. How-
ever, on closer examination, it is striking how similar the concepts of saint-
hood, the beliefs in baraka and miracles, and even the physical structure of
saints’ shrines are around the Muslim world. In addition, the festive traditions
around these sites show striking similarities in form and atmosphere in Mo-
rocco, Egypt, and Pakistan, although in each country one will hear from folk-
lorists and reformist Muslims alike that these are very special and unique lo-
cal traditions, in reality not religious at all, but communal customs that pre-
date Islam.
Thus if we are to enquire about the relationship between locality and
sainthood and their importance for Islam as a world religion, we must ques-
tion and reflect on the various claims that ‘local specificity’ is the key to un-
derstanding the very significance of the local. In fact, claims to continuity,
competing theories of the origin of a saint and varying and often contradicting
modes of authentication—that is, of ways to imagine and to argue for histori-
cal, territorial and normative foundations of a religion, a nation, a culture, or
any other such imagined community—significantly contribute to the kind of
importance and dimensions that are assigned to a location. The same physical
structure becomes a very different thing, depending on whether it is inter-
preted as the manifestation of the universal truth and divine aura of Islam, as a
key site of local identity, or as a trace of a pre-Islamic past. And, in each case,
the kind of authenticity it is attached to, the kind of territorial and collective
imagination, and the kind of relationship of the transcendent with the world of
humans and things appear in a different configuration.
Like followers of all religions, Muslims in our time relate to locality,
sanctity, and the transcendent on different levels. It is from this angle that we
might address the components of locality viewing them in relation to the cate-
gories of the saintly and the sacred in Islam, and to their sociological signifi-
cance.
The focus of this volume, therefore, is on locality. Building on imma-
nence—in the very sense of the presence of the deceased saint at his place—
we wish to develop here a complementary view to that pursued in Volume 5
of this Yearbook. It struck us there that the manifest continuity of ‘extra-
worldly’ orientations and soteriological needs of the modern subject are find-
 INTRODUCTION | 9

ing a parallel expression in Sufism and the veneration of saints in Islam. We

wanted to show that the coincidence of extra-worldly salvational attitudes and
individualism form a new, ‘modern’ category today, and that this certainly
features in cultural attitudes in Islam. However, in contrast to the issue of the
cultural needs of the modern subject raised in Volume 5, the present volume
stresses a different type of interplay of the realities of the sacred: i.e. the im-
manence of the place and the powerful totality of any locality seen to be in-
spirited.
By following the perspective of the place, this volume attempts to over-
come the misgivings of Weberian dichotomies and to look to modern forms of
appropriating religious ideas in terms of their manifest immanence in modern
life. This perhaps provides a better key for understanding the claims and prac-
tices of local authentication in religion and art and seeing their expressions in
Islam (and other world religions). Rather than focusing on questions of iden-
tity construction and modern self-constitution and on Weber’s conceptual an-
tagonisms, we attempt to depart from the strategic use of ‘Islam’ as an ex-
planatory paradigm and the accompanying dichotomy of Islam and non-Islam.
Instead, the book takes the construction of saints and places as a primary level
of reflection and analysis, looking at the dynamic and competing imaginaries
of aura and modes of authentication at work.
Some—although not all—of the papers included in this volume were pre-
sented at a small conference titled ‘Saintly Places in Islam’ which was organ-
ized by the Research Group ‘Saintly Places and the Veneration of Saints in
Egypt and Ethiopia’ of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 295, ‘Cultural
and Linguistic Contacts’ at the University of Mainz in Haus Noth Gottes near
Mainz in June 2006. The large number of contributions on Egypt derives in
part from the editors’ own research orientation and, in part, from a strong
Egyptian presence at this conference. We would like to avail of this opportu-
nity to thank our Egyptian counterparts, Professors Mahmoud Auda and
Ahmad Zayed in Cairo, who directed an Egyptian research group in the field,
and our colleagues in Mainz and specifically the speakers of the Collaborative
Research Centre 295, Professors Walter Bisang, Ursula Verhoeven and Tho-
mas Bierschenk, for their unconditional support.

Continuity and Authenticity

The many localized expressions of Islam have also become a subject of study
ever since the emergence of European scholarly interest in the Muslim world.
The, perhaps, oldest approach to their study had its focus on continuity, the
aim of finding a true core, or at least a positive trace, of earlier worship in the
practices of contemporary Muslims. In this view, a saint’s shrine and mosque
is ‘really’ a temple in disguise, an unchanging essence behind a changing ap-
10 | SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

pearance. Largely abandoned in contemporary Western historiography and

anthropology, this approach enjoys continued popularity in the folklore and
social sciences of many Muslim countries, in particular Egypt.
There is no doubt that where people are educated and socialized, and in
turn educate and socialize the next generation, there is continuity in human
history. But how continuity takes place, and how it is imagined by people re-
membering and reconstructing the past, requires closer examination. Take, for
example, the topic of an essential continuity of the Pharaonic tradition in cur-
rent Egyptian cloaks of Christianity and Islam granting an essential Egyptian
Islamic specificity. This notion of a ‘genius of the place’, of an inner lasting
essence of a location, has great poetic (and, potentially, ideological) power,
but remains problematic in view of both historical evidence and its heuristic
value as such.
There is no archaeological or documentary evidence for a direct continuity
of gods as saints. Furthermore, from the mediaeval period of the Islamization
of rural Egypt, there is only one documented case of a Christian saint becom-
ing a Muslim one. Far more often, however, we find evidence for the estab-
lishment of new Islamic sanctuaries that compete with the existing Christian
ones (Mayeur-Jaouen 2005). However, there is, of course, the fact that some
mosques and maqams (shrines) have been built on top of churches which, in
turn, were built on top of temples. This has been cited by both Egyptian and
European scholars as a case for essential continuity. The problem, however, is
that the appearance of a saint at former site of Pharaonic, Greek, Roman, or
Christian worship, stands for a specific way of building authenticity and cul-
tural recognition that explicitly denies continuity in the sense of genius loci.
The construction of a mosque over a pre-Islamic site of worship is an act of
symbolical and physical triumph, of the defeat and replacement of the preced-
ing cult. As such it is the instigation of the symbolic rule of the new religion,
an expression of cultural break rather than continuity in essence.
At the same time, there is no doubt that the physical presence of pre-
Islamic objects has always been acknowledged by Muslims, often with some
ambiguity. Symbolic triumph implies recognition which, in turn, is a tool of
the authentication and reconstruction of essence. It remains therefore impor-
tant to analyze the changing and varying forms in which Islamic thought and
practice relates to elements and expressions of Pharaonic history (El Daly
2005). If we want to understand how saintly places are constituted in relation
to their surrounding settlements, other sanctuaries, and the wider religious and
political ideologies of a society, the search for an unchanging essence behind
changing facades does not help us in analytical terms. It is, however, an im-
portant clue for understanding the different modes of authentication at work.
The search for unchanging ‘traces’ is in itself one of these imagined histories,
or modes of authentication, embedded as it is in romantic and nationalist
 INTRODUCTION | 11

imagination, but also in religious reformist polemics against the cult of saints.
It is a distinctively modern point of view that stands in clear contrast to the
way people in earlier periods dealt with the history of a site and with the ma-
terial traces of earlier cults found at the sites or near the shrines of Muslim
saints. In the mediaeval period of Islamization, liberal use was made of
Pharaonic, Roman and Christian elements—stones, columns, etc.—in the
construction of mosques. This was hardly a friendly gesture at the time, but a
powerful demonstration of victory: i.e. the demolition of temples and
churches and use of their stones to build mosques. In the contemporary pe-
riod, however, these stones and columns have become a part of the nationalist
romantic imagination of the cult of saints as unchanging Egyptian culture—an
image which the Muslims who venerate saints do not share. Thus, once am-
biguous signs of the victory of Islam, the physical traces of earlier cults now
become at once secular symbols of national identity and potential targets of
reformist attacks. For those, in turn, who continue to venerate the saints and
their places as Islamic holy places, removing pre-Islamic objects becomes a
way of reclaiming the Islamic nature of a contested site (see Stauth 2008).

Beyond the Local and the Universal

Another very important and more sophisticated but nevertheless highly prob-
lematic approach to the local in Islam has come from the field of the anthro-
pology in association with the concept of little and great traditions. This no-
tion, originally developed by Robert Redfield (1960: 40-59), was most nota-
bly adopted by Ernest Gellner who, in his famous and eloquent analysis of Is-
lam in Morocco, claims that there is an essential dichotomy within Islam be-
tween a universal, abstract, rationalist, and puritan Great Tradition and a lo-
cal, mystical, ecstatic, and popular Small Tradition. He goes on to claim that
the ‘central’ variant of Islam is in fact the one more compatible with moder-
nity (Gellner 1981: 4-5). This, of course, is what many modernists of both
secular and Islamic coloring claimed throughout the 20th century. Gellner,
however, disregards that this opposition is a construct of the 19th and 20th cen-
turies’ own historical imagination. He reproduces a reformist imagination of
true versus marginal forms of religion in an ingenious way but fails to prob-
lematize the claim that scholarly, purist approaches are central and others
marginal.
On closer examination, however, the dichotomies between puritan and ec-
static, egalitarian and hierarchical, and metropolitan and folk Islam turn out to
be very inaccurate: scholars have been mystics and mystics have been schol-
ars throughout the history of Islam. The very notion of some beliefs being
‘folk’, or ‘popular’ is a modern one (Schielke 2007). The veneration of Mus-
lim saints, today deemed marginal by some, was firmly and clearly a part of
12 | SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

orthodox Islam from the middle ages to the 20th century, and while the ques-
tion as to how saints should be venerated was subject to major controversy,
their status as mediators between the human and the transcendent and as
sources of religious authority was subject to far less questioning (see, for ex-
ample, the history of as-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi, Egypt’s major Muslim
saint in Mayeur-Jaouen 2004). Thus what Gellner deems the small ‘folk’ tra-
ditions of Islam may not be so ‘small’ at all. Mysticism, the cult of Muslim
saints, festive traditions, magic, etc. are all intimately part of and make refer-
ence to the ‘great’ universal framework of Islam and just as peasants recite the
Qur’an and hold on to ‘central’ traditions such as prayer and fasting, scholars
and members of urban bourgeoisie have engaged in mysticism and magic.
A less dichotomous approach that attempts to avoid the ideological trap
into which Gellner falls, has been offered by Clifford Geertz (1968) who ar-
gues that the universal discourse of religion is always localized in a specific
cultural context which will make ‘Indonesian Islam’ substantially different
from ‘Moroccan Islam’, even when they share the same doctrinal discourse.
However, the problem in both Geertz’s and Gellner’s approaches is that they
represent the relationship of the local to the universal as something fairly
static and the difference between the two as more or less clear. In conse-
quence, they thus fail to look at the ways people in any given local setting aim
for the transcendent and locate themselves in it—a much more complex proc-
ess that cannot be described by the simple opposition of the local and the uni-
versal.
A number of scholars of the history and contemporary practice of Islam
and Islamic devotional cults (Abu-Zahra 1997; Werbner/Basu 1998; Sedgwick
2005; Soares 2005) have pointed out that while Islam as a religion always has
been localized, it has never been disconnected from universalist discourses and
trans-local networks. In Embodying Charisma, Werbner and Basu argue that
rather than the localization of Islam, an Islamization of the local is the more
accurate version of the story. Perhaps the most powerful model of a localized
Islam, namely that of an ‘African Islam’ or ‘black Islam’ that was once pro-
moted by the French colonial administration and that has long inspired the an-
thropology of Muslim societies in Africa, has been effectively demolished by
contemporary Africanists (see, for example, Soares 2005) who show that not
only have Muslims in Africa, whatever their doctrinal orientations may be,
never subscribed to an ‘African Islam’ but to just Islam, they also have been
well connected with the global movements of Sufism, legal scholarship, and
most recently Salafi reformism. The local in relation to the various expressions
of a world religion, it seems, is not really a category opposed to the universal
and global, but something more complex.
One way to cope with this complexity would be to follow Talal Asad
(1986) who has argued that rather than trying to distinguish different layers or
 INTRODUCTION | 13

forms of Islam, one should recognize that Muslims around the world search
guidance, make arguments, and relate to the founding texts of the Qur’an and
the Sunna. While they disagree and debate, their debates are characterized by
the shared reference to the scripture and the attempt to maintain coherence.
This view of Islam as a ‘discursive tradition’ has been greeted enthusiastically
by many scholars of contemporary Islam (Abu-Zahra 1997; Mahmood 2005;
Soares 2005; Hirschkind 2006). Because its approach to plurality within Islam
is not dichotomizing, it may at an intial glance appear very promising in ac-
counting for such contested practices as local pilgrimages, shrines, and the
veneration of saints.
However, the problem remains that this type of universalist perspective
involves a sort of ‘orthodoxization’ reducing discourse to the interpretation of
scripture with the aim of regulating normative practice and creating coher-
ence. In doing this, it favors approaches to religion that do exactly that, and
overlooks approaches that do not. There can be no doubt that Muslims con-
tinuously relate their religious practice and ideas to the universalizing dis-
courses of Islam, and this renders obsolete many of the juxtapositions be-
tween the universal and the local, or between orthodoxy and popular religion.
However that is not the whole story. While Asad points to the right direction,
his notion of tradition does not really offer a way of understanding the prob-
lem of locality and localized cults in their complexity. By focusing so exclu-
sively on discourse and by conflating the historical genealogy of a discourse
with the ideological imagination of its own history, the notion of discursive
tradition has three blind spots that are important to mention here.
The first are traditions which are not transmitted in the form of discourse
but materially. While they take their orientation from the universalizing blue-
prints of Mecca and Medina, the shrines of Muslim saints are based on a more
complex kind of imagination and transmission than is evoked by the concept
of ‘discursive tradition.’ A more holistic common sense of the shape, form,
and practices related to a saintly place can be far more determining than ex-
plicit references to the scripture.
The second blind spot are the historical transformations of ‘tradition’ in
the course of shifting social and political hegemonies. The orthodox Islam of
18th-century scholarly and saintly establishments was radically different to the
orthodox Islam of 21st century social movements and do-it-yourself religious
manuals. And yet believers of the 21st century see themselves as being in the
unbroken and authentic tradition of objectively true Islam.
Finally, Islam is only one of the many parameters that are important when
people relate to cities, villages, landscapes, and the place of the sacred and
saintly within them. As many of the authors in this volume show, modern na-
tionalism, urban planning, and ethnic conflicts contribute to the formation,
contestation, and transformation of not only saintly places but also their reli-
14 | SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

gious imagination in a way that cannot be explained by the ‘discursive tradi-

tion’ of Islam.
The contributions in this volume present a more complex approach, look-
ing at the ways sacred and saintly locality is established, imagined, and au-
thenticated under complex and specific circumstances but always involving
claims for wider, even universal (but not necessarily religious), validity. This,
indeed, forms a specific component of what might be called discursive con-
nectedness. Rather than taking Islam as the primary level of analysis and try-
ing to explain what Islam ‘is’, we attempt to show how the local specificity
and the historical and inter-local connectedness of a site and the beliefs and
rituals relating to it are imagined and constructed (in the physical sense too) in
a given historical and social setting.

Locations and Localities

The authors of this volume take up the issue of locality and sanctity from dif-
ferent perspectives, and yet their approaches all share the problematization of
‘place’ or ‘location’ in the banal sense: the limits and history of a place, the
landscapes and territories it belongs to, its position in a political or religious
imaginary, and its physical and conceptual structure, can all be and are being
questioned, rethought, and remade by people who live in, visit, use, and plan
them.
The perspectives of the contributions to this volume can be roughly di-
vided into three groups. Werbner and Salvatore develop more general analysis
perspectives, working on what may be called a communicative theory of lo-
cality and sanctity. Basing their analysis on empirical work and anthropologi-
cal fieldwork, Desplat, Mittermaier, Peterson, and Werthmann make their
field of research the starting point for wider questions and theorizing that
move beyond the customary dichotomies of tradition and modernity, sacred
and profane, Sufi and reformist Islam, or Islam and non-Islam. Zayed and
Mosa, finally, take a special position in the volume since their research, con-
ducted at Egyptian research institutions about Egyptian sites, is not only en-
gaged in fieldwork but also forms part of the contestation of saintly places. As
a folklorist, Souzanne Mosa problematizes Islamist claims to the history of a
city but also presents an established point of view about the ‘folkloricity’ of
the cult of saints. As a sociologist, Ahmed Zayed engages in a wider public
debate on the shape of modernity in Egypt—and doing so questions the con-
sensus of equating the cult of saints with folklore.
Locality appears in different dimensions in the contributions in this vol-
ume. First, it can be understood in the immediate sense of place, the historical
continuum of practices in a location essentially defined through a reference to
its past and continuity. As such, the aura of saintly locality is a product of his-
 INTRODUCTION | 15

torical imagination. The saint, ultimately localized by his or her shrine, is the
carrier of local histories and identity. As a result, his or her character and
deeds can change along with the interpretations and emphases of local history.
As the contributions of Desplat, Mosa, and Werthmann show, claims to a
place, its description as belonging to a religion, an ethnic group, or a clan, al-
ways imply a different way of imagining the place itself. When Islamists
claim a Muslim saint to be a Jew and Sufis counter that, on the contrary, he
was a jihad hero, when the middle classes of Harar claim the saints of the city
as ‘theirs’ in opposition not only to Salafi reformism but also to other ethnic
groups in the city, not only the saint but his or her identity with a town, vil-
lage, family, or ethnic group stands in question. Contesting a saint’s shrine
becomes, as a result, a contestation of the identities and values of the people
who relate to it.
Secondly, locality and the aura of the saintly place emerge in the sense of
landscape or territory, the interrelationship of various locations to each other,
and the hierarchies between them. These landscapes can take forms of highly
organized movements, as Werbner shows in her contribution in which she
brings in the level of regional cults as an important and often neglected cate-
gory between the reference to a universal religious ideology and the localized
practice at a specific site. As Desplat shows, such landscapes can also be very
detailed and material, as is the case with the hierarchies of saints in Harar and
the network of shrines and other sacred places in the countryside around the
city. Such landscapes need not, however, be coherent or harmonious. On the
contrary, as Werthmann shows in her comparison of the two saintly/sacred
sites near Bobo-Dioulasso, they can stand in explicit contrast to each other
and thus present very different forms of sanctity that contribute less to a co-
herent hierarchy than to a pluralistic landscape of different levels of connec-
tiveneness and discourse, and different material, organizational, and commu-
nal interests.
Third, sacred locality emerges in the more abstract sense of space, the
structure and organization of a world apart. Here the notion of aura, or ba-
raka, or charisma, becomes central as the principle of spatial organization.
Zayed and Mittermaier, in particular, juxtapose the geometrical, functional
order of the modern city to the imagination and organization of saints’
shrines, their surroundings, and the (urban) landscape they constitute. While
adopting very different perspectives, both argue that the saintly/sacred space
of shrines is a world apart, structured according to spiritual hierarchies and
open to different kinds of use and meaning. It is this at once open and esoteric
character that has made saintly space so problematic for proponents of mod-
ern systematic rationality—of Salafi reformist and secular varieties alike. The
modernist and reformist imagination of religion, society, and space highlight
systematic rationality giving everything and everyone a place and a purpose,
16 | SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

and spectacular hierarchies that prescribe knowledge and communication as a

top-down process where the role of the public is to receive knowledge. In
contrast, the imaginary and physical spaces of saints shrines, surrounding
squares, and the landscapes they constitute are characterized by the moment
of intersection: between the human and the transcendent, between pious and
profane practices, between different social classes, and between open and pro-
tected (or ‘public’ and ‘private’) spaces. Ambiguous by default, saintly space
cannot be put to the service of any grand project of reform or development
and contains a degree of autonomy that continues to trouble those who believe
that society and religion should be structured according to clear boundaries
and ruled by universal laws.
Fourth, space, in turn, emerges as a metaphor for a state of being in the
contributions of Mittermaier and Peterson. Focusing on dreams, Mittermaier
highlights the importance of imaginary spaces. In doing so, she demonstrates
the extent to which locality on all levels is a category of imagination: the his-
tory and meaning of a place, the details of a landscape stretching beyond the
horizon, the hierarchies and structures of a space, all exist primarily on the
level of imagination that provides ‘a mode of perception and an order of real-
ity’ (Mittermaier in this volume), in which the history, the extension, and the
structure of a site become meaningful. In a further step, Peterson shows that
space as constituted through imagination can develop into an independent
mode of action and experience that need not be in a direct relation with physi-
cal space. Peterson argues that the spatial arrangement of a saints-day festival
as they exist around the Muslim world is essentially characterized by its tem-
porality. The space of a festival is thus always a time-space: a structure of
things related to a very specific moment in which more is allowed and things
work differently than otherwise. Referring to the genre of moulid pop music,
Peterson shows how this time-space of festive joy can become independent
from its original site to a certain degree: when moulid develops into a cate-
gory of experience characterized by haysa, fun, joy, and dancing, it becomes a
metonymical space, not so much denoting any particular location and its
structures than a modality of action that is described by reference to the spa-
tial and temporal event of the festival.
Finally, Salvatore introduces charisma and relationality as a possible per-
spective for the study of the sacred, sainthood, and saintly locality. Critically
engaging Western theoretical approaches to the concept of charisma, a cate-
gory that has been used with considerable—and questionable—ease in oppo-
sition to rational authority and organization, Salvatore argues that we must see
charisma as a relational principle based on the need for a connecting link be-
tween the human and the transcendent, or in more general terms, the specific
and the universal. While Salvatore’s approach does not center on the question
of locality, the way he highlights relationality as the key moment of charisma
 INTRODUCTION | 17

could contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how exactly places can

‘be’ saintly, ‘have’ baraka, ‘radiate’ aura, and ‘embody’ charisma.

Sanctity and the Sacred

The three holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem each are bestowed
with a special relationship to the transcendent: Mecca as the core site of the
pilgrimage and the physical and imaginary center of Islam, Medina as the site
of the victory of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s charismatic mediator par
excellence, and Jerusalem as the site of Muhammad’s ascension to Heaven.
These sites have also developed into paradigmatic examples of localized sanc-
tity around the Islamic world. This is most evident with the tomb and mosque
of the Prophet in Medina. The tomb, built at the site of Muhammad’s house,
and the mosque which, after successive extensions, has come to surround the
tomb from all sides, serve as the blueprint of practically every Muslim saint’s
shrine around the world.
Far from being the absolute and mystical opposite of the profane world,
the sacred embodied by these sites is a dynamic category that can be and has
been imagined differently. More than that, different concepts of the sacred are
often at work at the same time. The authors of this volume repeatedly discuss
different, at times coexisting, at times mutually hostile, notions of sacredness,
sanctity, and charisma. Different notions of sanctity and sacredness go hand
in hand with ways of imagining and structuring locality and its meaning, in
other words, different modes of authentication.
The customary terminology of Islam has several terms that can be more or
less accurately translated in terms of sacredness and sanctity. The Arabic root
QDS serves as source for terms that describe the transcendent and absolute
holiness of God, such as in muqaddas (holy), al-Qaddûs (‘Holy’, one of the
names of God) and al-Quds (Jerusalem, literally ‘sanctuary’). From the root
HRM are derived terms which describe sacredness in terms of protectedness,
taboo, and opposition to the profane, such as haram (protected sanctuary, es-
pecially denoting the sacred districts of the three holy sites of Islam) and
harâm (forbidden, taboo; sacred). Finally, the root BRK is a source for terms
that describe spiritual power, most notably baraka—a complex notion that in-
volves the divine aura, charisma or power of a person, object or a site, mate-
rial beneficial power, and protection.
If the notions of holy/muqaddas and sanctuary/haram highlight the oppo-
sition between the human and the transcendent, and consequently the explic-
itly otherworldly nature of sacred space, the notion of baraka stresses the pos-
sibility of contact and mediation. It is no coincidence that baraka is the essen-
tial and most important quality of Muslim saintly places. By the virtue of the
divine grace, the saint, a pilgrimage site, can be a source of protection, power,
18 | SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

healing, wealth, and peace. In the Muslim faith, the Qur’an, holy places, pious
people, and pious deeds radiate this beneficiary power that emanates from
God and can be physically transmitted and received, be it by reading the
Qur’an, by undertaking the pilgrimage to Mecca, by receiving the blessings of
a religious person, or—although this is strongly contested in our time—by
visiting the tomb of a pious person who enjoys a special grace of God that
makes him a friend of God (wali Allah), in other words a saint.
Even where it has been established in clear contrast to pre-Islamic cults,
the sanctity of a Muslim saint’s shrine is of a kind that always carries an in-
clusive momentum that does not respect the clear limits of sacred and pro-
fane, Islam and non-Islam. In this volume Werthmann shows that elements of
Islam can be incorporated into animism just as elements of animism can be
incorporated in Islam. Furthermore, as Werthmann’s juxtaposition of the sac-
rificial site of Dafra and the saints’ tombs of Darsalamy shows, not only the
places themselves, also the kinds of sacredness/sanctity ascribed to them are
different.
The notion of baraka goes hand in hand with modes of authentication
with their primary reference to divine grace and mediation embodied by the
deceased saint, and a form of discursive connectedness that present localized
mediation and universal transcendental truth as compatible. By the virtue of
its baraka, its aura of the extraordinary, a major sanctuary is open to a much
wider array of people and practices than a holy site defined by purity and op-
position to the profane would be.
It is precisely this openness that has become a major issue in the intense
criticism and often physical attacks on Islamic saintly places over the past
century. If the sacred has a taste of license at the saintly place constituted by
baraka, in another, distinctively modern notion of sanctity and the sacred, this
is unthinkable. The often furious indignation of Muslim reformists about the
participation of women, the openness of a saint’s festival to the profane at-
mosphere of a fair, the ecstatic and spontaneous nature of religious perform-
ance, and the occasional presence of pre-Islamic objects are telling of a deep
split in the ways the relationship of a sacred place with its history, landscape,
and structure is being imagined.

The Place, Connectedness and Paradigms of Authentication

It is thus not merely the ‘locality’ (in sense of being specific to a particular
place) as opposed to ‘universality’ of saintly places that has made them a fa-
vorite target of Salafism and developmental modernism, and an ambiguous
icon of nationalism during the past century. Nor are the attempts to defend
and to redefine saintly places merely a move from the ‘local’ to the ‘univer-
sal’.
 INTRODUCTION | 19

It is necessary here to return to the notions of aura and discursive connect-

edness. The special ‘aura’ of places, the imaginary yet immanent quality that
makes them extraordinary, meaningful, powerful, and part of something
greater can be thought of in different ways—and each way involves a differ-
ent kind of connectedness, a different way of feeling about a place, of seeing
it carry meanings and fitting into a bigger picture. The success of establishing
and stabilizing the presence of the saint in a given place over a long period of
time depends largely on successful modes of authentication, that is, re-
imagining the place in terms of its origin (history) and establishing this
imaginary as manifest (also changing) physical structures and ritual practices.
But what happens when these imaginary histories and connections become
contested? How do people attempt to defend, redefine, or replace the aura of a
saintly place? The ‘aura’ of a place and its discursive and imaginary connect-
edness are intimately interwoven, and if one changes, the other will be af-
fected.
By way of conclusion, we take up three juxtapositions that make clearer
the ways in which the aura and the connections of a saintly place can be and
are being imagined by present-day Muslims: baraka versus systemic rational-
ity, cultural versus religious authentication, and city versus countryside.
The first juxtaposition presents baraka and systemic rationality as two
opposing principles of organizing not only religion but social practice in gen-
eral: inclusive as opposed to exclusive, the sacred as a source of power and
protection—thence with an air of license—as opposed to the sacred as estab-
lished by rational study and moral practice—therefore with an emphasis on
discipline and purity. The inclusive nature of saintly places becomes a threat
not only to the purity of the rational sanctity of revivalist Islam, but also to
developmentalist modernist notions of public order and rationality. For the
modernist notion of society as an organic system structured by over-arching
norms and purposes, spaces that are characterized by openness rather than or-
der are very problematic. As a result, the baraka of a saintly place becomes
fundamentally problematic for the projects of modernity and Islamic reform
because of its inherent ambiguity, openness to Islam and non-Islam, religious
and secular practices, hierarchy and anarchy, local and trans-local dimensions.
The second juxtaposition presents a religious mode of authenticity deriv-
ing from the presence of a saint’s body and the connectedness of the site to a
grand history of Islam as opposed to a secular national mode of authenticity
deriving from the cultural and regional specificity and very long but locally
grounded history of the site. From a nationalist point of view, a site with a
very long history radiates the continuous presence of something that is essen-
tially ‘ours’, but precisely this presence can make it inauthentic in a religious
imagination that takes the break between paganism and Islam as a key mark
of authenticity. As a result, this puts people who venerate and defend Muslim
20 | SAMULI SCHIELKE AND GEORG STAUTH

saintly places in an ambiguous position whereby they have access to different

levels of authenticity which, however, each may jeopardize the legitimacy of
the site in a different way. Nationalist modernist middle classes and elites, on
the other hand, face a different kind of ambiguity where saintly places present
a threat to their religious and civilizational imagination, on the one hand, and
an asset for their nationalist cultural narratives, on the other.
The third juxtaposition is the most complex of the three and presents
modernist imaginaries of the village and the city as two modes of locality and
social and civic order, the first imagined as culturally authentic but territori-
ally limited and civilizationally backward, the other presented as culturally
alienated, globally connected, and modern. The saint’s shrine, in this imagina-
tion, is part of the village (regardless of the fact that most major shrines stand
in cities) or of old city districts and resilient to the dynamics of urbanity and
global modernity. This imagination is, in a way, an attempt to resolve the am-
biguity of the first two juxtapositions, but when we look at the actual influ-
ence of the nation-state and urbanization on rural saints, a very different pic-
ture emerges. Mosa and Zayed, themselves arguing within the paradigm of
modernity as a normative discourse on society, paradoxically show how ‘city’
and ‘state’ not only ‘limit’ the space of the saintly place by marginalizing it to
the backward village, but also contribute to a de-territorialization of the saint.
While their perspective is a modernizationist one, they present an intense in-
terplay between different groups around a saint’s place and the dynamics of
saintly locality that makes obsolete the modernist dichotomy of city and vil-
lage. While the Muslim saint in a modern city dominated by nationalist order
and Salafi religious movements survives by undergoing many and often sur-
prising transformations, saint cults in village milieus experience similar if not
the same transformations in their physical and imaginary connectedness.
Finally, it is essential to stress that these contestations take place in com-
plex ways which, while intimately related to the temporal imaginary of mod-
ernity, do not follow commonplace narratives of modernization. The flourish-
ing regional Sufi cults (Werbner), the ambiguous balancing of the Harari
middle-classes between religious and cultural authentication (Desplat), the
dream spaces that compete with the modernist structures of Cairo (Mitter-
maier), the re-invention of the saint’s festival as dance music (Peterson), the
shifting boundaries between Islam and animism in Bobo-Dioulasso
(Werthmann), and the omnipresence of peripheral modernity in Egyptian
countryside (Zayed) all indicate that locality and the aura of saintly places
cannot be thought of in terms of local-universal oppositions. Instead, it is es-
tablished, contested, and remade as part of different outlooks on both the spe-
cific place as well as the world as a whole.
 INTRODUCTION | 21

References

Abu-Zahra, Nadia (1997) The Pure and Powerful: Studies in Contemporary

Muslim Society, Berkshire: Ithaca Press.
Asad, Talal (1986) The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Occasional Papers
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town University.
El Daly, Okasha (2005) Egyptology: The Missing Millennium. Ancient Egypt
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Geertz, Clifford (1968) Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco
and Indonesia, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Gellner, Ernest (1981) Muslim Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Hirschkind, Charles (2006) “Cassette Ethics: Public Piety and Popular Media
in Egypt”. In: Birgit Meyer/Annelies Moors (eds.) Religion, Media, and
the Public Sphere, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 29-52.
Mahmood, Saba (2005) Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Femi-
nist Subject, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mayer-Jaouen, Catherine (2004) Histoire d’un pélerinage légendaire en
Islam: Le mouled de Tantâ du XIIIe siècle a nos jours, Paris: Aubier.
Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine (2005) Pèlerinages d’Égypte: Histoire de la piété
copte et musulmane (XVe-XXe siècles), Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS.
Redfield, Robert (1960) Peasant Society and Culture, Chicago: The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
Schielke, Samuli (2007) “Hegemonic Encounters: Criticism of Saints-day
Festivals and the Formation of Modern Islam in late 19th and early 20th-
century Egypt”. Die Welt des Islams 47/3-4, pp. 319-355.
Sedgwick, Mark (2005) Saints and Sons: The Making and Remaking of the
Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi Order, 1799-2000, Leiden: Brill.
Soares, Benjamin (2005) Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Author-
ity in a Malian Town, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Stauth, Georg (2008) Ägyptische heilige Orte II: Zwischen den Steinen des
Pharao und islamischer Moderne. Konstruktionen, Inszenierungen und
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feld: transcript.
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Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, London:
Routledge.
Part 1: Conceptual Spaces
Chapter 1

Sufi Regional Cults in South Asia

and Indonesia:
Towards a Comparative Analysis
Pnina Werbner

Introduction

To compare Sufi orders across different places separated by thousands of

miles of sea and land, and by radically different cultural milieus, is in many
senses to seek the global in the local rather than the local in the global. Either
way, charting difference and similarity in Sufism as an embodied tradition re-
quires attention, beyond mystical philosophical and ethical ideas, to the ritual
performances and religious organizational patterns that shape Sufi orders and
cults in widely separated locations. We need, in other words, to seek to under-
stand comparatively four interrelated symbolic complexes: first, the sacred
division of labor—the ritual roles that perpetuate and reproduce a Sufi order
focused on a particular sacred center; second, sacred exchanges between
places and persons, often across great distances; third, the sacred ‘region’, its
catchment area, and the sanctified central places that shape it; and fourth, the
sacred indexical events—the rituals—that co-ordinate and revitalize organiza-
tional and symbolic unities and enable managerial and logistical planning and
decision making. Comparison requires that we examine the way in which
these four dimensions of ritual sanctification and performance are linked, and
are embedded in a particular symbolic logic and local environment.
In this chapter I use the notion of ‘cult’ in its anthropological sense, i.e. to
refer to organized ritual and symbolic practices performed in space and over
time, often cyclically, by a defined group of devotees, kinsmen, initiates, sup-
plicants, pilgrims, or disciples. The notion of a ‘regional cult’ drew on the
geographical analysis of regional markets to refer to cults which extend be-
yond a locally demarcated and bounded administrative order (see R. Werbner
1977). Regional cults are, importantly, ‘cults of the middle range’, neither a
world religion nor a local, parochially focused set of ritual practices. Regional
cult analysis refers to the theorization of the complex, ambivalent relations
between the politics, economics, ritual, and belief at the cult center, consid-
ered in its wider geographical and political context, as these relations are
26 | PNINA WERBNER

played out historically, over time, and as they affect shifting power relations
between sacred and temporal authority. Spirituality and territorial politics are
often conflictual, at least publicly, but at the same time politicians seek the
support of priests or saints at the center of regional cults, able to mobilize the
masses, while the latter often draw legitimacy from recognition (and material
support) granted by temporal rulers.
The Sufi cult or sub-order I studied in Pakistan (see P. Werbner 2003),
was in many senses remarkably similar organizationally to other, non-Muslim
regional cults and pilgrimage systems in Africa, Latin America, and Europe
(for examples see the chapters in R. Werbner 1977). It also fitted the model of
Sufi orders analysed by Trimingham (1971), which was mainly based on his
extensive knowledge of Sufi orders in the Middle East and Africa.
The difficulty, of course, in trying to understand Sufism and comprehend
its systematic ritual and symbolic logic and organization, is that in any par-
ticular locality, there is a wide range of Sufi saints, from major shrines of
great antiquity, managed by descendants of the original saintly founder and
guardians of his tomb, to minor saints with a highly localized clientele (see
Troll 1989; Werbner/Basu 1998). In any generation, only some outstanding
living saints succeed in founding major regional cults, Sufi sub-orders which
extend widely beyond their immediate locality. My own study was about one
such Sufi regional cult, whose founder, Zindapir, the ‘living saint’, had estab-
lished his central lodge, a place of enchanting loveliness and tranquility, in a
small valley in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
During the saint’s lifetime, his cult, from being regional, extended glob-
ally: to Britain and Europe, the Middle East, and even South Africa. Estab-
lished during the 1940s, in the dying days of Empire, Zindapir began his ca-
reer as an army tailor contractor for the seventh Baluch regiment, and his cult
membership expanded through the recruitment of army personnel. These, in
turn, recruited members of their families and, when they retired to civilian
life, their co-villagers or townsmen. The cult expanded further as these sol-
diers went to work as labor migrants in the Gulf or Britain. Disciples were
also recruited from among the stream of supplicants coming to the lodge to
seek the saint’s blessings or remedies for their afflictions, and from among
casual visitors curious to see the saint and lodge itself, a place renowned for
its beauty. Some disciples joined the cult after meeting Zindapir or his vicege-
rents (messengers) on the annual Hajj to Mecca.
These disciples and messengers of Zindapir met regularly to perform zikr
at the lodge branches of the order, located throughout Pakistan. They gathered
at Zindapir’s central lodge weekly, monthly, and in most cases, annually, at
the ‘urs, the three-day ritual festival commemorating the mystical ‘marriage’
of a deceased saint with God. Some pilgrims arrived for the festival as indi-
viduals, but most came in convoys of trucks and buses from particular
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 27

branches of the order, traveling in some cases for over 24 hours, bearing with
them sacrificial offerings of grain, butter, and animals. They returned bearing
gifts from the saint—gowns or caps, and in some instances, the sacred soil of
the lodge itself. During their three-day stay at the ‘urs, all the participants
were fed and nurtured by the saint himself. The hundreds of beasts sacrificed,
the hundreds of thousands of baked chappatis and nans, the enormous caul-
drons of sweet and pilau rice distributed during the ‘urs, feed some 30,000
people over three days, a major logistical challenge. But the saint also feeds
pilgrims to the lodge throughout the year, in what may be conceived of as a
form of perpetual sacrifice. The lodge itself has been built with voluntary la-
bor, usually in the weeks preceding the annual ‘urs. The crowds depart fol-
lowing the final du‘a, the supplicatory prayer and benediction enunciated by
the saint himself on behalf of the whole community.
These are the bare outlines of Sufi regional cult organization. The Sufi
cultural concept which best captures the idea of a Sufi region is wilayat.
Wilayat, a master concept in Sufi terminology, denotes a series of interrelated
meanings: (secular) sovereignty over a region, the spiritual dominion of a
saint, guardianship, a foreign land, friendship, intimacy with God, and union
with the Deity. As a master concept, wilayat encapsulates the range of com-
plex ideas defining the charismatic power of a saint—not only over transcen-
dental spaces of mystical knowledge but as sovereign of the terrestrial spaces
into which his sacred region extends. These, it must be stressed, remain un-
bounded and theoretically could reach the far corners of the earth. The term
regional cult, a comparative, analytic term used to describe centrally focused,
expansive and unbounded religious organizations, which extend across ad-
ministrative borders and boundaries, seems particularly apt to capture this
symbolic complexity. Saints do no command exclusive territories. On the
contrary, the wilayats of different saints interpenetrate, and any one locality
will be the abode of a range of saints, big and small, more or less respected,
each with his or her own following.

Sufi Orders and Saintly Charisma in the Middle East and Pakistan

Trimingham (1971) speaks of Sufi ‘ta’ifas’, sub-orders focused around a sin-

gle living saint or his shrine. His description makes evident that ta’ifas are
comparable to other regional cults in their basic central place organization.
The sheikh, a living saint or his descendant, heads the ta’ifa by virtue of his
powers of blessing. Under the sheikh are a number of khalifas appointed by
him directly to take charge of districts or town centers. He reports that in a
large order each regional khalifa may have sectional leaders under him
(Trimingham 1971: 173-174, 179). The sacred centers and subcenters of the
cult, known as zawiya in North Africa, and darbars or dargahs (royal courts)
28 | PNINA WERBNER

in Pakistan and India, are places of pilgrimage and ritual celebration, with the
tomb of the founder being the “focal point of the organization, a center of
veneration to which visitations (ziyarat) are made” (ibid.: 179). The center is
regarded as sacred (haram), a place of sanctuary for refugees from vengeance.
The word ta’ifa was not used by members of Zindapir’s regional cult (and
appears to be unknown even in some parts of the Middle East). They spoke of
the cult as a tariqa, but to distinguish it from the wider Naqshbandi order to
which it was affiliated, it was known as tariqa Naqshbandiyya Ghamkolia. By
appending the name of the cult center, Ghamkol, to their regional cult, they
marked its distinctiveness as an autonomous organization. The saint at the
head of the order, Zindapir, (‘the living saint’), was by the time of my study
the head of a vast, transnational regional cult, stretching throughout Pakistan
to the Gulf, Britain, Afghanistan, and Southern Africa. He had founded the
cult center in 1948, when he first secluded himself, according to the legend, in
a cave on the hill of Ghamkol. At the time the place was a wilderness.
A key feature of Zindapir’s cult organization was the way in which the
exemplary center has replicated itself throughout the saint’s region through
scores of deliberate and conscious acts of mimesis. In different parts of the
Punjab important khalifas of the saint reproduce in their manners, dress, and
minute customs the image of Zindapir, along with the ethics and aesthetics of
the cult he founded. In their own places they are addressed, much as Zindapir
himself is, as pir sahib. Such mimesis, I want to suggest, creates a sense of
unity across distance: the same sounds and images, the same ambience, are
experienced by the traveler wherever he goes in the cult region. Along with
this extraordinary mimetic resemblance, however, each khalifa also fosters his
own distinctiveness, his own special way of being a Sufi.
In other ways, too, Trimingham’s account accords with regional cult the-
ory. He makes the point that ta’ifas “undergo cycles of expansion, stagnation,
decay, and even death” (1971: 179), but that since there are “thousands of
them, new ones [are] continually being formed” (ibid.: 172).1
One way to understand processes of Sufi regional cult formation to look at
the way cults are founded and expand ‘during the lifetime of an originary, liv-
ing saint’. There are also cases, of course, in which saints are sanctified post-
humously, their charisma ‘discovered’ by devout followers often decades and
even centuries later.2 The present chapter, however, aims to disclose what en-
dows some men with extraordinary charismatic authority during their life

1 Sedgwick (2005) makes a similar point, in virtually the same words, about Sufi
orders in the Middle East, without acknowledging Trimingham’s original con-
tribution.
2 I am grateful to the editors for this point. Such post-facto sanctifications never-
theless require the organizational talents and dedication of living devotees.
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 29

time, and hence the power to found new Sufi regional cults and expand their
organizational ambit.
To comprehend how the charisma of a saint is constructed and underpins
saintly authority requires a comparative analysis of the poetics of traveling
theories; that is, the way that such myths tell, simultaneously, both a local and
a global tale about Sufi mystical power everywhere, and the settlement of
Sufis in virgin, barren or idolatrous lands, such as the lodge valley in Pakistan
or industrial towns in Britain. Each Sufi cult is distinctive and embedded in a
local cultural context. But, against a view of the radical plurality of Islam
proposed, for example, by Clifford Geertz (1968), I want to suggest in this
chapter that Sufism everywhere shares the same deep structural logic of ideas.
These shape the ecological and cultural habitat and local habitus wherever
Sufi saints settle. Such beliefs persist, I show, despite internal inconsistencies
and evidence to the contrary, and remain powerfully compelling.

Sufi Myths and Legends:

Teasing out Comparisons between Morocco and Indonesia

In a groundbreaking essay, Clifford Geertz (1968), comparing Moroccan and

Indonesian Islam, proposed that global religions are necessarily embedded in
the taken-for-granteds of local cultural milieus. In criticizing Geertz, I am not
suggesting that he is entirely wrong. It is quite likely that Moroccan Islam and
Indonesian Islam are in many ways very different in their feel, their style,
their religious emphases, the emotions evoked by particular symbols and ritu-
als, the centrality of ritual and religion in the society, its symbolic importance,
and so forth.
Against Geertz, however, I want to argue that Sufi Islam as a traveling re-
ligion may change radically but in a way which seems almost the opposite to
that suggested by him. In theory, and often in practice, when a world religion
encroaches into an already charged social field, both religious practice and
scriptural exegesis are likely to be politicized and to lose the taken-for-
granted, doxic transparency that they once possessed. Instead, such religions
become highly self-conscious, reflexive ideologies. Intertextuality, in other
words, relativizes all knowledge. Recognizing the intertextual dimensions of
locally appropriated global religious texts is a critical theoretical advance for
an understanding of the global and local politics of religion and its thrust to-
wards greater reflexivity.
Two related questions are implied by the argument that traveling theories
gain in reflexivity: first, whether global religious knowledge, locally contex-
tualised, is produced within a charged political field, in what sense can it still
be said to be commonsensical, taken-for-granted and embedded unreflectively
in a local cultural ethos and world view, as Geertz proposed? Second, in what
30 | PNINA WERBNER

respect do traveling theories which change, also stay the same? In what re-
spect is Sufi Islam one rather than many?
To address these questions, I want to follow Geertz in the first instance by
shifting the focus to locally told narratives about saints and away from pub-
lished sacred texts. Unlike Geertz, however, my aim is to explore the underly-
ing structures—the moral fables—animating such narratives. The structural
logic of these fables, I wish to argue, in being implicit is rarely questioned or
challenged, even in politicized contexts. It provides believers with their sense
of naturalized, taken-for-granted certainty. So much so that such fables or un-
derlying plots, rather than being modified in travel, once adopted are a sym-
bolic force reshaping the cultural environments they invade. This is so be-
cause, as Becker has argued, in most cultures,

knowledge of plot constraints is unstated background knowledge, like the knowl-

edge of grammar and syntax. It is learned indirectly, first through fairy tales and
nursery rhymes (and their equivalent in other cultures), and then from the various
media that have access to children (Becker 1979: 217).

Hence, going against the anthropological tendency to stress the local, I pro-
pose that Sufi Islam, despite its apparent variety and concrete localism, em-
bodies a global religious ideology within a social movement which every-
where fabulates the possibility (if not the actualization) of human perfection.
Its shared implicit logic is revealed in the structural similarities between Sufi
legends and modes of organization in widely dispersed localities, separated in
time as well as in space. This is exemplified by the parallels in the plots of the
myths reported by Geertz for Morocco and Indonesia (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Sufi Myths in Morocco and Indonesia (after Geertz 1968)

(1) Inner Jihad: Overcoming Inner Desires/Total Submission

Morocco: Saint Washes with Smallpox-Infested Water
Indonesia: Saint Stands in a River for 15 Years
RESULT: DIVINE KNOWLEDGE

(2) Outer Jihad: Overcoming External Evil/Lack of Faith

Morocco: Triumph over the Evil Sultan
Indonesia: Conversion of Rulers at the Exemplary Center
RESULT: SPIRITUAL POWER OVERCOMES TEMPORAL POWER

The very same myths told about an Indonesian and a Moroccan saint could
both be told about Pakistani saints, or even about the very same saint. This is
because the myths represent two important and linked dimensions of Sufi Is-
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 31

lam—the inner jihad and the outer jihad (Figure 1). Jihad means struggle or
battle. For Muslims there is an inner battle with their desires and appetites and
an outer battle with infidels and non-believers.
The two myths in both localities, Indonesia and Morocco, tell a story of an
ordeal overcome through faith in the Sufi teacher. In Morocco the hero
washes the clothes of the teacher, covered in smallpox, and then washes in the
dirty water. This ordeal, which is an act of faith, endows him with divine
blessing from the teacher who, as a charismatic holy man, is an intermediary
with God, and inevitably also with divine knowledge. In the Indonesian myth
the hero undergoes a typical Sufi ordeal—he stands in a river for 15 years
waiting for his teacher to return, and is endowed with divine knowledge for
his patience. In both cases, according to Sufi doctrine, the heroes kill their
nafs, their personal selfish and bodily desires or carnal self. The Indonesian
hero’s myth ends here, except that we know that the hero went on to Islami-
cize the center of the state. In the Moroccan myth, the hero has a confronta-
tion with a powerful but evil monarch. This is the external jihad—the fight
against evil or religious backsliders.
My own interpretation of the message of this latter myth is different from
that suggested by Geertz, who interprets the myth as implying that the Mo-
roccan ruler proves his credentials as descendant of the Prophet. I propose
that the moral of this myth is that spiritual power is always above temporal
power—the house of God and his dweller, the saint, is more powerful than the
palace of the monarch and its dweller, the worldly ruler. Both may be descen-
dents from the Prophet, but one is superior to the other by virtue of his spiri-
tuality and the monarch must therefore bow to him. The moral of the tale is
that the rule of God is above the rule of man. Man does not make the law, he
simply administers it.3
This same principle is exemplified by Zindapir in a series of morality tales
about his encounter with secular authority.

Once an uncle of the Minister of Finance Mian Muhammad Yasin Khan Watto came
to Pir Sahib. He was seriously ill, and had returned from England, diagnosed as suf-
fering from an incurable illness. Pir Sahib cast dam (blew a Qur’anic verse for heal-
ing purposes) on him and said: ‘Let him eat from the langar’s food and he will be
cured’. Once healed, the Minister asked the Pir if he could make him, the Minister,
his disciple, allow him to cast dam and provide the food for the langar for three
days. Zindapir said: ‘You will provide for the langar for three days but what will
happen after that? I cannot make you partner, sharik, with God. Nor will I make you

3 A similar message in contemporary Morocco is enunciated by Abd al Yasin,

founder of the Justice and Charity Society, who rejects the authority of the King,
according to Paul Heck (2006).
32 | PNINA WERBNER

my disciple or allow you to cast dam.’ (Story first told me by the Sheikh in October
1989)

The tapestry of legends, myths, and morality tales told by and about Zindapir
objectify the saint’s divine grace and power through concrete images and re-
membered encounters. At the same time, the powerful validity of the legends
and morality tales springs dialectically from the observed ascetic practices of
the Saint, which embody for his followers fundamental notions about human
existence and sources of spiritual authority.
This dual basis for legitimized truth—saintly practice and concrete im-
age—makes the legendary corpus about the saint impervious to factual incon-
sistencies. The ‘myths’ and ‘legends’ are conceived of as historically accu-
rate, true, exemplary narratives about an extraordinary individual. If the
myths contain self-evident truths which transcend the mundane and are not
amenable to quotidian, common sense evaluation, this is because the subject
of these tales, the living saint, is perceived to be an extramundane individual,
a man outside and above the world, rather than in it.
This returns us to the question raised at the outset: to what extent is Suf-
ism as a transnational religious movement differentially embedded in the
common sense notions of specific cultural environments? I want to argue,
against Geertz’s relativist position, that the religious rationality and common
sense values implicit in Sufism transcend cultural and geographical bounda-
ries. The underlying logic of the fables constituting this religious imagination
is the same logic, whether in Morocco, Iraq, Pakistan or Indonesia. It is based
on a single and constant set of equations, starting from the ultimate value of
self-denial or asceticism:

World renunciation (asceticism) = divine love and intimacy with God = divine ‘hid-
den’ knowledge = the ability to transform the world = the hegemony of spiritual au-
thority over temporal power and authority.

The legends about powerful Sufis, from Indonesia and Morocco, which
Geertz argues exemplify the contrastive localism of Islam, retell, in essence,
the same fable or plot: (1) initiation through a physical and mental ordeal
overcome; (2) the achievement of innate and instantaneous divine knowledge;
(3) the triumphant encounter with temporal authority. The same legends can
be found in Attar’s ‘Memorial of Saints’ which records the lives of the early
saints of Baghdad (Attar 1990). What differs are merely the ecological and
historical details: a flowing river and exemplary center in Indonesia, desert
sands and a fortress town in Morocco, the Baluch Regiment, an anti-colonial
brigand’s valley, and corrupt politicians in Pakistan. A single paradigmatic
common sense plot upholds this legendary corpus, while the legends’ local
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 33

concrete details—regiments, rivers, and desert sands embody this common

sense and suffuse it with axiomatic authority. But the symbolic structure un-
derlying this common sense is as unitary as it is inexorable.

Indonesian Sufism: Teasing out Comparisons

This brings me finally to a comparison of South Asian and Indonesian Suf-

ism. One of the difficulties of drawing such a comparison relates to the differ-
ent terminology used to describe Sufi regional cults in Indonesia. The key
elements—places, actors, and rituals—that sustain Indonesian regional cults
are described by their indigenous names even in anthropological texts, and
this makes comparison difficult to tease out. Nevertheless, the basic building
blocks of the cults: saints, shrines, annual rituals, sacred exchange, central
lodges, and their hierarchically ordered branches, all seem to be present in In-
donesia.
Let me consider each of the different building blocks comprising Indone-
sian Sufi cults first, before exploring how they are interrelated. I draw on pub-
lished texts, along with three doctoral theses and one masters thesis submitted
to the Australian National University which are also crucial ethnographic
documents in this comparative endeavor.4
As in South Asia, so too in Indonesia there are famous ancient Sufi
shrines of celebrated wali which are places of pilgrimage for persons coming
from the whole of Indonesia. As in South Asia, these major shrines often have
associated with them whole villages of descendants who service the grave and
its festivals, each with its own clientele. Such a village is described by Jeffery
(1979) and by Pinto (1995) in their studies of the shrine of Nizam-uddin
Auliya located in Delhi, and for Indonesia by Muhaimin (1995) in his descrip-
tion of the Buntet shrine complex in Cirebon, Java. My own focus here, how-
ever, is on the smaller Sufi regional cults whose extension is far more limited
and local, focused on either a living saint or his shrine, which rise and fall pe-
riodically, waxing and waning over time.
The other point which needs to be made in advance of the comparative
analysis is one established clearly by Mark Woodward (1989) and a range of
other Indonesian scholars: namely, that Sufi mystical theosophy in Indonesia,
along with the practice of zikr, the repetitive recollection of God’s name, re-
semble practices and beliefs elsewhere in the Muslim world. The basic ideas
of taking the oath of allegiance to a saint (bai‘at), initiation, and ‘travel’
through different mystical stages on the Sufi path, self-denial, asceticism,

4 These are: Dhofier (1980); Zulkifli (1994); Muhaimin (1995); Jamhari (2000).
For a survey of studies of Islam in Indonesia, with particular emphasis on an-
thropological studies of Islam, see Jamhari (2002) and for further references see
the brief survey by Fox (2002).
34 | PNINA WERBNER

control of the vital, selfish soul (nafs), and mystical epiphany are found in In-
donesia as they are in the Middle East or South Asia. Second, as in South
Asia, Sufism in Indonesia, known locally as ‘traditional’ Islam, has been un-
der attack by Islamic and modernist reformists, who accuse it of unlawful
syncretism and polytheism (shirk). While such highly politicized attacks are
found throughout the Muslim world, and are often defined as an opposition
between ‘doctor’ (‘alim) and ‘saint’ (see Gellner 1981), in Indonesia, as in
South Asia, the resistance to this attack has involved, it seems, an alliance of
both saints and learned religious scholars or clerics (‘ulama), a point to which
I return below.5 Following from this, like in South Asia and other parts of the
Muslim world, a tendency to distinguish in Indonesia between practicing
Sufis and the so-called superstitions surrounding the cult of saints’ shrines has
obscured the intrinsic interdependency of these two.
In Indonesia, saints are known honorifically as kyai, but also by a range of
other titles: wali (usually reserved for big saints, including the nine founding
saints in Java), muqaddam, mursyid, serepah (meaning elder), and syeikh.
Important kyai, founders of their own lodges (pesantren) are regarded as char-
ismatic figures, imbued with blessing, and this charisma is transmitted from
father to son, much as it is in other parts of the Muslim world. Woodward ac-
knowledges that “for many traditional students, relationships with kyai are
elements in the zuhud (ascetic) complex. They see kyai as much as living
saints as teachers, as much as sources of blessing as of knowledge” (Wood-
ward 1989: 144). As in South Asia, in Indonesia too, high value is placed on
asceticism even in the case of wealthy saints (ibid.: 145). Saints prepare amu-
lets for supplicants and engage in healing, blessing, and exorcism as they do
in South Asia (ibid.: 146).
Indonesian saintly lodges or pesantren (ibid.: 135) are most often rural,
and they often own large tracts of land donated as religious endowments
(waqf), by royal patrons (ibid.: 146) or through purchase. If the lodge is an old
one, it usually includes the graves of the founders and their sons and grand-
sons. These are known as (keramat) and are the focus of an annual festival
commemorating the death of the saint, usually called khaul or kaul in Indone-
sia. The lodge doubles up as a religious seminary for youth, mostly young
men, which teaches a standard course in religious studies, with a traditional
Sufi inflection. The centrality of teaching in the Indonesian lodges seems of-
ten to overshadow the centrality of saintly charisma and pilgrimage (ziarah)
to a Sufi shrine characteristic of Pakistani and Middle Eastern central lodges.
In Pakistan, Barelvi, Sufi-oriented, schools and seminaries are kept separate

5 Sufi-minded ‘ulama are also found in Egypt where Sufi orders continue to flour-
ish.
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 35

from saints’ lodges (on the growth in the number of these schools in Pakistan
see Malik 1998).
Several ambiguities arise in the literature from the educational role of the
pesantren Sufi lodges in Indonesia. The saint or his deputies (khalifa, khulfat,
known in Indonesia also as badal murshid) who head the lodges are often de-
scribed in English as ‘teachers’. More usually in Sufi parlance, the saint as re-
ligious guide on the Sufi path is called a murshid. Saints in South Asia never
officiate as religious officials in the mosque or in weddings and funerals.
Unless they are minor saints, they never teach young children. These are tasks
allocated to learned religious clerics who respect saintly traditions. The saint’s
role is confined to guiding his initiates (murids), healing supplicants, advising
his flock and pronouncing du‘a, a supplicatory prayer, benediction or bless-
ing. In addition, the saint organizes the feeding of the multitudes in rituals,
festivals, and weekly zikr meetings at the central lodge.
So who is the kyai in Indonesian Sufi Islam? Is he a teacher of young men
and small children or a murshid, initiating and guiding his disciples?
The second ambiguity in the literature arises in relation to the organization
of pesantren Sufi lodges in Indonesia. Woodward, following Dhofier (1980),
describes the rise of a major Indonesia kyai saint, Hasyim Asy’ari, born in
1881, scion to a saintly family (Woodward 1989: 136). He began ‘teaching’ in
his father’s lodge at the age of 13 and later studied in Mecca. Returning to
Java in 1899, he ‘taught’ briefly at his older brother’s lodge before founding
his own lodge, Pesantren Tebuireng at Cukir in East Java. Woodward says
that “within ten years it was a major supplier of teachers to other pesantren”.
He reports that according to Dhofier (1982: 95-96), Asy’ari’s students were
sent to found their own lodges, many of which became institutions with over a
thousand students.
The question is, were these so-called student-turned-teacher disciples
promoted by the saint as his deputies and messengers (khalifa), being in some
cases even aspiring kyai saints in their own right, or were they merely learned
‘ulama? One possibility is that in Indonesia two centrally focused, regional
systems overlap, but only partially: one system is that of learned scholars, the
‘ulama, who remain connected to a major center of learning such as Tebureng
in Easter Java, described by Dhofier (1999). Dhofier says that in its heyday
there were 500 madrassas linked this lodge with 200,000 students, and it was
the center of the NU (the Nahdatul ‘Ulama,), an association of ‘ulama, with
its circuit of meetings and conferences (see Hefner 2002: 144). Alternatively,
one might look at the regional cults of the kyai or saints as comprising the sa-
cred center along with its khulafa, sent by the saint to found new lodges, who
continue to recognize their allegiance to their saint-guide, and to regard his
lodge as the cult center. This view is lent support by Jamhari (2002)’s discus-
sion of the central lodge in Buntet of a Tijanniya saint studied by Muhaimin
36 | PNINA WERBNER

(1995: 346). Kyai Abbas acting as murshid, he says, ‘organised and central-
ised’ this Sufi order widely through the establishment of new lodges centerd
on Buntet (Jamhari 2002: 19-20). Van Bruinessen (2003: 9) reports on an
‘alim who “succeeded his father Romly as the major Qadiriyya wa-
Naqshbandi teacher of East Java and inherited a vast network of hundreds of
local, mostly rural, groups of followers led by local deputies that went on ex-
panding, and he established close contacts with members of the military and
political establishment in Jakarta”. He further reports that “in West Java, there
was a rapidly expanding Qadiriya wa-Naqshbandiya network too, centered
upon the pesantren of Suryalaya and its chief teacher, Abah Anom”. Sila
(2003: 3) reports on a popular order in Bandung which had 318 places of
manaqiban (Sufi circles practicing collective reading of saintly hagio-
graphies), with the number of students extending to tens of thousands
throughout the city. Another order, Kadisiyya, was said to have founded four
branches, spreading in several large cities in Indonesia, including Jakarta,
with Cilegon as the headquarters (Sila 2003: 9). This particular founding saint
claims direct inspiration from a hidden companion (Uways) of the Prophet. In
one case, reported by Azra (2003: 5) a newly founded Sufi center which
treated drug users through zikr, had developed transnational network through-
out South East Asia. In other words, it had developed a new regional cult
around the center.
How is such a far flung regional cult co-ordinated in Indonesia by the sa-
cred center? We know nothing about these particular cults, but the literature
contains some clues about the co-ordination of other Sufi regional cults in In-
donesia. First, it seems that many saints are related to one another by kinship
or marriage, and trace their origin as Sayyids to the Prophet’s line of descent,
as well as through a sacred genealogy (silsila) of teacher-disciples (Wood-
ward 1989: 145).
In his own study of Jatinom, another lodge, Jamhari reports on a tradi-
tional celebration, named Angkawiya, commemorating the life of a deceased
saint, to which people walked on foot some 30 kilometers to obtain apem, a
pancake-like cake made of rice flour, coconut milk, sugar, salt, and oil (Jam-
hari 2000: 228). The festival, also known as apenam (ibid.: 205-215; 2002:
29), culminates in a ritual struggle by the attendant crowd for the pancakes,
regarded as endowed with powerful blessing (baraka), thrown from a tall
tower. As many as three tons of flour are donated by surrounding villagers,
and the apem itself can only be baked by direct descendants of the saint (Jam-
hari 2000: 217, 226). The apem is arranged in a mountainous shape, in two
types, one male, one female, representing the saint, Kyai Ageng Gribig, and
his wife (ibid.: 226). Before its distribution a supplication (du‘a) is made over
it and during its distribution the crowds chant dhikr and address God, the Al-
mighty and most powerful (ibid.: 227). Exegesis Jamhari obtained highlighted
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 37

the spiritual aspect of the scramble, the ‘striving’ for apem. “This means that
if in the slametan you obtained apem”, one informant told Jamhari, “this indi-
cates that you have obtained a spiritual blessing from Kyai Ageng Gribig”
(the departed saint) (ibid.: 39). The apem, containing baraka, is not eaten but
can be used in various ways: as a ‘fertilizer’ scattered over fields, to get rid of
pest attacks, to protect a house (ibid.: 229).
We see here parallels with the ‘urs in Pakistan as an annual ritual festival
at the sacred center, the abode of the saint, to which all the branches of a re-
gional cult make pilgrimage. This is a moment of sacred exchange: the saint
feeds the multitudes, slaughtering hundreds of animals in sacrifice, while dis-
ciples return from the lodge with gifts of white caps and cotton scarves. The
moment of du‘a, supplication, is a breathless moment of sacred communitas.
Indeed, I have argued that the ‘urs is the organizational hub of Zindapir’s and
other Sufi regional cults. Woodward reports on the royal Sufi rituals at
Yogyakarta, in which the sultan is said to attain mystical union with God and
tens of thousands of people gathered are offered ‘mountains’ of sticky rice,
highly charged with blessing (Woodward 1989: 179). Like the King of Mo-
rocco, Indonesian royals also claim direct descent from the Prophet. Dhofier
(1999) reports that in the minor lodge at Tegalsari, at its heyday, during the
annual kaul five cows, forty goats and hundreds of chickens were slaughtered
for the festival. Jamhari reports that in the annual kaul akbar ceremony at the
shrine of Sunan Tembayad, which lasts for a whole week, the cloth on the
grave, the pasang singep, is changed and the old cloth is cut into handkerchief
shapes and distributed to visitors, sometimes for a fee (Jamhari 2000: 127,
218). In Pakistan dupatta, green, red or black shawls, are carried through the
lodge and laid on the saint’s grave, much as they would be held over the
bride’s head at a mehndi, pre-wedding ritual, symbolizing his union, ‘mar-
riage’ with God (Werbner 2003: 252-254, 269).
Van Bruinessen tells us that from 1950 to 1970, traditional tariqas such as
the Naqshbandi, Qadri and Tijani, “expanded considerably and built up enor-
mous rural followings, that had turned umbrella organizations into significant
political actors” (2003: 13) with many top level army officers and politicians.
This is very like the following built up by Zindapir. But what are these so-
called umbrella organizations? Is he referring here to the regional cults
formed around particular living saints, or are they the associations that joined
these cults together? Once again organizational analysis and the use of ver-
nacular terminology inhibit theoretical and conceptual comparisons with Sufi
orders elsewhere. For example, according to van Bruinessen (ibid.) among the
living saints that emerged were antinomian characters, but we are not told
whether they were able to build regional cults, or whether they simply had a
high-level clientele who believed in their magical powers of blessing.
38 | PNINA WERBNER

A further weakness in this literature is that no distinction is made between

(1) disciples, (2) supplicants to a saint seeking blessing or healing, and (3)
‘groups’ of disciples attending the sacred center, whether merely forming a
zikr circle, or based at an alternative lodge. Second, we know little about how
students are recruited to study at the lodge. How can a Javanese lodge attract
young students in their teens from as far afield as Bali or Malaysia? Such re-
cruitment from a vast catchment area implies connections—whether via key
individuals or lodges located in peripheral areas.
Muhaimin (1995) contains the best ethnographic detail on the connections
between different lodges. He reports on the many instances in which a saint
sends delegates to found new lodges, much as Zindapir did in Pakistan and
beyond it. The career of a saint usually begins as a young man with travel for
learning, in which he may spend time at many different lodges, and often in
the Hijaz, before returning to his original lodge and ultimately founding his
own lodge. Over time a network of lodges emerges, linked through disciple-
ship to the central lodge (see in particular Muhaimin 1995: 311, 351). There is
a tendency for saints to recruit talented sons-in-law by marrying them to their
daughters, and many lodges are connected by intricate kinship relations, since
saints tend to marry endogamously with families tracing descent to the
Prophet (ibid.: 317, 320). Lodges often celebrate the eleventh of the month
(known in Pakistan as gyarvi sharif) much as they do in Pakistan, and Mu-
haimin reports regular visits from other branches to such celebrations. This, in
addition to the annual ritual commemorating the saint’s death, the kaul, cele-
brated in most central lodges in Java, although we are told little about the
delegations from other lodges attending such festivals. It is also evident from
the ethnography that most big saints go on regular circuits to visit outlying
branches of the lodge.
As in other regional cults, large Sufi regional cults in Indonesia encom-
pass a wide catchment area, including followers on other islands (Bali, Kali-
mantan, Sumatra) and beyond, in Singapore and Malaysia. They are thus in-
ter-ethnic and trans-national. This is a distinctive feature of central place or-
ganizations and pilgrimage centers, which do not respect administrative and
territorial boundaries. According to Richard Werbner, regional cults are, dis-
tinctively,

cults of the middle range—more far-reaching than any parochial cult of the little
community, yet less inclusive in belief and membership than a world religion in its
most universal form. Their central places are shrines in towns and villages, by cross-
roads or even in the wild, apart from human habitation, where great populations
from various communities or their representatives, come to supplicate, sacrifice, or
simply make pilgrimage. They are cults which have a topography of their own, con-
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 39

ceptually defined by the people themselves and marked apart from other features of
cultural landscapes by ritual activities. (R. Werbner 1977: ix)

Like other regional cults, Sufi cults are transregional, transnational, and tran-
sethnic. They interpenetrate with one another rather than generating contigu-
ous, bounded territories. They leapfrog across major political and ethnic
boundaries, creating their own sacred topographies and flows of goods and
people. These override, rather than being congruent with, the political
boundaries and subdivisions of nations, ethnic groups, or provinces (ibid.).
For example, in the regional cult headed by Zindapir in the North West Fron-
tier Province of Pakistan, followers within Pakistan were Pashtun, Punjabi,
and Sindhi speakers. The cult extended into Afghanistan, and also had South
African (Indian Muslim) followers, who are mainly Gujarati speakers. Zin-
dapir’s Murshid, Baba Qasim, had Hindu and Sikh followers. Zindapir was
seeking to reach Christians in Sindh and was very welcoming to Christians,
Japanese, and even a Jew like myself, since this proved his universal inclu-
siveness. There are still shrines both in India and Pakistan that have Muslim
and Hindu followers (see, for example, Saheb 1998).
Regional cult analysis aims to disclose hidden structural interdependen-
cies and ruptures between different domains of action: economic, ritual, po-
litical. Like other regional cults, Sufi regional cults are both linked to centers
of political power and in tension with them. Various historical studies have
highlighted the pragmatic tendencies of Sufism in South Asia which have en-
abled Sufi saints to accommodate to a variety of different political regimes
and circumstances, over many centuries of imperial and postcolonial rule.6
The relationship between the political center and the sacred center is a chang-
ing, historically contingent one, and in this sense, as in others, regional cults
are historically evolving social formations.7

6 See, for example, Gilmartin (1984), (1988); Eaton (1978), (1984), (1993); Mann
(1989); Liebeskind (1998); on North Africa see Eickelman (1976), (1977); Ev-
ans-Pritchard (1949).
7 An example of the complex, historically unstable relations between Sufi re-
gional cults and indigenous political rulers in South Asia is highlighted in Susan
Bayly’s study of South India during the volatile pre-colonial period from the
seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries (Bayly 1989). Initially following
the trade routes into the hinterland, Sufi regional cults drew extensive patronage
from a wide variety of Muslim and Hindu petty kings and rulers who struggled
to legitimize their rule by claiming spiritual dominion via important Sufi shrines
or Hindu temples. The sacred networks of individual shrines extended well be-
yond a ruler’s administrative territory and were thus perceived to be a source of
power, so that displays of generosity towards a famous dargah became “impor-
tant touchstone[s] in the competitive acts of state-building pursued by professing
Hindu and Muslim rules” (ibid.: 221).
40 | PNINA WERBNER

In a landmark study of sacred peripherality, Victor Turner defined pil-

grimage centers as ‘centers out there,’ beyond the territorial political commu-
nity, and in doing so opened up a whole new set of questions regarding ritual
journeys as transformative movements (Turner 1974: ch. 5). Turner conceptu-
alized pilgrimage centers as alternative loci of value within feudal-type socie-
ties. Like the rites of passage of tribal societies, he argued, the ritual move-
ment in pilgrimage culminated in a liminal (or liminoid) moment of ‘commu-
nitas’ which was anti-structural and anti-hierarchical, releasing an egalitarian
sociality and amity. Pilgrimage centers thus embodied an alternative ethical
order, one uncircumscribed by territorially defined relations of power and au-
thority.
In critiquing the series of dichotomous contrasts generated by Turner’s
theory—inclusive versus exclusive relations, peripherality versus centrality,
generic versus particularistic sociality, egalitarian or homogeneous relations
versus hierarchical or differentiated ones—regional cult analysis, as outlined
above, aims to highlight the dialectic resulting from the complex conjuncture
of these apparently opposed types of relationships, coexisting in a single cult
(R. Werbner 1977: XII passim).
As the history of Sufism in South Asia shows, Sufi regional cults are inex-
tricably intermeshed in regional politics. This is because Sufi cults are not
simply inclusive. They foster an exclusive membership, and yet the sacred
center and the major festivals around it are open to all. Relations between ini-
tiates are said to be (generic) relations of love and amity, stripped of any prior
status, idealized as beyond conflict or division, yet the organization of re-
gional cults is based around the ingathering of elective groups from particular,
defined political and administrative communities—villages, towns, city
neighborhoods—while cult relationships are often, as I show in my book
(Werbner 2003), marred by interpersonal rivalries and jealousies. The egali-
tarianism between initiates comes alongside internal relations of hierarchy,
and all disciples, whatever their rank, are subject to the absolute authority and
discipline of the saint or his successors at the cult center. Indeed, worldly
status, class and caste are implicitly recognized at the central lodge, while
saintly descendants often vie bitterly for the succession after the decease of
the founder.8 If there is a moment of experienced communitas during the an-
nual ritual at a Sufi regional cult center, it is the product of complex logistical
planning, a highly disciplined division-of-labor, and constant vigilance on the
part of the organizers.
In the face of criticisms leveled against Turner’s theoretical model (R.
Werbner 1977; Sallnow 1987; Eade/Sallnow 1991; and for India see Fuller

8 Caste is even more in evidence in the complex regional cult organization of the
Swaminarayans of Gujarat who divide ascetics from lay followers and recognize
divisions by caste among the ascetics (Williams 1984).
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 41

1993: 212-213), it seems more accurate to say that sacred pilgrimage creates
not ‘anti’-structure but ‘counter’-structure. Nevertheless, Turner’s key point,
that pilgrimage centers and the cults they generate produce sacred geogra-
phies where alternative, non-temporal and non-administrative ethical orders
are ritually embodied and enacted, still seems valid. In this spirit, regional cult
theory, as proposed here, aims to conceptualize the dynamics of spatially al-
ternative focal organizations to those centered on bounded, territorially based
states or administrative units.
The literature also make clear the extent to which Sufi cults and orders are
intermeshed with the politics of Indonesia, first with the politics of the
court—royals claimed descent from the Prophet and officiated at major Sufi
rituals—and later with the colonial and postcolonial governments. At the
same time, most Indonesian saints guard their autonomy and refuse to be fully
co-opted by any regime. This too is a widely found feature of Sufi saints and
their cults.

Conclusion

Sufism always has its concrete, local manifestations. Without an adequate

analytic terminology, however, and a conceptual framework linked to central
place theory allowing for comparisons, the study of Indonesian Sufism seems
doomed to remain locked in fragmentary descriptions and often fruitless de-
bates about syncretism. Metaphors such as ‘networks’ are inadequate to de-
scribe the complex organizational logistics of Indonesian Sufi regional cults,
especially because these networks are not documented ethnographically in de-
tail and are sometimes said to consist of individuals, sometimes of groups or
(in rare cases) of lodges (pesantren). Without serious consideration of hierar-
chy and authority relations within each regional cult or order, one has no
sense of how such networks are constructed and maintained. Without serious
attention to ritual performances as indexical events, the management of cult
organization remains obscure, and no serious comparative analysis with South
Asia or the Middle East is possible. Above all, we know very little about the
kinds of sacred exchanges occurring at a central lodge—how are relations be-
tween saint and disciple or saint and khalifa embodied? What are the rituals
that connect distant places? We do, however, get a hint of the prevalence of
such sacred exchanges in accounts of the distribution of apem, sticky rice and
sacrificial meat.
It is evident that, like in Pakistan and North Africa, in Indonesia as well
Sufi centers rise and fall, wax and wane (see Dhofier 1980: 172, 235) as they
do elsewhere. But the literature on Sufism in Indonesia lacks serious attention
to the indexical dimensions of the annual saints’ ritual, the kaul or its equiva-
lent, which elsewhere, I have demonstrated, revitalizes the charisma of a saint
42 | PNINA WERBNER

and his dominion over an extensive catchment area, or wilayat. Too much at-
tention, it seems to me, is paid to the educational, scholarly and intellectual
dimensions of Indonesia Sufi cults, or the mapping in space of genealogical
connections or chains of authority in the case of Sufi orders. These may not
reflect actual organizational connections on the ground, but are often merely a
way of conceptualizing space through the use of genealogies descent, familiar
in the anthropological literature. In the case of Sufi genealogies, these trace
the links from Pakistan or Indonesia to Mecca, the sacred center of Islam. To
understand the charisma of a Sufi saint, and the cult he creates, sometimes
expanded by his descendants, the need is to study contemporary Sufi regional
cults or sub-orders, apart from the major global Sufi orders to which they rec-
ognize allegiance. The need, in other words, is to plot the actual relationships
between branches and their disciples, and how these are sustained and revital-
ized through periodic ritual performance. This is a central theme in the re-
gional cult theorization of Sufi orders.
In Trimingham’s view, the larger orders were never viable organizations;
their expansion took place, and continues to do so, via the ta’ifas. This was
true of the Suharwardiyya order which was never, he says, a unified order but
merely a “line of ascription from which derived hundreds of ta’ifas”
(Trimingham 1971: 179). He continues:

Similarly with the Qadiriyya; the descendant of Abd al-Qadir in Baghdad is not rec-
ognized as their superior by an Arab Qadiri ta’ifa. Even the nineteenth-century Ti-
janiyya, as it expanded, has tended to lose its centralized authority. The shaikh of the
central Darqawi zawiya has no control over the many offshoots (ibid.).

Only very small, parochial orders are coherent, he says, maintained by tours
undertaken by the shaikh and his emissaries (ibid.).
Although lodges often imitate royal courts, the Weberian tension between
bureaucratic or temporal authority and charismatic authority still holds true
for autonomous Sufi lodges in South Asia.9 Moreover, the capitalist, com-
modity economy is converted at a saint’s lodge into a good-faith, moral econ-
omy through altruistic giving to the communal langar, a form of perpetual
sacrifice10. Even more generally, the site of the saint’s lodge is set apart as a
space of voluntarism, expressive amity, and emotional good will, of sukun,
tranquility and harmony. The bureaucratic state and its politicians, by con-
trast, are seen as menacing, corrupt, greedy and unfeeling. They are not truly
‘rational’ in the Weberian sense since they bend the rules to their selfish in-

9 For a discussion of Weber’s notion of charisma, see Eisenstadt (1968), and for
the debate as to whether charisma is located at the center or periphery, see
Turner (1974); Shils (1965) and Geertz (1983).
10 On this see Werbner (2003).
 SUFI REGIONAL CULTS IN SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA | 43

terests; but they use the instruments of patriarchal domination to achieve their
goals. Theirs is a charisma of unbridled power. By contrast the saint’s cha-
risma—and his achievement of subjective autonomy and freedom—is the
product of his perceived (and projected) self-denial and self-mastery, of love
and generosity.
But at the same time, as regional cult theory proposes, social structure is
not effaced in Sufi regional cults, just as the mundane realities of politics,
economics and social ranking cannot be made to disappear; instead, these
structural and ordering elements are incorporated in new combinations, and
negotiated in practice. Experientially, nevertheless, the lodges of Sufi saints
are for supplicants and pilgrims a fleeting sanctuary from the ‘real’ world, a
place of self-discovery and self-fashioning. A comparative analysis between
Sufi cults in widely separated localities, using the range of analytic tools out-
lined in this chapter, enables us to begin to explore these complex interrela-
tionships between power, authority, economics and religious experience in the
contemporary world.

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented at the conference on “Cultures, Nations, Identi-
ties and Migrations”, 15-16 April 2004. I would like to thank participants at
the conference and particularly Kathy Robinson for their insightful comments.
In writing the paper, I benefited from a three-week fellowship at the Humani-
ties Research Center, ANU, which enabled me to read some of the theses
lodged in the ANU library. I have also benefited from the incisive and ex-
tremely helpful comments of the two editors of this volume, Samuli Schielke
and Georg Stauth, I am grateful to them for compelling me to clarify my ar-
gument.

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Chapter 2

(Re)Imagining Space:
Dreams and Saint Shrines in Egypt*
Amira Mittermaier

In 1867, when Khedive Ismail Pasha of Egypt traveled to France to visit the
Exposition Universelle, Baron Haussmann personally received him and
showed him the ‘new Paris’. Inspired by his visit to the ‘capital of modernity’
(Harvey 2006), the Khedive appointed the French-educated minister Ali
Mubarak to rebuild Cairo with open spaces and straight streets that would re-
flect and further the city’s orderliness and social propriety. 1 The ensuing
process of reordering which resulted in the construction of legible and easily-
surveillable spaces has been read by Timothy Mitchell (1988) as an effect of
modernity’s colonizing and disciplinary power. 2 It aimed to impose onto
Egypt not only a new ‘modern’ cityscape but also “a new conception of space,
new forms of personhood, and a new means of manufacturing the experience
of the real” (ibid.: ix). This paper is about two spaces that seem to run counter
to this new conception of space and reality: the dream and the saint shrine.3

* I thank Alejandra Gonzalez-Jimenez, Jess Bier, Nadia Fadil, and the editors of
the Yearbook, Georg Stauth and Samuli Schielke, for their helpful remarks on
earlier drafts of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge financial support from
the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthro-
pological Research, and the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia
University.
1 During their occupation the French had already built long, ruler-straight streets
for military purposes, but for the most part the disciplinary order of modernity
was imposed onto Cairo’s city space by Muhammad Ali’s grandson, Ismail Pa-
sha, who was the Khedive of Egypt from 1863 to 1879. For details on Cairo’s
restructuring see Ali Mubarak’s (1980) al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al-Jadida and
Janet Abu-Lughod’s (1971) Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious.
2 This is not to say that re-orderings of space have colonizing effects only in mod-
ernity. Gwendolyn Wright (1991) suggests parallels between colonial urban de-
signs for Greek settlers in Turkey in the seventh century BC, Spanish conquista-
dors in Latin America in the sixteenth century, and more recent French, British,
and Dutch colonial settlements. Michel Foucault (1984: 239), on the other hand,
claims that a concern with the architectural requirements for the maintenance of
order was heightened in eighteenth century Europe.
3 My fieldwork in Cairo in 2003 and 2004 was primarily concerned with dis-
courses and practices surrounding dreams and visions, but for reasons that
should be apparent from this paper, I also spent much time at saint shrines. A
48 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

Through considering the interplay between these two spaces, my discussion

invites a re-imagining of space itself. Both the saint shrine and the dream di-
verge from the modern order that had so impressed the Khedive during his
visit to Paris. Shrines break the order of straight lines and empty Cartesian
space, and dreams open up possibilities of travel and interlocution that are
foreclosed by the spatial and temporal restrictions of waking life. While both
of these spaces seemingly subvert the order of modernity, I want to challenge
materialist readings which view dreams as a form of false consciousness or
which prioritize saint shrines as sites of resistance. Instead I suggest that un-
derstandings of saint shrines are incomplete unless they are conceptualized
within a space which includes both the material and the imaginary. Impor-
tantly, ‘imaginary’ here does not equal ‘unreal.’ In the context of this paper
the imagination is not the same as fantasy; it is both a mode of perception and
an order of reality.4 Attention to this kind of imagination, I suggest, can lead
to a more nuanced view of religious everyday life in modern Egypt as it opens
up spaces for understanding that move beyond dichotomies. Dreams and
saints often inhabit an in-between-ness and direct our attention to interplays
and ambiguities, thereby disrupting the antagonisms that pervade both liberal
secularist and Salafi-oriented Muslim reformist discourses.
As in other places, the modernizing project had grand ambitions in Egypt,
yet in practice its outcome was ambiguous and fragmentary. Alternative orders
were not erased or replaced, but they were remade, reframed, and labeled as
‘traditional.’ The traditional/modern dichotomy is one particular outcome (and
justification) of the modernizing project, and this dichotomy is today also mir-
rored in Cairo’s cityscape. Whereas Haussmann had razed entire districts of
Paris, Khedive Ismail Pasha decided to build a new city just west of the old
Cairo. As in other colonial settings, two cities thus emerged side by side as ar-
chitecturally and socially distinct entities: a New City that was planned on a
drawing board, and an organically grown Old City.5 Ali Mubarak’s plans to
also equip the Old City with open spaces and wide streets failed for the most
part and, in addition to its winding alleys, Old Cairo kept most of its mosques
and saint shrines. Supposedly, today there are more than 900 saint shrines in

note on translation: Rendering awliya’ (literally the ‘friends of God’ or ‘those

close to God’) as saints is problematic because of the Christian connotations at-
tached to the latter term. Nevertheless, for the sake of readability, I use the term
‘saints’ throughout this paper to refer to the awliya’.
4 This model of the imagination is central to some Sufi cosmologies. See, e.g.,
Akkach (1997) and Corbin (1997) on Ibn al-‘Arabi and the imagination, and
Aaron (2002) and Moosa (2005) on al-Ghazali. Remnants and reformulations of
this model play into contemporary dream-discourses in Egypt.
5 See Janet Abu-Lughod’s article “Tale of Two Cities” (1965). See also Brinkley
Messick (1993), especially chapter 12 “Spiral Texts”, and Bourdieu (1977).
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 49

Cairo alone. 6 Besides the locally-known saints, famous members of the

Prophet’s family (ahl al-bayt) such as Imam al-Husayn, Sayyida Zaynab, Sayy-
ida Nafisa, and Sayyida ‘A’isha, are buried and revered in Egypt’s capital.
While the shrines generally are located outside of Cairo’s modernized and more
upper-class neighborhoods, they at times come face to face with urban plan-
ners’ aspirations to ease the flow of traffic. Stories circulate in Egypt which de-
scribe how shrines (and their saints) literally deflected the order of modernity
by refusing to give in to the demands of maximally functional city-plans. When
shrines are to be moved or destroyed, shovels, pick axes, and other demolition
tools break; workers suddenly get sick. Other stories describe how tombs were
opened and a pleasant smell emanated from the saint’s body which convinced
the workers to leave the saint in his or her place. Shrines run counter to the
checkerboard order of modernity not only because they refuse to be moved
from their place, but also because they represent a non-linear spatial order. The
closer one is to the shrine, the more one becomes immersed in its spiritual
force, its baraka. Inside the shrines this spiritual power is most concentrated in
the saint’s tomb itself, so that visitors walk around or touch its enclosure
(maqsura) to absorb some of its baraka. While also modern urban orders fre-
quently have centers, as they are constructed around central squares, boule-
vards, government buildings, and shopping areas, the baraka of shrines is more
inclusive and does not have the same degree of functional differentiation. Its
high concentration inside the shrines extends into their surroundings in concen-
tric and sometimes overlapping circles yet loses its force the further one gets
away from the shrine.
Because of their baraka saint shrines also upset the order of modernity by
attracting numerous visitors who come from nearby neighborhoods or from
far away, and whose crowding convergence in the saintly spaces spoils the
city’s self-image as a modern metropolis. Whereas early hadith literatures as
well as the fourteenth century Hanbalite scholar Ibn Taymiyya long ago con-
demned the practice of visiting saint shrines (ziyara), modernists and nation-
alists brought a new urgency to this critique since the turn of the twentieth
century.7 In spite of this critique, the shrines are continuously and devoutly
visited. They are believed to be places where one’s prayers get answered and
where one can receive help or guidance. At shrines one meets not only peasant

6 This number was given to me by an employee at the Higher Council of Sufi Af-
fairs in 2003.
7 See Samuli Schielke (2004) on mulid. On the Egyptian state’s concern with ‘su-
perstitions’ and ‘excessive’ Sufism more generally, see de Jong (1999) and
Johansen (1995). What is ‘superstition’ and what orthodox Islam is of course
always up for debate. Some reformist Muslims in Egypt acknowledge the pro-
phetic potential of dream-visions but consider the visitation of shrines forbid-
den; others visit shrines but deem all dreams dangerously unreliable.
50 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

and working class Egyptians but also bankers, university professors, politi-
cians, high school students, military officials and intellectuals. Believers treat
the dead saints as real interlocutors and at times even address letters to them.8
The fact that saints have postal addresses nicely illustrates the ways in which
spiritual space spills over into material space. The focus of this paper is pre-
cisely this interplay between material and non-material spaces.
I propose that the space of the shrine can best be understood by also con-
sidering the imaginary geographies in which it partakes, and more specifically
through its relation to dream-space. When conceptualizing dreams as space,
one should remember that, as Lefebvre (1991: 3) has pointed out, “we are for-
ever hearing about the space of this and/or the space of that: about literary
space, ideological space, the space of the dream, psychoanalytic topologies,
and so on and so forth”, while it is rarely explained what ‘space’ is supposed
to mean in these contexts. Space, as I use the term here, is not only produced
through visible social and material relations but it is a broader realm that is
socially or metaphysically imbued with meaning and power. Dreams can be
thought of as space because dreamers move in and through dreams. Through
dreams, furthermore, the dreamer’s spirit can travel into the barzakh, a realm
located between the human and the Divine, in which the spirits of the living
and the dead meet. The dream thus offers a space for encounters. Dream-
space is a socially meaningful space that interacts with, but cannot be reduced
to, the material. To understand the dream spatially we might also turn to Fou-
cault, who in one of his earliest writings, criticizes Freud for psychologizing
the dream and argues that “the privilege [the dream] thus acquired in the
realm of psychology deprived it of any privilege as a specific form of experi-
ence” (1993: 43). The dream, Foucault suggests, should be understood not as
a mere ‘rhapsody of images’ but as a mode of being in the world. He argues
that particular attention should be paid to the spatial dimensions of the dream
experience since “much has been said about the temporal pulsations of the
dream, its particular rhythms, the contradictions or paradoxes of its dura-
tion. Much less about dream space” (ibid. 60).
Dream-spaces, however, are not universal. They are shaped by historical
contexts and beliefs concerning the nature of dreams. Yet, a study of dream-
spaces poses an obvious methodological problem, as someone else’s dreams
can never be empirically verified. My interlocutors in Egypt sometimes
pointed out to me that the Islamic tradition itself addresses this problematic
relationship between dream-experience and dream-telling. A hadith warns
that whoever lies about dreams will be gravely punished in the Hereafter as
“the worst lie is that a person claims to have had a dream which he has not

8 The Egyptian sociologist Sayyid ‘Uways (1965) studied a set of letters ad-
dressed to Imam al-Shafi‘i in the 1960s. For a discussion of a more recent set of
letters addressed to the same saint see Aymé Lebon (1997).
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 51

had”.9 Within the Islamic tradition of dream interpretation, furthermore, not

all dreams are considered to be reliable and trustworthy. The tradition rather
distinguishes between three kinds of dreams: dreams that are sent by the Devil
or evil spirits; dreams mirroring the dreamers’ wishes and worries; and
dream-visions which the Prophet Muhammad defined as one of the forty-six
parts of prophecy.10 Telling dream-visions is an established mode of argumen-
tation in Egypt, and dream-stories can consciously be told to establish author-
ity. Far from wanting to embark onto the impossible endeavor of verifying or
disproving particular dream-stories, I want to draw attention to the kinds of
questions about space and conceptions of the real that such stories open up.
All of the dreams that I recount were presented to me as truthful dream-
visions (ru’a, sing. ru’ya). Not only are they taken to be prophetic but they
also partake in a larger metaphysical geography. Dream-visions radically di-
verge from a psychological premise, reminding us that, as Vincent Crapan-
zano (1992: 142) has noted,

Much of what we in the West call psychological and locate in some sort of internal
space (‘in the head’, ‘in the mind’, ‘in the brain’, ‘in consciousness’, ‘in the psy-
che’) is understood in many cultures in manifestly nonpsychological terms and lo-
cated in other ‘spaces’.

These other spaces, according to Islamic models of the imagination (al-

khayal), are not loci inside the human consciousness, but they belong to an
actual realm located between spirit and matter, between being and not-being,
between the Divine and the human. Besides originating in this realm of in-
between-ness, dream-visions are spaces of social relations that enable imagi-
nary journeys which, in turn, often lead to saint shrines. Dream-visions are
more than just reflections of the subconscious; they are a reality with potential
material consequences.
This paper, in short, explores three geographies that intersect in contem-
porary Egypt: the order of modernity with its rectangular angles and straight
lines; the order of the saint shrines from which concentric circles of baraka
emanate; and the order of the dream-vision which seems to disregard spatial
constraints altogether. Adopting Lefebvre’s notion that neither imaginary nor
material spaces can be understood in isolation, I examine how dream spaces
spill over into, and are shaped by, material spaces and concrete spatial prac-

9 Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 87, nos. 165, 167.

10 In Arabic the three kinds of dreams are referred to as hulm, hadith nafsi, and
ru’ya respectively. The prophetic nature of dream-visions is affirmed by sound
hadiths. See, e.g., Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 87, nos. 116, 119. On the history
of Islamic dream interpretation see, e.g., Lamoreaux (2002), Fahd (1966), Kin-
berg (1994), and Schimmel (1998).
52 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

tices. As will be shown, dreams find their materialization in visits to shrines

and sometimes even in the building of shrines, whereas shrines (and saints)
are materialized through dreams. My argument expands Lefebvre’s notion of
the production of space by incorporating a recognition of the fact that both the
social and the material aspects of that production may take place in the imagi-
nary realm, and thus that the imaginary realm is itself not entirely divorced
from either the social or the material.
If we take seriously the interpenetration of the imaginary and the material,
then we are also prevented from projecting counter-hegemonic ideologies
onto the shrine. Precisely because saint shrines are spaces that counter the
state-promoted order of modernity, reformist sensibilities, and patriarchic
power relations, they have frequently been prioritized as sites of resistance.
Fatima Mernissi refers to them as ‘antiorthodox, antiestablishment’ (1977:
105) spaces, and Michael Gilsenan (2000), in an article on the dreams of
Egyptian peasant women, speaks of the ‘disordering power’ of dreams that
invite women to visit the saint shrines whose powers are already ‘resistant to
worldly authorities’. Dreams in this view subversively invite believers to al-
ready-subversive spaces. Also, Marcia Hermansen suggests in an article on
‘Dreams and Dreaming in Islam’ that contemporary Muslim women can be
empowered through dreaming because,

while women’s dreams of saints commanding them to attend shrines are disparaged
by scripturalist male religious authorities, such dreams allow the women to penetrate
more public social spaces (2001: 84).

Attention to the imagination problematizes this public/private divide. Dreams

do not only inspire believers to enter into the public sphere of mosques and
shrines, but at times also enable believers to participate in religious realms that
they might on a visible level not partake in.11 Still, the act of visiting the shrines
can easily be read as a subversive act. Dream-stories and dream-inspired visita-
tions establish competing forms of order that relativise the seeming evidence
that is needed to make the scholars’ authority and the modern order seem ob-
jective and natural. Nevertheless, I suggest that from the dreamer’s point of
view such dream-stories are not subversive. When visiting a shrine in response
to a visitational dream, the dreamer does not answer (or refuse to answer) to the
state, to worldly authorities, to the law, or to scripturalist male religious au-
thorities, but she responds to the saint (and the dream). Dream-stories, if taken
seriously, thus invite us to think beyond a frame of resistance.12 While dream-

11 Additionally, one might question whether shrines are best conceptualized as

solely public spaces.
12 My argument here is in part inspired by Lila Abu-Lughod (1990) who has
turned a critical eye to the romantization of resistance, and by Saba Mahmood
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 53

visions constitute links between dreamers and saints that evade state control,
the laws of rationality, and modernity’s spatial order, the interactions surround-
ing saint shrines for the believers themselves are not primarily subversive acts
against state control or the orthodoxy. Dream-visions partake in larger meta-
physical spatialities and logics of exchange. Dream-stories therefore do not so
much resist the hegemonic order of modernity but rather create an alternative,
but not purposively contrary, space within it.
Let me then turn to some concrete examples to illustrate the multiple
spaces inhabited by believers. Drawing on conversations with, and stories told
by, Egyptian interlocutors, the remainder of this paper describes four ways in
which shrines and dream-visions are interrelated in contemporary Egypt: a)
dreams move shrines in terms of their location; b) dreams move dreamers to
visit shrines; c) dreams transport dreamers to shrines; and d) shrines shape
dreams. Through tracing these multiple interplays, I aim to expand our under-
standing of both imaginary and material spaces.

Dreams Moving Shrines: Mashhad Ru’ya

We might first consider why shrines are built where they are. The most appar-
ent answer is that the saint either died or was buried in that specific location.
But there is another, less obvious possibility: some shrines are built as a result
of dreams. The belief that deceased saints can announce by way of dream-
visions where they want to be (re)buried, is evident, for instance, in the follow-
ing story recounted by a middle-aged Egyptian woman who frequently visits
Cairo’s saint shrines:

Sidi Gharib—may God be content with him—was from Morocco. His name was
‘Abdullah, and he was called Gharib [‘stranger’] because he was fighting in the city
of Suez and defending it. They say that, after he lost his leg in battle, he took the leg
in his hand and used it as a sword. He was [buried] somewhere—we don’t know
where exactly—until he came in a dream [lit. in the sleep (ga fi-l-manam)] to Sheikh
Hafiz, who was a good man, and asked him to take him out from where he was bur-
ied and to put him into a shrine. They tried to find his [initial] grave, but they
couldn’t find it, and then he came again to [Sheikh Hafiz]. He went back and dug
deeper and found the body wrapped in white cloth with the leg next to it. The body
was still intact, and a pure beautiful smell was emanating from it. The saints don’t
get eaten by worms. He took the body out and washed it and put it into a shrine as he

(2005) who points out that the very emphasis on resistance presupposes and re-
inscribes liberalist teleologies and concepts of agency.
54 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

had been told. Sidi Gharib now is buried in the mosque of the city of Suez, and they
call the mosque ‘Gharib’.13

Appearing twice by way of a dream-vision, Sidi Gharib insisted on being bur-

ied in a particular place, and he finally was. The dreamer, in this case a ‘good
man’ and quite generally in such stories a famous person, saint or government
official, is bound to execute the saint’s request. Abu Hasan al-Shadhili’s
shrine is said to have been erected after he appeared to President Gamal ‘Abd
al-Nasser in a vision and requested for his tomb to be built at that specific lo-
cation. One religious student who had always prayed in al-Sayyid Badawi’s
mosque in Tanta, supposedly appeared after his death to President Anwar al-
Sadat and asked to be buried inside his favorite mosque. Sheikh Mutwalli
Sha‘rawi, a highly popular religious figure who died in 1998, appeared to
President Mubarak who then initiated the building of the sheikh’s shrine in
Daqadus in the Nile Delta. I heard such stories from a number of Egyptians
who frequent saints’ tombs. Although the three Egyptian presidents, ‘Abd al-
Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, are generally not thought of as very religious fig-
ures, these rumors illustrate the extent to which certain dreams are taken to be
morally binding. Whether pious or not, the dreamer has to follow the dream-
vision because instructions delivered in dreams are ‘extremely clear’, as a
young woman explained to me—so clear that even the Egyptian presidents
would not dare ignore them.14
In the stories above, the result of a fulfilled dream request is the building
of a shrine in which the saint is then buried. Other times saints do not specify
their burial place, but instead request a shrine which is merely a vision-site, re-
ferred to as mashhad ru’ya in Arabic. The term mashhad is the place-noun of
the verb shahida (to witness, to be present). While according to Edward Wil-
liam Lane (1980: 1611) the term refers to a ‘place where a martyr had died or
is buried’, in the case of a vision-site the term exceeds this body-bound mean-
ing. Rather, as a young Egyptian man explained to me, the saint’s spirit tires
of drifting around the barzakh and longs to be anchored in a concrete site. The
saint therefore appears in a dream to request a shrine. Outwardly vision-sites
resemble other saint shrines: they contain a sarcophagus that is covered with a

13 The dream-stories in this paper were collected during my fieldwork in 2003 and
2004. All translations are mine.
14 I am grateful to Samuli Schielke for pointing out to me that a conflicting dream-
story circulates with regards to Sheikh Mutwalli Sha‘rawi’s shrine. Supposedly,
the deceased sheikh appeared in a dream to his son Hagg ‘Abd al-Rahim who
oversaw the construction of the shrine and the organization of the mulid and
heavily lamented him, telling him that he had done wrong by building a shrine
for his father and organizing a mulid. Such contradictions are not atypical of
Egypt’s discursive dream-landscapes but a more encompassing discussion of the
underlying politics of dreaming in Egypt would exceed the scope of this paper.
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 55

black cloth; visitors circumambulate the shrine, speaking prayers and supplica-
tions (du‘a) to the saint; an annual saint’s day celebration (mulid) is held at
the shrine. But unlike other saint shrines, vision-sites are empty; they do not
host the saint’s body.
Sayyida Zaynab and Imam al-Husayn each have a number of shrines in
Egypt which are dedicated to them; many of these do not lay claim to the
presence of their bodies. A famous vision-site in Cairo is also that of Sayyida
Ruqayya.15 While one tradition claims that Sayyida Ruqayya came to Egypt
together with her half-sister Sayyida Zaynab, it is generally held that she died
and is buried in Damascus. Her shrine in Cairo was built between 1133 and
1153 CE after she had requested it by appearing to the Fatimid ruler al-Hafiz
‘Abd al-Magid in a dream. According to Caroline Williams (1985: 44),

that a shrine should have been built for [Sayyida Ruqayya] in Cairo in response to a
dream or a vision was not so extraordinary at the time. Supernatural interventions
were not uncommon motives for the religious constructions of Islam.

Williams adds that in the twelfth century, and especially in the reign of al-
Hafiz, the founding of saint tombs was commonly justified by visions or the
miraculous discovery of relics.
A number of historians have remarked upon the phenomenon of vision-
sites. In his study of the tomb-centered cult of saints in Egypt between 1200
and 1500 CE, Christopher S. Taylor (1999: 32) notes that large and impres-
sive buildings were erected on the instructions of the saintly dead, as told in
dreams, usually without any further corroborating evidence. Rudolf Kriss and
Hubert Kriss-Heinrich (1960: 11) confirm that there are many shrines with
empty tombs in the Muslim world, and Edward William Lane (1973: 236) ob-
serves that “most of the sanctuaries of saints in Egypt are tombs; but there are
several which only contain some inconsiderable relic of the person to whom
they are dedicated; and there are a few which are mere cenotaphs”. Providing
a somewhat functionalist interpretation, the Egyptian historian Su‘ad Mu-
hammad Mahir (1971: 102f.) links the proliferation of vision-sites to medieval
times of hardship and war when believers sought refuge in the Prophet’s fam-
ily and needed more places where they could receive baraka and speak suppli-
cations. Also Ignaz Goldziher (1971), in his article on saint veneration in
Egypt, points to the existence of numerous Doppelgänger shrines and argues
that authenticity seems to have been of little concern to ordinary believers. In
using the term ‘authenticity’, Goldziher seems to imply a truthful origin, i.e., a

15 It is generally believed that Sayyida Ruqayya was the daughter of Imam ‘Ali,
the fourth caliph and the Prophet’s son-in-law, but not Fatima’s daughter. Other
vision-sites in Cairo include the shrines of Muhammad al-Anwar, Muhammad
al-Ga‘fari, Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, and supposedly Sayyida Sukaina.
56 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

body that goes with the shrine. He overlooks the possibility that ‘ordinary be-
lievers’ might also be concerned with authenticity but that in their eyes a
dream-vision might replace the body’s role in authenticating a shrine’s loca-
tion.
This is not to deny that questions of authenticity and orthodoxy are
charged political issues in Egypt today. The leading sheikh of the Higher
Council of Sufi Affairs, a state institution first established in 1903, was dis-
missive when I asked him about the phenomenon of vision-sites. He brushed
aside the concept with the argument that one can never be sure if the person
claiming to have dreamt of a saint is not lying. Such skepticism towards the
world of dreams sometimes also manifests itself in a particular kind of mate-
rialism which mirrors Goldziher’s notion of authenticity as well as the ‘new
means of manufacturing the experience of the real’ described by Timothy
Mitchell. When I suggested to the guardians of Sayyida Sukaina’s and Sayy-
ida Ruqayya’s shrines in Cairo that the shrines might have been built in their
particular locations because of dreams, both told me I was wrong and insisted
that the two saints are in fact buried in their respective tombs. The shrine here
has become a signifier that necessarily indicates a buried body as its signi-
fied. The concept of a vision-site does not sit easily with such materialist
conceptions of authenticity. A vision-site is seemingly an empty signifier, a
token of the imagination. Yet the fact that accounts such as the one about
Sidi Gharib circulate among contemporary believers suggests that for them
dream-visions are not divorced from the material realm. Dream-visions in
such stories figure as a medium of communication, and they inspire actions.
As the next section shows, at times they move not only shrines but also
dreamers.

Dreams Moving Dreamers: Gifts and Countergifts

Al-Hagga Nura is a pious woman in her seventies who lives in Medinat Nas-
ser, a Cairo suburb, but who rarely leaves her house. One night in July 2004
al-Hagga Nura dreamt that she entered her kitchen and found the sink filled
with cooked beans (ful). She knew what this meant and the following day she
asked her daughter to come over. The latter, in turn, brought me along and the
three of us spent hours in al-Hagga Nura’s kitchen preparing little plastic bags
with cooked beans, sprinkling salt and cumin onto them, wrapping each bag
in a leaf of pita bread, and stacking the finished meals in large shopping bags.
After completing the preparations, we took a taxi to Sayyida Zaynab’s shrine,
which sits in the center of Cairo. It is one of the city’s most popular shrines.16

16 Sayyida Zaynab is the daughter of Imam ‘Ali and Fatima, and the granddaughter
of the Prophet Muhammad.
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 57

We entered the women’s section, forced our way through the crowd, and be-
gan handing out the little bags and bread at random to women sitting on the
floor. Someone watching us might have assumed that we were fulfilling the
religious obligation to give to the poor, but, whether they knew it or not, the
gift that the women in the shrine were receiving was the enactment of an or-
der that had been given in the form of a dream-vision. Al-Hagga Nura had
dreamt a dream that requested its own enactment. Her dream-vision had not
been of a symbolic nature, but, as both al-Hagga Nura and her daughter in-
sisted, she had dreamt of ‘these beans’.
While al-Hagga Nura explained to me that the beans could be distributed
at another shrine as well, some of the women who received our gift that day
might have themselves been summoned to Sayyida Zaynab’s shrine by a
dream. As Nadia Abu Zahra (1997) notes in her ethnography of the shrine, al-
Sayyida Zaynab often urges women in dreams to visit her, to eat the food dis-
tributed at her shrine, and to keep the vows made to her. During my fieldwork
I found as well that people visit shrines for a variety of reasons. Some visit the
saints when they are about to get married, when they are sick, before they take
an exam, or when they have specific worries and want the saint to intercede
on their behalf (tawassul). Upper class or Salafi-influenced visitors to the
shrines, by contrast, at times were careful to explain to me that they had not
come to pray to the saints or to ask them for help, but that they visit out of re-
spect for the saints’ exemplarily pious lives. Other visitors in shrines told me
that they had come neither to make a request nor to pay their respect but that
they had seen the saint in a dream. Dreams, in which a saint visits the
dreamer, are considered a special blessing, and stories of such dreams are of-
ten introduced with the phrase “I was honored by the vision of ...” (tasharraft
bi-ru’yat ...). Being a gift, such dreams demand a countergift. As Smith and
Haddad (1981: 190) have noted for a historical-textual context, the “interac-
tion of believers and walis [saints] is a complex process involving expectation
of reward, fear of reprisal for neglect and a highly structured set of particular
responsibilities”.
When a saint visits a believer by way of a dream, the latter is subse-
quently expected to visit the saint in his or her shrine. Al-Hagga Nura’s ex-
ample shows that even without a saint appearing in person, a dream can incite
a visit to the shrines. What is observable at the shrines might thus in many
cases be inspired by non-observable interchanges, spaces and relationships.
Such imaginary interactions are not divorced from the material but rather ex-
pand its space. Next I turn to an alternative interpretation of dreams in which
a saint appears. Sometimes such a dream does not necessitate a visit to the
saint’s shrine but rather substitutes for it.
58 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

Dreams Leading to Shrines: Night Journeys

‘Why walk?’ William S. Burroughs asks in his dream book. He continues: “I

jump off the iron balcony and swim through the air uptown” (1995: 17). It
might be universally true that dreams open up possibilities for movement
which are foreclosed to us during our waking life. But such nightly journeys
are told, interpreted, valued, and devalued in historically particular ways. Ac-
cording to many of my Egyptian interlocutors, certain dreams can take the
dreamers on actual journeys. Within the Islamic tradition an archetypical
journey that renders meaningful the believers’ own spiritual travels is the
Prophet’s famous Night Journey (al-isra wa-l-miraj). According to the com-
pendia of the tradition, the Prophet Muhammad was asleep one night near the
Kaaba in Mecca when he was wakened by the angel Gabriel. Riding on the
back of the mythical two-winged horse Buraq, the Prophet and Gabriel flew
from Mecca to Jerusalem where they met Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other
prophets, and from Jerusalem the journey continued vertically towards the
Throne of God. The Prophet passed through all seven heavens and, according
to the Qur’an, came ‘but two bow-lengths away’ from God’s presence ‘or
even nearer’.17 His bed, it is said, was still warm upon his return to Mecca.
Both space and time seem to have been miraculously compressed during this
journey. The journey’s precise nature, however, is the object of disagreement
among Muslim theologians as well as contemporary Egyptians. Whereas ac-
cording to some the journey was performed both spiritually and physically (as
it otherwise would not have been a miracle),18 others, among them Ibn Baz,
the former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, have asserted that it was only a
dream. Those adhering to the latter opinion draw on a tradition from ‘A’isha,
the Prophet’s wife, who attested that ‘the apostle’s body remained where it
was but God removed his spirit by night’.19
Besides telling me about the Night Journey, my interlocutors in Egypt
frequently referred to a Qur’anic verse that reads: ‘God takes the souls of
those who die, and of those who do not die, in their sleep; then He keeps those
ordained for death, and sends the others back’.20 Based on this verse my inter-

17 Qur’an 53:8. All translations from the Qu’ran are Muhammad Asad’s.
18 According to miracle narrations in the textual tradition, also living saints some-
times have the ability to appear in two places at once (Gramlich 1987).
19 This hadith is quoted in Ibn Ishaq’s biography of the Prophet (Ibn Ishaq 2003:
83).
20 Qur’an 39:42. The Arabic term in this verse is nafs (self) and not ruh (spirit) but
most Egyptians I spoke to understood the verse to refer to the spirit. The ruh, of
which we know very little according to the Qur’an (17:85), is of divine origin
and was passed on to humankind when God breathed His spirit into Adam. Ac-
cording to Egyptian sheikhs and laypeople, the ruh is eternal, has no boundaries,
and can detach itself from the body during times of sleep.
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 59

locutors suggested that also ordinary dreamers’ spirits can travel freely while
the body is sleeping. According to this understanding, dream-visions take
place in a realm which circumvents the conventional restrictions of time and
physical space. Whereas Freud (1955: 647) famously called dream interpreta-
tion a royal road into the unconscious, for others dreams are themselves roads
on which they can travel elsewhere at night. While sound asleep on one’s bed
in Cairo, one might be circumambulating the Kaaba in Mecca or visiting al-
Shadhili’s shrine in the south of Egypt.21 Consider the following dream story
told to me by Sharifa, a young upper class woman from Cairo:

One night I was sitting in my room and a person appeared. I didn’t see his face. He
was wearing a white gallabiyya.22 I saw myself leaving myself; I saw myself with
my hair and my body, just like me. I turned and waved bye-bye to myself. Then the
person took me to the balcony, and then I was on the street. I don’t know how I got
from the balcony to the street. I got into my car with him and drove. I don’t know
where I went, but I found myself in front of a sign saying “The Red Sea”. Then
there were mountains and people sacrificing animals. There was a big sheikh. We
went a few kilometers further, and there was a smaller sheikh. Then we drove back
home. I left the car, went back upstairs, and I fell onto myself, like a light blanket—
not like a heavy woolen blanket, but something very light. I told Sidi this whole
story. I didn’t know at all what it was. Never in my life had I known that there are
sheikhs at the Red Sea, and I had never even been there.

Sidi is the sheikh of a mystical order to which Sharifa belongs. When she told
the sheikh about her dream, he explained that her spirit (ruh) had gone to visit
Abu Hasan al-Shadhili in Egypt’s southern desert, as well as a less famous
sheikh buried on the Red Sea coast not too far from al-Shadhili’s shrine. The
woman had never been to the Red Sea, and it remains ambiguous whether she
had actually gone there by way of the vision. Like the Prophet’s body during
his Night Journey (according to some), her body stayed behind and only her
spirit traveled. She speaks of two selves, one waving goodbye to the other,
and it seems that she was simultaneously on her bed and at the saint’s shrine.
According to Sharifa’s sheikh, the spirit is not bound by the laws of physical-
ity; it can travel much faster than the body. As the spirit has its own eyes to
see and ears to hear, its realm of experience is much wider than that of the
body.
As in the previous examples, geographical location in this story is not
rendered irrelevant. Sharifa visits two particular shrines, one of which is

21 Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Shadhili (d. 1258 CE) was a saint from Morocco who even-
tually settled in Alexandria. He died in the south of Egypt while on his way to
Mecca.
22 A gallabiyya is a long dress shirt that is traditionally worn by Egyptian men and
women.
60 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

marked by an actual sign announcing a nearby geographical landmark (‘The

Red Sea’). Yet Sharifa’s mode of travel exceeds the observable. Also with re-
gards to the Prophet’s Night Journey, the question for believers is not whether
the Prophet truly went to Jerusalem and traveled towards God’s Throne, but
only in what form he did so. Significantly, Ibn Ishaq, the Prophet’s first biog-
rapher, commented that, “whether [the Prophet] was asleep or awake, it was
all true and actually happened” (2003: 183). Dream journeys here offer a fully
valid alternative to physical travels.

Shrines Shaping Dreams: Incubation

Whereas some dreams render geographical distances irrelevant, other dreams

are shaped by the dreamer’s proximity to the saint’s baraka. Dream-visions
seemingly overcome the dreamer but the act of seeing dream-visions can be
facilitated through the creation or utilization of spaces which are conducive to
dreaming. In addition to its impact upon everyday experiences and popular
consciousness (Bourdieu 1977), the construction of material space can thus
also affect imaginary dream experiences. Many of my interlocutors told me
that bodily practices and the place in which one sleeps can impact the nature
of one’s dreams. Following the Prophet’s tradition, one is more likely to have
truthful dream-visions if one sleeps in a state of purity and on one’s right side
with one’s right hand under one’s cheek. Dreams of the Prophet or the saints
can further consciously be invited through practices such as dhikr,23 by read-
ing specific formulas, or by sleeping in saint shrines. In Morocco in the
1970s, Vincent Crapanzano (1973: 174) observed that pilgrims often tried to
sleep in shrines of the Hamadsha saints in the hope that the saints would ap-
pear to them and give them instructions. As Elizabeth Sirriyeh (2000: 118)
notes, practices expected to result in dreams of the ‘holy dead’ have a long
history in Muslim societies. In contemporary Egypt, too, saint shrines are be-
lieved to be places where one is particularly likely to dream of the saints.
Classical orthodox scholars abhorred the practice of sleeping in shrines be-
cause of its affinity with the ancient practice of incubation and because of con-
cerns for ritual purity (Fahd 1978).24 Today sleeping in shrines is often prohib-
ited in line with a broader compartmentalization of social practices and the re-
organization of space brought about by modernity’s disciplinary power. The

23 Dhikr here refers to repetitive prayer that has the objective of always being
mindful of God. It is a central Sufi ritual for inner purification and divine bless-
ing. Many of my Sufi interlocutors spoke to me of the waking visions or dream-
visions they saw after having participated in collective dhikr sessions.
24 Incubation here refers to the practice of sleeping in sacred areas with the inten-
tion of experiencing a divinely inspired dream or cure. Incubation was famously
practiced by members of the Asclepius cult in ancient Greece.
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 61

dream’s place in the modern order is supposed to be the bedroom, the private
sphere, the unconscious; in Ian Hacking’s words the ‘holy site’ for dreams to-
day is the couch (2001: 256). Some of my interlocutors described a sudden
need for sleep that overcame them in shrines or the adjacent mosques and then
recalled the rude awakenings they faced (“Did you come here to sleep or to
pray?!”). Despite these interdictions, I heard a number of dream stories that
were framed by the dreamer’s locatedness in sacred spaces. Rasha, a middle-
aged housewife from Hurghada, remembered the following experience:

There is a sheikh in the direction of Shadhili. His name is Sheikh Malik. We go to

visit him every year and spend one or two nights there. The first time I went, I had
the following dream: I saw myself in the area in front of the tomb, and I saw a man.
He was kind of small, and he was riding on a rock, swinging his arms wildly in cir-
cles, like a madman. He was dark like the Nubians or the Sudanese. He seemed to be
retarded (mutakhallif). When I woke up, I told the people in charge of the shrine
about the dream. They said I had seen the sheikh. They recognized him immediately.
They said it means the sheikh is content with us.

After Rasha had finished telling her story, her husband added proudly that,
while they had gone to visit Sheikh Malik’s shrine as a big group, the person
who profited most from the visit was his wife. Without any prior knowledge
of what the saint looked like, and without knowing during the dream who the
madman was that she was seeing, a special bond was established through the
dream-vision. According to the underlying dream-model, prior knowledge of
the saint’s appearance was not necessary as it was not her conjuring up his
picture, but it was he who visited her. By spending the night enveloped in the
baraka of Sheikh Malik’s shrine, the woman had unknowingly facilitated the
dream and invited the saint’s visit. In this case the physical space of the shrine
facilitated an encounter occurring in dream-space.
Underneath the possibility of telling and making sense of such stories lies
a different conception of the real and its relationship to physical space. Al-
though her encounter with Sheikh Malik was not observed by others, for
Rasha, her husband and the shrine’s guardians, this does not mean that it did
not occur. In dream-visions the spirits of the dead and the living meet and
communicate. Thus, exchanges between saints and believers are not only re-
stricted to the waking world but they take place also in the imaginary realm.
As the previous example shows, in some cases visits to saint shrines occur by
way of the imagination alone. In Rasha’s case, by contrast, the imaginary en-
counter was itself impacted by her relationship to a specific material space.
By traveling to and spending the night in the shrine, Rasha was able to have a
dream-vision that she might not have seen if she had not gone on this trip. We
have thus come full circle from shrines being built as a result of dreams.
62 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

Whereas some shrines are built in their particular location because of dreams,
in Rasha’s case a dream was facilitated by the material space of a shrine. Just
as dreams move shrines, shrines shape dreams.

Conclusion

While talking about the restructuring of a Moroccan village, one of Stefania

Pandolfo’s informants told her that people in the new village “were so happy
to have SPACE! that they didn’t realize they were being S P A C E D away”
(1997: 64). One of the questions that motivated my fieldwork was whether
dreams have been spaced away as well in modern Egypt. At times it seemed,
indeed, that in the twenty-first century there was little room for dreams. A
seventy-six year old woman from Upper Egypt complained to me that she and
all the other inhabitants of her old village were made to move to a new village
when the local Phosphate factory shut down. In the new village everything has
changed: neighbors don’t ask about her anymore; people don’t care about each
other anymore. And while the woman often used to dream of the saints, the
Prophet, and al-Khidr in the old village, in the new village there are no more
dreams (mafish ahlam).25 If the right conditions are lacking and if spaces are
restructured, can one still see dream-visions? Particularly conducive places for
encounters with the saints, according to many of my interlocutors, are the
saint shrines themselves. Yet sleeping in shrines is often no longer permitted.
Has the disciplinary power of modernity left its mark not only on Egypt’s
physical landscapes but also on its dreamscapes? As spaces are reordered,
mapped, colonized, and compartmentalized, have the possibilities of experi-
encing dream-visions in these spaces also been altered? Have all dreams been
absorbed by the hegemonic order of modernity?
Offering concrete dream-stories as examples, I suggested in this paper that,
far from having been erased in modern Egypt, dream-spaces and saintly places
figure prominently in believers’ everyday lives. Over the course of my field-
work I came to realize that not only does a multiplicity of spaces for dreams
still exist, but also that dreams make necessary a re-imagining of space itself. I
accordingly proposed in this paper to think of the dream as a space that inter-
acts with the material space of the saint shrine. This leads to a conception of
space which includes both the imaginary and the material, rather than a simple
examination of the ways that each half of the dichotomy influences the other.
While dream-invitations at times inspire believers to go to mosques and

25 The term hilm (pl. ahlam) in colloquial Egyptian Arabic is sometimes used to en-
compass all three kinds of dreams, including dream-visions. Al-Khidr is an im-
mortal legendary-mythical figure, who usually appears in green and is associ-
ated with a Qur’anic story (18.60-82). He is described as a prophet, an angel or
human being and provides guidance to Sufis and travelers.
 (RE)IMAGINING SPACE | 63

shrines, believers can also have extensive conversations with Sayyida Nafisa or
Sayyida Zaynab without ever leaving their homes. Modernity’s disciplinary
power has reordered physical space and time, but the saints themselves rarely
keep to visiting hours, maps, and timetables when visiting believers in their
dreams. The visitational dream thus enables interlocutory possibilities that are
foreclosed by physical geographical distance, linear time, and the dividing line
that separates the living from the dead. Further, the dream-space parallels the
saint shrine in certain ways: Both spaces enable interlocutions and encounters
which are less likely to occur in a disenchanted waking world. Both diverge
from empty Cartesian abstract space as well as secularized notions of socially-
constructed space. To believers they are sacred spaces, and in them miraculous
things can happen. At the same time, as other dream-stories in this paper show,
social relations and material space can also have an impact on the imaginary
sphere. This is not to say that people have dream-visions because they expect to
have them or are conditioned to do so through social pressure or economical
hardship.26 Instead, I proposed to expand discussions of the available sphere of
social relations to the sacred to include the possibility of having personal rela-
tionships with (deceased) saints through the medium of the dream. Likewise,
the dream-space itself expands the physical space of the shrine because it al-
lows for people to travel within the dream.
Neither trivializing the material nor reducing everything to it will open up
a space for understanding the very interplay between the imaginary and the
material. By considering the imaginary as a space that is related to, but not
identical with, the social and the material, my goal was in part to complicate
straightforward accounts of the modernization of Egypt that allow only for
narratives of acceptance or resistance. The dream-spaces and saintly spaces
that I have described are neither fully modern nor wholly alternative, repre-
senting neither open resistance nor full accommodation. While the disruption
of binaries can itself be read as subversive, the framework of moder-
nity/resistance is inadequate to explain the spaces I have described, as my in-
terlocutors themselves do not necessarily conceptualize the shrines and
dreams in antagonistic terms. Instead of interpreting saint visitations either as
responses to a need for consolation or as acts of resistance, I suggest that we
need to take into consideration less easily-observable aspects of the relation-
ships between saints and believers. Interpreting observable religious practice
in functionalist terms is reductive as it fails to do justice to the fact that be-
lievers often operate within a broader spatial realm. Functionalist interpreta-
tions furthermore often miss the ‘saint’ in the loose triad of dreamer-saint-
shrine. Attention to dreams can thus widen our views both of religious prac-

26 Also within the Islamic tradition of dream interpretation the category of hadith
nafsi accounts for dreams that spring from the dreamer’s wishes and worries.
The focus of this paper, however, is on the dialogical nature of dream-visions.
64 | AMIRA MITTERMAIER

tice and of space. While never situated outside of modernity, dream-visions

are imaginary spaces that expand the order of modernity by effectively ruptur-
ing dichotomizations of inner/outer and imaginary/material through their op-
eration as part of a more inclusive conception of space.

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Chapter 3

Remixing Songs, Remaking MULIDS:

The Merging Spaces of Dance Music
and Saint Festivals in Egypt
Jennifer Peterson

Mulids1, annual festivals held to commemorate saints, temporarily transform

both the physical space and atmosphere of Egyptian urban neighborhoods and
villages. With the saint’s shrine at their center, public space is restructured to
delineate festive grounds, mark frames for ritual practice, and connote the
spiritual reach of the saint’s presence. The festive time and space of mulids
create a unique, ephemeral world, where the ‘religious’ and ‘profane’ inter-
sect in manifold ways through a diverse range of spiritual and carnival-like
spaces and activities.
At a mulid, groups of pilgrims may erect tents sewn out of plastic wheat
sacks and old sheets; others might spread a mat on the ground. Both spaces
serve as temporary homes and bases from which to offer ‘services’ to guests
in the way of tea, food, and friendly communality in the deputized hospitality
of the saint. Larger tents that are constructed of colorful Arabesque cloth and
lit with chandeliers additionally offer inshad, Sufi spiritual singing that serves
as the musical accompaniment to dhikr—a form of standing rhythmic move-
ment meant to facilitate the invocation of God. A practice absolutely essential
to mulids, dhikr allows some to experience heightened spiritual states of be-
ing.
Outside these intimate Sufi ‘service’ spaces, from the shrine to outlying
alleyways, the area’s festive space is intermittently strung with colored lights.
A fair-like atmosphere unfolds as itinerant vendors spread their wares or set
up carts selling toys, trinkets, sweets, snacks, and souvenirs considered to
bear the saint’s baraka, a type of locally-effusive spiritual energy. Carnival
workers run swings, shooting booths, and magic shows. Makeshift for-profit
cafés are set up, some with stages hosting party bands and singers. DJs work
behind large speakers, and youth carve out dance spaces in the streets.

1 In the Egyptian colloquial called mulid (pl. mawalid), taken from the classical
Arabic mawlid, this literally means a birthday or anniversary and in this context
usually marks the anniversary of a saint’s death.
68 | JENNIFER PETERSON

The current of dance music these young DJs currently highlight is one
called ‘mulid’, a trend that borrows musically and lyrically from Sufi inshad,
mixing it with electronic beats and boisterous wedding-party vocal styles.
Sometimes hosted in demarcated areas ornamented in ways similar to those of
Sufi tents, DJ stations may also distribute a ‘service’ of cold herbal infusions
to mulid-goers dancing, watching, or simply passing by. These mulid DJ
spaces thus fuse, whether through physical form, artistic representation, or ac-
tual practice, many of the major elements of the mulid experience.
All of these mulid spaces are temporal, creating a time and place set apart
from everyday life.2 Yet mulids are also slowly being marginalized in various
spatial, conceptual, and rhetorical ways as modernist and Islamic discourses
and policies seek to contain their highly visible and aural forms of festive
celebration. 3 Despite their temporality and the pressures being exerted on
them, however, this current of ‘mulid’ dance music has successfully drawn on
mulids as a cultural source and enabled representations of them to seep into
more mundane social realms such as the production of bootleg cassette tapes,
internet forums, public transportation, and the countless weddings celebrated
across the country every night. It relocates mulids into social spaces far re-
moved from the physical domain of the saint, extending the very idea of a
mulid through time, space, and lived experience into forms and concepts ar-
guably more permanent than those of the mulid itself. And, in the opposite di-
rection, this music current is furthermore contributing to the ever-changing
features of actual mulids, offering an alternative ‘modern’ approach to cele-
brating these festive occasions and meanwhile reinforcing their social signifi-
cance.
This study explores how the remixing of Sufi inshad has led to a remaking
of mulids, by shaping them into cultural metaphors found and used in a vari-
ety of social spaces as well as through contributing to an alternative ‘mod-
ernization’ of mulids themselves. In doing so, it follows the trajectory of this
music current’s developments and examines what meanings are conveyed
when its social context is changed from the ‘otherworldliness’ of the mulid to
the ‘everydayness’ of contemporary Egyptian life.

2 See Schielke (2006) for discussion of how the festive experience inverts reality
in the context of Egyptian mulids.
3 See Peterson (2005), and, for much greater detail and analysis, Schielke (2006).
I would like to point out that the editors of my magazine article made numerous
changes prior to publication without my knowledge, including a changed title.
The article does not seek to suggest that mulids are ‘barely surviving’.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 69

The Places, Times and Spaces of mulid Dance Music

Mulid dance music was not developed at mulids themselves, but rather by
wedding musicians in low-income urban neighborhoods. Wedding artists first
borrowed inshad melodies to flavor dance music in 2001, and the distinctive
melodic riffs they employed on electric keyboards, ones usually performed on
the ney and kawala reed flutes, were clearly reminiscent of mulids and Sufi
dhikr. Wedding singer Gamal Al-Sobki then made these nascent dance tracks
a hit in 2002 when he sang to them lyrics taken from the mulid milieu (“ya
madad”—a form of supplication, “Hayy!”—a name of God chanted when
practicing dhikr) and others in a traditional Sufi style referring to the Prophet
Muhammad as a ‘doctor’ who heals the spiritually ill. This song, “hanruh al-
mulid” (We’re going to the mulid), also featured a barked wedding vocal style
including salutations to his producers and “all of Al-Mu’asasa” (the cassette
tape production and sales center of the sprawling, low-income Shubra Al-
Kheima neighborhood). The novelty of this approach was given a marketing
boost when his tape al-mulid was temporarily banned by the authorities in re-
sponse to complaints filed by an Islamic preacher who held that some of its
lyrics were sacrilegious.4 Demand for the tape consequently rose, it selling
under the table for up to 20 EGP (around 4 USD), nearly seven times its
original price.5 According to Al-Sobky and a magazine article he recalls from

4 The preacher railed against Al-Sobky in his Friday sermons and filed a com-
plaint with the public attorney, leading state security to contact Al-Sobky. The
case was dropped when it was confirmed that the tape was recorded ‘live’,
meaning in one shot with all band members performing simultaneously, as op-
posed to a studied, rehearsed and professionally mixed recording. Under such
circumstances, singers can “say what you want” and “nothing is meant by it”,
according to Al-Sobky (interview in Shubra Al-Kheima, 18 April 2007). The of-
fending lyrics, which were cut from later releases, were, “kalimat habibi al-nabi
lazim nidala’ha, wa fi zikra laylat al-nabi halif l-awala’ha, ‘ala bab al-kiram
da’at da’a wara da’a, wa huwa asl sayidna al-nabi ‘amru ma ’al la’a. la’a [...] ha-
n’ul la’a, ha-n’ul la’a” (“The word of my beloved the Prophet we must pamper,
and on the anniversary of the night of the Prophet I swear I’ll burn it up. On the
door of the honorable I knocked and knocked, for our lord the Prophet never
said no. No. We’ll say no, we’ll say no.”) Offense was apparently taken at this
final “We’ll say no”, as though it were meant as “We’ll say no to the Prophet”, a
statement wholly unacceptable in the Egyptian public sphere. Attention to the
song’s performance, however, suggests that it was mere execution of a vocal
repetition technique not intending to convey this specific understanding.
5 I bought my copy on the street at a microbus station in the small Delta town of
Al-Ibrahimiya for around 3-5 EGP in spring of 2005. My copy, which is coun-
terfeit, has the original lyrics, and is accordingly labeled “ahdath al-munaw’at
al-‘arabiyya (Up To Date Arabic Types [sic])” to avoid unwanted attention from
state security.
70 | JENNIFER PETERSON

the time, it was the best-selling album of the season, outselling Lebanese
commercial pop stars Nancy Ajram and George Wasouf.6
Like their creators and the urban areas they have been developed in, mulid
dance songs are considered sha‘bi and form a sub-current within a larger class
of music referred to by the same term. Sha‘bi derives from the word sha‘b,
meaning ‘people’, and is used variously to mean ‘populist’, ‘popular’ as in be-
ing liked by many, and also ‘popular’ as in coming from the people, that is,
being native, grassroots, and from a ‘working-class’ socio-economic back-
ground. It is this latter definition that applies in the case of sha‘bi singers and
music, although they may also (and often do) enjoy immense popularity
(sha‘biyya) even beyond the sha‘bi classes. Like its complementary counter-
part baladi, essentially meaning ‘native’, ‘local’, or ‘cottage-industry’, the
term sha‘bi has both positive and negative connotations. On the negative end
of the spectrum, it can imply the unsophisticated, the gauche, the inferior-
quality, and the impoverished. Conversely, it is used in positive ways to sug-
gest ‘authenticity’ and being ‘down-to-earth’, clever, savvy, and ‘street-
smart’. Fans and detractors of sha‘bi music and mulid dance songs apply the
entire range of these concepts when appraising them.7
Following Al-Sobky’s success with al-mulid, other sha‘bi singers began
to adopt a ‘mulid’ style. Mahmoud Al-Leithy, a young up-and-coming sha‘bi
star, produced a dhikr dance hit called “qasadt baabak” (I aimed for your
door) that borrowed heavily from traditional styles, including that of Sufi
munshid (inshad performer, pl. munshidin) ‘Arabi Farhan Al-Balbisi, with re-
gard to both its lyrics and melody. This song stormed the so-called microbus
circuit and the Nile pleasure cruise scene, at once expressing and reinforcing
the sub-genre’s popularity in the urban sha‘bi milieu. Another example is
provided by Sa’d Al-Sughayr, a childhood friend of Al-Sobky’s and a sha‘bi
superstar (in)famous for his dancing who now performs at 5-star hotel wed-
dings, expensive Pyramids Road nightclubs 8 , and in box-office hits. 9 Al-
Sughayr produced a mulid song that was featured in the film lakhmat ra’s
(Befuddled) and which reflected and reinforced the popularity of mulid dance
songs through commercial mass media, a channel otherwise generally not

6 This, and all future references to and quotes by Al-Sobky from interview in
Shubra Al-Kheima, 18 April 2007.
7 For more on sha‘bi culture and music, see Armbrust (1996) and Grippo (2006).
8 Pyramids Road, which leads to the pyramids of Giza, is lined with nightclubs
that cater mainly to wealthy visitors from Gulf states and which are notorious
for their exploitive atmosphere, all-night belly dancing shows, plentiful hard
liquor, and assumed prostitution.
9 Research is needed on the commercially successful yet purely sha‘bi films pro-
duced by Mohamed El-Sobky (of no relation to the sha‘bi singer Gamal Al-
Sobky) and the social tropes they represent and explore.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 71

open to this particular music current.10 Yet in terms of sheer quantity, most
mulid dance songs have been produced either by otherwise little-known
sha‘bi singers, possibly trying to make their break with the mulid style, or
largely unidentified DJs who remix this already hybrid sub-genre on their
home computers.
Both the fluidity of music as an artistic genre and the relative flexibility of
informal sha‘bi contexts are to be credited for allowing mulid dance songs to
take off in the directions they have, both with regard to their musical and lyri-
cal dimensions and to the numerous social spaces they have occupied. Con-
cerning their internal form, the combination of inspiration drawn from mulids,
often perceived as ‘rural’ in origin, and the urban production of dance music
is one that works well in the sha‘bi music genre. Sha‘bi music often fuses ‘ru-
ral’ musical traditions with ‘urban’ lyrical concerns, instruments and dance
tempos, a characteristic that has facilitated its adoption of mulid motifs. Yet
the sha‘bi framework has also afforded the mulid dance trend the freedom to
assume a range of approaches in tone stretching from the earnestly Sufi-
oriented to the tongue-in-cheek, boisterous, mocking and naughty, and even
the polemical. This range is put into perspective when sha‘bi mulid songs are
compared to the Sufi-inspired and religious songs of mainstream commercial
pop stars Mohamed Mounir and Amr Diab, all of which remain staid, rela-
tively slow-paced, and strictly pious in tone. In contrast, and as an example,
while the titles of some mulid dance tracks make direct reference to the spiri-
tual mulid context (such as ‘mulid of Saint Ali’, ‘mulid of dhikr’, and ‘mulid
of the worshipper and Satan’) 11 , others flagrantly market themselves as
sources of a state of mazaag. Literally meaning ‘mood’ but used in Egyptian
colloquial to suggest a heightened sense of pleasure induced or expressed by
anything considered well-executed, from music, food and dance to a care-
fully-constructed stylish outfit or a joyous, carefree attitude, mazaag is often
associated with states of intoxication.12 Examples of such titles that boister-
ously suggest some of the fun-loving aspects of mulids include ‘the crazy mu-
lid’, ‘the mulid is supreme pampering’, and ‘the “don’t awaken pain” mu-
lid’.13
In a manner similar to the flexibility granted to the current’s musical and
lyrical dimensions, the relatively underground nature of the sha‘bi context

10 According to www.egyfilm.com, this film made 4,071,405 EGP in box-office

sales (http://www.egyfilm.com/films.php?MovieID=2427).
11 In Arabic, mulid sidi Ali, mulid al-zikr, and mulid al-‘abd wa al-shaytan.
12 For more on mazaag and the mulid dance trend, see also Peterson (2008). On
the related concepts of tarab (enchantment/rapture) and saltana (which implies
being ‘reigned’ by a state of extreme pleasure), see Racy (1982 and 2003).
13 In Arabic, al-mulid al-magnun, al-mulid al-dala’ kullu, and mulid ma-tsahush al-
muwagi.
72 | JENNIFER PETERSON

and its informal networks has also facilitated the prolific production and wide
scale distribution of mulid dance songs, ultimately allowing the current a tan-
gible presence in a variety of mundane, everyday spaces. 14 In terms of acces-
sible production, some mulid songs are recorded at very low cost and quality
by a singer accompanying a DJ in an office studio or on the street, while oth-
ers rely solely on sampling crafted on a home computer. As for distribution,
while cassette prices for sha‘bi music remain low (around 5 EGP), a plethora
of even cheaper (3 EGP) bootleg tapes and ‘cocktail’ compilations make the
latest hits, including mulid tracks, easily affordable, and are readily available
on the street. Yet as one young DJ told me, mulid songs are essentially an
‘MP3’ current15, utilizing digital technology to enter numerous social spaces
despite being shunned by the channels sanctioned by the official arts estab-
lishments, such as radio, television, and large commercial recording compa-
nies. For example, the plummeting costs of computers have made them com-
mon in low-income urban and rural areas and homes, and the practice of
transferring files between them by removing and re-installing hard drives has
contributed to the wide distribution of mulid songs, among others. USB
memory sticks, MP3 players, and music-playing cell phones are other increas-
ingly common informal modes of distribution, while compilation CDs can be
burned at internet cafés for a modest fee. Arabic-language internet forums are
yet another channel for the distribution of sha‘bi songs, including mulid dance
tracks, whereby web forum members and the general public request them, afi-
cionados upload them, and DJs advertise themselves by attaching their names
and telephone numbers to the titles of their remixes’ music files. The accessi-
bility of the internet has facilitated the distribution of mulid songs even be-
yond Egypt, with users of one website downloading mulid songs registered as
residing in Ethiopia, Germany, Kuwait, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and the USA.16
Some of the informal, sha‘bi methods of distributing and promoting mulid
songs, of carrying them into social spaces physically and temporally distant
from actual mulids, are mobile in themselves. For example, while cell phones
that can store and play music files aid distribution in general, ring tones fea-
turing mulid songs also assure the mobility of the dance current and its aural
presence in cafés, street corners, workplaces, and all other public and semi-
public spaces whenever they receive an incoming call. Mulid songs have also
found a space in various forms of transportation, both those used for getting
around in practical terms and those employed for fun outings. A cheap and
semi-informal mode of public transportation that primarily services sha‘bi

14 On the mulid dance trend and sha‘bi uses of technology, see also Peterson
(2008).
15 Interview with DJ ‘Alaa’ in Al-Sayyida Nafisa, 17 July 2007.
16 This was www.tzbeets.com, accessed in April 2007.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 73

neighborhoods, microbuses (mini-vans) and their cassette players have long

been considered an important means of distribution for sha‘bi songs in gen-
eral. Yet tuk-tuks, which are unlicensed three-wheeled motorcycle carriages
serving crowded sha‘bi quarters as informal public transportation, are now as-
suming this role even more so than microbuses. Usually driven by teenagers
and featuring a carnival-like atmosphere with decorative lighting, ornamenta-
tion, large speakers, and a thrillingly dangerous ride, they often blast the latest
mulid dance hit. In a similar vein, colorfully lit-up motorized pleasure boats
that boast significant dance floor space and powerful speakers act as mobile
barometers of the moment’s most popular music as they noisily cruise up and
down the Nile, often blaring mulid songs. Mulid tracks are also loudly fea-
tured in the highly ornamented horse carriages that take outing-goers for a
ride along Cairo’s Nile promenade.
While these dance songs have brought musical references to mulids into a
variety of relatively everyday spaces such as internet forums, cell phone ring
tones, public transportation, and evening outings, their extensive reach into
these various social spaces has also allowed for their development into an in-
dependent metaphor representing boisterous fun as expressed by sha‘bi youth
culture. It is, further, a marker of their popularity that mulid dance songs have
inspired a transfer of their name to other semiotic spaces in the world of
sha‘bi music, used as a label for products other than themselves. Some highly
popular sha‘bi songs, such as Emad Ba’rour’s 2006 version of the song “al-
‘aynab” (Grape), are occasionally titled mulid songs on compilation tapes and
internet forums (hence, “mulid al-‘aynab”) although they are not in fact mulid
songs in that they do not employ inshad melodies or incorporate lyrical refer-
ences to mulids. This practice is also applied to sha‘bi hits from movie sound-
tracks, resulting in titles consisting of “mulid+movie title”, an adoption that
can be interpreted as both affirmation of and marketing for their supposed
party-atmosphere inducing quality. Yet this metaphorical development has
gone even further in the titling of entire compilation tapes “such-and-such
mulid” although they might have only one, or even no mulid songs listed. The
covers of such party ‘cocktails’ invariably feature photos of belly dancers and
small cutouts of the popular sha‘bi singers whose songs are included on the
tape. On the one hand, producers have explained this use of the term ‘mulid’
as a gimmick meant to draw attention to potential purchasers.17 Indeed, titles
such as “mulid of who doesn’t pay can watch”, “mulid of the stoned” and
“mulid of Al-Ahly” (a soccer team)18 are eye-catching, and maybe particu-
larly so to sha‘bi youth. On the other hand, however, ‘mulid’ has in this con-

17 Conversations with Gamal, a producer of bootleg cassette tapes in Imbaba, and

Abdel Megid Al-Mahdi, producer of Abdu Company tapes in Imbaba, March
and April 2007.
18 In Arabic, mulid illi ma-yidfa‘sh yitfarrag, mulid al-mastul, and mulid al-ahly.
74 | JENNIFER PETERSON

text become almost synonymous with both ‘raucous fun’ and ‘cocktail compi-
lation’, implying a somewhat chaotic mixed bag of delights offering some-
thing for everyone, much like in actual mulid festivities.
‘Mulid’ has hence come to mean more than just the carnival-like celebra-
tion of a saint or a particular strand of dance music. After having been con-
densed into musical representation, mulids, in their new social space of sha‘bi
music, have been re-packaged into a concept suggesting chaotic and boister-
ous fun, noisy expressions of joy, a wild party-like atmosphere—an experi-
ence that bootleg cassette customers are offered to try on their own terms, at
the time and in the place of their choosing. Just as various aspects of mulids
have entered the Egyptian cultural consciousness at large through, for exam-
ple, a metaphor for chaos, ‘it was a mulid missing the saint’19, and representa-
tions of sweetly quaint folkloric celebration, as in the much-loved puppet op-
eretta “al-layla al-kabira” (The big night)20, mulid dance songs have now es-
tablished a cultural representation of mulids as mind-bending fun and a musi-
cal means to accessing the out-of-the-ordinary, even in the everyday.
Yet while mulid songs have been traveling through sha‘bi networks into
various mundane social spaces and become cultural metaphors for the ulti-
mate mazaag in sha‘bi youth culture, they have also traveled from their ori-
gins in the sha‘bi wedding milieu back to the source of their inspiration, mu-
lids themselves. Mulids have always featured various forms of popular music
entertainment, and in recent years the mulid dance current has created a strong
presence for itself in this mulid context, affirming the role of youth in a mu-
lid’s more secular celebrations and highlighting their contributions both
physically and aurally. At rural mulids, this may be confined to the loud play-
ing of mulid songs by cassette vendors and as accompaniment to rides, such
as bumper cars or a Ferris wheel, in the amusement area. At the 2007 mulid of
Abu Hatiba held in the Delta village of Al-Sids21, however, these songs in fact
aurally competed with that of the sayyita, a Sufi performer whose songs are
woven into the narration of a morality tale, and whose truck-bed stage was in
close proximity to the amusement area. Moreover, the performance of this
sayyita, in addition to being remarkable because she was the first woman to
have taken on this public spiritual role at this particular mulid, contained
some musical and lyrical borrowings from the sha‘bi mulid current itself.
Here, sha‘bi dance variations inspired by the mulid context were contributing
to the re-shaping of the performance of Sufi inshad itself.

19 In Arabic, mulid wa-sahbu ghayib.

20 Written by Salah Jahin, composed by Sayyid Makkawi, and performed by the
Cairo Puppet Theater, cassette tape recording produced by Sono Cairo, 1972.
21 Al-Sids is located in Al-Sharqiyya governorate, and the finale night was held on
Thursday, 12 July 2007.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 75

Perhaps more readily striking, however, are the DJ stations proliferating at

many Cairene mulids. The flexibility and affordability of DJs is contributing
to their increasing popularity and partial replacement of live bands (which
now also play live versions of mulid dance tracks), while the rise of the mulid
current has resulted in it virtually monopolizing the play lists of these mulid
DJ stations. The dominant presence of such youth culture was tangibly felt, by
way of example, at the 2007 mulids of Fatima Al-Nabiwiyya, where at least
seven different DJ stations dotted all the paths leading to the shrine, and Sayy-
ida Sakina, where the four DJ stations outnumbered both the popular bands
and Sufi dhikr spaces (two each).22 The area alongside the mosque and shrine
of Sayyida Sakina, the spatial and spiritual heart of the mulid, was marked by
two DJ stations that towered along the mosque walls with eight to ten large
speakers stacked upon tables and a DJ perching atop one of them, framed by
the mosque’s strings of flashing lights. A party-like atmosphere was created
as the DJs shouted into microphones to encourage youth to dance, and others
sprayed foam and created flame jets by igniting aerosol sprays. Here, mulid
dance songs and their spatial theater were not simply representing select as-
pects of mulids, they were remaking them, spatially, aurally, and in terms of
social meaning. Martin Stokes aptly describes this power of music and its use
as a negotiation of social space and its ultimate transformation:

Music and dance […] do not simply ‘reflect’. Rather, they provide the means by
which the hierarchies of place are negotiated and transformed. Music does not then
simply provide a marker in a prestructured social space, but the means by which this
space can be transformed. (Stokes 1994: 24)

Even as many of the youth who attend mulids to dance and joke with their
friends consider the spiritual intent of mulid celebrations invalid and a form of
bid‘a (innovation discouraged in Islamic law), or perhaps outdated folk cus-
tom, their active contribution to mulids in the form of DJ dance areas legiti-
mizes and reinforces the role of mulids as a space for the enactment of fun.23
Various forms of modernist discourse and policy are seeking to limit and con-
trol the mulid in numerous ways including their relative spatial, temporal and
aural marginalization24, and yet in the case of mulid DJ stations, the ‘moder-
nity’ of the latest youth culture practices are reshaping the mulid according to
a different logic, one that is as chaotic and loud (and yet, ‘modern’) as the
‘traditional’ mulid is typically perceived. While these youth may refute some
of the spiritual beliefs and activities related to mulids, their dance-oriented

22 The finale night of the mulid of Fatima Al-Nabawiyya was Monday, 23 April
2007, and that of the mulid of Sayyida Sakina was Wednesday, 30 May 2007.
23 On cultural and religious debates around mulids, see Schielke (2006).
24 Ibid. Also, see Peterson (2005) and Schielke (2004).
76 | JENNIFER PETERSON

participation reinforces some of the other, more secular (and ever moderniz-
ing) elements of frenzied carnival-like fun at the mulid. And in doing so, they
also reaffirm a sense of local identity connected through time and place to the
mulid event, by using the opportunity it provides to celebrate the sha‘bi cul-
ture of themselves, their neighborhoods, and ultimately their mulids, through
proudly performing sha‘bi dance, to sha‘bi music, in an area they have staked
out in possibly the most quintessentially sha‘bi space there is—the street.

Farah: Expressing Joy at Weddings and mulids

Mulid songs have carved out a tangible presence in various everyday spaces
and metaphors, in urban outings, and even at mulids themselves, where they
help to reinforce sha‘bi identity and heighten the mulid’s focus on fun. Yet,
why is it that mulids in particular are being drawn on in the production of
sha‘bi youth culture, and why did urban wedding musicians choose saint fes-
tivals as material to begin with? To answer these questions, it may be useful
to examine how mulid songs are used as actual music tracks, and in what
kinds of social contexts this use produces meaning. As Virginia Danielson
points out,

‘Music use’ [...] ‘is no less part of “social practice” than is production’ (1990, p.
139). Assuming that musical meaning is co-produced by listeners and that, as Mid-
dleton argues, ‘acts of “consumption” are essential, constitutive parts of the “mate-
rial circuits” through which musical practice exists—listening, too must be consid-
ered a productive force’ (1990, p.92). This is salient in the Arab world where his-
toric definitions of song include the listener as a principle constituent of the process
of performance. (1996: 300)25

Egyptian ‘listeners’ typically use mulid songs in two ways—by dancing, and
by watching dancing, interacting with and encouraging the dance performance
by clapping in time. This is true to the extent that the above statement could
be modified to “listening and dancing, too must be considered a productive
force” and that “definitions of song include the listener, dancer, and dance
spectator as principle constituents of the process of performance.” Ramy, a
19-year-old dance enthusiast from the sha‘bi neighborhood of Al-Sayyida
Zeinab, stresses the essential dance factor of mulid songs thus: “Mulid songs
in general are not listened to. It would be noise pollution if you listened to

25 Danielson’s reference, a source I was unable to locate, was Middleton, Richard

(1990) Studying Popular Music, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 77

them. They are only danced to. If I’m sitting here and you play a mulid song
for me, I won’t be able to listen to it. I can dance to it, but not listen.”26
Mulid songs are thus meant to be danced to, and Egyptians readily do so.
On a comic home-made video spoof that circulated on cell phones in 2007,
their love of dancing is exemplified as both uncontrollable and more represen-
tative of nationhood than nationalism itself. The clip shows a spy, hooded and
kneeling on the ground before his two weapon-wielding executioners. A
statement is made declaring that he has betrayed his country and been sen-
tenced to death, but when the popular sha‘bi song “al-‘aynab” starts playing,
all three dance together joyously, spontaneously tossing hood, shackles and
weapons aside.
Given their dance prerogative, mulid songs are most commonly used in
contexts of social dance, which in Egypt are manifold. Mulid songs are
danced to at social events that range from the street-side grand opening party
of a small business (such as a cell phone store or butcher shop) or a short
pleasure cruise on the Nile, to a picnic outdoors or even a simple gathering of
friends in a private home, dancing to entertain one another. The communal
context is essential, as stressed by sha‘bi singer Gamal Al-Sobky who says,
“There’s no such thing as someone who sits alone and dances. Dancing needs
lamm (close gathering together).” Also essential, yet perhaps a product of this
dancing as much as a contributor to it, is a sense of joy. As Al-Sobky further
explains, “if you want haysa, you have to listen to sha‘bi.” Haysa means a
loud and raucous time, considered equivalent to an experience of fun and the
expression of joy. It is also considered an ingredient essential to the success of
many forms of Egyptian celebration, which range from store openings to
birthday parties (including the ‘birthday’ marking the first seven days of an
infant’s life, al-subu‘), and the various stages of wedding celebrations. Mulid
songs are thus widely used in celebratory atmospheres in which people dance
(or encourage dancing by enthusiastically watching and clapping) as a me-
dium of communally enacting joy, and particularly so, but by no means exclu-
sively, in sha‘bi contexts. (Al-subu‘ and birthday parties, for example, are of-
ten relatively quiet and contained indoor affairs, yet in some sha‘bi neighbor-
hoods they may be held in the street with haysa provided by a DJ and mulid
songs, flashing lights, and refreshments ranging from soda and cake to beer
and hash).
Just as mulid songs developed in the wedding milieu, then, the most
common context they are found in is the wedding party, Egypt’s ubiquitous,
and arguably most socially significant, communal context for celebrating,
dancing, and expressing joy. Mulid songs feature in the celebratory atmos-

26 Interview with Ramy ‘Al-‘Aqil’ (‘the rational’—so called because he’s ‘crazy’)
in Al-Sayyida Zeinab, 27 April 2007.
78 | JENNIFER PETERSON

phere of engagement and wedding events ranging from back-alley affairs in

unplanned housing districts to five-star hotel receptions to rural village wed-
dings.27 And it is important to note that in Egypt most weddings are indeed
parties. Rather than the white lace motif, pink roses, and harp music associ-
ated with American weddings, for example, Egyptian weddings typically fea-
ture disco lights, dry ice, bright, primary colors, and dancing crowds. Muslim
marriage rituals are usually performed separately, often far in advance of the
wedding that socially marks and sanctions the marital bond, and typically in
the privacy of the immediate family. The wedding, in contrast, is a highly in-
clusive event that is often open to the public in the way of a street party. It is
officiated only by DJs or other MCs and lacks speeches or other textual narra-
tive, the entire event being orchestrated by loud music and various shouts of
encouragement to dance or clap, from the moment the bride and groom arrive
and until they leave.28 Mulid dance music, then, both draws on and facilitates
a collective experience of clamorous joy that is considered essential to Egyp-
tian weddings and intrinsic of their structure. A shopkeeper explains its musi-
cal and connotative connection to Egyptian wedding party atmosphere in the
following terms:

This is mulid music. You can only hear it here [at the mulid] and at weddings. At
any other time and place it has no meaning; you won’t be able to listen to it. These
songs are full of raucousness (haysa), uproar (dawsha), and clamor (dawda’). Wed-
dings (afrah) need things with lots of raucous clamor—slow songs won’t work. And
it needs to be loud to suit the sha‘bi environment.29

This focus on celebratory joy and its public expression is reflected in the
Egyptian colloquial term for an engagement or wedding party—farah (pl.
afrah) literally means ‘joy’. The concept and enactment of farah is perhaps
most obviously associated with weddings due to their weighty social signifi-
cance and everyday pervasiveness among Egypt’s family-oriented populace

27 On the topic of mulids, music, and weddings, it also should be noted that tradi-
tional, ritual-based Sufi inshad, used by listeners in the form of the rhythmic
movement accompanying dhikr, is performed by famous munshidin at certain
weddings, mostly in Upper Egypt or those held by migrant Upper Egyptians in
Cairo.
28 This framework and orchestration was even the case at a dance-free Islamic
wedding I attended (in Shubra, 9 July 2007), where DJs blasted Islamic wedding
songs mainly sung in chorus to the accompaniment of Islamically-condoned
frame drums.
29 Grocer on Al-Tabbana Street in the historic, sha‘bi neighborhood of Al-Darb
Al-Ahmar, and whose shop faced a DJ station during the mulid of Fatima Al-
Nabawiyya, 23 April 2007.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 79

of an estimated 80 million.30 Given the crowded population and the high per-
centage of marrying-aged youth, as well as the many highly visible and loudly
celebrated public customs associated with weddings (such as transporting the
couple’s new furniture, picking up the bride from the beauty parlor, touring
the city to take photos at scenic sites, wedding processions, etc.) various as-
pects of weddings and their effusive joy are casually encountered on a daily
basis. Yet, through the wedding-oriented development and use of mulid dance
songs, the Egyptian farah draws on another event in which the concept and
enactment of joy is arguably just as essential—the mulid. Even as a spiritual
occasion, Sufis convey a feeling of joy at the mulid as being part of the love
that is felt, expressed and shared in the realm of the beloved—the saints, the
Prophet, and God. Even the toil associated with offering ‘services’ of food,
refreshments, and spiritual-social gathering spaces can be framed by a concept
of joy, as expressed by a Sufi tent sponsor who told me that while she never
even washes a teacup in her own home, at the mulid she scrubs the very mats
and is happy (farhana) as she does so. She says that she sits for hours on a
low stool cooking in huge pots, but that her body never aches because she is
happy, doing it out of love.31 For other mulid-goers, joy experienced at the
mulid is part of having fun and celebrating a change of scenery, of exploiting
an opportunity to let one’s hair down and enjoy the mulid’s party-like atmos-
phere.32
The concept of joy is so entrenched in both the practices of celebrating
weddings and participating in mulids that the word farah actually crosses se-
mantic boundaries in their respective contexts. The teenaged dancer Ramy,
for example, made several slips of the tongue when telling me about his mulid
experience, saying things such as “Then we went to another farah (wedding)”
when he meant another DJ station. And in fact, within the mulid context,
farah is commonly used to mean both ‘an experience of joy’ and a type of
metaphorical mulid ‘wedding’ celebration. Both of these meanings are im-
plied in the following quote by a Sufi woman at a mulid as she explains her
opinion of the loud dance music played by a nearby band and highly audible
in her mosque-side tent:

This is a farah and the people act out their joy (bi-yifrahu) each in their own way.
That girl dressed up in trendy pants is not in mulid dress but rather like that for a
wedding or holiday (‘eid). See how that boy is walking down the street, clapping his

30 July 2007 population estimate according to the CIA World Factbook, accessed
online at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/eg.
html on 24 July 2007.
31 Hagga Ragaa’, who sponsored a small Sufi service tent beside the mosque at the
2007 mulid of Fatima Al-Nabawiyya, 22 April 2007.
32 See Schielke (2006) for discussion of the concepts of love and fun at mulids.
80 | JENNIFER PETERSON

hands? People eat more than they should, dance about, wave their arms, laugh hys-
terically as though visiting with a dear old friend. That music is part of the farah,
and those playing it must be happy (farhanin).33

With regard to the first meaning of farah in the mulid context, that of ‘joy’, it
applies as readily to the spiritual framework as it does to the carnival fun-
making. To Sufis, love of the saint is so powerful and pervasive that it touches
all those welcomed in his or her presence, and this love is held to be a source
of joy that can be experienced in manifold ways. Sufism’s inclination towards
tolerance allows for the embracing of seemingly disparate manifestations of
joy, while the conception of joy as being contextualized by and/or compatible
with spirituality also conforms to a general cultural sense that there is no in-
herent contradiction between being pious and making people happy. Acting
with a religious purpose can also seek to bring people joy, as illustrated in a
conversation with young men who sponsored a DJ station at an ironer’s shop
during the 2007 mulid of Fatima Al-Nabawiyya. When I asked why they of-
fered the ‘service’ of cold herbal infusions and a DJ station with loud speak-
ers, they responded with “To make the people happy (‘ashaan nifrah al-nas)”
in the same breath as “For Fatima Al-Nabawiyya.” When I further asked why
they wanted to make the people happy, I was given the response, “The people
are choked (makhnuqa); the people are in poor shape (ta’bana). We want to
make them happy. Muslims love to make people happy.”34
As for the other meaning of farah as a ‘wedding’, this too is pertinent
in both the Sufi and more festival-like contexts of mulids. With regard to
the latter, mulids are compared to weddings and major religious holidays
(a‘yyad, sg. ‘eid) because each are exceptionally special, joyous occasions
that occur relatively rarely, either once a year or, in the case of weddings from
the perspective of those marrying, typically once in a lifetime. Their being
long anticipated and set apart from the everyday heightens the uniqueness of
their festive atmosphere and the joy felt and expressed in their celebration.35
In the Sufi context, as a celebration marking the anniversary of a saint’s death
and union with God, the wedding is in fact an apt metaphor. And accordingly,
many of the symbolic traditions practiced at mulids are also essential ele-

33 Hagga Ragaa’, see footnote 22.

34 Sayyid Al-Gazzar, Abu Haroun, Hassan Ali, Okal, and Obeida each contributed
35 EGP to host the DJ event and prepared hibiscus and tamarind infusions to
distribute to guests at their site a block away from the shrine of Fatima Al-
Nabawiyya, 23 April 2007. This was the second year they had hosted this ‘ser-
vice’.
35 A more concrete connection between weddings and mulids is the fact that some
musicians and sha‘bi singers perform in both. See Puig (2006) and Van
Nieuwkerk (1996).
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 81

ments of wedding rituals—both share forms of the henna celebration 36 the

night before; the opening zeffa, or procession; and the sabahiyya, the morn-
ing-after reception. Moreover, female saints are often referred to as ‘arusa,
bride, during their mulids, and their tombs are sometimes re-draped on the oc-
casion with white tulle and silver sequins reminiscent of bridal gowns.37
The similarities between mulids and weddings with regard to their physi-
cal form and practice do not end here, however. In terms of spatial and tempo-
ral dimensions, both are night events, and at a glance, their ornamentation is
strikingly similar with flashing colored lights, beaded chandeliers, and color-
ful tent awnings, to the point that when sighting them from a distance, it is not
always immediately clear which kind of celebration they are.38 More immedi-
ately pertinent to the mulid dance current, however, is the critical role of
rhythmic bodily movement in each. In the spiritual context of mulids, inshad
is typically used as musical accompaniment for and an aural catalyst of dhikr,
a communally performed ritual that nonetheless fosters an individual bodily
and spiritual experience. This form of standing, swaying movement is an ab-
solutely key element in mulids. In parallel, and as explained by Ramy above,
mulid dance music, which draws from this very inshad, is an art form that is
essentially danced to, and dancing to mulid songs and others is generally in-
dispensable at weddings. While the style of dance particular to mulid songs
differs greatly from the movement of dhikr in its complex combination of var-
ied moves and focus on sensational performance, the inevitability of its prac-
tice when mulid songs are played is reminiscent of the intrinsic relationship of
dhikr to inshad.
Given the many conceptual, metaphorical, and material similarities be-
tween weddings and mulids, it should not be surprising that the words farah
and ‘mulid’ cross semantic boundaries in both directions. In addition to mu-
lids being termed afrah, the word ‘mulid’ has, since the rise of the mulid
dance trend, also become a term of reference for large weddings with an ex-
treme party atmosphere, ones that create a ‘mood’, in the words of sha‘bi
singer Gamal Al-Sobky. Such events, like the engagement party of Al-

36 The henna party is a type of warm-up to the actual wedding, and can be held
separately or jointly for the bride and groom. Music is played and danced to, and
prepared henna is displayed in a cooking tin and filled with lit candles; attendees
may dye their hands with a piece of it.
37 The wedding analogy is also applied in Egypt to elements of the healing zar rit-
ual.
38 Mulids and weddings also share various aspects of their ornamentation with
those of other celebratory occasions and even funerals, as well as official events
such as lectures and seminars, in addition to being used as cover-up for con-
struction sites. The most commonly shared decorative element is brightly-
colored Arabesque tent cloth.
82 | JENNIFER PETERSON

Sobky’s younger brother, do in fact resemble mulids in certain ways.39 The

all-night male-only segment of this event was essentially a huge street-side
makeshift cafe (including a staff of waiters in uniform) covering an entire
block and featuring a sha‘bi band hosting numerous popular singers. While
guests got stoned, snacked on treats, and ordered beer and water pipes, seem-
ingly independent entrepreneurs made the rounds of the street space selling
tea, fenugreek infusions, cigarettes, papers, lighters, trays of roasted seeds and
peanuts, tissues, and flower garlands. While some of these items are sold by
itinerant vendors or available from makeshift cafés at mulids, more significant
was the similar atmosphere of public festivity, of an ephemeral world com-
plete with all the actors and other means necessary to facilitate an experience
of joy. It was more than a typical engagement party; it was a kind of outdoor
festival—a mulid, as the newly-coined metaphor frames it.
Given the manifold similarities and overlaps between mulids and wed-
dings on a number of levels, then, what is it that clearly differentiates them?
Other than their distinct purposes—commemorating a saint and celebrating a
marriage—the two forms of celebration are most markedly separated by a
spiritual divide. The mulid, despite its many ‘secular’ aspects, is fundamen-
tally an event with a spiritual origin and purpose, and many of its participants
recognize the commemorated saint’s baraka, spiritual energy, as one that af-
fects all aspects of the occasion. Even though most youth I spoke with for this
study were generally skeptical of the concept of baraka, one young DJ con-
ceded that proximity to the shrine ensures that even DJ-sponsored dance
events at mulids remain free of problems.40 Yet this concept of baraka re-
mains local and material—it is not transferred musically or lyrically through
inshad, or, consequently, mulid dance songs. Baraka is not to be found at
weddings, even those hosting Sufi munshidin.41 Instead, the force that con-
nects these two kinds of events remains that of pure joy, one that is perhaps
heightened by the marvel of encountering the out-of-the-ordinary in spaces
otherwise construed as the everyday.

39 Ahmed Al-Sobky’s engagement party was held in Shubra Al-Kheima on 30

April 2007.
40 Interview with DJ ‘Alaa’ in Al-Sayyida Nafisa, 17 July 2007.
41 This point was strongly affirmed by Sayyid Imam, a musician and singer with
years of experience in each of the fields of the zar healing ritual, Sufi inshad at
both mulids and international festivals, and weddings and other venues for
sha‘bi music, and who stressed that baraka and weddings have no relation to
each other (Interview in Al-Muqattam, 18 July 2007).
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 83

Mulid Music with a Message

But are mulid songs only about expressing joy, only popular because they
“have a good beat and you can dance to it”?42 And does their failure to trans-
mit baraka or the mulid’s spirituality mean that they exist outside of a reli-
gious framework or are devoid of any mulid characteristics other than that of
fun? On the contrary, the songs of Mahmoud Al-Leithy, one of the mulid cur-
rent’s most popular singers, provide an example of a moral-driven and heri-
tage-inspired style he describes as part of his vision for producing music with
a message (al-fann al-haadif).43
Al-Leithy was raised in the mulid milieu, being related to performers in
the old Al-‘Akif Circus. He tells of traveling mulid circuits across Egypt with
his dagger-throwing and gymnast aunts and uncles, and of being taught
madih, lyrical praise of the Prophet, by his grandfather. By age 10 he was
singing on stages at mulids, briefly taking over from the performing munshid,
a context he still describes as “the most beautiful thing in the world. The best
speech that comes out, the most sincere, is that singing [...]. [When singing in
this context] I’m happier than all the people present”.44
Al-Leithy went on to become a sha‘bi wedding singer, and after Gamal
Al-Sobky introduced the nabatshi45 wedding salutation style to dhikr melo-
dies, he decided to sing Sufi lyrics to them in a manner that would make peo-
ple dance. His idea was to make madih chic (madih mitshayyak). Al-Leithy
produced a sha‘bi dance version of dhikr, to which he sang lyrics taken from
Sufi inshad and others used to frame traditional epic ballads, and the individ-
ual track, “qasadt baabak” (I aimed for your door) was a huge success. Ac-
cording to Al-Leithy, the album it was included on, ‘asforayn, sold a million
copies.
Although certain aspects of marketing to the musical fashion of the mo-
ment (and of honoring his sha‘bi producers) can be found in Al-Leithy’s
work, the Sufi-, tradition-, and moral-inspired content of his songs rings true
to both his upbringing in the mulid milieu and to his own self-proclaimed re-
ligious and artistic orientations. Al-Leithy is often described by fans of sha‘bi
music as ‘respectable’ and ‘polite’, and he describes himself, in addition to
being a sha‘bi singer, as one who sings madih46, saying that he learnt his art

42 Amber von Tussle in the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray.

43 On Mahmoud Al-Leithy and moral content in mulid dance songs, see also Peter-
son (2008).
44 This and all further references from interview in Imbaba, 25 April 2007.
45 The nabatshi is the master of ceremonies who collects gifts of cash and loudly
greets and praises those who give as thanks and recognition.
46 The reason Al-Leithy says that he must have a kawala reed flute in his band is
that he sings madih.
84 | JENNIFER PETERSON

from al-shuyukh (sg. shaykh, here meaning munshid). And in addition to his
songs being widely played and danced to at mulid DJ stations, Al-Leithy con-
tinues to attend mulids in person, where he says he is dragged by fans from
one popular band stage to the next, performing his moral-imbued mulid hits
live.
His second album, Ya rabb (Oh Lord), includes, in addition to the reli-
gious-oriented title track and others of a moral nature, a song called “al-
anbiya’” (The prophets) that names and briefly describes 25 different proph-
ets in a romantic, tender tone. A track that DJs say is much in demand at wed-
dings, it is one example of the approach Al-Leithy characterizes as music with
a message, his goal being to teach the younger generation about its religion
through a medium it enjoys and relates to. Al-Leithy says that his next song
will address the five obligatory daily prayers and their spiritual benefits to
Muslims, and that he also plans to sing about the Companions of the Prophet.
In the coming months he further intends to produce his first video clip, ex-
tending his music with a message to a wider audience and possibly bringing
mulid musical and lyrical borrowings, via sha‘bi dance tracks, to the world of
television at last.47
It is among street-smart youth often preoccupied with reaching or creating
a state of mazaag that Al-Leithy’s morally-driven and tradition-inspired mulid
songs have been such a huge success. In contrast to how religious rock music
might be received in an American context, for example, the moral content of
Al-Leithy’s songs is not considered a kill-joy force, just as acting with a reli-
gious intent is not seen as incompatible with facilitating the fun enactment of
joy. Even as the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ do not form a dichotomy in mulids,
the boisterous fun-making character of most mulid dance music (and the fact
that it does not carry baraka or spirituality) does not preclude its existence
within a larger cultural context in which religion, even at times of merry-
making, remains a dominant and unquestioned force.
The actual use of mulid songs sheds some light on how they function
within an overarching religious framework. At weddings, mulids, and in other
celebratory contexts, DJs typically open their musical event with recorded
recitation of the Qur’an, often followed by a popular religious song whose
lyrics consist solely of the 99 names of God.48 At weddings, this is often fol-
lowed by Western trance dance music and then a slow romantic song, while at
mulids, the transition is immediately made to mulid dance tracks. Another
way of defining the DJ’s aural space as Muslim is the use of a microphone to
shout things like “If you love the Prophet, raise your hand!” (whereupon eve-
ryone, including those smoking hash, does). Out of respect for the power of

47 On video clips and al-fann al-hadif, see Kubala (2005).

48 Called “’asmaa’ allah al-Husna” this song has been recorded by numerous
young popular singers including Hisham Abbas and Hamada Hilal.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 85

religious utterances, DJs also turn off their music when the call to prayer is
sounded and sometimes leave it off until nearby worshippers have completed
their prayers. A final example of the respectful co-existence between the ma-
zaag-focused mulid dance current and a larger religious cultural framework is
provided by the case of a mulid DJ station that conceded shared aural and
physical space to a munshid when he was ready to perform, even sharing its
speaker system with him.49
With the exception of the controversy around Gamal Al-Sobky’s first mu-
lid song, there has been no religious outcry over the mulid dance current. Al-
though the dance songs do not transport baraka or a sense of spirituality from
the source of their inspiration, the mulid, their youthful boisterousness is not
seen as counter to religion or as overstepping the boundaries of Muslim sensi-
bilities. Rather, while sanctioned by the permissibility of ‘religion’ and ‘joy-
ous fun’ commingling, their actual use and practice takes place within an un-
questioned overarching Islamic cultural framework that is reinforced by the
DJs and dancing youth themselves. This religious cultural umbrella is one
that, on the one hand, allows for the moral songs of Al-Leithy to gain popular-
ity among youth, and, on the other, sanctions the force of joy, spurred on by
the informality of sha‘bi culture, to carry various notions of the mulid into
ever more ‘secular’ social spaces.

Conclusion

A block away from her shrine in Cairo’s historic sha‘bi neighborhood of Al-
Darb Al-Ahmar, celebration of Fatima Al-Nabawiyya’s 2007 mulid was still
going strong following the dawn call to prayer.50 People of all kinds passed
through on their way to and from the shrine and mulid center. Men created
spaces in front of their daytime shops to smoke water pipes, drink tea, and ob-
serve the late night activity. Families gathered on the wrought-iron balconies
of dilapidated Ottoman-era homes to watch the scenes below, and rained hard
candies upon street-side revelers. Without prior arrangement, a live band sud-
denly hosted the popular singer Mahmoud Al-Leithy, and he performed his
sha‘bi dance version of Sufi dhikr. Those present at the space’s makeshift
café clapped in time, while teenager Ramy spontaneously danced on the stage
in his unique, eye-catching style. Around the corner, an ironer’s shop blasted
electronic ‘mulid’ music from large speakers while a group of teenage boys,
some enthusiastically ripping off their shirts, danced energetically. Matronly
figures watched on from the street margins, as did a Sufi dervish dressed in

49 This occurred at the mulid of Al-Rifa'i, whose finale night was on 28 June 2007.
The munshid was ‘Adel Al-‘Askari.
50 The finale night was on Monday, 23 April, and the dawn prayer time was at 4.47
am.
86 | JENNIFER PETERSON

layers of filthy, oversized gallabiyyas.51 Eventually he rose to interact with

the youth through dance, sliding his head and arms from side to side, keeping
in time with the rhythm and in sync with the teenager facing him.
Here, at the height of the mulid’s post-dawn climax, sha‘bi dance versions
of Sufi inshad provided the soundtrack as various dimensions of the mulid
met on one street corner. Dancing youth, an itinerant dervish, and families all
came together to communally celebrate in an inclusive atmosphere of fun.
Those seeking a celebration of local identity, the release of youthful energy,
spiritual closeness to the saint and God, or reinforcement of fame, were all
drawn together by the joyful mulid dance songs that musically, and through
their actual use, combined various essential elements of the mulid experience.
The successful integration of this dance music in the mulid’s festive
space, as well as its wide-reaching popularity in other social arenas beyond
the saint’s domain, affirms that the mulid, despite the various pressures placed
on it, remains both a dynamic and productive cultural source and an animated
social occasion. Music, with its fluid yet powerful nature, is at once able to
represent aspects of the mulid, freeing them from the physical and temporal
constraints of the saint’s domain to enter other social spaces, and to augment
the mulid by reaffirming its significance to local sha‘bi culture and stressing
its spiritually legitimized enactment of fun.
Although materially and conceptually centered around a shrine and em-
bodying the various physical and social characteristics of its local place, the
mulid is essentially an ephemeral event, a ‘happening’ of sorts that creates a
form of festive space. Because it is a socially constructed space, the mulid can
be restructured in other social locales that both outlive the original mulid’s
temporality and overstep the bounds of its limited geography. It is the experi-
ence of a mulid that can be, if not relived, reconfigured and applied to other
experiences removed from the actual time and place of the mulid event. Al-
though a particular mulid may only take place once a year, and the scope of
its celebration may be increasingly restricted by the authorities, various as-
pects of its fun-loving joy and sha‘bi identity can be, through their musical
representation and dance-based re-enactment, expressed and experienced
throughout the year in an untold number of other spaces and places.
It is also as this state of exemplified haysa that the musical representation
of mulids re-enters the mulid event itself, highlighting its cultural dynamism
and celebrating its provision of a framework for merry-making. Through its
condensed musical metaphors and the spectacular performance of its dance
forms, sha‘bi mulid songs reshape the festive space of mulids, heightening
their focus on the experience of fun. The remixing of Sufi inshad, then, in ad-

51 A gallabiyya (pl. gallalib) is a traditional form of dress for Egyptian men, essen-
tially a full-length, tapered tunic/gown.
 REMIXING SONGS, REMAKING MULIDS | 87

dition to reconfiguring the conception of mulids at celebratory events

throughout the Egyptian social sphere, also contributes to the remaking of
mulids themselves. Young DJs and their dancing audiences, the every em-
bodiment of ‘modern’ fun-making, serve as cultural actors interpreting and
remaking mulids as events that are at once relevant to sha‘bi youth culture
and increasingly expressive of unbridled joy.

References

Armbrust, Walter (1996) Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.
Danielson, Virginia (1996) “New Nightingales of the Nile: Popular Music in
Egypt Since the 1970s”. Popular Music 15/3, pp. 299-312.
Grippo, James R. (2006) “The Fool Sings a Hero’s Song: Shaaban Abdel Ra-
him, Egyptian Shaabi, and the Video Clip Phenomenon”. Transnational
Broadcasting Studies 16.
Kubala, Patricia (2005) “The Other Face of the Video Clip: Sami Yusef and
the Call for al-Fann al-Hadif”. Transnational Broadcasting Studies 14, pp.
38-47.
Peterson, Jennifer (2005) “On the Margins: Facing Religious and Official
Disapproval, Mulids Barely Survive”. Cairo Magazine, 10-16 March, pp.
14-19.
Peterson, Jennifer (2008) “Sampling Folklore: The ‘Re-Popularization’ of
Sufi inshad in Egyptian Dance Music”, Arab Media and Society 4/January
2008 (online at http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=580).
Puig, Nicolas (2006) “Egypt’s Pop-Music Clashes and the ‘World Crossing’
Destinies of Muhammad ‘Ali Street Musicians”. In: Diane Singer-
man/Paul Amar (eds.) Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban
Space in the New Globalized Middle East, Cairo: The American Univer-
sity in Cairo Press, pp. 513-536.
Racy, Ali Jihad (1982) “Musical Aesthetics in Present-Day Cairo”. Ethnomu-
sicology 26/3, pp. 391-406.
Racy, A.J. (2003) Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry
of Tarab, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schielke, Samuli (2004) “On Snacks and Saints: When Discourses of Order
and Rationality Enter the Egyptian Mawlid”. In: Georg Stauth (ed.), On
Archeology of Sainthood and Local Spirituality in Islam. Past and Present
Crossroads of Events and Ideas (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam 5),
Bielefeld: transcript, pp.173-194.
Schielke, Samuli (2006) Snacks and Saints: Mawlid Festivals and the Politics
of Festivity, Piety and Modernity in Contemporary Egypt, (Ph.D. disserta-
tion), University of Amsterdam
88 | JENNIFER PETERSON

Stokes, Martin (1994) “Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music”. In: Mar-
tin Stokes (ed.) Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction
of Place, Oxford: Berg Publishers , pp. 1-28.
Van Nieuwkerk, Karin (1996) “‘A Trade Like Any Other’: Female Singers
and Dancers in Egypt, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.

Filmography

Hairspray (1988) John Waters. New York: New Line Cinema.

lakhmat ra’s (2006) Ahmed Al-Badri. Cairo: Al-Sobky Film.

Select Discography

Gamal Al-Sobky (2002) al-mulid. Shubra: Al-Imam for Artistic Production

and Distribution.
Mahmoud Al-Leithy (2007) ya rabb. Imbaba: Sawt Al-Tarab for Acoustics.
Mahmoud Al-Leithy (2005) ‘asforayn. Imbaba: Sawt Al-Tarab for Acoustics.
mulid al-kharbana al-gadid (2007). Imbaba: Abdu Company.
Chapter 4

Notes on Locality, Connectedness,

and Saintliness
Armando Salvatore

The Place of Saintliness within the Sociology of Islam

This is the second issue of the Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam to be dedi-
cated to saintliness with regard to ‘locality’, a fact that witnesses the strategic
importance of this topic for the overall project of the sociology of Islam. The
thematic link between saintliness and locality stimulates some reflection on
the founding paradigm of such a sociology, on what is specifically sociologi-
cal about it, or also on whether a clearer opening to anthropology might en-
rich the project. This is not just a special theme, but a topical question that
embraces the core issue of the ‘ambiguous positioning of Islam in the global
construction of society’, as we read in the flap page presentation of the Year-
book of the Sociology of Islam. A discussion of the special theme of saintli-
ness and locality might reveal a fundamental ambiguity concerning how soci-
ology positions Islam within its purview.
One main potential of the overall project of the sociology of Islam lies in
the fact that the study of phenomena related to Islam might lead to revise ba-
sic categories and relocate fundamental antinomies within social theory at
large. The project can include a more radical, yet situated, critique of the clas-
sics of social thought than it has been possible thus far though various ‘imma-
nent’ critiques of modernity and modern society. Such critiques, like the work
of Michel Foucault, revealed the power formations on which modernity rests,
and in this way strengthened modernity’s own capacity of theoretical regen-
eration via nourishing the spiral of challenges and transgressions internal to
its own logic.
Many ambiguities of social theory are inherent in how sociology itself
was constituted in Europe by instituting a strategic link between religion and
modernity, also through the influence of studies on Islam. Notably in the work
of Max Weber, modernity appears as the completion of the semi-rationalizing
spirit of religious traditions, whereby reformers and modernists within those
traditions play the role of the midwifes of modern social worlds (cf. Turner
1974). Yet the study of Muslim saints (as in volume 5 of the Yearbook) has
90 | ARMANDO SALVATORE

already triggered off a more basic interrogation: can an archaeology of Mus-

lim saintliness question the sociologically received character of the inherent
link between religion and modernity? Wouldn’t rather the study of Muslim
saintliness help resituate the tension and ambivalent relation between religion
and modernity and so show in a clearer way the extent to which the ambigu-
ous positioning of Islam in global society is not primarily due to alleged ra-
tionalizing deficits of Islamic traditions? Can this ambiguous positioning be
instead related to Islam’s ongoing role of a counterexample and/or back-
ground screen to the spiraling antinomies inherent in the functioning of
global, Western-centered modernity? Would then the way be open for a more
productive use of the sociology of Islam for deflating the binary logic on
which those antinomies of modernity have been based? Could such a defla-
tion of the tension restitute a more lucid look at how religious traditions, their
carriers and contesters, ingrain into the economic and political structures of
the modern world? Can this operation ultimately facilitate a more sober but
also more nuanced view of the autochthonous modernizers: the ‘modernists’,
the ‘reformers’, the salafis? (cf. Salvatore 2001; Schielke 2004).
Moving in this direction, it is possible to propose a different reading of the
issue of saintliness and locality. We cannot indulge in this brief note in any
definitional game about what ‘saintliness’ is essentially about. If sought, such
a definition can emerge through the overlapping topics of the contributions to
this volume as well as to volume 5 of the Yearbook or can be searched in the
work of scholars who singularly tried to provide such a definition (e.g. Cor-
nell 1998: xvii-xxiv). The reason why saintliness is preferred to ‘sainthood’ or
‘saintship’ is due to the fact that the latter terms’ morphology appears quite
immediately oriented to institutionalization processes, or better canonization
of saints, notably as available within the Catholic tradition. Local rooting or
localization as found in the making of Muslim saintliness cannot be consid-
ered an exact counterpart to canonization, though some authors do not con-
sider this difference an obstacle to a unified definition (Ib.). The main empha-
sis here lies on what is not or not easily definable with regard to saintliness.
Therefore I can suggest a reading of saintliness coming into the purview of
inherited sociological categories as a syndrome of reconciliation of what is
sociologically irreconcilable and not even susceptible to be reduced to a clas-
sic sociological antinomy like between individual and society, movement and
institution, rationality and authenticity, abstract rational systems vs. local ac-
cretions: it is the syndrome inherent in the ongoing and unsolvable tension be-
tween relations and locations, between the networks and the movements at-
tending to the construction and reproduction of saintliness and the corre-
sponding sites of accumulation of material riches and symbolic power, be-
tween the self-sufficiency of the enactment of a drama of suffering and re-
demption, of meditation and play (the dimension of immanence and selfness),
 NOTES ON LOCALITY, CONNECTEDNESS, AND SAINTLINESS | 91

on the one hand, and the inherent dispersion of the game itself, the impossibil-
ity to contain it into a unity of place, staging and ritual orchestration (its di-
mension of transcendence and otherness), on the other, between the fluidity of
saintly charisma intended as patterns of connectedness and the apparent but
often misleading solidity of sacredness as the provider of stability to the dy-
namics of settled groups. In this perspective, saintliness should be decoupled
from sacredness, although the two concepts appear often as conflated, like in
volume 5 of the Yearbook.
The perspective here adopted concerns the universe of binary oppositions
developed within social theory, the mother of which is the dichotomy between
tradition and modernity. This is not to deny that a social scientist might in
good faith try to apply social theory concepts to explain social phenomena re-
lated to Islam. Yet the aporias that result from their use might lead us either to
pragmatically revise, or at least to question some binary concepts stemming
from the ambiguities and antinomies inherent in the development and self-
understanding of Western social science. In this way, the scope of a sociology
of Islam would not be restorative vis-à-vis the problem of the universal appli-
cability of social science concepts, but rather genealogical, through locating
the conceptual and also historical junctures where tensions emerge and stric-
tures are created. The goal would not be to produce new or better concepts,
but to show how aporias arise and contribute to construct and stabilize rela-
tions, both internal to societies and between them. In this perspective, the am-
bivalence mentioned in the presentation of the Yearbook project appears not
related to Islam’s positioning in global society, but ingrained in the dynamics,
contradictions and conflicts of global society itself. The study of Islam from a
social theory perspective might help to understand them better.

Connectedness vs. Locality?

I will refer to one chapter of volume 5 of the Yearbook in order to understand

how saintliness might reflect a syndrome of reconciliation between connected-
ness and locality. Saintliness might then appear as resistant to a rationalizating
path of a Weberian type. My argument questions the euro-christianocentric di-
mension of notions that are prominent in the European classics of sociology,
like internalization, extraordinariness, habitual intellectualization, the nexus be-
tween ‘calling’ and ‘office,’ eruption and routinization, virtuoso religion, and,
last but not least, charisma: the ultimate matrix of power and agency where all
contradictions in the conceptual chain are recollected and redeemed.
Patrick Franke’s study of Khidr, the ‘Man in Green’ of both Islamic and
pre-Islamic lore, can be taken as an example, since it tackles a root figure of
Muslim saintliness by direct reference to the sacralization of places (Franke
2004). In volume 5 of the Yearbook Franke analyzed in particular how Khidr,
92 | ARMANDO SALVATORE

a prototypical character of Islamic saintliness who appears and disappears at

different places and through various epochs, is widely evoked in narratives
that are intended to sacralize a certain place, for constructing its territorializa-
tion or more precisely Landnahme, the ‘taking possession of the land’ in the
‘theo-political’ sense elucidated by Mircea Eliade. Khidr intervenes in several
narratives concerning the institution of such major sacred places of Islam like
the Kaaba, the Dome of the Rock, and the Aya Sofia. This seems at first
glance to institute a close relation of saintliness to locality, or rather to its le-
gitimization. Nonetheless Khidr is at the cusp of the system itself of saintli-
ness, intended as the capacity to create grace and distribute blessings first of
all through caring for the concrete other who is the reflection of the abstract,
absolute Other: the poor and the weak, the alter to ego who are closest to Al-
ter, i.e. God. Khidr is like the backup system of the entire network of Muslim
saints. As shown by Franke, many key saints, often founders of the most im-
portant orders (turuq), are narratively related to Khidr and his authority. In to-
day’s Cairo, one of the biggest metropolises of the world, several devotees,
including Sufi sheikhs, claim to have met Khidr during critical moments of
their lives. Khidr is known as the sheikh of those who have no sheikh and pre-
exists all of them. He connects and relates. He works as a primeval hyperlink
of what human society needs above anything else, i.e. the almost self-
referential care for the integrity of the social bond and the capacity to act in
the world, as represented, in its most critical situations, by the care for the
needs of the neediest.
On one hand, Khidr exists to visit places and then to escape, transcend
them. He can justify their sacralization, in modern parlance, by showing that
in a universalistic religious tradition the local can only be an instantiation of
the global, by literally running through the globe, disappearing here and reap-
pearing there. The legitimization of locality is therefore as much needed for
the politics of instituting local networks as it is impossible to justify in purely
local terms. It needs a transcending imagination de-personalizing local links,
before they are re-personalized through historical saints rooted in their envi-
ronment. On the other hand, neither prophet nor angel, Khidr is a perfect wali
(‘friend’ of God, therefore saint), so perfect that he is unlike any other wali,
while he endorses the biography and legitimizes the authority of many of
them. He is the symbol itself of what in principle needs no symbolization
since it is a pure eruption of practice and blessing, reflected in the factual
normativity of the social bond, whenever there be need. E.g. Franke mentions
that ambulance services in Turkey today are sometimes still called ‘Khidr-
Service’ (Francke 2004: 26). Khidr is not properly a presence but rather the
making-present of what is necessarily absent, the satisfaction of a legitimate
need. This situation corresponds to the idea itself of grace or blessing. He is
the absent convivial guest to which one offers a meal. He witnesses the neces-
 NOTES ON LOCALITY, CONNECTEDNESS, AND SAINTLINESS | 93

sity of an absence, and the presence of a necessity. He completes relations in

what they can never be completed: in the attainment of perfect, symmetrical
reciprocity. If there were perfect reciprocity, there would be no social poor,
i.e. those made poor by imperfections or failures in rules of reciprocity. Yet
Khidr does not personify the injunction itself of giving to the poor: he imme-
diately fills the gap through the sheer evocation of his presence, yet to vanish
again and make the gap painfully felt by those who remain.
In the Introduction to Yearbook 5 it is stated that “Max Weber trans-
formed the idea of the ‘primitive magician’ and his charismatic qualities be-
ing the Ursprung (origin) of professional man into a genealogy of the human
character, office and institutional governance in modernity” (Stauth 2004: 8).
Yet in Weber’s analysis the type of dynamics through which the charisma of
institutional governance is distinguished from a charisma of eruption, effer-
vescence and transformation is rigidly wrapped into a dichotomy opposing a
supposedly ‘authentic’ or ‘intrinsic’ force of charisma to its routinization into
an institutional form crystallizing in ‘office.’ Weber was conscious that
prophecy was the main example, probably the pinnacle of such a charismatic
breakthrough. This did not lead him to paying enough attention to the dimen-
sion of care for the social bond inherent in the eruption, since this dimension
would rather be assigned to the moment of institutional routinization that fol-
lows the eruptive momentum. Thus the caring or reforming dimension of the
breakthrough is conceptually diluted in the theoretical grid of dichotomizing
social processes. In my view, the same fallacy is present if we lay too much
emphasis on a primeval location as an autonomous factor in the institutionali-
zation of saintly networks. This is like putting the cart before the horse and
constructing a primeval sacredeness tight to a genius loci or even a charisma
of the place, laying an undue emphasis on the inertial continuity of the locus
and its irreducibility to the painful reconstruction of connectedness across lo-
calities and via relations and networks. An ‘inner impetus’ of charisma and its
sacredness is so transferred from persons to places. The question is evaded
concerning how relations are formed by virtue of just such ‘charisma.’ In an
interpretive context influenced by the Weberian concept of charisma, the sig-
nificance of location risks to be played out against relation and connectedness.
The machine of ritual consumption reposing on the locus might then become
an anti-systemic, yet equally functional reflection of the modern—national
and global—disciplinary systems of power. Here we see both the danger of a
dualism and the possible seeds for a fruitful reframing of the basic tensions
underlying modern antinomies, in order to understand them no longer as an-
tinomies but as contingent and ambivalently relational tensions. We could
then focus on relations and locations as two spheres in mutual tension, whose
reconciliation might be facilitated by a focus on ‘saintliness’ as the relational
dimension of ‘spirituality’ that can’t evade the dynamics of places, yet builds
94 | ARMANDO SALVATORE

its authority by connecting and ultimately transcending them: this is also the
pattern of formation and operation of Sufi turuq. This alternative approach
might facilitate overcoming any excess of emphasis either on charismatic rup-
ture or on ritual per se. It could also help performing preparatory steps for
giving a dignified burial to the time honored, but sociologically abused notion
of charisma.
In parallel, we could de-emphasize what in Weberian terms is defined as a
‘substantive’ or ‘value oriented’ rationality, a traditional type of rationality
seen as rooted in ‘religion’. In this context one cannot neglect that some
strands of older Orientalist scholarship were important precursors of the iden-
tification of such a rationality also by reference to saintliness in Islam. They
even added to it a vivid functionalist coloring. As reminded by Georg Stauth
in the Introduction to Yearbook 5:

from the perspective of the founders of modern Islamology, such as Goldziher, C.H.
Becker and Snouck Hurgronje, Islamic mysticism was considered as filling the func-
tion of closing the gap between law, theology and individual piety. Accordingly,
Sufism was labeled as being secondary to the dominant conception of religion
(Stauth 2004: 10).

An important Muslim scholar and intellectual like Fazlur Rahman started to

challenge the classic Orientalist view by showing that Islam would not be
what it is today—not least in terms of its diffusion, mobilization, and integra-
tion of popular classes—without the key contribution of Sufism (Rahman
1979 [1966]). In this sense, the scholarly association between saintliness and
Sufism and thus the functionalization of Muslim saintliness as the factor
‘closing a gap’ and thus a deficit of rationalization in the Islamic system of
knowledge production should be questioned. It is also sociologically relevant
to show that Sufism has been re-evaluated as a coincidental source of both
socio-religious movements of an Ikhwani type, and of modes of state govern-
ance and discipline (Eickelman/Salvatore 2002). But the main issue here is
how to situate the ‘substantive rationality’ carried by Sufism in a modern con-
text, where another type of rationality purportedly prevails, based on science
and productivity. Again, relations are probably key, if we do not reduce them
to a mere social infrastructure for distributing power, wealth, and prestige
which can flexibly fit into different types of rationality systems.
Relations are at the origin of the idea of charisma, before it became an
overloaded concept denoting the subjective possession of immaterial sources
of power susceptible to accumulation and even territorialization. The Greek
idea of charis (‘grace’), from which charisma originates, denotes the type of
situation that makes relations possible, starting from a situation of asymmetry
between ego and alter (Szakolczai 2006). Unlike Weber’s sociological, per-
 NOTES ON LOCALITY, CONNECTEDNESS, AND SAINTLINESS | 95

sonalized understanding of charisma, but also unlike its Catholic supernatural-

institutional formation, charis is a genuinely relational concept. As suggested
by Szakolczai, there are two possibilities to build relations between ego and
alter, either by violence (see the political theory of Hobbes), or by gift (see
the anthropology of Malinowski, Polanyi, and Mauss). In the latter case, a
third person appears necessary, and this is where charis or grace starts to take
form. Wherever grace is not instantly produced by the relation itself, it is be-
stowed by a god or a saint. The enigma of how relations can be formed should
be solved by reference to the new type of tensional power generated by the
triadic frame whereby ego can connect to alter via a special Alter who is both
internal and external to the relation. It is not the case of a charisma being lo-
cated in Alter or appropriated by whoever is close to him (like the wali Allah,
the ‘friend of God’), it is rather the case of charis, the classic name for the tri-
adic framework, that generates the tensional power.
The specific reasons why social theory neglected the charis of a triadic
construction of relation (Salvatore 2007: 54-67) in favor of the charisma of
persons and institutions or to the sacredness of rituals and places, are too
complex to ascertain in a brief note. At large, this twist corresponds to the
way the modern institutions of Western states happened to function and be le-
gitimized, relying on structures of governance depending on leadership pat-
terns and on representative and monumental seats of office carriers. Yet via
the above mentioned interventions of Khidr precisely the opposite happens:
the instituted law, the nomos, is created through a kind of displacement, of es-
cape from the sacred locus. This movement is the source of all innovative re-
form, of all ‘heterodox’ movements, and Sufism as the engine of saintliness is
no exception. In a well-known episode of the Qur’an, in the surah of the cave
(18: 60-82) this is exemplified by the way an enigmatic character that the sev-
eral commentators have identified with Khidr (Omar 1993) teaches Moses a
lesson, by taking decisions that do not make sense on the basis of the law of
Moses but prove to be wise and fair, especially from the viewpoint of the
weakest actors involved. It would be tempting to explain this pattern as the
way through which saintly charisma supplies to law what it lacks, a sense for
the place and circumstances. Yet this reading would be still confined within
the limits of the above mentioned functionalist approach, where Weber and
islamologists found a common terrain. At a more careful scrutiny, if we adopt
the triadic scheme of charis, we see that the story of Khidr and Moses show
that law can only be practicable if it adheres to the social bond and is able to
face its fragility and unpredictability. Real law is not the product of a routini-
zation of charisma but is co-essential with the social bond, instituted ever and
again in the framework of the tensional power of the triadic scheme. Saintli-
ness is prior to any distinction between a charisma of eruption and transfor-
mation and its institutionalization. Therefore it is also inherently translocal.
96 | ARMANDO SALVATORE

Khidr and Moses move through three different places and situations to which
they are strangers, in order to reinstitute the social bond. The human and nor-
mative resources found in the locus are not enough to preserve and promote
human community in it, yet purportedly universal law is also limited, if a
sense for the specificity of any situation is not complemented by translocal
knowledge and movement.
This approach can be related to Marcel Mauss’ valorization of connected-
ness, expanding on the perspective of transcendent mediation and situating it
into a wider context of social practice (Salvatore 2007: 33-45). The inclusion
of the fellow human being into a given community of salvation was an expan-
sion of the primordially Hobbesian ego-alter dyadic relationship. This rela-
tionship happened to be buffered by cosmological myth and holistic visions,
the undifferentiated collectivity of Mauss’s mana, the force that humans see
as intrinsic to things (Tarot 1993: 565-67). At a further stage, it solidified into
the pattern of I-Thou connectedness mediated by a transcendent God. The
new triad replaced primordial forms of the contract as gift. This rupture with
archaic religion and its intrinsic model of sociality marked the reconstruction
of the social bond within the triadic scheme of ego-alter-Alter/God, whereby
now God is explicitly recognized as the transcendent Alter. The breakthrough
disengages agents from their dependence on the mediating capacity of objects
as gifts. It thus transposes the ‘it’ of things into the ‘It’ of divine transcen-
dence. The Weberian vision of charisma as first personalized and then diluted
into routine practices contrasts with this view, and can be interpreted as the
ultimate outcome of a long trajectory of post-Protestant secularization of so-
ciality that focuses on the inwardness of subjects and misrecognizes the rela-
tional and ‘spontaneous’ (charis-like) dynamics of both breakthroughs and
crystallizations. This Weberian vision privileges the machine of modernity as
the routinization of an ethic of ‘office’ and reads a metamorphosed charisma
originating in prophet ‘calling’ backwards into it. This is not a wrong geneal-
ogy or an anachronism, it is rather an appropriative self-genealogy of hege-
monic Western views, whose hegemony did not outlive long the time of their
formulations. It cannot account for the deployment of global modernity and
the role of religion in it during the last half century.
An important revision of the Weberian paradigm, which saw the light
around half a century ago, was the Axial Age theory, usually associated with
the name of Karl Jaspers (see volume 7 of the Yearbook). It is probably symp-
tomatic that in this theoretical framework the notion of charisma was not sub-
ject to critique or revision, but rather swept under the carpet, although this ap-
proach, from the time of Jaspers to its sociological reformulation linked to the
work of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, seems to lay a strong emphasis on the momen-
tums of constitution of the reflexive social bond. Concerning the Western
civilizational area, the patterns of axial transformations crystallized in the
 NOTES ON LOCALITY, CONNECTEDNESS, AND SAINTLINESS | 97

prophetic role, but a reflective elaboration on the constitution of the social

bond and on its religious dimension was equally present in the Greek ‘axis’,
revealed by key concepts like the already mentioned charis and phronesis.
The latter is the ‘spontaneous’ reason of Eraclitus and Sophocles, the proto-
sophia or inherent wisdom of the common speakers, the lips of reason or the
reason of the lips. It denotes a type of knowledge oriented to action that was
later trivialized into the modern ‘common sense’ of pragmatic reason, via a
metamorphosis of the previous standardization performed by Aristotle
(Salvatore 2007). Yet in classic Greek philosophy phronesis is a virtue that
transcends a purely pragmatic accommodation of means to ends and consti-
tutes a singular model of rational action-cum-communication. It provides the
only possible mediation between the xenon and the idion, the common and the
singular, the public and the private: phronesis is the spoken logos, uttered via
human lips to the extent it is understood by other. In Aristotelian terms, the
ultimate Other authorizing the logos transcends the human ego-alter dyad.
Phronesis, that some contemporary social theorists like Bourdieu have trivial-
ized into a notion of practical reason sustaining the ‘logic of practice’ consist-
ing in following a rule (Salvatore 2007: 93-94), presupposes a mediation, a
third element, and therefore a triad, via the orientation of the agent to a telos,
the cusp of the triangle without which the directionality of action would not
be able to sustain the practical judgment. Such notions like charis and
phronesis seem to have impregnated the logic of reasoning and action both in
a Western and in an Islamic context and have also provided visions of ‘con-
nective justice’ among human beings. The sociology of Islam could make bet-
ter use of them, instead of insisting in twisting Weberian concepts to suit a
changed world where a Western civilizational and discursive hegemony can-
not be taken for granted any more.
The ‘secular machine of modernity’ does not suppress all axial differ-
ences, which are as much due to varieties among and tensions within cultural
traditions as to differences in the positioning and repositioning of different lo-
calities on a global scale. The question should then be asked whether a re-
framing of saintliness as accommodating a notion of spirituality through the
lenses of a deepening global governance can suppress the politics of grace and
gift based on the asymmetry of connectedness, a type of micropolitics of the
social bond that is often in tension, but can also be compatible with traditional
and modern policies of regulated violence.
As stressed by Georg Stauth:

since the genealogy of modernity is so intrinsically linked with asceticism and the
religious roots of modern dialectics of inwardness and power construction, we need
to understand why the Islamic adherence to saintliness would reject any ultimate
dialectic (sic) between inwardness and externality (Stauth 2004: 20).
98 | ARMANDO SALVATORE

Here a crucial question is raised, on which the whole project of the Yearbook
of the Sociology of Islam, as also illustrated in a seminal essay in volume 1 of
the Yearbook (Stauth 1998), dangerously hinges: whether the categories of
Weber’s sociology of religion along with their dichotomous perspective are at
all feasible for the Sociology of Islam. This Weberian perspective might even
presuppose a political theology of the subject that effects, at will, de-
localization and re-localization:

Modernity supposes the transgression of collective norms into individuality, of ethi-

cal inclinations into knowledge and of wisdom into individual action, in other words
the ever more self-responsible methodization of everyday life. The question that
may be asked in this context is whether ‘saints’ and ‘Sufis’ open up a specific mod-
ern way of individuation and an alternative to Western individualism (Stauth 2004:
20).

Categories like ‘individuality,’ ‘rationalization’ or ‘methodization’ might be

too much entrenched in a view of the self-reforming subject and too little bent
on a relational perspective on action: charisma being the point of highest vul-
nerability of this perspective on hyper-subjectivation. Accepting that moder-
nity is strictly associated with an individually willed and managed methodiza-
tion of life does not require that the issue of saintliness, which implies indi-
vidualization and methodization to some degree, should be incorporated by
default into an issue of modernity—unless one follows a strictly genealogical
perspective that clarifies the extent to which such Sufi practices delineate a
parallel and different way of being in the modern world which puts into ques-
tion the categories of modernity inherited from Weberian sociology.
Against this Weberian background, saintliness might be given a chance to
be reconstructed as a syndrome of interaction and connectedness, where local-
ity plays a role, yet within, and as a specification of, the translocal dimension
of connectedness as charis and the rational dimension of action as phronesis.
One should not miss the chance, within the Sociology of Islam, to be more
critical of the idea that at whatever historical stage, it is always an external
power formation that takes over the governing of the ritual staging, so that
saintliness cannot exert any control of the stage of human connectedness and
only becomes essential, naked, sublimated individuality. According to this
view, individuality is first severed from connectedness and then docked again
to the impersonal mechanisms of regulation and disciplining imposed by the
agents of modernization. This severance is facilitated by the discourse of
modern individualism, whose latest stage is the sacredness of life and of hu-
man rights. Neither should we reduce this operation to a purely post-
Protestant syndrome. The arch-Catholic Louis Massignon has an important
place in the genealogy of the dialectic between the inwardness of the self and
 NOTES ON LOCALITY, CONNECTEDNESS, AND SAINTLINESS | 99

the externality of power. A methodically oriented genealogy might prevent

twisting the Massignonian approach into a self-affirmative logic.
The archaeological digging into the Islamic machinery of saintliness could
then show that this construction does not match any dialectic of inwardness
and externality comparable with its post-Protestant, Weberian (or Haberma-
sian) brand. Not by chance the Sufi and saint Hallaj (857-922), Massignon’s
hero of spiritual selfhood, lost his radical battle for affirming a convergence
between God and the self, and was executed. Nonetheless, his execution was
authorized by Ibn Dawud Ispahani (d. 910), the author of the most celebrated
Arab commentary, in rhapsodic form, of Plato’s theory of love (kitab al-
zuhra). He interpreted love as a divine madness (junun ilahi) that is simply
there, unexplainable, neither to be praised nor to be condemned, since it is an
unsolved perennial tension between lover and Beloved, the self and God.
Here relational tension stops short of reaching a convergence (tashbih) at the
level of inwardness. The Hallajian dialectic between lover and Beloved was
identified as the dangerous entry into the shirk (associating other divinities to
the only God) of a trinitarian scheme, replacing connectedness with a charis-
matic type of personalization that would signify the almost Hegelian solution
(Aufhebung) to the dialectic of inwardness and externality or even the psy-
choanalytic normalization of divine eros (Corbin 1964: 275-83).
At the end, the issue concerns, again, the modalities—and limits—of root-
ing individuality and inwardness in new, modern forms of power. Are
Nietzschean resentment and Foucauldian microphysics of power immediately
‘applicable’ to the global politics of Islam or are they first and foremost the
reflex of North-Western European exceptionalism? (Stauth 2005; Salvatore
2007: 28-32). Isn’t the ambivalent relation of Western culture to its axial,
spiritual sources and their purported authenticity a smoking screen preventing
an understanding of the complex workings of civilizing traditions? Isn’t such
a power-culture syndrome the main marker of a peculiar, globalizing, ‘con-
tinuously unfolding,’ yet not therefore universal ‘secular machine of moder-
nity’? (Stauth 2004: 10). No doubt the issue of saintliness—particularly as re-
lated to Sufism—is ever more embedded in a ‘battlefield of east-west phi-
losophy and cultural globalization’, yet it cannot be explained—and socio-
logically valorized—by this ‘embeddedness’ alone.

References

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Cornell, Vincent (1998) Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroc-
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Eickelman, Dale F./Salvatore, Armando (2002) “The Public Sphere and Mus-
lim Identities”. European Journal of Sociology 43/1, pp. 92-115.
100 | ARMANDO SALVATORE

Franke, Patrick (2004) “Khidr in Istanbul: Observations on the Symbolic

Construction of Sacred Spaces in Traditional Islam”. In: Georg Stauth
(ed.) On Archeology of Sainthood and Local Spirituality in Islam. Past
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Omar, Irfan (1993) “Khidr in the Islamic Tradition”. The Muslim World 83/3-
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the Sociology of Islam 3), Hamburg and New Brunswick, NJ: Lit and
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(Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam 1), Hamburg and New Brunswick,
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Stauth, Georg (2004) “Introduction: Muslim Saints and Modernity”. In:
Georg Stauth (ed.) On Archeology of Sainthood and Local Spirituality in
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Sociology of Islam 5), Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 7-23
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lam and the New Europe: Continuities, Changes, Confrontations (Year-
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Islam in Process: Historical and Civilizational Perspectives (Yearbook of
the Sociology of Islam 7), Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 68-94.
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Part 2: Contested Places
Chapter 5

Saints (awliya’), Public Places and

Modernity in Egypt
Ahmed A. Zayed

Introduction

Places close to the shrines of saints (awliya’) in Egypt are seen in this paper
as public places that are continuously changing in relation to the surrounding
structural context. Such gradual transformations can manifest themselves in
the complete disappearance of this saint’s public place itself or its being
turned into a public trading and consumer center. Such transformations are
undoubtedly linked to the broader framework of Egyptian society, however in
many cases the veneration of the saints at their places often appears to resist
all these changes.
I am not inclined here to see change in pure terms of proceeding from a
traditional system to a modern one, as conventional theories of modernization
would suggest, but wish to perceive this as the creation of a type of peripheral
or counterfeit modernity, a thesis which I have already developed elsewhere
(Zayed 2006). I assume that peripheral societies develop their specific moder-
nities, which are culturally and structurally eclectic and politically authoritar-
ian, however well equipped with all ingredients of modern consumer socie-
ties. In this type traditions co-exist alongside modern structures, and we find
modern and traditional forms in a permanent process of interaction leading to
a ‘third culture’ which is neither modern nor traditional. In its process of
structuration, the ‘third culture’ or the ‘third society’ adapts itself to and copes
with wider global and local contexts in contradicting ways. History is not
made through accumulative actions and strategies, but through the accumula-
tion of sporadic responses that end in the building up of new contradicted
modes of social morphologies and social actions. Looking from the angle of
these structural determinants, I assume that the places surrounding the shrines
of saints quite strongly reflect such a third type of modernity, specifically
where they continue to exist for ages and are entangled in processes of trans-
forming their functions in relation to the society in which they exist. It may be
anticipated that the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’ systems, engaged in a con-
tinuous dialogue and permanently reacting to each other, will be found here.
104 | AHMED A. ZAYED

Modernity demolishes public places surrounding the shrines of saints and/or

transforms them in such a way that the place reflects all of these contradic-
tions of modernity in the periphery, including the veneration of saints in rural
Egypt.
In this context clarification of what I mean by public places is needed.
Public places are known as interactive, democratic, and meaningful places;
they are open places receiving all groups, protecting the rights of all individu-
als involved in the reaction thereto, granting them the liberty of action, giving
them both power of action and power of momentary ownership of the place or
claiming its possession. Thus, a public place is transformed into a place, in
which an individual behaves more freely, and he is tinctured by the deeds of
individuals participating in the public or group activities. The salient feature
of a public place is that it is a place owned by all people, a place in which in-
dividuals learn how to behave together (Carr et al. 1992: 19-20).
This definition brings to light two main characteristics of a public place:
i.e. the relative absence of private interest and the domination of public or
group activities. However, we might object to the definition on the grounds
that a public place also provides an opportunity for the pursuit of private in-
terests. Therefore, it cannot be defined purely in terms of public activities and
a wider definition of the public place based on the experience of the human
beings using the public place should be developed. The public place is a place
where a number of people interact without necessarily knowing each other
and at the same time participate in both group and private activities. Accord-
ing to this definition, public places are places which accommodate multiple
types of interactions, extending from the pursuit of private interests to public
interaction and representation, thus, all in all, a diverse range of an individ-
ual’s local experiences (Smithsimon 1999).
While taking this into account, I wish to place the focus in this paper on
the cultural nature of public places. In fact, there is a physical aspect of place
involved that affects the social nature of the place. This is where we have to
regard its nature as a cultural place which embodies the reproduction of dif-
ferent forms of social interaction and of the actions of individuals or groups.
This is where we must be aware of the fact that, although public places, as
I see it, the saints places in Egypt entail certain characteristics of society,
however, they are not merely a microcopy of it. The forms of interaction here
are different from institutionally bound forms of interaction in society. More-
over, constraints and social control are weaker here than in places of institu-
tionalized social interaction. In the saints’ public places, there is a space for
open forms of interaction and more liberal behavior than is known at other
public places in society. The place also provides an opportunity for the mix-
ing of different degrees and types of status, roles, and symbols. This may not
be a general rule for all public places surrounding the shrines of saints. There
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 105

is a hierarchy of shrines and spatial order around them that narrows or widens
the restrictions, class distinctions, and different levels of behavioural con-
straints. Shrines and the public places linked to them can be arenas or stages
of power, status, and class representations; equally they can be places of very
intensive liberal interaction. This local diversification of saints’ places can be
complemented by looking to the diversity of festivals or other occasions in-
volving the meeting of individuals or groups in the place. For example, on the
occasion of the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday (mawlid an-nabi), the
place does not accommodate status, class, and power-based privileges. It may
even reshape such privileges differently, regardless of the place’s local nature.
Accordingly, public places can be looked at as localities which materialize
some aspects of public sphere. Eisenstadt argued that Muslim societies had
developed autonomous and vibrant public spheres that play in important role
in the control of the moral order of the community in contrast to their “limited
autonomous access to policymaking” (Eisenstadt 2006: 310-311). Public
places, especially those surrounding the holy shrines of saints, open horizons
for different groups, sects, and/or organizations to interact and to express
themselves freely apart from any political and social restrictions. Thus, they
constitute venues for interaction and representation for the different groups of
such ‘autonomous public spheres’.
Finally, an explanation for the neighborhood of saints’ shrines as archaeo-
logical sites might shed light on the historical role of local public places as
cultural places. Al-Gawhary argues that such vicinity indicates that the graves
of the awliya’ were originally built on the rubble of ancient temples or sacred
sanctuaries (al-Gawhary 1988: 109-112). By the same token George Stauth
argues that Egypt was perceived in the religious mind “as the power of the
past, combining broader concepts of Goddess with strong local ritual and
symbolic practices […] that ends in reinventing the powers of ancient gods”
(Stauth 2006: 163) and a continuous accumulation of cultural heritage. What
made such accumulation possible is the cultural and social functions of the
public places. They are not conceived as mere physical spaces, but as cultural
spaces. Certainly, this affiliation of shrines with archaeological sites reflects
historical transformations in the use of a place. The antiquities, mosques, and
shrines contained in a place indicate the historical importance of the place and
its relations with other places, and also tells us of the local society in relation
to different historically and currently interacting cultures. Throughout history,
such places might have been used as trading centers, as stations on the route
of entertainment caravans (mostly by gypsies), and as venues by Sufi orders
for their rituals. In this way it is obvious that these places have been points of
cultural blending throughout history. They might have been used as cultural
transit points, as places of interaction between villages and towns, expanding
their relations and mixing experiences. Some of them even changed from be-
106 | AHMED A. ZAYED

ing pure places to village centers, and furthermore contributed to the trans-
formation of villages into towns or even cities.
This paper attempts to cast light on the transformations that occur in
places surrounding the shrines of saints in Egypt by considering them as pub-
lic places and specifically analyzing the influences of modernity on them. The
main questions to be addressed here are: how had the traditional mind built a
sacred image for such places? How were they transformed into spiritual and
cultural places? How were such images structured in the traditional society?
What are the modes of transformation of such places and images in modern
Egypt? And how is the modern life of Egyptians reproduced in the festivals
and rituals related to saints in different parts of Egypt. I shall begin to answer
these questions by demonstrating the nature of the relation between saints and
their burial places, laying particular emphasis on the holy nature of such
places and the way in which both the place and the saint (wali) establish their
own reputation. I will then go one step further to describe the role of these
places in traditional society. After this I will explain changes undergone by
such places in modern Egypt. In treating each of these points, I shall depend
on qualitative data collected recently from different saintly places in Egypt.

Specificity of the Place: The Making of a Domain

Hobsbawm claims that traditions could be created or even invented through

processes affected by the political claims of the organized social and political
movements, and/or by unofficial groups with no definite political objectives
(Hobsbawm 1993: 263-307). In this perspective the tradition connected with
saints (awliya’) and their miracles (karamat) could be considered as an in-
vented tradition. Several studies have emphasized this fact. In his study on
saints of the Atlas, Gellner referred to the inventive processes connected with
the making of a saint (wali), endowing him with extraordinary faculties ena-
bling him to impose his authority on a tribe (Gellner 1969). Works published
in Egypt emphasized that saints are locally invented, in locations where peo-
ple attribute certain stories to a man and thus identify him as a saint who per-
formed exceptional deeds or miracles. These stories may even be developed
when he is alive and they continue up to his death, whereupon new stories
about the miracles he performed during his burial are narrated. All these nar-
ratives manifest the wali’s extraordinary faculties and thereby shape the im-
ages of the saint in the minds of individuals and in the general memory of the
populace (al-Gawhary 1988; ‘Uthman 1981; Mustafa/Ibrahim 2004).
Accordingly, public places around the graves of saints are similar objects
of invention. It is through the narrations about wali that special sanctity is en-
dowed to a place and that rites are performed in the place. Narratives about
the miracles performed by the saint and about the rites performed in the place
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 107

reproduce the image of the place as a ‘cultural space’ in which the pity of the
saint marks the frontiers of the space. To begin, it should be said that the
place surrounding the saint’s grave is sometimes called haram al-wali (the
saint’s sanctuary); that is to say, it is inviolable. Such terminology not only
symbolizes the relation between the place and the wali’s grave, but it also en-
dows it with a certain sanctity. It is often reported that the wali himself might
choose his own burial place. Thus the place and all land associated it easily
ends up being subject to the orders of the saint rather than remaining in full
possession of its owner. It is only through the wali that they might continue to
benefit from it. It is the wali who chooses the ground on which he walks, lives
or sits while he is alive; in the same way, he chooses his burial place. He has a
supreme freedom to live his life as he likes and to be buried in any place he
selects. A variety of stories have been collected on the ways in which saints
choose their burial sites:

1. It is often reported that some other greater wali or a group of important

awliya’ take possession of the people escorting the deceased (new) wali to
his final resting place. It is the spirit of the great awliya’ that makes the
coffin fly to the burial place.
2. On order of these (greater) awliya’, the body of a deceased wali might
refuse to move from one place to another one. If he wants to stay in his
place, he must be buried here, as is the case of Sidi Musa Ghanim (Abu
Lamuna) at Minyat Samanud, in the district of Aga, Daqahliyya
Governorate, and Sidi Khamis Gubbarah, in al-Shuhada’, Minufiyya
Governorate.
3. The wali may have traveled from afar to his burial place, he first chooses
his place, and may wish to wander further after his burial. There are
various narratives about awliya’ who came through the Nile or by sea and
settled in a place on the sea shore or river bank until their death and then
were buried in another chosen place. Of these awliya’ are Sheikh Al-
Awwam, at the town of Marsa Matrouh; and Sidi Muhammad Al-Iraqi
(Kafr Ruzqan, in the Tala District, Minufiyya Governorate).
4. There are different rituals involved in the choice of the burial place, such
as by hurling a stick or a piece of stone so that the place where the stick or
stone lands will be his burial place. There is a story about Sidi
Muhammad Al-Murshidi (Mutubis District, Kafr al-Shaykh Governorate)
who came to this area from Morocco escorted by as-Sayyid Ahmad Al-
Badawi. It is told that a difference of opinion occurred between him and
Ahmad Al-Badawi about the site on which the shrine was to be built.
Finally, the difference was resolved by Sidi al-Murshidi who held a piece
of green palm branch (a twig recently taken out of a palm tree) and threw
it in the air. The mosque was to be built on the site on which the thrown
108 | AHMED A. ZAYED

stick fell and settled. The stick actually fell down on the place now
containing both the mosque and shrine of Sidi al-Murshidi at a site which
once was on the shore of Lake Burullus. Sheikh Murshidi was later known
as the ‘man of the palm branch’.
5. The body of a deceased saint or wali may be moved either by the wali’s
will and action or by the will of certain persons who visited his shrine in
their dreams and were ordered to undertake that mission for him. A good
example of this is the story about Sidi Abdallah Ibn Salam: “his corpse,
after being killed, flew in the air and came to the graveyard in Daqahliyya
Governorate, and every drop of his blood falling down on a place turns
that place into a blessed one whereupon a shrine for him is constructed.”
This narration symbolizes the saint’s supernatural power which makes
him capable of expropriating land anywhere for his benefit. All land is his
and nobody can prevent him from being buried wherever he wants. One
drop of his blood is even sufficient to make a place a blessed one. It also
explains why so many of his shrines exist in the Daqahliyya Province.

Dreams and visions intermingle with reality, in that certain people wake up
with visions requesting them to build a shrine for a certain saint. This oc-
curred in the case of such famous saints as Al-Husain Ibn Ali, al-Sayyida Za-
inab, the Seven Girls (Sab‘a Banat), and al-Sayyid Al-Badawi who have nu-
merous shrines at different places around Egypt. The place chosen by the wali
and/or the people ‘who dream’ is not just a place for the tomb but it turns into
domain protected and safeguarded by the wali. Once chosen nobody can
claim it. The will of the wali must be realized, even by force. Let us consider
the following three stories narrated in three different places:

1. In a story about the saint Sidi Ali al-Yatim (in the village of Kafr Abu
Gum‘a, Qalyubiyya Governorate), we found that his shrine is located on
cultivated land because he was a Bedouin and liked seclusion in open
fields. People in the village say that the wali’s body is spread in all the
grass covering the area, and that he lives under the grass with forty others.
2. In another story about the saint Sheikh Muhammad Hasabu in the village
of Tarabumba, in the city of Damanhour (Buhayra governorate), people
mention that “he used to sit under a tree close to the cemetery in an open
area. After his death, he was buried in an ordinary cemetery but he
appeared to one of his sons in a dream and told him that his grave was
under the tree where he used to sit. This tree and this place were owned by
one of the wealthy people. Thus, the saint’s children did not want to bring
out the subject. However, the wali insisted on appearing to them and
telling them to look out for his grave under the tree. They did so and
transported the body from the cemetery to the place under the tree and this
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 109

tree became a blessed one, and the whole place became a blessed place”.
3. In a similar story, Sheikh Talha al-Tilmisany, in Kafr al-Shaykh City,
“used to move from country to country till he settled in the area where he
wanted to be buried and said that this was his place at present and ever
after. The story mentions that when he settled in this place, he had a horse
that landed on a piece of land owned by the King of Sakha nearby and ate
from it, thus the king sent forces to drive Sidi Talha away. Forces came
through the sea and were surprised to see Sidi Talha himself walking on
the water, pointing at them to stop the ship. The force could not move the
ship (as if they have been frozen) and so they went to summon the king
who went to see the truth of it. Sheikh Talha came out to the King of
Sakha walking on the water and indicating once again with his hand, so
the ship stopped again and could not move. The King asked the Sheikh
what he wanted and the Sheikh replied that he wanted this area to himself
so the king responded to his request”.

These three stories may well illustrate how saints create their own places. In
the first story, the saint’s body is spread in the fields, thus, preventing farmers
from trespassing over the land. The idea the saint being spread over the land
represents a symbol of the extension of his strength, despite the fact that the
saint’s shrine is small and built of clay. Also he keeps forty people with him.
They are also saints and they guard the domain against any violation (can I
dare to say that they constitute a hidden army to help in times of crisis). In the
second story there is conflict between the worldly power of the land owner
who owns the place of the tree and the relative weakness of the saint. The
conflict ends to the advantage of the saint. In the third story, the conflict is
turned into an open conflict between the temporal power (of the ‘king’) and
the spiritual power (of the saint). We notice here that the use of the word
‘king’ is rather metaphorical and the story teller wants to confirm the strength
of this worldly power. The word ‘king’ is invented because rulers of districts
have never been called kings in Egypt. The story ends with the victory of the
spiritual power. The saint wins over horses and swords with his magic pow-
ers. As soon as he appears walking on water the war ends. The story develops
a symbolic relationship between the worldly civil power and the spiritual
power, stressing the winning of the latter by means of the supernatural. This
symbolizes the potential strength of ordinary people against the governor and
the nature of their relationships to men of power. There is here an ambiguous
wish to resist, however combined with a disability to indulge in an open con-
flict. The helplessness of the weak compels them to look out to the world of
magic to find their own power.
Once the saint occupies an area, it is considered ‘sacred’ also in the sense
of being ‘protected’. At the same time ever more stories are recycled about
110 | AHMED A. ZAYED

miracles that happened in the place, defending the sanctity of the saint and his
place. In the case of Sidi Hassan Abu Raytayn in the village of Bani Walims
(Minya Governorate) a thief attempting to steal wheat from the field sur-
rounding the sheikh’s shrine, was kept stuck to the ground until the owner of
the wheat woke up, forgave the thief, and released him.
Sometimes the holiness of a place relates to a tree, a well, or a lake, based
on their symbolic power which identifies them as sources of magic or bless-
ing. The sycamore tree and the prickly pear trees that surround the famous
shrine of Sheikh Abu Mandur in Rashid (Rosetta, north of the Delta) bestow
blessings on the place and provide a picnic site for the visitors. A tree can also
be considered a source of healing as in the case of the tree near the shrine of
Sheikh al-Gharib in the village of Bani ‘Amir in the al-Adwa district (al-
Minya Governorate). People come here to seek the blessings of the sheikh and
request healing or release from distress by hammering a nail in its trunk or by
hanging something on it. The same is reported about the wells found near
some of the saints’s shrines, for example the well near Sheikh Abu Mandur’s
shrine, in whose water the sick bathe, the well in the Church of the Virgin
Mary in Mostorod (Helwan, Cairo) and the lake near Sheikh Abu Ghu-
nayma’s shrine in the village of Sakola (al-Minya governorate) where people
bathe in search of healing or the resolution of their problems. It is believed in
these cases that the tree or the waters of a well or a pond are inhabited by the
spirit of the wali and thus transmit his strength and blessings.
We have pointed out previously that a strong relation exists between
miracles (karamat) and local conflicts where the saint is linked to a sort of
separate sphere which is dominated by the world of saints (awaliya) and con-
fronts the world of the real. This is certainly linked to the process of creating a
public sphere around the saint’s shrine. This creation of a public sphere
around the shrine could be considered as related to people’s desire to create
within the realm of the saint’s personal space (a specific domain) a space full
of common freedom and culture, as opposed to the different world of the eve-
ryday bound to authority and legal restrictions. Truly the first world is also a
world of power where authority, status, and power are included, and influence
cannot be disputed. However, it is a world by people’s choice which they cre-
ate in their imagination, co-existing with real power as though it were a reality
in itself and beyond discussion. However, the continuation of such an imagi-
native world as a public sphere owned by the people should also be seen in re-
lation to modern society, the state, the mass culture and one could suggest that
the greater the scale of these these influences, which are often viewed in local
contexts as a type of authoritarianism of modernity, the more people escape to
their personal caves, and the more they produce daily life utopias relating
them to the disputes over real human existence and the life of the saints. It
may also be suggested that the greater the pressure of modern institutional hi-
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 111

erarchy, the greater is the inclination of people, who live on the periphery, to
create autonomous domains and to recognize and dispute territories and fron-
tiers. The mythical culture and the rituals and actions related to that culture is
only one example of such domains. It is only the most important because of
its historical roots.

Awliya’s Squares in Traditional Society

In traditional village society, when a wali’s shrine was located in a central

spacious place, it was used as a public place, even though that it could be pri-
vately owned by one of the families that traced their descent to the wali. It
was used by everyone for a variety of activities. It gave people an opportunity
to reveal personal behavioral attitudes and representations which otherwise
would not have been accessible to them due to social rules and class hierar-
chies. Here, the villagers were able to meet strangers, the poor among them
could meet rich people, the weak could meet the strong. The place opened up
for interaction which social constraints would otherwise have prevented. This
open communication between different social classes at the place parallels
that between life and death, or, in other words, between the life of people in
the place and the shrine of their wali, a dead human being, who sorts out mat-
ters and rules them while they seek his blessing. They enjoy being close to
him and celebrating his anniversary, and he is believed to protect them and
guard the place for them. For them he is the weak, poor, and humble man who
became powerful owing to his spiritual and then supernatural ability to per-
form miracles (karamat). He is believed now to possess the place, allowing
them to use it. This public place allows for everything and even for behavior
which otherwise may not be socially acceptable. It seems that people derive
their freedom from the saint, using him to build a relationship with the other
world and an experience of being close to it.
This ideal picture of the relationship between the people and their wali’s
shrine is of course a more common and pure case in traditional village socie-
ties, as the example of Sheikh Hassan Abu Raitain in one of the al-Minya vil-
lages shows. The wali’s shrine is located on a small hill surrounded by the vil-
lage’s cemetery (kum) which was surrounded by wide open place (gurn)
which reached to the river banks of Bahr Yusif. The location remained un-
changed until the mid 1970s.
It was a place that saw strangers, especially in between village wanderers,
like cattle traders, entertainers and gypsies. Of course the place was used by
local cattle traders too. They took the place in order to tie their cattle before
selling it. As for camel traders, they usually came from far away villages.
Sometimes they came in caravans from the desert. Every year, people in the
village talked about the caravan that would arrive soon. It consisted of camels
112 | AHMED A. ZAYED

which were led and ridden by strangers from Morocco or from Sudan moving
to the village from the Western Desert. These traders took the area surround-
ing the wali’s shrine as a place to settle for a week or two before moving to
another village. Concerning entertainers, they were swing owners, moving
from village to village especially after the harvest, when people were free and
had time and money for fun. Among the people who would periodically fre-
quent the shrine were gypsies who settled with tents for a month or two near
the Wali. Of course, not knowing from where they make their living, people
were suspicious that the gypsies could steal. However, they normally would
not do it in the village they settled. In the night the place becomes a ground
for children and youth to play. One of the most popular games played in this
place is turnaza. Similar to hockey, it is played with a ball made of twisted
strings and hooked rods from palm branches. However in the times of the
harvest and at the festival of the Prophet’s birthday, the place was differently
used.
In the harvest season, from the beginning of summer in May and continu-
ing till the end of July, peasants brought their principal crops, broad beans,
clover and wheat to the area near the shrine in the belief that the wali guards
their crops.
In the days of the anniversary of Sidi Hasan Abu Raytayn, which starts on
the first day of the Islamic month Rabi’ al-Awwal, that is, shortly before the
Prophet’s birthday festival, people set up market stands to sell sweets, pea-
nuts, and tea and tables for playing cards. The stands are called farsh and con-
sist of two or three benches and a table to display the goods. The roof of the
kiosk consists of palm branches or corn reeds supported on four wooden col-
umns. There are about ten of these stands. The festival continues until the
night of the 12th of Rabiǥ al-Awwal when the ‘great night’ (al-layla al-kabira)
is celebrated. The market stands are more or less empty in the morning and at
noon, but from the afternoon until the evening they are crowded with people:
some eat peanuts and sweets, others play cards, and some buy peanuts and
sweets, either as souvenirs to bring home from the festival, or for female rela-
tives who spend the festival in tents further away from the center of the cele-
brations. Youths invite one another to eat sweets and peanuts. Family rela-
tions influence the choice of market stands people frequent: young people
from a certain family prefer the farsh belonging to some of their relatives, al-
though this is not a general rule. Swings are set up to children and profes-
sional entertainers attract the visitors to shooting stands, circus performances,
and tests of strength—in a popular attraction known as ‘train’ or ‘cannon’
young men push heavy iron weights on a rail. If the contestant manages to
give the weights enough speed, they hit a firecracker at the upper end of the
rail. The weights can be adjusted depending on the strength of the contestant.
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 113

Meanwhile, the servants of the shrine prepare it by cleaning it, giving it a

fresh coat of paint, and placing a large flag fixed on a tall thick column of
wood that marks the beginning of the celebration in the middle of the square
facing the shrine. At the beginning of the festival, the servants of the shrine
invite a group of drummers from a nearby village called al-Garnus. The
drummers, three or four of them, belong to a Sufi brotherhood associated with
Sheikh Abu Shuk of al-Garnus. They are joined by the professional drummers
from the village. Together they form a procession that passes through the vil-
lage on each of the twelve days of the festival, carrying flags of Sheikh Abu
Shuk and Sheikh Abu Raytayn. They all participate in celebrating the days of
the anniversary. In the morning, the drummers come out with the two flags
carried by two of Sheikh’s servants or their children. They start their tour
around the village houses, stopping by each one to recite loudly the Fatiha,
the opening Sura of the Qur’an, so that the house owners give them a small
present in cash or seeds (depending on the family’s financial means), known
as al-ǥada, i.e. ‘(the Sheikh’s) habit’.
This procession ends in the afternoon at the Sheikh’s shrine where people
gather to celebrate or begin another procession. There is a reason for this: the
young people compete in parading with the flag around the village to the
rhythm of drum beats. This is called ‘touring the flags’. Women stand further
away, observing their children and encouraging them with waves. The young
men not only carry out this process just to be blessed, but also to show off
their pride and strength. Each one who waves with a flag, pays a piaster or
more to be collected and added to the total income of the celebration.
The villagers call the group that tours around the village with drums and
flags al-zawiya, meaning literarily ‘corner’, but in this context referring to a
Sufi group’s meeting place where the group performs its rituals and, indi-
rectly, the group itself. Many people donate a meal to this zawiya at lunch or
dinner throughout the days of the celebration to the extent that members of
the zawiya are unable to attend every invitation for dinner or lunch. Therefore
members of the zawiya often accept the invitations without eating.
Every evening, a dhikr (a rhythmic, dance-like meditation on Qur’anic
verses and poetic praises of the Prophet) is performed in front of the shrine. It
is led by the only Sufi order present in the village, the Bayyumiyya order,
which has spread in the village since the early 1970s. Prior to this, dhikrs
were organized by the followers of Sheikh Abu Shuk who were experienced
in this. This could be the reason for the continued privileged position of the
dhikrs in celebration. The donations collected during the festival are divided
by three among the ‘servants’ (khadim, pl. khuddam) of the sheikh of the vil-
lage, the followers of the main sheikh in al-Garnus village, and the followers
of Abu Shuk.
114 | AHMED A. ZAYED

The ‘great night’, the last and most crowded night of celebration, marks the
end of the festival; it is the night of the prophet’s birthday when people delay
their work to attend the nocturnal celebration. The celebration begins in the af-
ternoon when the khalifa, dressed in white and riding a camel which is also
covered with a fresh blanket, leads a procession around the village. The khalifa,
literally ‘successor’ is the local representative of the larger Bayyumiya order
and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Men on the left and right of the
khalifa carry flags, and others in front of him beat the drums. After him come
children and youths who ride richly decorated donkeys and camels. After the
procession of the khalifa, the smaller flag processions continue until the eve-
ning. On the square facing the shrine, a dhikr begins, amplified by loudspeak-
ers. At the end of the great night, a sheikh recites religious supplications and fi-
nally receives money from people asking for God’s protection, saying “Mr. so
and so”. His chorus follows by saying, “Oh, may God protect him” or “Oh,
may God have mercy upon him”, each according to the situation until dawn.
Each person or household seeks protection or mercy for their dead family
members through this chorus. Women sit behind and receive gifts of peanuts
and sweets. Trade flourishes on this night as everybody buys peanuts and
sweets for their houses. The celebration lasts until the morning when every-
thing comes to an end and the days and nights return to their normal course.
Undoubtedly, this is an ideal description of the celebration, for the village
could be in anguish for the death of a village nobleman, youth, or a large
number of men. In such a year, there is no festival at all, or there could be one
but on a more restricted level than that described here. Importantly, the festi-
val is influenced by the general economic and societal situation.
The celebration manifests different patterns of symbolic exchange and
power representation. Openness is the key characteristic of these patterns:
while various groups and authorities participate in the celebration, none of
them has exclusive power over the site. The festival is open for the various
celebrations of different groups of people. The square surrounding the wali’s
shrine functions in a traditional society as a public place in which interactions
of different types take place. It is the place through which villagers interact
with foreign traders and entertainers, accommodate outsiders such as gypsies,
prepare their crops for storage, and gather to celebrate a religious occasion.

Modernity and Transformation of the Place

Many observers, both in Egypt and abroad, expected that modernity disrupts
and totally destroys the quietude of a traditional place like the saint’s square
in the village. Modernity, which we shall deal with here, is a peripheral, or
counterfeit modernity. In other words, it is a type of modernity that is not es-
tablished on an internal foundation, but depends on the random and irrational
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 115

transference from Western modernity which spread through colonization,

mass media and communications around the world. As a result, this type of
modernity is characterized by its dependence on induced modernization, irra-
tional selection, and consumerism (Zayed 2006: 72). This kind of modernity
does not obliterate traditionalism totally or even boycott it, but instead copes
with, transforms, and uses tradition in different ways. Of course, this was also
the case with the high modernity in Western industrial nations in the 20th cen-
tury. But while the high Western modernity, along with the nationalist project
of developmental modernity in Third World countries, have been built on a
strong (even if often imagined) dichotomy of modernity and tradition, periph-
eral modernity, both as an ideology and as a social practice, gives up much of
the dichotomizing nature of high modernity in favor of an idiosyncratic mix-
ture of different forms of power and social organization.
In the following I explore the impact of modernity on the surrounding
places of saints (awliya’), and the manifestations of peripheral modernity in
these places. Before getting into the subject, let us relate some narratives by
supporters of the saints that relate to the impact of modernity:

1. First narrative: “The place is the shrine of Sheikh Hasanayn in the city of
al-Mansura, Daqahliya. The shrine is inside a small mosque which is near
to a larger one. Both mosques are located in a big square called Sheikh
Hasanayn Square. In the framework of a project to renew both of them, it
was decided to demolish them. (In Egypt ‘renewing’ usually means the
demolition of an old building and its replacement by a new one). The lar-
ger mosque had already been destroyed and so is part of the smaller one.
When the contractor decided to move the grave of the wali from the small
mosque using a tractor, the wali defended himself against this violation
(because he does not want to leave his simple and small room). As a re-
sult, the tractor broke down, and the same happened to other three trac-
tors. Besides, seven workers got sick while demolishing the mosque and
were taken to hospital.”
2. In a second narrative, we will relate an anecdote told by a servant of the
shrine of Yusuf Abd as-Salam Ga‘far also known as Sidi Yusuf in San al-
Hagar village, Sharqiya Governorate: “The young people of this village
gathered to prevent the servant from celebrating the festival of the wali,
considering it a novelty with no religious ground and an event in which
non-religious acts occur. As a result, the festival was stopped for four
years. This harmed the financial benefits of the servant who depended on
the annual income from the festival. Thus, he sought the assistance of the
Sufi leaders who came to the village and persuaded the protestors to allow
the resumption of the festival. The leaders’ request was granted on the
condition that no immoral conduct should be allowed during the festival.”
116 | AHMED A. ZAYED

3. The third narrative tells about Sidi Shibl al-Aswad and his seven sisters
and/or brothers (sab‘a banat, sab‘a ihwat) in Al-Shuhada’, a city in the
Minufiyya Governorate. The story revolves around the saint’s rescuing of
a drug dealer from the police: “The latter had been caught and in his pos-
session was an amount of drugs inside a box. During his arrest, the dealer
raised his hands and said, ‘Help! Sheikh Shibl, I seek your help’. When
the policemen opened the box, they found nothing but some snakes. So,
they released him. Soon after his release, the drugs were back inside the
box”. Such stories of the saint rescuing a follower from hands of the po-
lice are common, although, unlike this narrative, they often end with the
saint personally punishing the wrongdoer after demonstrating his superi-
ority towards the power of the state.

The three aforementioned stories show significant testimonials of the experi-

ence of peripheral modernity—in alliance with Salafi reformism—in Egypt as
well as the clashes and contradictions resulting from it. In the first story, the
traditional attitude triumphs over modern technology and even destroys it.
Technology can be made use of in several fields, yet when it clashes with re-
ligious beliefs (we must remember that while it is easy for an outside observer
to label them ‘popular ones’, for those who hold them they are a part of cor-
rect Islamic creed), such beliefs emerge victorious. Therefore, technology
should co-exist with such beliefs and allow them to remain. It is not an exag-
geration to say that in the conflict between modernity and traditions, traditions
come out victorious. Moreover, modern forms may have only superficial exis-
tence that do not run deep in any way.
The second story is common story also found elsewhere in Egypt. There
have been clashes between groups of young Salafis (a radical Islamic reform-
ist movement strongly opposed to saints and Sufism) and the servants of some
shrines in some villages in various locations. The Salafis believe that the prac-
tices and beliefs of the khuddam, i.e. the servants of the saint, such as visiting
the graves of awliya’, the existence of a wali’s grave beside a mosque, and the
celebration of festivals for awliya’ contradict the principles of the Sunna doc-
trine. According to some studies, these clashes have a historical dimension
since there have always been conflicts between a purist doctrine and Sufism,
between orthodox religious scholars and Sufis. Sometimes, such conflicts
ended with contriving conspiracies and arresting Sufists (Mustafa/‘Abbas
2004: 200). Some attributed this historical enmity to the popularity and prolif-
eration of Sufis, for they take control of people’s hearts who like their way of
practicing religion, a fact which some purist scholars of the Scripture consider
as a danger against the true religious creeds (al-Tawil 1964: 174). Recent
studies do point out, however, that this theory is strongly exaggerated and
anachronistic, projecting a modern conflict on pre-modern times. While there
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 117

has always been conflict between more purist and exclusive, and more inclu-
sive and ecstatic currents within Sunni Islam, Sufism and scholarly orthodoxy
have nevertheless been very close throughout centuries, and the Islamic al-
Azhar University contains a significant and powerful Sufi faction to the pre-
sent day. The implicit enmity between purity and ecstasy has, however,
changed over time to become more explicit and clear. Since the emergence of
modernity in late 19th century, there has been a pronounced and strong an-
tagonism between Sufis supporters of Salafi reformism. Although both claim
to represent the true orthodox Islam, it is worth noting that the project of
modernity in Egypt has shown much more sympathy for the Salafi reformist
claim. The material collected from Delta villages displays some glaring ex-
amples of this conflict between some Salafi groups and the Sufis (especially
the servants of the saints’ shrines). Material from other villages in Egypt
demonstrated that these conflicts are widespread and, in some villages, the
success of the Salafis in proselytizing their doctrine (which claims that saints-
day festivals are an un-Islamic and novelty) has reached an extent whereby
some awliya’ festivals have been stopped or are only being celebrated on a
small scale.
What we encounter here are two attitudes reflecting two forms of religion;
namely, the Salafi religious movement and Sufism. We are not referring here
to the view of ‘folk’ religion as the alleged opposite of ‘formal’ religion,
which has long prevailed in both Egyptian and foreign literature (Uwais 1965;
Gellner 1981). In this case, both sides claim to represent true, correct religion.
What we have here is a conflict between a traditional mystical practice of Is-
lam and novel form of religion, that is, the strict Salafi form of Islam. (I con-
sider this form of Islam as an integrated part of peripheral modernity.) This
conflict is a modern one which did not feature previously in traditional soci-
ety. We have already referred to this conflict by saying that while conflicts
between purist and ecstatic approaches have a long history, they were largely
latent. The emergence of contemporary conditions have brought these differ-
ences to the surface and sometimes turn them into an open source of conflict.
One of the most important of these conditions is the prevalence of an affinity
with fundamentalism among the youth. The spread of this attitude was
boosted by the intensive migration to the Gulf countries from the 1970s.
Many of the migrants were influenced by the Wahhabi doctrine (named after
its founder Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab), which prevails in much
of the Arabian Peninsula. One of the key objectives of the Wahhabi and other
similar doctrines is to fight what their supporters believe to be novelties and
superstitions. Wahhabis and Salafis believe that visiting the graves of the dead
and resorting to the intermediation of saints are pre-Islamic customs which
started to spread in Muslim societies from the 8th century after Higra (Mostafa
1989: 305). Holding to a very strict interpretation of monotheism, Wahhabis
118 | AHMED A. ZAYED

and Salafis believe that any kind of devotion to saints is outright polytheism
that renders its practitioner an unbeliever.
In the third story we find the wali coping with the requirements of the
modern age in a thrilling and astonishing manner. In this story, the wali does
not stand beside a victim of injustice, protect someone from falling in danger,
prevent a robber away from stealing, protect a cow from falling into water,
bring back a lost child or causes a sick person to recover from pain—as he
may do in many other stories—but the wali safeguards a drug trafficker. Nar-
cotics and their criminalization are a feature of the modern society. Police
forces that find narcotics and arrest their traffickers are one of modern soci-
ety’s apparatuses. In the first story we have a wali who refuses to be moved
from his place and resists urban reconstruction and here we have another wali
who condones the protection of a narcotics trafficker, that is to say, ensures
the protection of a legally deviant person. One could wonder why the wali
helps a trafficker against the police instead of helping the police to catch the
drug trafficker. The saint’s assistance is telling of the deep distrust of many
Egyptians towards their police force and the competing forms of authority and
power in peripheral modernity. Resorting to the help of saint appears as some-
thing like a resistance mechanism against the state as represented here by po-
licemen. Helping the drug trafficker is thus not framed in terms of law and
deviation, but of the saint standing up for his people against the state appara-
tus.
Let us move on now to study the effect of modernity on the use of public
places surrounding the shrines of awliya’. The first of these effects was the
disappearance of the place altogether, or at least the reduction of its size. This
took place as a result of the spread of modern buildings in such locations. In
the 1980s and 1990s, Huge expansion of the villages and cities took place in
the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the free market economy and the increase
of migration ratios making previously unseen amounts of capital available for
the construction of houses. Together with rapid population growth, this led to
a dramatic expansion of the geographic area of villages, towns, and cities and
random slum expansions which spread in every direction. This urban expan-
sion has often devoured the areas surrounding the shrines of awliya’ unless
they are protected by legal prohibitions, such as the existence of archeological
monuments on these sites. Local authorities often participate themselves in
such building operations by making use of open spaces to build schools, local
administration centers, or youth centers.
An example of such a development can be found at the shrine of Sidi
‘Awwad in Qalyub City District (Qalyubiyya Governorate) which is located
near a main road and a railway line. The area surrounding the shrine used to
be free from buildings until a mosque was built beside the shrine. This was
accompanied by an urban development that resulted in the shrine being sur-
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 119

rounded by residential buildings and shops. The area, moreover, witnessed the
construction of schools and administrative buildings (e.g. the local admini-
stration of the city and district of Qalyub, telephone exchange, and a post of-
fice). Another example is the aforementioned shrine of Sheikh Hasan Abu
Raytayn where the once spacious place around it has become crowded with
buildings. Unable find a place in front of the shrine to celebrate the sheikh’s
mulid celebration, people have moved to celebrate it in the streets leading to
the shrine. Sometimes, a shrine that was originally far away from a village
becomes surrounded by new buildings, especially if a mosque is built beside
it. We can see this in the case of the Nur al-Sabah shrine in the city of Tanta,
capital of the Gharbiyya governorate. The construction of a mosque beside the
shrine led to the construction of a road leading to the mosque which, in turn,
was followed by houses and a large governmental building lining the two
sides of the road. Almost the same thing occurred with the shrine of Sidi Abu
al-Naga al-Ansari in the town of Fuwa, Kafr al-Shaykh governorate where a
bank branch, a car parking area, and a market were built beside the shrine.
There are several manifestations of the state’s interference in affairs con-
cerning awliya’ and the mosques containing their shrines. Such state interfer-
ence reflects forms of induced modernization:
The inclusion of saints’ shrines in tourism development plans as happened
with the graves of the Sab‘a Banat (seven girls) in Al-Bahnasa village, Al-
Minya governorate. There, the site containing the graves of the seven girls
was developed as a tourist site. Accordingly, an iron fence was constructed
around each grave and painted green. Each grave was covered with a green
cloth. The area surrounding the graves was cleaned in order to make it suit-
able for tourism.

A. Interference in the processes of collecting money at the shrines: visitors

often come to the shrine of a saint to make a vow to God and leave a sum
of money at a box next to the shrine. The income from these vows is
significant, at major shrines in particular. These shrines have been under
direct state control since the nationalization of the awqaf (religous
foundations) in the 1960s, and the Ministry of Awqaf organizes the
collection and distribution of the donations, keeping a lion’s share for
itself.
B. Interference in the organization of the annual mulid (pl. mawalid) festivals
at the shrines: While large mulids of national significance have always
been organized and policed by the government to a significant degree,
festivals of local and regional importance were organized largely
autonomously by Sufi orders and local notables. In recent decades,
however, state interference in all mulids has increased, be it through the
distribution of locations for market stands and Sufi dhikrs, through the
120 | AHMED A. ZAYED

restriction of the movement of the public at the festival or through an

intensive security presence.
C. One of the most important forms of state power at the shrines is urban
reconstruction at the wali’s shrine. In this case, the area is redeveloped to
appear in a modern form. For example, the shrine of Sidi Muhammad al-
Murshidi in the village of Minyat al-Murshid, Kafr al-Shaykh
governorate: the shrine and a small mosque overlooked an anchorage for
boats in Lake Burullus. When the old mosque was demolished and
replaced by a new one, the canal connecting the village to the lake was
filled up with earth, and the land adjoining the berth was reclaimed. The
new mosque was built in the standard style that has come to replace
historic mosques in almost all of Egypt’s villages and small towns. The
shrine, dating back to 13th century and unlike the mosque an architectural
site under supervision of the Ministry of Antiquities, is the only historical
structure remaining. Both the shrine and the mosque overlook the new
‘Sidi al-Murshidi Square’.
D. Interference may come from civil society and from the Sufi orders
themselves with the help of governmental bodies as occurred in the case
of the square of the shrine of Sidi ‘Izz ad-Din Madi Abu al-Aza’im (Itay
al-Barud, al-Buhayra governorate). The shrine is located inside a large
mosque which also functions as the local center of the Azmiya Sufi order.
A civil organization allied to the Azmiya order built a hospital—as an
annex to the mosque—for the town’s inhabitants and for the needy from
neighboring villages. The new mosque complex also houses a kinder-
garden and a pharmacy and hosts private tutoring classes for school
children. Thus, the place has changed from a religious shrine to a both
religious and civil shrine. Just as the traditional square in front of the
shrine is open for all kinds of people and activities, the new shrine
complex is also open to functions other than those deemed purely
religious. However, in a distinctively modern manner, the variety of
functions is clearly limited to those deemed in line with the reformist Sufi
creed of the Azmiya, a group whose members largely originate from the
urban middle classes. As multifunctional as the new shrine may be, it has
no space for the genuine openness of the traditional shrine.
E. Finally, the traditional organization of saints-day festivals (mawalid) has
been effected by societal and economic changes. The mulid festival,
celebrated annually at the shrine of the wali, provides a space for various
economic, social, cultural, and artistic practices. It is also a place where
Sufi groups gather to meet, mobilize their supporters, and display their
identity to the visitors (M. El-Gawhary 1988; F. Mostafa 1980). Until
early 20th century, major mulids (especially the mulid of as-Sayyid Ahmad
al-Badawi in Tanta) constituted the country’s most important markets.
 SAINTS (AWLIYA’), PUBLIC PLACES AND MODERNITY IN EGYPT | 121

With the growth of the modern economy, mulids have largely lost their
importance as markets. However the cafes, amusements, and the trade in
toys, souvenirs, sweets, and religious commodities continue to have
enormous economic significance for towns that host major mulids. This
trade demonstrates the many changes that have taken place in the
traditional organization of festivals. Rather than unchanging traces of
traditional culture, mulids today are in many ways thoroughly modern and
infiltrated by the culture of consumerism. The first of such manifestations
of change to emerge was the appearance of modern cafés in the public
places around the shrines of awliya’. Previously, the tea-maker used to
appear only at the festival (mawlid) in villages or sit in a remote place of
the square in towns and cities to make tea for people sitting around him on
ground. Some tea makers still run their business in this way. Next to the
tea makers, however, there appeared modern cafés with chairs, tables,
glass cups, and glittering lights. Another manifestation of modern
consumerism is the development of simple shops in the districts around
important saints’ shrines into modern shopping centers with radiant
facades and modern commodities. For example, the shops selling sweets
around the shrine of as-Sayyid al-Badawi in Tanta are no longer small
shops selling products made inside the shop, but have become part of a
major industry with central distribution and a network of branches. Even
the small trade of travelling vendors is connected to the global economy
with the vendors selling incense made in India and rosaries made in
China. With the availability of electric light, loudspeakers, and brightly
colored textiles, the sound and appearance of the mulid have changed:
Sufi dhikrs have turned into concerts with audiences reaching the
thousands, the mulid is illuminated by a striking display of colorful lights,
and Sufi processions appear to have become more radiant and splendid
through the glittering colors of turbans and banners. The forms of
entertainment have become more diverse, and new games have appeared.
Thus, while certain places diminish and disappear due to urban expansion,
other places undergo radical transformation under the influence of modern
urban development. Their functions are also transformed, reflecting the
general outlook of modernity prevailing in the society.

Conclusion

In this paper I have attempted to open new horizons for the study of Egyptian
saints (awliya’) and their miracles (karamat). I propose that we go beyond the
conventional way of looking at saints as established in Egyptian folkloric and
ethnographic studies. A peripheral structure of modernity exists in Egypt that
is largely linked to the re-creation of saint veneration and beliefs, re-inventing
122 | AHMED A. ZAYED

the world of saints and guarding it throughout all transformations of the social
context over the years. I concentrated my analysis on the areas surrounding
the saints’ shrines as public places. There is a significant difference, however,
in the nature of the ‘publicness’ found in these areas in traditional and periph-
eral modern societies. While the traditional square of the saint’s shrine was
most importantly characterized by the openness it enjoyed due to the baraka
of the saint, the modern public space of the saint’s square is in many ways
more contested and fragmented due to ideological and religious contestation,
urban expansion, modern economics, and state attempts to impose fences, po-
lice surveillance, and other physical restrictions on the use of the space. I have
shown some aspects which are instrumental to the way in which these places
have been transformed from the setting of traditional culture to places where
saint veneration and communal culture and new forms of state and consumer
culture overlap. I hope that this analysis will prompt further research incorpo-
rating this view of the continuity of the relationship between the spiritual
power and the surrounding temporal powers, the role that popular beliefs play
in shaping modern public ideology, and the problems and contradictions re-
lated to the construction of a modern society. There can be no doubt that we
must consider the contradicting modes of the formation of modern material
and cultural life in peripheral societies.

References

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mu‘taqadat al-sha‘biya, Alexandria: Dar al-ma‘rifa al-jami‘iya.
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Adab Bookshop.
Carr, Stephen/Francis, Marc/Rivlin, Leanne/Stone, Andrew (1992) Public
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Gellner, Ernest (1981) Muslim Society, Cambridce: Cambridge University
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Hobsbawm, Eric (1983) “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe 1870-1914”. In:
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Mustafa, Faruq (1980) al-Mawalid: dirasa li-l-‘adat wa-t-taqalid al-sha‘biya
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Mustafa, Faruq/Muhammad, ‘Abbas (2004) Sina‘at al-wali: Dirasa

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Usra.
Chapter 6

Islam on both Sides: Religion and

Locality in Western Burkina Faso
Katja Werthmann

Introduction

Although the history of Islam in West Africa has been studied by historians
for a long time, anthropologists have tended to focus on the non-Islamic, ‘tra-
ditional’ elements of West African cultures (Launay 2006; ùaul 2006). A
closer look at these cultures, however, reveals that Islamic elements seem to
have been incorporated ever since Islam made its first inroads into the West
African Sahel and Savannah zones more than thousand years ago. Instead of
maintaining a dichotomy between Islam and non-Islam, Mahir ùaul (2006: 8)
suggests regarding Islam as a “major ingredient of West Africa’s historical
heritage” that has created a shared ‘canvas of meanings’ through exchanges
between West Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Middle East. Islam
has had a profound influence on West African cultures, even where conver-
sion did not take place.
Before the 19th century, Muslims rarely were politically dominant. A po-
litical division of labor between rulers and warriors, shrine priests, and Mus-
lim advisors and mediators was a common feature throughout West Africa.
Through their command of literacy, Muslims acted as secretaries, diplomats,
and counselors at the courts of rulers. Conversion to Islam was not a one-way
street; depending on the historical and local circumstances Muslim groups be-
came non-Muslims and then Muslims again over the centuries, with some Is-
lamic elements retained in local religious practice. Populations who never
adopted Islam as a whole incorporated Islamic elements into local religion
(ùaul 1997). On the other side, Muslims in some regions practiced masking
traditions on the occasion of Islamic holidays. “People keep debating the Is-
lamic or non-Islamic origin of certain practices, in which their own collective
identities now hang. From a historical perspective, both sides of the divide are
saturated with Islamic elements” (ùaul 2006: 23).
126 | KATJA WERTHMANN

This paper is about two cases of ‘Islam on both sides’ in present-day

Burkina Faso.1 It compares the sacrificial site of Dafra and the Muslim village
of Darsalamy, both in the vicinity of Bobo-Dioulasso. Bobo-Dioulasso is
Burkina Faso’s second-largest city, its population of an estimated half million
is predominantly Muslim, and the lingua franca is Jula.2 In terms of cultural
history, Bobo-Dioulasso has much more in common with the Mande-speaking
areas of the neighboring countries Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea than with
the Moose (Mossi) areas which make up much of present-day Burkina Faso.
Dafra and Darsalamy are closely connected with the history of Bobo-
Dioulasso and the history of Islamization of this region. At an initial glance,
these two places seem to epitomize the difference between non-Islam and Is-
lam. Dafra is seen by many Muslims as a quintessentially pagan place, but
stories of the origin of Dafra told by Muslims and non-Muslims alike say that
a Muslim saint discovered it. Darsalamy, on the other hand, was intentionally
founded by Muslims in order to create a place where pagan practices are for-
bidden. The comparison of these two localities shows that they do not corre-
spond to a clear dichotomy between Islam and ‘paganism’, but instead repre-
sent two points on a continuum of more or less Islam in Burkina Faso.

The Spread of Islam in Burkina Faso

In contrast with the neighboring polities of ancient Ghana, Mali and Songhai
to the West, and the Sokoto caliphate to the east, the Islamization of what is
today Burkina Faso began relatively late. Before the 19th century, and in some
parts until well into the 20th century, many areas were predominantly inhab-
ited by populations who were religiously non-Muslim, economically farmers
and herders, and politically organized in largely autonomous units of local-
ized kin groups, even if nominally part of overarching political hierarchies.
Muslim traders probably came to the Volta region from at least the 16th cen-
tury, but Muslims did not attain positions of political superiority. Although
some rulers converted to Islam, and Muslims held important positions at rul-
ers’ courts (Kouanda 1989), the Moose (Mossi) polities were credited as be-

1 Fieldwork was carried out in 2006 and 2007 in the framework of the multidisci-
plinary research program SFB 295 ‘Cultural and linguistic contacts’ at the Uni-
versity of Mainz, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). I
thank Lamine Sanogo (CNRST) for taking me to Bobo-Dioulasso in March
2006, Lassina Sanon for introducing me to some of the old-established Muslim
families, Alimatou Konaté for her cooperation and friendship, Bruno Doti Sanou
(CAD) and Mahir ùaul for their comments on an earlier version, and all those
who kindly agreed to be interviewed. This paper presents work in progress and
may contain shortcomings yet to be corrected by further research.
2 The Jula spoken in Bobo-Dioulasso is very close to the standard Bambara/
Bamanankan of Mali.
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 127

ing ‘bulwarks’ against Islam until the beginning of French colonial rule
(Clark 1982: 59; Levtzion 1968: 163-172). Only a small portion of what is to-
day the northernmost part of Burkina Faso mainly inhabited by Tuareg and
Fulbe populations fell under the influence of the jihad movements of the 19th
century, and the Fulbe polity of Liptako became an emirate of the Sokoto ca-
liphate (Kouanda 1995: 236; Pelzer et al. 2004: 265-269).The jihad move-
ments also had repercussions on the upper Mouhoun where Mahmoud and
Moktar Karantao tried to establish a Muslim polity around Ouahabou in the
mid-19th century. In contrast with the neighboring West African regions, Sufi
orders such as the Tijaniyya or the Qadiriyya were almost absent in Burkina
Faso until the colonial period (Otayek 1988: 107).
Around 1960, the percentage of Muslims in what was then Upper Volta
was estimated as 20-25 percent (Clark 1982: 214). During the 1980s, this fig-
ure rose to 40 percent, and currently there are around 50-60 percent Muslims3.
Since the colonial period, Muslims founded several associations such as the
Communauté des Musulmans au Burkina Faso (CMBF), Mouvement Sunnite
du Burkina Faso (MSBF), Association Islamique de la Tijaniyya de Burkina
Faso (AITBF), Association des Elèves et Etudiants Musulmans du Burkina
Faso (AEEMBF), Centre d’Études, de Recherches et de Formation Isla-
miques (CERFI). Most of these associations have recently been united under
the umbrella of the Fédération des Associations Islamiques du Burkina
(FIAB) which was created in 2005.4 Rivalries exist both between these asso-
ciations and among members of one and the same association (Kouanda
1998).
Burkina Faso is a laic state. “There is no official state religion, and the
Government neither subsidizes nor favors any particular religion. The practice
of a particular faith is not known to confer any advantage or disadvantage in
the political arena, the civil service, the military, or the private sector” (Inter-
national Religious Freedom Report 2005 Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights, and Labor, US Department of State). 5 Both Muslim and Christian
feasts such as Eid al-Adha or Easter Monday are national holidays. Although
individual politicians may support or sympathize with specific religious insti-
tutions or associations, or the other way around, the state by and large does
not interfere in religious affairs. To date, religion has rarely been a cause of
conflicts. When conflicts occur, it is within religious communities, such as for
instances the clashes between Wahhabites and other Muslims in the 1970s,

3 https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uv.html (last
download August 8, 2007).
4 http://www.hebdo.bf/actualite2/hebdo349-350/societe_federation349.htm (last
download June 4, 2007).
5 http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51451.htm (last download August 8,
2007).
128 | KATJA WERTHMANN

rather than between Christians and Muslims (cf. Fourchard 2002: 243). The
cohabitation between Muslims, Christians, and adherents of local religions
has been mostly peaceful, partly because many families in Burkina Faso are
multi-religious. Conversions occur rather pragmatically, and individuals can
convert more than once from one religion to the other (Langewiesche 2003,
2005).6

Scholars, Traders, and Warriors

As in other West African regions, the spread of Islam in the Volta area was a
concomitant of long-distance trade. Mande-speaking Muslim traders and
craftsmen who came to be known as Jula7 slowly made their way from further
west. Some of these Muslims settled down in agrarian, segmentary communi-
ties and adopted local religions over the course of several generations (Lev-
tzion 1968: 143; Wilks 2000: 101). Others settled in separate villages or town
wards where they built mosques and founded Qur’anic schools for their own
and other people’s children.
Since Muslims in the Volta region lived in dar al-harb (land of the unbe-
lievers), they needed legitimization for trading with unbelievers—an activity
viewed with disdain by some North African Muslim jurists (Wilks 2000: 95).
This legitimization was provided by Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, a 15th or 16th cen-
tury scholar from the Sahelian town of Ja (Dia) who established “a pedagogi-
cal tradition that survives to this day despite the pressures of modernism”
(Wilks 2000: 97; see also Wilks 1968: 177-180; Wilks 1989: 98-100). Ac-
cording to Suwari’s teachings, the Jula developed a ‘praxis of coexistence’
(Wilks 2000: 98) with unbelievers which was rooted in the conviction that
conversion to Islam could not be enforced, and that submission to non-
Muslim rulers was acceptable as long as Muslims could keep their faith.
The Jula, notably those groups carrying the patronymic Saganogo,8 were
instrumental in the spread of Islam in the area between the Middle Niger and

6 For Islam in Burkina Faso since the colonial period, see also Cissé (1998);
Deniel (1970); Koné-Dao (2005); Otayek (1988, 1993); Skinner (1966); Traoré
(2005).
7 Alternatively Dyula, Dioula, Juula.
8 Other pronunciations and spellings: Sanogo, Saghanogho, Saghanughu. For the
history of this patronymic, see Rey (1998). In conversations and in the literature,
patronymic groups are frequently represented as one family or kin group, but in-
dividuals and groups adopted Jula patronymics at different times and for a vari-
ety of reasons which were not always connected with conversion to Islam, e.g.
to facilitate marriage and war alliances; to show allegiance to a local ruler; to
adopt one’s master’s name when being a slave; to become traders and thus Mus-
lims; as a ‘nom de guerre’; under colonial pressure; or simply as a nickname af-
ter having traveled to the Mande-speaking regions.
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 129

the forests of the Guinea Coast (Wilks 2000: 101).9 The history of Islam in
Bobo-Dioulasso is closely related with the history of Kong (Kp‫ܚ‬n), a major
center for trade and Islamic learning in present-day Côte d’Ivoire, c. 250 km
south of Bobo-Dioulasso. Those Saganogo who eventually settled in Bobo-
Dioulasso were descendants of Muhammad al-Mustafa Saganogo, an impor-
tant scholar who had twelve sons. Two of them, Ibrahim and Seydou, moved
to Bobo-Dioulasso in 1177/1764 (alternatively 1168/1754 or 1188/177410) at
the request of warriors carrying the patronymic Watara11 who needed the so-
cial and spiritual services of the Saganogo scholars. These consisted not only
in providing religious advice, but in settling conflicts and mediating between
different interest groups. Until today, the Saganogo act as ‘maîtres de pardon’
for the Watara (Quimby 1972: 53).
Bobo-Dioulasso, or Sya in pre-colonial times, was a trading center along
the axis that linked Djenné in present-day Mali to Beghu in present-day
Ghana, with connections to other trading centers such as Bondoukou, Bouna,
Kong, and Salaga, in present-day Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (Fourchard 2002:
31). The town of Sya emerged from several settlements of Bobo-speaking
groups along the banks of the streams We (Houet) and Sanyon. Sya’s inhabi-
tants are the result of the merging of different groups, among them those
known as Bobo-Jula or Zara.12
The Muslim scholars Seydou and Ibrahim Saganogo accompanied a group
of Watara warriors from Kong.13 The Saganogo settled in the quarter of Fara-
kan where they built a mosque whose first Imam was Seydou. Another
mosque was built later in the quarter of Kombougou where the Watara re-
sided. As in other West African towns, there was a division of labor between
the warriors who protected the trade routes and captured people as slaves, and
the Muslim specialists who provided the warriors and traders with spiritual
protection (Fourchard 2002: 34-35; cf. Green 1986; Launay 1982). Until the
end of the 19th century, Islam in Sya was restricted to the families of the Sa-
ganogo karam‫܉‬g‫܉‬w (‘the people who teach’, from ar. qara’a ‘read’), other
groups of foreign traders such as the Dafing, and some converts among the

9 In contrast with Muslims east of the Mouhoun (Black Volta) who became politi-
cally and culturally integrated into the existing polities such as Dagomba, Gonja,
or Wala, the Jula Muslims west of the Mouhoun retained their linguistic and cul-
tural identity (Levtzion 1968: xxv).
10 Traoré (1996: 245); Wilks (1968: 175) and field research in Bobo-Dioulasso
2006/07.
11 On the history of the Watara and the Watara ‘war houses’, see ùaul (1998,
2003).
12 As elsewhere in Africa, collective identities in pre-colonial times did not neces-
sarily correspond with what came to be referred as ‘ethnic’ today (Lentz 1995).
13 Jula scholars stood in defined relationships with, or ‘belonged’ to, their respec-
tive Watara allies (Quimby 1972: 42).
130 | KATJA WERTHMANN

Watara and local families. It was only during colonial rule that Islam became
the religion of the majority of the inhabitants of Sya (Fourchard 2002: 219).
In 1904 Sya was officially renamed Bobo-Dioulasso.

Alliances and Rivalry:

Relationships between the Sanou, Watara and Saganogo

A tourist in Bobo-Dioulasso will inevitably visit the ‘quartier touristique

Kibidoué’.14 It is one of the oldest parts of Bobo-Dioulasso and characterized
by compounds built of mud connected by a multitude of small passageways.
In this part of town, the visitor is led to two houses said to be the ‘first houses’
of the respective communities. In front of one of the first houses is a board
that says ‘Sya-kourou. La maison et l’autel du premier ancêtre Bobo-Madarê’.
In the courtyard, there is a huge shrine in the form of an ovoid mound of
earth. The other first house has a board saying: ‘Konsasso. La maison du
premier ancêtre Bobo du Sya’.15 The existence of these two ‘first houses’ re-
flects the complex processes of population movements, the emergence of
‘ethnic’ identities, and claims to firstcomership in western Burkina Faso.
‘Bobo-Madare’ is an umbrella term for groups known as Bobo or Bobo-Fing
in the literature.16 Guy Le Moal (1999) thinks that the groups known as Bobo
today emerged from clans of sedentary farmers with various origins. The
other group called Bobo is better known as Bobo-Jula or Zara. According to
Le Moal (1999: 17-18), the Zara ancestors came from the Mande-speaking ar-
eas between the end of the 16th and beginning of the 18th century and special-
ized in trade and warfare.17 They were later called Bobo-Jula by the Watara of
Kong. The Zara, or at least some Zara families, first allied with the Watara,
but later became their rivals for trade routes and political authority.

14 Bobo Dioulasso, Plan Touristique, IGB Ouagadougou 1990.

15 In fact, every ancient quarter has its ‘first house’, i.e. the house of the founding
family which contains important cult objects and is the venue for specific cele-
brations.
16 For a discussion of ‘Bobo’ as an ethnonym, see Le Moal (1960).
17 For a reconstruction of the history of the Zara, see Le Moal (1999: 17-25).
Sanou (2005: 51) situates the immigration of the Zara between the 11th and the
16th century. Traoré (1993: 10) differentiates between 1) ‘Zara de souche’, the
ancestors from Mande, 2) Zara who married Bobo women, and 3) Bobo who
converted to Islam and thus became Zara. Zara is used as a self-reference of the
groups more widely known as Bobo-Jula, but the name Zara may not be known
by other inhabitants of Bobo-Dioulasso, even if born and bred there. Today, the
Zara families of Bobo-Dioulasso carry the patronymic Sanou/Sanon. Relations
between the Watara and the Sanou predated the arrival of Watara in Bobo-
Dioulasso (Kodjo 2006; Le Moal 1999: 21, n. 58; Rey 1998: 143; ùaul 1998:
548).
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 131

A legend repeatedly cited in the literature18 and told in Bobo-Dioulasso

has it that the ancestor of the Bobo-Jula/Zara was a Muslim who settled in
Bobo-Dioulasso among the local non-Muslims. When he made the pilgrimage
to Mecca, he entrusted his children to his Bobo hosts. During his long ab-
sence, the children gave up Islam and practiced the religious cults of their
hosts. Underneath a small shrine in the first house of the Bobo-Jula/Zara there
are said to be buried a Qur’an, a staff, or a prayer mat of this ancestor.19 The
majority of the Bobo-Jula/Zara remained non-Muslims until well into the co-
lonial period.
There was, however, one Bobo-Jula/Zara who became an important figure
in the history of Islam in Bobo-Dioulasso: Sakidi Sanou. According to what
seems to be a fairly standardized version of his biography,20 he was the son of
a wood carver named Kiétré Traoré. Kiétré was a pagan but became friends
with a Saganogo scholar named Seydou Babema. Babema was a grandson of
Seydou, one of the two Saganogo brothers who first came to Bobo-Dioulasso.
Kiétré converted to Islam and took the name Mahama. When Kiétré’s wife
died in childbirth,21 he gave the child to Seydou Babema who entrusted it to
his wife Makossara.22 The child, Sakidi, was raised by Seydou Babema and
Makossara and later became a pupil in Seydou’s Qur’anic school. When he
was old enough to be inititated into the Bobo mask cult, his non-Muslim rela-
tives claimed him back, but Seydou refused. He arranged for Sakidi to be sent
to a renowned Muslim scholar in Dia, Abubakar Karabinta. Sakidi’s return to
Bobo-Dioulasso coincided with mounting tensions between the Watara and

18 Rey (1998: 143); Traoré (1984: 20-21); Traoré (1993: 14); Traoré (1996: 199);
Wilks (1968: 193).
19 Cf. Person (1968: 145) who found similar stories: “On nous raconte souvent
dans la zone préforestière comment les descendants d’un Ladyi célèbre ont
transformé le Coran que leur ancêtre, acheté à la Mecque, en ‘fétiche’ sur lequel
ils sacrifiaient très régulièrement.” See also Levtzion (1968: 144). Rey (1998)
sees this legend as a condensed version of what also happened in other West Af-
rican regions during a time when Islam was not yet permanently rooted. Accord-
ing to Rey, the reversion to local religion was a result of Suwari’s and other
scholars’ exit of Dia after Askia Muhammad came to power in Songhai. Their
retreat led to a general decline of Islam in Dia and in other Muslim centers.
20 Interview with Imam Siaka Sanou and others, 28.10.2006; Interview with Imam
Mohammed Kassamba-Diaby, 4.11.2006; Interview with Ali ‘Mossi’ Moulaye,
14.11.2006; Interview with Mohammed Sabti Saganogo; 15.11.2006; Interview
with Fajabi Saganogo, 23.3.2007; see also Person (1975: 1903, n. 53); Traoré
(1984: 72-75), Traoré (1993), Traoré (1996: 640).
21 According to one document in the possession of Mohammed Sabti Saganogo
and written by Elhaj Muhammad Fodé Mory Saganogo aka Marhaba, Sakidi
was born in 1245/1829. Traoré (1993) gives 1840 as Sakidi’s year of birth, Doti-
Sanou and Sanou (1994: 126) between 1820 and 1830.
22 The fact that Babema’s real name was also Seydou is probably the reason why
these two persons are frequently confused in stories about Sakidi.
132 | KATJA WERTHMANN

the Zara. Sakidi wanted to construct a Friday mosque but was not given per-
mission. It was only after he and other Muslims had helped the Zara and Wa-
tara warriors against their enemy Tieba of Sikasso that he was given a piece
of land for the mosque which was built in 1292/187523 in what is now the
quarter of Dioulassoba. 24 The relationship between Sakidi and the warlord
Samori Touré is said to have spared the town from being sacked in 1897.
Sakidi also tried to act as mediator between the people of Bobo-Dioulasso and
the French troups in the same year, but was killed in the course of the attack
on the town. He was buried in his mosque, and is today venerated as a saint.
Sakidi is an important figure for the history of Islam in Bobo-Dioulasso
because he personifies the historical alliance between the Watara and Sa-
ganogo on the one hand and their Zara hosts on the other. Sakidi also stands
for the transfer of religious authority from the Saganogo to the Zara. Although
he never became Imam himself, the building of the Friday mosque epitomizes
a shift in the pattern of religious leadership, because the Imamate eventually
came into the hands of the Zara.25 To the present day, the Imam of the mosque
of Dioulassoba is considered as ‘grand Imam’, although other Friday mosques
have been built since then.

Darsalamy: A Saintly Place

Darsalamy is a settlement 15 km south of Bobo-Dioulasso that was founded

around the mid-19th century by Muslim Jula scholars from Bobo-Dioulasso.26
One particular incident is cited as the reason for their emigration: a pupil of
one Saganogo scholar was flogged by a Bobo mask and thereby lost an eye.27
This incident epitomized the mounting tensions between the Saganogo schol-
ars and their Watara allies and Zara hosts, who—even if nominally Mus-
lims—would not give up certain habits and customs such as drinking sorghum

23 Interview with Mohammed Sabti Saganogo 11.11.2006; according to others ei-

ther in 1880 or after the war against Tieba of Sikasso which was in 1893.
24 Dioulassoba/Sya comprises the ancient quarters or villages of Kibidoué and
Tiguihȃn (Sanou 2005: 61).
25 Since there was no ‘central mosque’ before that built by Sakidi, it seems
unlikely that the Zara were Imams before that time, as claimed by Griffeth
(1971: 173).
26 Exact dates are notoriously hard to come by in African history, even where writ-
ten sources exist. According to Mohammed Sabti Saganogo, who relies on
documents by Al-Hajj Marhaba Saganogo, Darsalamy was founded in
1266/1849; according to Balaji Saganogo from Loto 40 years before the arrival
of Samori, which would be 1857; according to Traoré (1996: 785) and to Grif-
feth (1971: 174) in the middle or the latter half of the 19th century respectively.
27 Traoré (1984: 79-80); Traoré (1996: 639), interview with Baflémory Saganogo,
Darsalamy, 31.1.2007; interview with Balaji Usman Saganogo, Loto, 16.3.2007.
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 133

beer, masking traditions, or the dances of kurubi and jȃmȊnȊ 28 . Kurubi is

danced by Jula girls and young women in the 14th and 27th night (laylat al-
qadr) of Ramadan. JȃmȊnȊ is danced by Bobo-Jula/Zara girls and women on
the day of the Muslim New Year (Ashura, 10th day of Muharram). These
dancers were practically naked in pre-colonial times, and they still appear na-
ked to present-day Muslims who do not consider a bra as a top and a cloth and
some strings of pearls tied around the waist as decent clothing.
Darsalamy is one of the few settlements in Burkina Faso that were inten-
tionally created or renamed in order to stress Muslim identity and piety. Other
examples are Ouahabou near Boromo which was conquered and renamed by
the Karantao during their attempt to wage jihad against the local populations
in the mid-19th century (Kouanda 2000), and Ramatoulaye near Ouahigouya
which was founded by one important figure of the Hamalliya/Hamawiyya in
the early 20th century (Dassetto/Laurent 2006). The Muslims from Bobo-
Dioulasso who went to settle in Darsalamy wanted to have a saintly, or ‘pure’,
place (yȃrȃ sanyiani; ‘ville saine et sainte’, Kouanda 2000: 259), away from
non-Muslim customs. “Darsalami became a place of refuge for learned Mus-
lims, a center where judicial appeals were argued before clerical courts, and a
school center” (Griffeth 1971: 174).
Today, Darsalamy is one of the few places in Burkina Faso where there
are tombs of Muslim saints. Among them are the tombs of the founders, but
also tombs of ordinary persons who were not considered as someone special
during their life-time. Tombs are not normally marked. Old graves may only
be discovered when holes are dug for new ones by accident. In Darsalamy, a
horse stepped on an old grave several years ago. The ground caved in, and
people discovered that the corpse of a woman who was buried there, and
whose name was not even remembered, had not decayed. As in other parts of
the Muslim world, this is considered as a sign of saintliness and, since then,
the grave has been surrounded by an enclosure, pilgrims come to visit, and
prominent Muslims, such as the late patriarch of the Saganogo in Bobo-
Dioulasso, Al-Hajj Abdulkadir Asséou (died 10.1.2007), ask that their fami-
lies be buried next to it. However, there is no unanimous opinion concerning
these practices. Some scholars explicitly asked that their graves not be marked
to prevent the emergence of a cult.
There are several versions of the foundation of Darsalamy, but those I
have heard so far agree that the founder was Bassaraba Saganogo, a grand-son
of one of the two Saganogo brothers, who came to Bobo-Dioulasso from
Kong. Other Muslim families such as the Barro, Coulibaly, Diané, Diarra, Fo-

28 Other spellings: Djombele, Jombele, Zȃmİlİ. For the kurubi, see Bauer (2005:
345-377); Quimby (1972: 75, 1979); Traoré (1996: 706). “Le Jõmènè est chez
les Bobo-jula ce qu’est le Kurubi chez les Mandé-jula” (Traoré 1996: 703; see
also Sanou 1993).
134 | KATJA WERTHMANN

fana, Kassamba-Diaby, Sesuma, Sissé, Touré, and Traoré joined them. Since
the Barro do not specialize in Islamic scholarship, the Saganogo offered them
the village headmanship (dugutigiya).29
The foundation of Darsalamy must be set in the historical context of the
jihads that marked West Africa during the 18th and 19th century. The tolerance
for pagan practices and non-Muslim rulers which for centuries had character-
ized the Jula scholars’ attitude vis-à-vis unbelievers came under strain in the
second half of the 19th century. In particular the new doctrines by the West
African jihad leader Al-Hajj Umar Tall, according to which paganism had to
be fought, not tolerated, created a dilemma for the Saganogo scholars whose
philosophy rejected conversion by force (Traoré 1996: 690-691, 785). In con-
trast with the previous ‘revolutionary’ jihads which had primarily aimed at re-
forming Islam within the societies of the respective jihad leaders, Umar Tall’s
was an ‘imperial’ jihad aimed at imposing Islam on the lands east of the Fulbe
Dar al-Islam, but also included attacks on Muslim polities such as Masina
(Robinson 1985: 3-4, 323).30 Umar Tall also was a major figure of the West
African Tijaniyya whereas most of the Saganogo scholars belonged to the
Qadiriyya. This situation probably led to diverging opinions among the Jula
Muslims in Bobo-Dioulasso about how to position themselves. In any case,
even before the creation of Darsalamy, there had been differences between the
descendants of Ibrahim and Seydou which led to the relocation of Seydou’s
descendants from Farakan to Kombougou.
During the same period, there was a mounting rivalry between the Sa-
ganogo, the Watara, and the Zara about commercial and political interests.
According to Traoré (1996: 784), the Zara who started resenting the Watara
dominance suspected the Saganogo of ‘connivance’ with the Watara. In fact,
spiritual and other support was exactly what the Watara had always expected
of the Saganogo. The Zara’s claim for political leadership meant that the
Muslims could come under non-Muslim rule. Although this had not been a
problem for the Jula in previous centuries, it became unacceptable in the his-
torial context of the jihad period. Eventually, the circumstances made it diffi-
cult for the Saganogo to cohabit with their non-Muslim hosts. Rather than en-
gaging in combat against paganism, a part of the Saganogo left Bobo-

29 Interviews with Ali and Bakoba Diané (Darsalamy), Bafaga Diané (Kotédou-
gou), Baflémory Saganogo (Darsalamy), Balaji Saganogo (Loto), and Moham-
med Sabti Saganogo (Bobo-Dioulasso) in 2007.
30 Umar’s most spectacular achievement was the conquest of Segu in 1861. After
the conquest, he sent a message to Kong demanding its rulers to submit. A dele-
gation from Kong went to Umar and asked him to spare the city. To the relief of
the people of Kong, Umar died shortly thereafter in battle (Binger 1892: 341;
Robinson 1985: 300). According to a popular account, Umar Tall stayed with
Ibrahim Saganogo in Bobo-Dioulasso for some time on his way to Mecca be-
tween 1810 and 1820, but Robinson (1985: 96) considers this as a legend.
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 135

Dioulasso and founded the village of Darsalamy. The name Darsalamy, ‘land
of peace’, is significant in itself, because, in contrast to the old-established
pattern of Jula scholars following the Watara warriors to new settlements, no
Watara preceded or accompanied them this time.
The episode cited as the reason for leaving Bobo-Dioulasso—the Qur’anic
student who was injured by a Bobo mask, see above—was probably only the
last, or the most memorable, in a serious of similar events that preceded the
move-out. This episode points to two different, but related aspects concerning
the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims. On the one hand, Mus-
lim scholars felt offended by the disrespect of their non-Muslim neighbors.
On the other hand, they were also afraid that their children—many of whom
obviously had the habit of watching the mask dances—might become non-
Muslims (as had the children of the Zara ancestor). A third reason for the re-
location to Darsalamy was brought up by a present-day Saganogo scholar:31
some of the Saganogo, especially those considered as great marabouts,
needed a more quiet place for practicing khalwa (spiritual retreat), away from
the crowds and noises of town life, and from their religious and social obliga-
tions to attend name-giving-ceremonies, funerals, and the like. The relocation
to Darsalamy thus led to a concentration of marabouts in a small place.
The combined spiritual powers of these Muslim scholars are reputed to
have influenced some decisive historical moments. When the inhabitants of
Bobo-Dioulasso were at war with Tieba of Sikasso (in present-day Mali) at
the end of the 19th century, it was with the help of the Saganogo marabouts
that an albino or a female jinn was transformed into Tieba’s favorite wife and
managed to poison him with food. In the colonial period, when the Watara
were chefs de canton, one Watara was refused a woman of the Saganogo in
Darsalamy on the grounds that she was already married.32 As a revenge, he
managed to have forced labor imposed on the Muslim scholars and made
them build a road. This was highly offensive for the scholars because in Jula
society manual labor was normally done by slaves or social minors. The Sa-
ganogo scholars united their spiritual forces and made the French remove the
power of the hands of the Watara and give it to the Zara of Bobo-Dioulasso.
Stories like these stress the political agency of the Saganogo although they
never were officially political leaders. They also illustrate once more the shift-
ing loyalties between Watara, Zara, and Saganogo that until today have reper-
cussions in local politics.
Khalwa is also one of the means to obtain solutions for the problems of
people who consult the scholars. Until today, Darsalamy is more a village
than a town, but it is a place with a veritable ‘prayer economy’ (Soares 2005).

31 Interview with Mohammed Sabti Saganogo, 29.8.2007.

32 This represented not only an inappropriate request but an outright affront. Tradi-
tionally the Watara gave wives to the Saganogo and never the other way around.
136 | KATJA WERTHMANN

Until recently, the main source of revenues seems to have been spiritual ser-
vices by a number of marabouts who were visited by people from all over the
region. Darsalamy has a train station which only a few years ago was closed
after the privatization of the national railway company RAN. Whenever pas-
sengers got off the train, they were immediately surrounded by local guides
who offered to take them to one of the local scholars who provide spiritual
services. Obviously, religious and commercial interests have merged in the
creation of Darsalamy.
The emigration to Darsalamy was not an exodus. From the existing litera-
ture, one may get the impression that all the Saganogo from Bobo-Dioulasso
left for Darsalamy. In fact, it was only one branch that left and was later
joined by others, many of whom came directly from Kong after the
(in)famous warlord Samori Touré had destroyed the town in 1897. The move-
out of a part of the Saganogo does not necessarily reflect a complete breach
with the Watara and the Zara. There were and are close relations and a con-
stant stream of visits between Bobo-Dioulasso and Darsalamy, especially on
the occasion of Islamic holidays. The relocation of Bassaraba and his follow-
ers instead reflected internal divisions which may have been articulated,
among others, in terms of religious differences. According to one interview
partner, it was primarily the Saganogo who were allied with one particular
Watara family or ‘house’33 who would not agree to tolerate pagan customs
any longer. Those Saganogo who stayed in Bobo-Dioulasso kept acting as ad-
visors and mediators for the Watara. Until today, the Imam of the Watara
mosque in Kombougou is a Saganogo, and the relations between the Sa-
ganogo in Darsalamy and Bobo-Dioulasso are very close.

Dafra: A Sacred Place

Visitors to Bobo-Dioulasso are told to be aware of approaching the banks of

the streams Houet and Sanyon which are inhabited by sacred silurids (catfish,
j. manȃgȃ). These catfish are considered as tutelary spirits of Bobo-Dioulasso
and figure in the city’s coat of arms. Should anybody intentionally or by acci-
dent kill one of the fishes, he or she will be flogged and must pay a fine to the
elders of the respective quarter through which the Houet flows.34 They will

33 The Watara are subdivided into lineages or houses such as the Janguinajon,
Sissira, Numabolo, Kinibolo, and Bambajon (Quimby 1972: 15; cf. ùaul 1998:
563). According to Traoré (1996: 294), these groupings corresponded in fact
with military divisions or garnisons, comparable to the Zara houses of Foroba-
konso, Sangouélélouma, and Dagasso.
34 This and the fact that there are some masks which are thought to flog innocent
passers-by are one of the reasons why many inhabitants of Bobo-Dioulasso who
are not Bobo or Bobo-Jula never venture into the old quarters. Only tourists do
that.
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 137

make a sacrifice in order to appease the powers embodied in those fishes, and
the dead fish is going to be buried like a person.35 The source of the Houet is
at Dafra, a gorge some eight km southeast of Bobo-Dioulasso. Dafra is a sac-
rificial site that is visited by people from all over Burkina Faso and the
neighboring countries. It has the reputation of being a powerful place where
wishes made and confirmed by vows will be fulfilled.36
A pilgrim to Dafra is led on a footpath down a slope into the gorge. At
bottom level, the source of the Houet forms a kind of basin. The pilgrims,
each of whom has brought a chicken, are led to a shrine, a large boulder on
one side of the banks of the basin covered with feathers, blood, and millet
beer. The chicken is killed and some blood and feathers sprinkled on the rock.
If the pilgrims are Muslims, however, they will not go to the shrine but kill
their chicken directly on the rocky ground beside the basin. Before killing the
chicken, the visitors hold them for a moment and silently utter their respective
wishes to them. After the chickens have been killed, they are plucked and
grilled on the spot at several fireplaces. Then the visitors proceed to the edge
of the basin, throw pieces of dȊgȊ (fermented balls of millet paste) and the in-
testines of the chicken into the water, and call the fishes: “Dafra na tȃ!”—
“Dafra, come and take!”. Dafra is the name of the genius loci and encom-
passes the place and the fishes. Soon there will be a number of fishes (some of
which easily measure about one meter) who snap at the food.
Having finished feeding the fishes in the basin, the pilgrims follow a small
footpath to the other side of some big rocks. There is another basin where
they can feed the fishes, and those who wish may strip and take a bath (a
‘guard’ will be posted on the footpath above in order to prevent other people
from coming around the bend that hides those who bathe from view). The wa-
ter of Dafra is considered to be purifying and healing in a spiritual sense and
can be taken home in plastic bottles.
When all of this is done, the pilgrims either eat the chicken directly, shar-
ing out pieces to other visitors who came after them, or take them home. On
Fridays, when most pilgrims arrive, the scene resembles a kind of picnic site
with groups or families gathered around a meal, were it not for the cadavers
of a dozen or more goats and rams cut into large pieces, lying on their skins
on the ground next to the basin. The goats and rams are offerings of thanks

35 Normally the fish will be buried on the spot where it is found. The quarters or
former villages which share the ritual responsibility for the Houet and the fishes
are Bindougousso, Dioulassoba, Kuinima, and Tounouma. In 2007, more than
60 fishes died of poisoning after an industrial accident on the level of Kuinima.
They were buried next to a shrine along the Houet (interviews with the village
heads of Bindougousso, Dioulassoba, Kuinima, and Tounouma in August 2007).
36 One football team in Bobo-Dioulasso is named ‘Les Silures’ after the sacred
fish. Before home matches, its members collectively visit Dafra and make offer-
ings (Royer 2002: 475).
138 | KATJA WERTHMANN

made to Dafra according to a vow made once the respective wish has been
fulfilled. The entire ground is covered with feathers, and skins that were left
behind hang in the branches of two or three trees on the side.
There is no way of establishing how long Dafra has been a sacrificial site
or lieu de pèlerinage (Sanou 1996: 128)37 for the local populations. Dafra has
probably always been an important place in the spiritual landscape of those
who inhabited the region, who, like other populations elsewhere, made a
‘pact’ with the spiritual beings of the localities where they settled.38 Today,
visitors come from all over Burkina Faso and the neighboring countries, even
from as far as Europe and the US. There are Muslims, Christians, and adher-
ents of local religions. Their social backgrounds vary widely: on several visits
my interpreter Alimatou Konaté and I met people as diverse as a doctor, a so-
ciologist, traders, farmers, students, etc. Some people clearly did not like hav-
ing witnesses and refused to talk to us, but others were quite open. Most visi-
tors said that people come to Dafra because of some personal problem such as
illness, infertility, lack of money, failure in school or business, nightmares,
etc. We did not ask for personal information other than that which was pro-
vided voluntarily, but obviously there were some people who had tried other
means of solving a serious problem before coming to Dafra as a last resort.
Otherwise it would not be conceivable, for instance, to leave a town in south-
ern Côte d’Ivoire and undertake a journey of several days, including the
crossing of the military buffer zone that has separated the North and the South
since the beginning of the civil war in 2002, just to get directly to Dafra and
then back again.
Dafra lies on the land of Kuinima which was a Bobo village in pre-
colonial times and is a quarter of Bobo-Dioulasso today. According to the
present-day chef de village de Kuinima, the inhabitants of Kuinima were
firstcomers in the region and thus have a special relationship with the site of
Dafra and with the silures, and likewise other ancient Bobo villages that bor-
der the rivers Houet and Sanyon.39 Therefore members of these Bobo com-
munities act as ‘sacrifice attendants’ for the visitors. Today, the pilgrimage to
Dafra clearly has an economic dimension. For the people who act as sacrifice

37 Sanou (1996: 128) cites two main reasons for the Bobo for making a pilgrimage
to Dafra: in order to conduct a sacrifice after having breached certain interdic-
tions concerning Dafra or the river Houet, and in order to ask for a child in case
of infertility.
38 In Timothy Insoll’s book on archaeology, ritual, and religion (Insoll 2004), the
description of a visit to Dafra serves as a prologue.
39 Interview with Sanou Famara, chef de village, and Sanou Mamadou, Kuinima,
Bobo-Dioulasso, 21.3.2007; Sanou (1996: 96). This version is contested by the
chef de terre of the Tiéfo village of Kwakwalé who claims that Dafra belongs to
the land of Kwakwalé (interview with Mori Ouattara, 10.3.2008).
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 139

attendants or tourist guides, going to Dafra has become a way of making

money, which in turn attracts other less desirable visitors such as thieves.
Certain interdictions have to be observed when visiting Dafra. One should
not wear clothing in red; on the way to and from the site, one should not
speak to other persons; one should not wear shoes when approaching the edge
of the basin and the shrine; no blood should get into the water. Most people
come accompanied by guides, either some of the attendants who wait for ‘cli-
ents’ in a compound along the dirt road leading to the site, or relatives, or
friends who have been there before. On the spot, every pilgrim is instructed
and accompanied by one of the attendants while making the offerings. The at-
tendants then pluck and roast the chicken or slaughter the other animals, and
receive meat, millet beer, or cash by way of payment.40
In former times, visits to Dafra were only permitted on Mondays and Fri-
days, but nowadays people come on every day of the week, many at week-
ends. The visits continue from early morning to early afternoon; around 4
p.m. the stream of visitors ceases and vultures start descending to pick up the
left-overs. Due to the constant coming and going, we were not able to count
people systematically, but just to give an impression: on February 9, 2007, a
Friday, we conducted brief interviews with 78 people, some of whom arrived
in small groups of three to six people (among them a group of tourists), some
alone or with a guide. These 78 people were probably half of the total number
of people who visited that day. Most of the visitors we spoke to came from
Bobo-Dioulasso or some towns and villages in the region such as Pala, Bare,
Numudara, or Banfora, but there were also people who came from Aben-
gourou and Korhogo in Côte d’Ivoire. Other Ivorian cities mentioned on other
days were Abidjan and Gagnoa. Among the visitors were Muslims, Chris-
tians, and ‘animists’; the ethnic affiliations mentioned were Bobo, Bobo-Jula,
Lobi, Mossi, Tiéfo, Samo, Senufo, and Turka.
When asked what they knew about Dafra, most people said that Dafra is a
place where you can go with any kind of problem. People come to make of-
ferings (saraka) there. They had heard about Dafra either because they were
from Bobo-Dioulasso, or because some relative or friend had already been
there and a wish had been fulfilled. Some said that Dafra is a pagan place
(sȃnni kİ yȃrȃ lo). Others, on the contrary, stressed that Dafra is not a pagan
shrine (jo yȃrȃ or josȃnyȃrȃ), but a place for the worship of God (Ala dari
yȃrȃ). In the same vein, some said that Dafra is not a god, but a gift of God,
and that their ancestors already had the habit of going there. These answers

40 It is forbidden to charge fees for these activities, but some of the attendants do so.
Apart from theft, there have also been cases of attacks on tourists (John Mes-
ser: Travel: holiday disasters, The Independent, London, May 23, 1999,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990523/ai_n14237317,
download 1.6.2007).
140 | KATJA WERTHMANN

mirror the differences between Muslims and Christians who tended to declare
Dafra as a part of local ‘tradition’ or something that did not have anything to
do with religion at all, and those who were either ‘non-practicing’ Muslims
and Christians, or outright proud to be ‘animists’ or ‘fetishists’ in popular
Burkinabè French parlance.
Whatever the case, the ‘discovery’ of Dafra is attributed to a Muslim saint
(wali) or scholar (karamȃgȃ). This Muslim is credited to be the ancestor of the
Kassamba-Diaby, one of the Muslim families in Bobo-Dioulasso. According
to a legend that is not only told by the Kassamba-Diaby but also by non-
Muslims,41 their ancestor came to the area on his way from Samatiguila in
present-day Côte d’Ivoire. According to different versions, the Kassamba-
Diaby ancestor either found the source by praying and then looking around, or
by following an animal, or he prayed for water and lightening struck the earth,
opening up the source.42 Therefore, to the present day, the Kassamba-Diaby
have a special relation to the site, although they are not its ‘owners’.
The Kassamba-Diaby are a group of Mande origin who came to the region
of Bobo-Dioulasso in the 18th century. 43 They became assimilated to the
Bobo-Jula by intermarriage and by adopting their hosts’ language. In the late
19th century, however, there were misgivings between the Kassamba-Diaby
and the Bobo-Jula because the latter did not give up their pagan practices.
Therefore, a part of the Kassamba-Diaby followed the branch of the Saganogo
family who left for Darsalamy (Traoré 1996: 798). However, close relation-
ships have existed between the Kassamba-Diaby and the Bobo-Jula up to the
present day, and they still act as maîtres de pardon for each other.44
Concerning Dafra, there is no unanimous opinion among family members.
Some have never gone and would never go to Dafra; others accompany visi-
tors quite regularly and make offerings. The present-day Imam Muhammad
Kassamba-Diaby stopped visiting Dafra many years ago. Nevertheless, he
talks openly about it. He explained, for instance, that if a person has to make
an offering of thanks but cannot do so because he or she is abroad, it is possi-

41 Interviews and conversations with Bobo elders, sacrifice attendants, and visitors
at Dafra on several visits in February 2007; Interview with Sanou Famara, chef
de village de Kuinima, Bobo-Dioulasso, and Sanou Mamadou, 21.3.2007.
42 Traoré (1996: 332); Interview with Imam Muhammad Kassamba-Diaby,
4.11.2006; Interview with Souleymane ‘Doudou’, 3.3.2007. A similar story is
told about the springs at Sindou (interview with Bafaga Diané, Kotédougou,
17.2.2007).
43 According to Traoré (1984: 22, see also Roth 1996: 45-46), they arrived before
the Saganogo, but the current Kassamba-Diaby Imam says the Saganogo and
other Muslims were already there when their ancestor arrived.
44 According to the historian Bruno Sanou (personal communication, 22.8.2007),
discussions about the origin of Dafra only emerged during the past 30 years in
the context of political disputes about historical origins of collective identities in
Bobo-Dioulasso.
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 141

ble to send money to a member of the Kassamba-Diaby family and they will
take care of it. He also said that not all wishes will be fulfilled. This does not
mean, however, that God has not heard the wish. Instead it means that God
knows about the counter-productive consequences a wish may have for a per-
son. For example, a person makes a wish to be promoted at work; but if he or
she will be promoted at the expense of a colleague, this colleague will be an-
gry and try to do harm to the person. Other Muslims in Bobo-Dioulasso, such
as, for instance, Gaoussou Sanou, a son of the late Imam Salia Sanou, would
ridicule people who go to Dafra on the grounds that everything is made by
God anyway: there is no use of killing chicken and feeding them to fishes if
you can speak to God directly through prayer.
The sacrificial practices at Dafra appear archaic but, although blood sacri-
fices are made at various shrines throughout the region, the killing of chickens
in Dafra appears to be a recent introduction. Formerly the non-Muslims only
made their vows and then washed with Dafra water, and the Muslims prayed
two rakat at the site.45 Twenty five years ago Mahir ùaul was told by Bobo in-
formants that a blood sacrifice in Dafra was an abomination. The proper sacri-
fice was fried cakes or balls made of millet (ƾȃmi, dİgİ).

The associations here are double and both interesting. First the centrality of millet,
which is a kind of sacred crop among the Bobo and other savanna people (the pagan
element if you wish). Second, it is vegetable food, which enters into the notion of
salaka/saraka [from ar. sadaka]. Whenever village people say salaka they mean a
non-blood offering.46 It is an interesting case of continuity/reinterpretation. It goes
with the prohibition of red, which is the color of very bloody shrines such as
Komo/Kono47 (Mahir ùaul, e-mail, 10.6.2007).

Obviously, not all Bobo people shared the notion that non-blood offerings are
the only acceptable way to communicate with Dafra, but it is impossible to
find out when, why, and by whom blood sacrifices were introduced in Dafra.
However, it is conceivable that the ritual practices at Dafra changed several
times ever since it first served as a sacrificial site. Since Dafra does not ‘be-
long’ to any one group, the Kassamba-Diaby Muslims could not prohibit
blood sacrifices or the consumption of sorghum beer right next to the water.
Likewise, it is difficult to set up rules or sanctions against those who violate
the interdictions, because nobody can effectively control the site. The village
heads who are responsible for sacrificial matters along the Houet say that Da-

45 Interview with Sanou Famara, chef de village de Kuinima, Bobo-Dioulasso, and

Sanou Mamadou, 21.3.2007; interview with Fousséni Kassamba-Diaby,
1.9.2007.
46 Cf. Le Moal (1999: 80).
47 ‘Power associations’ or ‘initiation societies’, sometimes transformed into witch-
hunting cults in the Mande-speaking areas of West Africa.
142 | KATJA WERTHMANN

fra will punish wrongdoers in its own time, which means that the person will
drown, be killed by a wild animal (i.e. a bush spirit), or otherwise. It is proba-
bly the fear of this kind of punishment that keeps most visitors from breaking
the rules of conduct at Dafra.
Even in the context of western Burkina Faso where earth shrines, ancestor
shrines, and individual shrines are important for personal and collective well-
being (regardless of the attachment to the universal religions), Dafra is an ex-
ceptional place. It does not ‘belong’ to any specific group or individual, al-
though the Kassamba-Diaby and some Bobo and Tiéfo communities claim a
special relation with it. Although frequently described as a pagan or ‘tradi-
tional’ place, Muslims do go there (according to some, even Wahhabites).
Some Muslims who go there maintain a difference to the non-Muslims by not
killing chickens at the shrine, and by not offering or drinking sorghum beer.
Muslims who consider themselves as more orthodox and who would never go
to Dafra argue that sacrificing chickens is a pagan practice and that if a Mus-
lim does so, he is in fact a pagan.
As the example of the Kassamba-Diaby Imam has shown, an individual
may find himself on both sides of this divide, and deal with the dilemma
pragmatically by not going to Dafra himself, but not preventing other family
members from going there. It is possible that other Muslim groups and fami-
lies in Bobo-Dioulasso secretly doubt the orthodoxy of the Kassamba-Diaby
Imam, but they do not do so openly. When the Kassamba-Diaby held a tafsir
on 5 November 2006, during Ramadan, they routinely invited the ‘grand
Imam’ and other Imams and Muslim notables. Whatever their personal views,
the grand Imam and other Imams honored the tafsir with their presence, just
as they would invite the Kassamba-Diaby in turn.

Conclusion

Darsalamy and Dafra are important localities in the spiritual landscape around
Bobo-Dioulasso. Interestingly, places like these are terminologically differen-
tiated both in French and in Jula. Whereas a Muslim place such as Darsalamy
is called ‘saintly’ (‘lieu saint’ or ‘lieu de prière’; yȃrȃ sanyiani, Ala dari yȃrȃ),
places like Dafra are called ‘sacred’ (‘lieu sacré’: joyȃrȃ́ place of shrine, or
josȃnyȃrȃ́ place of offering at a shrine).
The two places have some common features. Both are important places in
present-day accounts of the history of Bobo-Dioulasso. For both places, Islam
is a point of reference, though in different ways. Both are known beyond the
region and are visited by people who look for help and spiritual support. In
both places, the religious practice has a commercial dimension.
 ISLAM ON BOTH SIDES | 143

There are also some obvious differences between the two places. The
creation of Darsalamy seems to have been modeled on the hijra.48 The village
was founded by Muslims for Muslims who wanted to set themselves apart
from non-Muslim or only nominally Muslim people and practices such as
masks, dances, shrines, and the consumption of alcohol. Dafra, on the other
hand, is an inclusive place that does not ‘belong’ to any specific individual or
group and is visited by all kinds of people, regardless of their professed faith.
Islam serves an important element in discourses about the constitution of
collective identities. As elsewhere in West Africa, the reference to Muslim
ancestors is thought to convey a somewhat superior status on a population.
Historically, there were shifts between more and less Islam in the sub-region.
This is mirrored in the present-day relations—and conflicts—between differ-
ent groups of inhabitants of Bobo-Dioulasso. The Kassamba-Diaby—whose
ancestor, a Muslim saint, is said to have ‘discovered’ Dafra—are labeled as
‘guests’ (i.e. socially juniors) of the Bobo-Jula/Zara in Bobo-Dioulasso who
consider themselves as founders of Bobo-Dioulasso (a claim which is con-
tested by the Bobo). The Zara themselves refer to a Muslim ancestor.
Today, both Islam and the sacred fish figure in the city’s coat of arms: it
shows four silurids forming a stylized S, the upper end surrounding a baobab,
the lower end surrounding the old mosque. Thus, the coat of arms symbolizes
the different religious traditions, and the co-existence of Muslims and non-
Muslims in Bobo-Dioulasso.
The examples of Dafra and Darsalamy shows that there is no neat distinc-
tion between Islam and non-Islam in this part of West Africa. Although Dafra
is clearly not an ‘Islamic saintly place’, Muslims do visit there and make of-
ferings, and the story of its ‘discovery’ by a Muslim is acknowledged by Mus-
lims and non-Muslims alike. On the other hand, even the marabouts of Dar-
salamy were not able to eradicate the custom of kurubi (dance by girls and
young women during the 14th and 27th night of Ramadan)49. In fact, kurubi
presently seems to be more important in Darsalamy than in Bobo-Dioulasso.
It would be too easy to dismiss the attitude of Muslims who go to Dafra as
‘not really Islam’ or to discredit them as pagans—as many people in Bobo-
Dioulasso actually do. Debates about what constitutes ‘true’ or ‘false’ Islam
are probably as old as the religion itself, but the contents of the actual dis-
agreements vary according to the local and historical circumstances. It makes
sense that disagreements in this case revolve around a sacrificial site, because
sacrificial sites are an important feature of the spiritual topography of western
Burkina Faso, much more than the tombs of Muslims saints, as discussed in

48 For a discussion of hijra as a form of liminal action with reference to a similar

case of the spatial separation of ‘true’ and ‘false’ Muslims by the West African
jihad leader Usman Dan Fodio in the 19th century, see Fisher (1986).
49 For modern-day debates about kurubi, see Quimby (1979).
144 | KATJA WERTHMANN

other contributions to this volume. Other debated issues that seem to be typi-
cal for the region of Bobo-Dioulasso are the ongoing practices of masking
traditions or the dances of kurubi and jȃmİnİ, all of which are condemned in
the speeches of Muslim preachers but at the same time heralded as ‘tradition’,
‘custom’, and ‘cultural heritage’ during festivals such as the biannual Semaine
Nationale de Culture or the Festival de la Rue. More generally, the co-
existence of the diverging attitudes concerning religious practice itself points
to the fact that there is no central religious authority on either side which
could define general and binding norms. The ambiguity of certain practices—
on the one hand deemed by many to be against religion and at the same time
held to be important parts of cultural heritage and collective identity—appears
to be a general pattern in regard to modernization and religious reform in
much of the Muslim world.

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Chapter 7

The Making of a ‘Harari’ City

in Ethiopia:
Constructing and Contesting
Saintly Places in Harar
Patrick Desplat

Introduction: Debating Muslims, Contested Practises

The East Ethiopian town of Harar is considered the most important centre of
Islam in the Horn of Africa. Its symbolic capital is reflected in its local repre-
sentation as madinat al-awliya’, the city of saints, which emphasizes the spiri-
tual value of the hundreds of saintly places within its old walls and the many
shrines in the countryside beyond them. Some inhabitants go as far as refer-
ring to their city as the fourth holiest place in Islam—i.e. after Mecca, Me-
dina, and Jerusalem. However this claim is rejected by the majority and is
currently used mainly in the tourism sector to attract more visitors. Nonethe-
less, the associated saints, their legends, and practices of veneration continue
to play a significant role in the religious life of the town of Harar and, similar
to its ascription as the fourth holiest place in Islam, the saintly tradition is the
focus of much debate concerning it legitimacy. This attitude is reflected in the
following exchange between two employees of a local administration office:

Fathi: “What are people doing there, at the shrines? You know that it is forbidden to
pray to someone other than God.”
Imadj: “Of course. But people are not praying to the saint. That would be shirk
(polytheism). They pray to God and they do it in communal way, since praying to-
gether increases the effectiveness of the prayer.”
F: “So? But why are people doing it at the shrines? What is their importance? I may
pray at home, it has the same effectiveness. I don’t have to go there since God hears
me everywhere!”
I: “No, no. Look, the saints are very important individuals, the friends of God. They
have been great figures of Islam and they stand out due to their deeds and their char-
acter. It’s better to pray at their places. It’s also better to pray in a mosque than at
home. The same thing is true with shrines.”
150 | PATRICK DESPLAT

F: “O.k., but let me ask you one question: When have you been there for your last
time?”
I: “Hhm … That was long time ago. When I was a child I went there with my father
or mother. I don’t remember exactly. But that doesn’t matter. The saints are impor-
tant and righteous.”
F. “You see. I even didn’t meet any Harari, who’s going to the shrines for ziyara.
Only women may do it and a lot of Oromo people. Well, I just don’t believe in it.
And when I make this statement openly, they will call me a ‘Wahhabi’ and I will
have a lot of problems!”

This argument between the administrative employees is an illuminating ex-

ample of the different perceptions of the saintly tradition. Both participants
were Hararis and both were from the local middle class, who claim to be the
original settlers of the town and differentiate themselves from other ethnic
groups, such as the Oromo, Somalis, Argoba, and Amhara. Despite being a
minority—they represent merely twelve percent of the town’s population—
the Hararis enjoy a privileged status among their ethnic neighbours based on
their political power. As a result of the reorganization of administrative struc-
tures by the state from 1991, Harar became the smallest administrative unit in
Ethiopia, the Harari National Regional State (HNRS). This development
guarantees special legal rights for the Hararis and underlines the importance
of their current political role. Today, most of the Hararis live in diaspora
communities in other Ethiopian cities or overseas. Fathi is an exception as he
returned to Harar a few months earlier to take up a job opportunity, while
Imadj was born and raised in Harar.
Their discussion illustrates that the contestations of local saint veneration
includes at least three categories of actors. First, there are people who position
themselves against the saint tradition. These individuals clearly constitute a
minority within the Harari society and are fearful of expressing their point of
view openly as they will be accused of ‘Wahhabism’ which is equated with
extremism (akrari) in local parlance. The accusation of being a ‘Wahhabi’,
mostly made in the context of gossip, can have severe social consequences. In
reality, only a few Oromo, mainly graduates of Saudi universities, and their
followers publicly accuse saint veneration as ‘un-Islamic’.
Second, the supporters of the saintly tradition, who may visit shrines for
veneration, are identified by Fathi as ‘women’ and ‘Oromo’. Fathi used these
terms as collective references for people from the margins of society, which
includes the ‘crazy Sufis’, peasants, and illiterates and reflects the image the
local middle class has of the ‘ordinary people’. This also includes the belief
that they are ignorant of ‘correct’ religious practice. Those who believe in
saint veneration, on the other hand, resist this allegation and see themselves as
agents of an ‘orthodox’, but mystical inspired Islam. They justify their argu-
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 151

ment by referring to a mystical world view which underlines the hidden inner
dimension which would not be captured by either middle-class secular educa-
tion or the abstract knowledge of religious scholars.
This debate between followers and their opponents is not new, but a com-
prehensive phenomenon of Islamic societies and must be understood in the
context of the continuous purification of religious practice through the influ-
ence of modernity and ideas of Islamic reform. However this arena of debate
is supplemented in Harar by a third group, a characteristic of which is its am-
biguous attitude towards the saint tradition. Like Imadj, the members of this
group praise the saints, but will never visit the local shrines or participate oth-
erwise in their activities. At the same time they lament the decline of the
saintly tradition and may criticize the related rituals without, however, catego-
rizing them as un-Islamic while defending them vehemently against those
who openly question the practices at the shrines. This group includes a variety
of people from the well-educated middle class, shop-keepers, traditional reli-
gious scholars, and even reformers from the Tablighi Djamat or the Habashi-
yya. 1 This heterogeneous group is characterized by its ambivalent stance:
people from this group visit the local shrines seldom or never and may even
criticize some of the related practices. However, like Imadj, these people
never fundamentally question the saints and even defend them in disputes.
The question that arises here is why these influential and, in part, promi-
nent people in Harar stand up for saintly places although they never visit them
for religious practice. This question is directly related to local imaginations of
the self and locality. As the city of saints, Harar is an important resource not
only in the context of religious contestations but also in relation to identity
politics. This chapter will explore the problems of the construction and nego-
tiation of saintly locality. The aim is to show that local saintly places are not
marginal, but an important factor of religious and cultural order. The spatial
dimensions of sanctity play a part in the disputes surrounding their legitima-
tion. This paper will show that the conflation of culture, history, and locality
with religion are an important project for the maintenance a Harari identity, in
which the city of Harar is constructed as Islamic but rather resembled a pre-
dominantly ‘Harari’ city. The question concerning the contemporary role of
saint tradition must be seen in a wider context, in which Harari Muslims are
trying to positioning themselves as modern Muslims in a wider sense of the
umma, while defining themselves in a local and regional context through their
distinctiveness.

1 Both movements have different theological and practical approaches but share
the objective of a renewal of the Islamic faith. The Habashiyya is locally known
as Sheikh Abdullahi Djama and was initiated in Lebanon by a Harari scholar in
the 1980s. Similarly the Tablighi Djamat is quite popular in Harar as the Dawa
Djama and developed in India in the early 20th century.
152 | PATRICK DESPLAT

Symbolic and Historical Configurations of Local Sanctity, Saints,

and their Places

Harar is known by its inhabitants as Bändär Abadir, the city of the saint
Abadir or, even more distinctively, as madinat al-awliya’, the ‘city of saints’.
This term reflects the density of saintly places in and around Harar. Emile
Foucher (Foucher 1988, 1994), a catholic priest from the Capuchin mission in
Harar, identified 235 saints, while several years later the anthropologist
Camilla Gibb counted about 272, i.e. 232 male and 40 female (Gibb 1996:
291-309). More recently, the University of Rome published a map of the old
town in cooperation with the Harari People National Regional State which
contains the location of 100 saintly places (CIRPS/State 2003). However, the
exact number of saintly places and their associated saints in Harar and its sur-
rounding is not known as many sites are considered locally as khuddun, which
means ‘to be covered’, a synonym for the Arabic batin, i.e. esoteric, hidden.
This bundling of locally perceived religious importance into a meta-term
‘city of saints’ has its significance even today. Although some religious
scholars may not accept the term because of its relationship to a mystical and,
in their view, ‘popular’ Islam, many people from the middle class appreciate
it. As they see it, the expression ‘city of saints’ not only underlines the impor-
tance of the town, but also explains the obvious density of saintly places in
Harar. Other Hararis may justify the expression with reference to mystical
knowledge. According to a popular legend, the denomination of Harar as the
city of saints goes back to the prophetic ascension (mi‘radj):

During the nocturnal journey the prophet Muhammad saw from above a shining spot
on earth. He was drawing the attention of his escort, the angel Djibril and asked him
about the place and its name. The angel answered him that this is the city of saints
and they continued their journey.2

In addition to this story there is a saying that embeds two of the most vener-
ated saints of Harar, Abadir and ǥAbdulqƗdƯr DjilƗnƯ, the famous founder of
the Qadiriyya, into the wider context of the ascension of the prophet: BƗd
zaleyu AbƗdir. Bäri zaleyu ǥAbdulqƗdƯr (The land belongs to AbƗdir. The gate
belongs to ǥAbdulqƗdƯr).3 According to local interpretations the prophet was
expected by the later Caliph Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. Abu Bakr was already in-

2 This legend was already published in a similar form by Foucher, i.e. Foucher,
Emile (1994) “The Cult of Muslims Saints in Harar. Religious Dimensions”. In:
Bahru Zewde/Richard Pankhurst/Taddese Beyene (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th
International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa (1-6.4.1997), Addis
Abeba: Institute of Ethiopan Studies, Addis Abeba University, pp. 71-83.
3 A local adaptation of a hadith which is especially recognized by the Shia: “I
[Prophet Muhҕammad] am the town of knowledge and Ali is the gate.”
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 153

formed about the sighting of the madinat al-awliya’ by Muhammad through

their close relationship and the possibilities of dream communication. As a re-
sult he tried to claim the city for himself. However, the prophet said that he
would not give it to him but to his great-grandchild. After all, the local saint
Abadir is genealogically related to Abu Bakr, and the Hararis see themselves
as the descendants of the saint, which means that their claim to the town of
Harar was finally legitimated through the prophet himself. Djilani was men-
tioned because he met the prophet on one of his spiritual journeys and he was
assigned to rule the wider region, emphasizing his spiritual role in the Horn of
Africa.
These overlapping stories of spiritual belonging and leadership in a spe-
cific territory are set into a repertoire of legends that construct a connection
between the local spiritual order of Harar and a semantic Islamic imperative,
the mi‘radj in this case. All these legends of spiritual claim and protection are
connected to a cognitive map which extracts meanings that individuals and
groups assign to places. They are more or less embedded in historically con-
tingent and shared cultural understandings of the terrain and sustained by di-
verse imageries, through which people see and remember the city of Harar as
a regional centre, which obtained its legitimation as saintly from the prophet
itself, distributed genealogically through the first caliph to Abadir, the final
owner of Harar.

Saintly landscape and local cosmology—

the manifestations and meaning of saintly places

As in the case of other traditions of saint veneration throughout the Muslim

world, the saints in Harar are believed to have the capacity to heal diseases,
find of stolen goods, bring good fortune, generate fertility, and redirect lazy
pupils from Qur’anic schools back to the path of learning. In a particular case
the ascribed meaning of sanctity does not necessarily reflect an Islamic or
Sufi doctrine, but rather concrete needs and cosmologies of the local commu-
nity. This kind of contextualization causes the high level of identification of
the people with the saints, who lived, acted, and ultimately died at the shrines
as neighbours, ancestors, teachers, healers, friends, and even foes. In Harar
sanctity is partly ideological and not related to purity and taboo but mainly to
protection and the common good, both spiritually and worldly.
The historical sanctity of the ‘golden age’ is bound to protection and the
common good. This is reflected today in the local cosmology of temporal and
spatial protection. Like the town of Harar itself, virtually all visible shrines
are constructed on top of hills. Taken in combination they constitute charac-
teristic landmarks forming a saintly topography. The material appearance of
these places is highly diverse. They exist in the shape of niches, trees, simple
154 | PATRICK DESPLAT

graves, rocks, and the typical cupola. Some shrines have rooms, which are
used for the veneration of saints (gelma). Many of the shrines have a mosque
with a small cemetery attached to it. Saintly places in the countryside in par-
ticular are erected close to enormous overhanging sycamore trees.
The temporal aspect of protection is provided through local interpretation,
according to which Harar is safeguarded by 355 saints. This figure correlates
with the days of the Islamic lunar year. Thus every day of the year is pro-
tected by one saint. Oral histories tell that each weekday is represented by a
specific saint, however in most cases their names are not known. All of the
saints belong to a spiritual ‘parliament’. According to legend, all of the saints
of Harar meet every week on the top of nearby Mountain Hakim to debate
about the well-being of the city. These weekly meetings are supplemented by
monthly and yearly gatherings. This belief in protection conducted by a
saintly ‘parliament’ corresponds to a common notion in Sufism of a ‘hidden
government’ (hukuma batiniyya), who debates and judges the affairs of the
mortals and the worldly authorities, the ‘visible government’ (hukuma zahiri-
yya) (Reeves 1990).
In addition to this temporal perspective the Hararis perceive saintly places
as spatial landmarks of protection. The city wall of Harar has five gates which
lead to the region’s main trade routes. Many saints have their last sanctuary
on these routes. The saints with the first shrines beyond the gates are seen as
important patrons of protection. This is undoubtedly related to their location
as the gates were known as obvious points of attack. Shrines in the country-
side are also known for their protection, but also combine other functions. On
the one hand the shrines are believed to be places of education, Islamization
and healing during times of peace. On the other hand these graves are seen as
intersections of a wider network of communication which helped to transmit
information concerning attacks, epidemics, etc. as quickly as possible during
times of crisis.

The ‘golden age’ of saints as

reflection of historical crisis and marginality

The symbolic configuration of local sanctity is historically situated and de-

mands a perspective that brings together hagiographical sources and historical
events. The reference to a ‘golden age’ of saints is more than a mere glorifica-
tion of the past. The ‘golden age’ was, in fact, anything but golden. It was a
time of crises, in which Harar lost its political, military, and economic power.
As the capital of the Sultanat of Adal, the city became the most important
centre in the region during the 16th century. It was the breeding ground for a
new religious elite who waged a 14-year djihad (1529-1543) against the
Christian empire in the Ethiopian highlands. Their most popular leader, Imam
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 155

Ahmed b. Ibrahim, conquered extensive parts of Ethiopia during the war but
was finally vanquished with the help of Portuguese troops. From this point on
the situation in Harar changed dramatically, particularly due to the interven-
tion of a third party; for unknown reasons, the pastoralist non-Muslim Oromo
started to migrate to the western and eastern parts of today’s Ethiopia, driving
a wedge between Christians and Muslims and party benefiting from the war-
devastated land and the resulting power vacuum in these regions. In the east-
ern regions, which had been dominated by Muslims, the Oromo migration
only left small enclaves of the former Islamic dominions. For the first time the
inhabitants of Harar saw themselves as a Muslim minority against a foreign
majority of Oromo who constantly attacked the town. Islam remained the only
resource for superiority and civilization. This symbolic distinction between
town and country, physically manifested in the wall, is reflected in local ter-
minology which classifies the town as ‘civilization’ (ge) while the outskirts in
the countryside are associated with ‘barbarism’ (därga).4 Thus, Harar became
a historical Islamic bulwark which influenced the perception of the city as an
Islamic center more than its role in education and scholarship. Surviving the
tremendous tragedy contributed to the glory of the city, which is acknowl-
edged throughout the wider region of Ethiopia.
The most popular saints and the ascription of their sanctity must be under-
stood in this context of ideologization. They are historical figures who are
venerated on the basis of their deeds as leaders and protected the community,
while miracles transmitted in oral or written form provide supplementary ma-
terial not the primary legitimation of their saintly status. The most important
saint of Harar is Abadir. He is considered as the main patron of the city and
nicknamed imam al-qut̙b or shaykh ash-shuyukh. He is not seen as the foun-
der of the city or the first person who Islamized the region, but is instead as-
sociated with the reorganization of Harar and the establishment of the local
saint tradition. According to the legendary local hagiography, Fath madinat
Harar, he arrived in the already Islamized region of Harar from the Hidjaz
with 405 saints the 12th century (Wagner 1978). Abadir, who was elected by
the saints as their leader, ordered the reorganization of the town, which was
formerly divided into seven villages. He asked each of the surrounding tribes,
i.e. the Somalis, Argobas and different Oromo clans,5 to bring their agricul-

4 There is an entire repertoire of words relating to this division: the Harari named
their town ge and call themselves ge usu, the people of the town. These ge usu
speak a Semitic language called ge sinan, the language of the town, they claim a
specific ge ada, a town culture, live in ge gar, the traditional town house, and
send their children to quran ge, the urban Qur’anic school.
5 This is an obvious invention of a tradition. While Wagner made clear that the
time of the arrival of Abadir is historically more or less correct, the Oromo came
not before the 16th century into the region of Harar at least not as permanent set-
tlers.
156 | PATRICK DESPLAT

tural products to the town and trade them. Moreover, these tribes had to elect
one of the saints to be their leader. Subsequent to this initial action, he fought
the surrounding unbelievers and after the final victory transferred the con-
quered land to his saintly companions, while staking a claim to the town of
Harar for himself. Each saint was assigned to a specific site where he should
act as scholar, local doctor, military commander, teacher, and/or miracle
worker. After their deaths they were buried at their sites of action, which then
became centres of attraction for local veneration and pilgrimage. Those places
became saintly as spatial materializations of the saints and their transcenden-
tal power. Through Abadir, Harar became a both secular and spiritual admin-
istrative unit, with the city at its centre. Topographically, sanctity in Harar is
organized as an urban-rural continuum and is not centred on a single grave.
The saint tradition in Harar comprises a diffuse network of saintly places,
which together form a saintly landscape restricted to a radius of about 40
miles. Moreover, this limited space of spiritual authority coincides with the
territory of the independent emirate of Harar which was established during the
17th century. This may explain why, unlike Sheikh Hussein in southern Bale,
Harar does not attract pilgrimages from all over Ethiopia, but appeals more to
the immediate inhabitants of the region.
The second most popular saint is Amir Nur b. Mudjahid (1551-1567).
Like Abadir he was a historical figure who is mainly praised for his deeds as
military leader. Amir Nur tried to remobilize the djihad and succeeded in kill-
ing the ruling Christian emperor. On the way back to Harar he became in-
volved in a military conflict with the approaching Oromo, but lost the fight
and fled back to Harar. There he ordered the construction of a wall around the
town, which provided effective protection against the continuous attacks of
the Oromo and retains its high symbolic value to the present day. Abadir’s
approach was more inclusive; he organized the surrounding tribes to serve
Harar, but excluded the Christians, with whom he fought in several battles. In
contrast, Amir Nur’s agenda may be interpreted as rather exclusive, involving
the construction of a wall to exclude other foes, now the Oromo. However,
this view neglects an important and mostly overlooked aspect; oral histories
point out that it was Amir Nur who gathered the surrounding Muslims and re-
settled them in Harar to protect them against the Oromo. Due to their hetero-
genous backgrounds, fights broke out between the initial and later settlers.
Amir Nur arbitrated in the dispute and ordered the destruction of all genealo-
gies so that all inhabitants of the town could be considered equal as Hararis, a
term which had not been used hitherto. This means that Amir Nur was not
only responsible for the wall, but also for the genesis of a Harari identity.
Seen from this perspective, sanctity in Harar is related to the exclusion of the
foreign and the inclusion of the self—showing strength to the outside and at
the same time endowing identity. However, during the reign of Amir Nur, the
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 157

spatial structure of sanctity in Harar was transformed into a more restricted

area of what is today called the old town, the core of the city surrounded by
its wall.
The third saint is Sheikh Hashim. He lived in the 18th century and repre-
sents a different type of saint. He is also seen as an innovator and is associated
with the popularization of the Qadiriyya. However, the sanctity he represents
is less concerned with protection and the common good than with asceticism
and miracles. The conflict between Sheikh Hashim and the community is con-
tinuously underlined in the oral histories, cumulating into a story in which the
saint fought with the ruling emir regarding the correct recitation of dhikr. Dis-
appointed by the both ruler and the people, he ultimately left the town, an-
nouncing that all saints after him should be hidden (khuddun) and that spirit
possession should instead enter Harar. This tradition is deeply symbolic and
addresses the decline of the ‘true’ saintly Islam, while Sheikh Hashim is con-
sidered as the ‘seal of the saints’ (khatam al-awliya’). This is basically related
to a different historical context: the inhabitants of Harar in the 18th century
were less exposed to wars and crises, but experienced instead increasing secu-
rity and prosperity due to alliances with the Oromo. Finally, the consolidation
of Harar correlates with the end of the ‘golden age’ of saints; spatial sanctity
itself expanded during Sheikh Hashim beyond the city wall.

Decline and Revival of Pilgrimages and Festivity

Saintly places must be ‘charged’ to maintain their status. A ziyara, the visit to
a shrine, is probably the predominant practice involved in keeping such places
alive. The organization of a ziyara may be based on a range of motivations.
However, these can be differentiated into two categories. First, the individual
ziyara whereby the faithful visit the grave of a saint for intercession and, sec-
ond, the communal ziyara, which is usually connected to a specific time. Dur-
ing the individual ziyara the person approaches the representative of the
shrine (murid) to beg for something, to seek for a solution, or to thank the
saint for a fulfilled wish. The pilgrim usually hands over a gift for the saint,
utters the problem to the murid who will first bless the donations and then re-
cite specific prayers to gain the help of the saint. Incense is burned during this
process. The murid ends the ritual with a blessing, spitting water in the face of
the pilgrim. If the vow is fulfilled, the pilgrim must return to the shrine, not
only to make further donations but also to participate in the regular communal
ziyara. This kind of ziyara is always an overnight session and is organized on
a weekly basis on Thursday night or on one of the eight ‘big days’ in a lunar
year. These big days (gidir jam) are not related to the birth or death of a saint
but are associated with generic occurrences in Islam such as the mi‘radj or
badr. On rare occasions, a communal ziyara may be organised due to catas-
158 | PATRICK DESPLAT

trophes such as famines or family disputes. Despite the varying temporal set-
tings, the practice is very similar: the scene is dominated by drum playing,
dance, and the recitation of religious text in Arabic, e.g. the mawlud, supple-
mented by zikri, local songs to praise God, the prophets, and saints in ver-
nacular languages. Large quantities of Qat and coffee are consumed and in-
cense is burned continuously. The recitation is led by the murid and his
djamƗǥa, an equivalent to a Sufi order but less organized, while others follow
with the chorus of the songs, dance in a group forming a circle, or clap their
hands to the beat of the drums. Depending on the shrine and the occasion, the
ziyara may attract anything between ten and 200 participants.
While most saints and saintly places in Harar are not discussed, the mid-
dle class and religious scholars in particular criticize the religious practise and
the participants. Theologically they agree about the righteousness of personal-
ized sanctity in general and the historical role of the saints for Harar in par-
ticular, however they accuse the participants of being ‘wrong Sufis’, ‘illiter-
ate’, and ‘uneducated’. This argument is common among the middle class in
different Islamic societies. However, the interesting fact is that, although they
keep away from shrine activities, at the same time they defend them when
sanctity comes under the attack, for example by the Wahhabis, whom they ac-
cuse of being extremists and, in some cases, even unbelievers. The consensus
between the Sufis and the middle class concerning the significance of sanctity
is based on different normative views of religion. While the Sufis have a mys-
tical inspired world view and differentiate between the ‘hidden’ and the ‘visi-
ble’, a structure, which is dissociated from human intervention, the middle
class argues that sanctity represents a paradigm from the past which is not
practicable in the modern context. Their view on saint veneration is an am-
bivalent one, best reflected in an article published by Ahmed Zekaria, a Harari
scholar. On the one hand he assesses the ziyara as ‘syncretistic’ and dismisses
any form of intermediation through the saints as being strong blasphemy. On
the other hand, however, he legitimates the practice in an historical frame-
work and for today only if the believer has the ‘right’ intention before and
during his pilgrimage (Zekaria 2003: 26). This attitude is a strategy of distinc-
tion which is addressed to both Sufis and the Wahhabis. I will not follow this
line, but will recapitulate an incident in 2003 in which members of middle
class attended a festival called shawwal id to deconstruct the thesis that mem-
bers of the middle class will never visit any kind of ziyara.
As opposed to a ‘generic’ ziyara, the shawwal id is a public feast and also
known as Harari Id as, traditionally, other ethnic groups did not participate in
it. The shawwal id takes place at two shrines near the two northern gates fol-
lowing seven days of fasting in addition to the month of Ramadan. In 2003
these places where colourfully decorated with pennants and banners in Am-
haric or Arabic script. Flags of Ethiopia and Harar were on show everywhere,
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 159

underlining the role of the municipality as the main sponsor of the decora-
tions. Schools and some shops were closed during the period of festivity. As
in the case of other forms of ziyara, people recited local songs devoted to
God, Muhammad, and the saints (zikri). The singing was accompanied by
drums. The participants danced or clapped their hands, while others hung
around, chewed qat, or strolled from one place to the next and back. Unlike in
the case of a generic ziyara, men and women mixed freely, a religious text
was not recited and there was no murid present. The scene in the evening was
dominated by young people, both male and female. Many youngsters from the
diaspora, easily identifiable by their style of clothing, recorded the dancing
crowd on their video cameras and sold their recordings on CDs several days
later. The young people were also present during the day when a lot of older
women and children participated in the festival. The number of participants is
likely to have reached several hundreds, mostly Hararis, but also people from
other ethnic groups.
The success of the festival was highlighted by the comments of many Ha-
raris who were surprised by the revival of the shawwal id as, previously, people
had to be forced to attend the shawwal id. Similarly, some Hararis argued that
the regional state, represented by the president and an employee of the munici-
pality, once tried to ban the feast while others denied this and referred to reli-
gious scholars who were against it because of the lax attitude towards alcohol
and the mixing of the sexes. The festival of 2003 presented an entirely different
picture. This change of attitude brings us to the central questions as to what at-
tracts people to saintly places and what draws them away from them.
Shawwal id stands in clear contrast to the generic ziyara. It is a remark-
able case of the reinterpretation and a change of purpose, in particular in rela-
tion to the protection of the city. In the past it had two main functions. It re-
flected, first, the need for protection and, second, the presentation of strength.
In the past, the practice of wandering between the two shrines at the night was
intended to convey to potential enemies that the Hararis were not weak after
the fasting period but alert to potential threats. The establishment and use of
two shrines as places of festivity has nothing to do with the saints themselves.
The shawwal id is considered to be historically linked to the coming of
Abadir, who taught the Hararis the ‘right’ way to fast. There are several other
oral histories concerning the festivity, but none ever mentioned the two saints’
shrines where the shawwal id takes place. This is unusual, but taking into ac-
count that those two shrines are the nearest to the northern gates of the wall,
historically the weak point of attack by Oromo and other groups, they may
serve as spiritual guardians due to their location.
Nowadays, the symbolic frame of the parade between the two shrines is
missing: people can take the most comfortable path and most participants do
not know about the protective function of the festival. While, previously, par-
160 | PATRICK DESPLAT

ticipation in the shawwal id was rather insignificant, today, the involvement

of the young people has made a strong contribution to its revival. This may be
related to another traditional function of the feast whereby it is intended to
provide an occasion for the adolescent male to choose his future fiancée. The
feast was the only occasion within a religious context when men and women
were allowed to meet in the public. This partly explains the nicknaming of
shawwal id as Harari id, since the Harari marry endogamously and may dis-
like the participation of other groups for that reason. Even if the original func-
tion sounds inappropriate in today’s context in which the young people mix
relatively freely, the shuwwal id is mainly being revived through them and
members of the middle class who meet at the shrines, flirt, and hang around in
groups and do not necessarily participate in the recitations of zikri or dancing.
Visiting youngsters from other towns have a significant influence on the local
event and use it as a platform for new cultural identity, a typical element of
diaspora communities.
However, the popularization of the festivity is also due to the fact, that it
offers a broad scope for interpretation. The greatest potential for attracting the
otherwise prejudiced middle class lies here as the shawwal id has been always
popular festival which departed from social rules and constraints. This mean-
ing is documented in different traditions, in which tension arose between the
people who wanted to celebrate a festivity and a ruler who tried to forbid it,
but failed due to spiritual powers. The inversion of hierarchical structure is
not only obvious in several legends, but also evident in the conception of the
shawwal id itself. In contrast to the ‘generic’ ziyara, the shawwal id is not
about obtaining the blessing of the saint or making vows. There is no hierar-
chical order between the murid, djamaǥa, and the participants. Another point
of distinction is that families or some of their individual members are usually
connected to a specific shrine due to the fulfilment of their vows and therefore
bound to attend the ziyara there. The shawwal id is the only festivity related
to saintly places in Harar, which all Hararis should attend, irrespective of their
relationship with a particular saint. Strictly speaking, the feast is not too em-
bedded in the framework of mystical knowledge. The symbolization of pro-
tection through the wandering around and the selection of a fiancé are more
acceptable by the middle class than any Sufi explanation.6 Another trend is
the increasing commercialization of the festivity and the involvement of the
state through donations. Moreover the shawwal id is celebrated in Addis
Abeba and Dire Dawa and thus reconstructs locality in another context.

6 It must be admitted that some Sufis have an explanation for the shawwal id.
They relate it to a ‘mystical fiscal year’. This is interesting because the 7th of
shuwal is sometimes known as New Year of the pre-Islamic age. However, this
explanation is relatively unknown and therefore of little relevance for most of
the Sufis and the middle class.
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 161

The most important aspect of the shawwal id at present may be the pres-
entation of Hararis as a homogeneous cultural group. This is reflected in the
in different cultural-political programs of events. In the year 2005 the festival
was further enlarged with the help of the diaspora organization Harari Unity
Youth Association and additional events were staged, ranging from an anti-
HIV campaign to musical and cultural shows at which popular local musi-
cians performed Harari songs and women presented traditional Harari cloth-
ing. In 2006 the course of events was similar, but on this occasion the shaw-
wal id also revealed a political connotation. The festivity was used to wel-
come the representatives of different groups, namely Somalis, Afar, and in
particular Silte, a Gurage-group. The Silte party comprised 300 people who
were welcomed by a brass band and fireworks. During the dinner the repre-
sentatives gave a speech, in which the need for a reunion of Hararis and Silte
was addressed:

we have seen the reunification of South and North Yemen, East and West Germany
and insh-Allah one day we want to see all Hararis ‘re-united’ with their motherland.7

That other groups define themselves as ‘Hararis’ is a new phenomenon, but

could be interpreted as reference to the ‘golden age’ as it is said that the Silte
and the Hararis belonged to one group before the Oromo overran the region in
the 16th century. Thus, the event forms part of a policy of remembrance, in
which the heyday of the Islamic Sultanate under Imam Ahmed is celebrated—
a fact furthermore underlined by the exclusion of the Oromo, the immediate
neighbours of the Hararis.
The shawwal id offers different interpretations not necessary bound to the
rules and regulations of the more ‘generic’ ziyara. The motivations for going
to or staying away from shrines are diverse: i.e. to search for the spiritual in-
spiration, to meet friends and have fun with them, to compete with others in
the recitation of religious texts, to dance and chew qat the whole night long.
Some may go to shrines to gain the blessing of the saint, to find a solution for
a problem, or to ask for the fulfilment of a wish. This rather individual ziyara
is locally associated with the belief in intercession (tawassul) and is contested
locally but also widely practiced and tolerated. First, this ambivalence is in-
herent to the saint tradition itself, which is not an explicit theology but an im-
plicit belief and therefore open to different, often competing interpretations.
Second, it is generally tolerated by those who do not believe in it because
only few people visit shrines for intercession, or do so discreetly. It is consid-
ered a matter of personal religiosity whereby what matters is the intention be-

7 http://hararconnection.blogspot.com/2007/01/historical-shawal-eid-in-harar-
2006.html [10.10.2007].
162 | PATRICK DESPLAT

hind the visit matters and this will ultimately be judged by God himself.
However, the revival of shawwal id and its meaning for the modern context
must be seen in the context of two recent developments: the revival of relig-
ion and a revival of cultural identity.

Islamic Reform and the Revival of Cultural Identity in Harar

Islam had been constantly marginalized following the incorporation of large

Muslim-populated regions into the Ethiopian state at the end of the 19th cen-
tury. This was, in fact, the fate of all religions except Orthodox Christianity.
This corresponds to the imagination of Ethiopia as a ‘Christian island sur-
rounded by infidels’ and the projection of the country as predominantly Chris-
tian, despite the fact that approximately 45 percent of the population is Mus-
lim. This attitude changed slightly with the change of government in the
1970s. Initially the socialist regime (1974-1991) treated all religions equally,
but set up restrictions on religious networking, mainly the importing of reli-
gious literature, pilgrimages to Mecca, and visits by foreign scholars.
It was not until the current government came into power in 1991 that the
state developed a more liberal attitude towards the religious sphere: religious
freedom became an item on the political agenda and was written into the con-
stitution and the previous restrictions were abrogated. These changes
prompted a revival of Islam reflected in a new Islamic identity, the construc-
tion of new mosques and Islamic schools, the emergence of numerous maga-
zines and newspapers with an Islamic focus, the participation of Muslims in
public discussions, conferences, an increase in pilgrimages to Mecca, and the
establishment of Islamic organizations (Ahmed 1998).
The non-interventionist stance by the state changed with the allegation of
‘fundamentalism’. There had been fights against some groups at the Somali
border and in June 1995 a significant incident occurred in capital Addis
Abeba, in which Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, survived an assassi-
nation attempt. As a result, the state began to intervene in the religious sphere
again by banning several Islamic NGOs. The term ‘fundamentalism’ became
synonymous with an Arab-inspired, foreign Islam that divides Ethiopian Mus-
lims. This has a clearly political background as ‘fundamentalists’ are always
depicted as ‘foreign’ by the state, i.e. associated with the neighbouring states
of Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia, with whom Ethiopia has a hostile relationship.
Based on this attitude, local groups also came into the potential focus of the
Ethiopian state.
In Harar the revival of religion and the tension between the alternating
state restrictions and liberal attitude is clearly reflected in the presence of
Egyptian teachers in Harar in the early 1990s. Interest in religion increased at
the time and was reflected in the establishment of new educational institutions
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 163

which combined secular and religious curricula or focused strongly on Ara-

bic. The Tablighi djamaat succeeded in attracting a lot of followers, new reli-
gious literature circulated, and the access to cheap television and satellite
equipment due to contraband trading offered access to Arabic channels broad-
casting on religious topics. The arrival of the Egyptians and their engagement
in religious education prompted a positive response by many Hararis. How-
ever, despite being tolerated for some time, they were suddenly expelled from
the country by the Ethiopian State on the grounds of their lack of work per-
mits. Hardly uncoincidentally, this happened soon after they exposed them-
selves as members of the Muslim Brotherhood and started to use the
mosque’s loudspeakers for preaching. The broadcasting and the content of the
sermons were reason for both state and the Hararis to act against the Egyp-
tians on the ground of their ‘extremism’. While the Hararis embraced a re-
newal of Islam, they were not interested in appropriating ideas they consider
as deviating from the established interpretation of religion—particularly when
it is done openly in public. The Ethiopian state, on the other hand, was moti-
vated by its concern about potential threats to national security which became
an increasing issue after the failed assassination of the Egyptian president.
This rather brief incident was accompanied by a similar development on a
wider scale. During the 1980s some Oromo received scholarships for reli-
gious studies from the Saudi government (Gnamo 2002). On completion of
their studies they returned to their home country and preached that some long-
established religious practices were un-Islamic. However their activities were
only partly successful, mainly in the in rural areas and on the outskirts of the
towns. In Harar, the reformist Oromo condemned saint veneration as a ‘Harari
cultural invention’ which is alien to ‘original’ Islam.
But what kind of influence did the reformists have on the Hararis? The
term ‘Wahhabi’ is locally indexed and embedded in an historical incident that
occurred in the 1940s when a small group of pilgrimages came under the in-
fluence of Wahhabi ideology and after their return became involved in a local
school. This group was challenged by local scholars and, again with the in-
volvement of the state, their leader was arrested and the school closed down.
The concept of ‘Wahhabi’ was initially used as a synonym of ‘otherness’ and
the misinterpretation of Islam. Of course, this does not mean that new ideas
were and are not appropriated by some Hararis. However, the people who
embrace such views tend to express them in the context of small groups of
friends and keep a low profile in public.
This conflict between the followers of different religious interpretations
had a rather strong effect on saint veneration: people who venerated local
saints were suddenly harassed and forced to justify their practice and mem-
bers of the middle class, in particular people who never visit the shrines,
started to defend local sanctity. The two groups attack the Wahhabis, on theo-
164 | PATRICK DESPLAT

logical grounds and accuse them of distorting the doctrine of the unity of god
(tawhid). However, views based on a polemic text, in which Wahhabism is
exposed as being an invention by the British colonial power with the deliber-
ate intention of dividing Muslims in order to control them have become even
more popular in this debate. These kinds of conspiracy theories have a great
impact on the debate as they are inherently disprovable. However, the middle
class is probably not so much concerned about Wahhabism itself as the ques-
tion of theological righteousness. They are more agitated by the fact that some
Oromo are attacking the historical core of Harari identity, namely the saints
and their deeds. Members of middle class see this as a direct attack on the le-
gitimacy of the Hararis themselves and their role in the political and religious
administration of Harar. This brings us to the recent process of culturalization
and identity politics.

The culturalization of Harari society—locality as a cultural resource

The question of locality remained relatively untouched in the context of reli-

gious contestations in the past but has now re-entered the arena in the context
of identity, since the conflict between people for and against saint veneration
is intertwined with another set of conflicts between the Hararis and Oromo.
Another facet of locality has entered the arena here focused on question as to
who ultimately owns Harar.
The Ethiopian state again assumed an important role in this debate. With
the change in government in 1991, the Ethiopian state not only liberalized the
religious sphere, but also implemented a federal policy. While in the past the
state was controlled by the Christian Amhara, the new state tried to concede
more rights and autonomy to different ethnic groups. To that end, new re-
gional states, each with their own parliament, budget, and tax authority, re-
placed the previous administrative zones. The most distinctive feature of the
restructuring process was its ethnic and linguistic dimension. The smallest re-
gional state, i.e. Harari People’s National Regional State (HPNRS) was es-
tablished in 1995. At the expense of other ethnic groups in the region, most
notably the Amhara and Oromo, the Harari minority obtained political privi-
leges which permitted them for the first time since the incorporation of Harar
into the Ethiopian state not only to lay claim to the city of Harar but also to
administer it. This governmental empowerment of Hararis triggered a revitali-
zation of ethnic-linguistic identity and also gave rise to conflicts with the local
Amhara and Oromo who see themselves as politically unrepresented.8

8 It must be added that the above-mentioned groups and the Somalis, have their
‘own’ regional state. However, due to the symbolic role of Harar, its characteris-
tic as a historical crossroads, at which many groups interacted, the town is also
claimed by others. The militant Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) is striving for an
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 165

This search for a Harari identity was supplemented by the search for ‘au-
thentic’ Harari culture understood as a rather static system of binding rules.
The ideological power of ‘culture’ is based on the essentializing politics of
identity, through which the meaning of being Harari is currently discussed.
The establishment of museums, publications in the Harari language, and also
the successful application for inclusion in the UNESCO list of world cultural
heritage sites are exemplary of this process. The city of Harar has become a
political and economic resource. To underline the continuity of its signifi-
cance, in a recent publication the former president of HPNRS explained the
central theme in the preface: “This book will help the cause of protecting the
heritage in no uncertain manner. [It] will surely help to prevent losing our
heritage” (Revault/Santelli 2004: 5).
While the religious meaning of the city for the region was constantly un-
derlined in this book, the main focus was on historical and cultural manifesta-
tions. It is worth noting that the publication classifies shrines in Harar as ‘cul-
ture’. This structure reflects the common middle class discourse that today
categorizes shrines as cultural and historical manifestations. Parts of the new
regional government are particularly concerned about the areas of language,
culture, and the administration of historical places, in particular “mosques,
shrines and graves of saintly figures” (Abubeker 2001: 27).9
Local sanctity is a symbol, in which the complex imagination of the own
group is mobilized. This is only possible because they are historically
‘proven’. The saint tradition is one of the many aspects Harari society, in
which a territorial and spatial concept of representation and symbolization is
mediated. Saintly places along with the wall and mosques are used as places
of memory. A sense of belonging and, moreover, belonging to a certain place
and involvement in its administration is part of this culturalization. The con-
flation of culture and history with religion are inherent to the Harari project of
identity. From the perspective of the regional state and the middle class,
saintly places are historical-cultural landmarks and only secondarily religious
sites.

independent Oromo state including Harar. According to some Somalis, Harar

should play an important role in the context of an idea of ‘Great Somalia’, in-
cluding the war-torn Somalia, as well as Djibouti and parts of northern Kenya
and eastern Ethiopia. The Amhara, on the other hand, would like to place the
Harari regional state under the central government of Addis Abeba, as was done
with the town of Dire Dawa, due to its multi-ethnic status.
9 In practice, however, the regional state provides sporadic help to economically
weak shrines. It usually focuses on the repair of shrines and related buildings,
e.g. the festivity rooms. The municipality will sometimes donate a camel or goat
for a ziyara, but mainly to shrines with a female clientele which are economi-
cally weaker than other saintly sites.
166 | PATRICK DESPLAT

Religious meaning and cultural use of saintly places

In this context it is understandable why people feel so attracted to festivities

like shawwal id, while they may neglect other forms of pilgrimage. It is worth
noting that the term ‘culture’ is interpreted in different ways: while some
Oromo, who are associated with the Wahhabi movement may attack the saint
veneration as ‘cultural’, the Hararis, i.e. both middle class and Sufis, justify
their practices as religiously legitimate. They argue from the same logic but
with different normative claims. However, outside this debate saintly places
become indeed a cultural resource of the regional state and the well-educated
middle class. For them, ‘cultural’ becomes an attribute of positive self-
representation that does not contradict the ‘religious’. Both levels of culture
and religion are intermingled and used as arguments in particular situations.
There may be situations in which many Hararis will strictly divide between
religious and cultural practice. However, if the ‘other’ is claiming the same
thing, the argument will be strongly rejected. This middle-class ascription of
shrines as primarily cultural (rather than religious) sites explains why Hararis
today may defend these places and even the associated practices. It is not even
about not going to the saints’ graves, but about a different way of going and
the attachment of an altered significance to the shrines.
Against the background of the initial question it is evident that the tradi-
tion of saints is of significant relevance, but the nature of the relevance has
changed. This development cannot be reduced to processes of rationalization,
secularization, or ‘Wahhabization’ of their own religion, which means the
confrontation and contestation with modernistic ideas. In fact the reinterpreta-
tion and refunctionalization of saintly places has become obvious: i.e. from
the classical model of intercession between God and Muslims to the produc-
tion of mainly local and collective identity. The modification is the result of
the interaction of different groups of actors and the continuous negotiation of
the ‘true’ Islam. Processes of increasing transnational integration simultane-
ously strengthened processes of definition and redefinition concerning the self
and the other. The apologetic discourses in the context of recent contestations
display a feeling of loss. Saintly places are promoted as moments of cultural
and historical remembrance without losing their inherent ambivalence. For
this reason the relation between the locality of urban Harar, a saintly topogra-
phy, and collective identity have produced a new meaning. The construction
of saintly locality, manifested in individual shrines or in the town itself, com-
prises processes of uprising against the recurrent waves of purification that
involve the attempt of a hegemonic reduction of the natural heterogeneity in
Islam.
 THE MAKING OF A ‘HARARI’ CITY IN ETHIOPIA | 167

References

Abubeker, Abdulhamid (2001) The Process of Decentralization in Ethiopia. A

Case Study of the Harari Peoples’ National Regional State (B.A. thesis),
Addis Abeba: Addis Abeba University.
Ahmed, Hussein (1998) “Recent Islamic Periodicals in Ethiopia (1996-
1998)”. Northeast African Studies 5, pp. 7-21.
CIRPS/State HPNR (2003) Cultural Heritage of Harar. Mosques, Islamic
Holy Graves, and Traditional Harari Houses. A Comprehensive Map,
Brüssel: European Commission.
Foucher, Emile (1988) “Names of Mussulmanes Venerated in Harar and its
Surroundings”. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft
138, pp. 263-282.
Foucher, Emile (1994) “The Cult of Muslims Saints in Harar. Religious Di-
mensions”. In: Bahru Zewde/Richard Pankhurst/Taddese Beyene (eds.)
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies,
Addis Ababa (1-6.4.1997), Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopan Studies,
Addis Abeba University, pp. 71-83.
Gibb, Camilla (1996) In the City of Saints. Religion, Politics and Gender in
Harar, Ethiopia (Ph.D. thesis), Oxford: University of Oxford, Michael-
mas.
Gnamo, Abbas Haji (2002) “Islam, the Orthodox Church and Oromo Nation-
alism (Ethiopia)”. Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 165, pp. 99-120.
Reeves, Edward (1990) The Hidden Government. Ritual, Clientelism and Le-
gitimation in Northern Egypt, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Revault, Philippe/Santelli, Serge (2004) Harar. A Muslim City of Ethiopia,
Paris: Maisonneuve&Larose.
Wagner, Ewald (1978) Legende und Geschichte. Der Fath Madinat Harar
von Yahya Nasrallah, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
Zekaria, Ahmad (2003) “Some Remarks on the Shrines of Harar”. In: Bert-
rand Hirsch/Manfred Kropp (eds.) Saints, Biographies and History in Af-
rica, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 19-29.
Chapter 8

Merchants and Mujahidin:

Beliefs about Muslim Saints and
the History of Towns in Egypt
Souzan El Saied Yousef Mosa

Introduction: History and Folklore

In Egyptian anthropology, folklore is considered to be a creation expressing

the spirit and symbols of popular cultural attitudes in everyday life. It is con-
sidered to determine the immediate relationships between man and environ-
ment, between people interacting with each other, and between people in their
material, social and intellectual worlds as represented by symbols in language,
art and religion.
There are cultural generalities that are shared by local people and, more
specifically, there are different attitudes which are related to gender, age,
class, occupation and geographical location. Although people inherit the val-
ues and beliefs that feature in the symbols, tales and rituals, they also change
these values and beliefs and use them in different ways.
Popular beliefs and practices draw on the past and interpret it with respect
to present daily life and future expectations. It is increasingly acknowledged
today that popular beliefs represent a mixture of folklore, religions and other
forms of knowledge. However, they also transport the belief in supernatural
powers that can be avoided or controlled through rituals that repel evil crea-
tures and invite benevolent ones. Based on the German tradition of Volks-
kunde, Muhammad al-Gawhary has introduced folklore studies as a specific
approach in Egyptian anthropology. Today, however, American approaches to
folklore studies, such those developed by Alan Dundes (1992) and Michael C.
Howard (1995), exert significant influence in Egypt.
With respect to history and its impact on folkloric expressions as they re-
late to the cultural nature and collective personality of people, the influence of
German Volkskunde and, specifically, the Munich School, which was con-
cerned with the history of beliefs, and modern continuities in language and art
(Brandish 1992: 60-65), remains influential. This approach goes back to the
Volkskunde studies of the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder
(1744-1803). Herder attached major significance to the inherent relationship
170 | SOUZAN EL SAIED YOUSEF MOSA

between the formation of personality and popular traditions. He argued that

folk tales contained representations of community principles and local history,
law and morality. For him it is a kind of poetry that emerges spontaneously
from the conditions of life at the moment of redemption, and people express it
in a simple spirit, each individual considering it a real expression of himself
or herself (cf. Oring 1994).
It is important to note that the specific dimension of locality is important
within these traditions of folklore studies, which largely deal with modern
identity formations. In this framework, it becomes possible to map mentalities
on the basis of an historical-geographical view (cf. Dundes 1980: 18-20). As
opposed to this, it has been debated whether it is still possible to sustain a
pure identity/history relation. The notion of the past changes and folklore is
seen to represent only a certain period that the community sees as particularly
important for it (e.g. Ben Amos 1971).
Based on these discussions of Egyptian folklore studies, in this study, I
will lean on this concept of change. I will concentrate on the tales about a wali
(saint) and shift the ritual aspects of celebrating the awliya’ into the back-
ground of my analysis. Visiting the shrine, offering votives, and celebrating
the mulid, the annual saints-day festival, are key elements of the veneration of
a saint. However, there is difference in the way rituals are performed and
symbols used. These differences are mainly dictated by the specific character
of each wali. My argument here is that each town has created different wali
characters and related to them a special historical imagination. Some of these
awliya’ are associated with ruins of ancient cities, such as Abdallah Ibn Salam
near the well known Tell el-Rub‘, which is the ancient town of Mendes, the
capital of the sixteenth nome in old Lower Egypt. Tell al-Muqdam (Busiris),
which was the capital of the 19th nome in old Lower Egypt and is located near
to Mit Ghamr, hosts the shrine of Al Muqdam Ibn al-Aswad (Selim Vol. VI:
407-408). Some villages are related to the Coptic history, for example Bussat
al-Nasara and Tonnamel where tales about Maria the Copt and Caliph al-
Ma’mun are found.
It is believed that awliya’ (saints) are people who performed karamat
(miracles and extraordinary deeds). These karamat may have taken place dur-
ing their lifetime or after their death. Examples of these karamat as described in
hagiographies and vernacular traditions include travelling away and returning
on the same day, walking on the surface of water, and curing serious illnesses
without medical intervention. Since saints are believed to have a special rela-
tionship with God, people ask them to act as intermediaries between themselves
and God so as to bring blessing to people. While present in localized Muslim
cults around the world, this phenomenon also has deep roots in ancient Egyp-
tian culture (Hassan 2000: 219-220). Old beliefs and practices continued and
featured in the life of people in different periods, although they were often sub-
 MERCHANTS AND MUJAHIDIN | 171

ject to restrictions imposed by and confrontations with orthodox religious and

state institutions. An important question, therefore, concerns the reasons that
lead to the continuation of the phenomenon of belief in awliya’ and the role
played by saints play in local communities and their historical imagination. An
equally important question is how people adjust and redefine the cults of
awliya’ in the face of opposition from religious movements opposed to the ven-
eration of saints. I will attempt to answer these questions below by explaining
the relationship between the tales about awliya’ and the history of al-Mansura,
the capital of the ad-Daqahliya Governorate.

Al-Mansura and its Saints

Some of the awliya’ of al-Mansura are related to the Crusades and Mamluk
sultans. Others can be traced to the period of the British occupation and mixed
courts which were intended for foreigners. Some of them were leaders of
neighborhoods or cemetery guards. Their lineage may be traced to Ali ibn Abi
Talib and Abu Bakr al-Siddiq. Some are martyrs of the Islamic conquests,
others are leaders of Sufi turuq (orders), or natives of those villages who were
famous for their piety or were exposed to injustice and oppression during their
lives. Some were been magazib, divinely insane men and women, and finally
some may be legendary characters representing the symbols of nature.
Daqahliya Governorate extends in a plain with a rural nature. It is divided
into a number of districts along the Damietta branch of the Nile. Most of the
districts are located on the east bank of the Nile, and a few of them are on the
west bank. Al-Mansura became the capital of the Governorate at the begin-
ning of the Ottoman rule. It was originally built by King al-‘Adel Abu Bakr
ibn Ayyub in 1218 A.D. during the 5th Crusade when Damietta was captured
by the Crusaders. He stayed there until the Crusaders left Damietta. During
the 7th Crusade in 1248 A.D., King al-Kamel Ayyub stayed in Al-Mansura.
That decisive battle ended with the capture of King Louis IX of France in Ibn
Luqman House (al-Maqrizi 1974: 194-210). Those incidents had their appar-
ent effects on the popular mentality that wove a lot of tales on the awliya’ re-
lated with that period.
Sufis played an important role in leading the popular resistance against the
Crusades. According to the legend, Abu al-Hassan al-Shadhili, the founder of
the Shadhiliyya tariqa in Egypt went with some Sufis to Al-Mansura to urge
people to fight (Mahmud 1984: 19). Thus those Sufis were related in the popular
thought with piety and supporting Islam, and shrines were built for them
throughout the city.
In the Middle Ages, Sufis played an important role in spreading beliefs
about awliya’. They spread tales about the karamat of those awliya’, and con-
tributed in building shrines in other towns and villages. The State and the reli-
172 | SOUZAN EL SAIED YOUSEF MOSA

gious establishment, both closely associated with Islamic mysticism, where

largely supportive of the veneration of awliya’. All classes of the people be-
lieved in sacredness of awliya’, because of their descent from the Prophet
(peace be upon him) or a spiritual genealogy leading back to him. The rich
were keen to build shrines for them at their own expenses to be buried beside
major saints in the hope that the latter would intercede for them in the after-
life. Members of the ruling class were equally keen to build their tombs be-
side those of awliya’ (The tombs of the royal family, for example, are located
beside the shrine of Abu Shibbak in ar-Rifa‘i Mosque in Cairo). Since the be-
ginning, the shrines build around tombs were commonly attached to mosques.
But some shrines were built inside markets, where a shrine was the center of
the market, and a place where poor classes would gather for relief and cure,
and to ensure blessing for their transactions.
With the multiplicity of Sufi turuq, the characters and symbols of awliya’
became very diverse. With the growth of the city the number of awliya’ in-
creased and their characters varied. Belonging to all classes and categories
(Ben-Ari/Billu 1987), some of them were members of Sufi turuq (Shadhiliyya,
Rifa‘iyya, and Burhamiyya) or ordinary people. The wali could be free or a
slave, white or black, a man or a woman.
The members of all classes had a chance to turn into awliya’ after their
death, and thousands of folk tales have been told about their piety and
karamat. Although those tales were a kind of literary creation invented by the
popular imagination, they can be used to explore some aspects of the social
history whose recording was neglected in formal history books. To some ex-
tent they give us a presentation of the real history of towns and their battles
against invaders. More importantly, they also present a popular historiography
of trades and craftsmen, the emergence and development of neighborhoods,
and local families and the ways they tried to immortalize their names.
In late nineteenth century, Al-Mansura was a large city on the bank of the
Nile. It had industries of silk, cotton, and wool. It had the main tribunal of the
Governorate, a hospital, and foreign missionary schools. Beside its native
Muslims, Copts and Jews, it was inhabited by a Greek community and some
French and English (Mubarak 1990: vol. 15, p. 57). The city was divided into
two main areas: the east and the west, further subdivided into smaller
neighbourhoods. The inhabitants of the western neighborhoods were called
hawaryon (those who live in alleys) and those who lived in the eastern
neighborhoods were called hadharyon (the urban people). Each neighborhood
had a leader who was obeyed at the times of hardship. Fights took place occa-
sionally—once every three months at maximum. Preceded by boys throwing
stones and brandishing a club the neighbourhood leader would lead the young
mob of the neighborhood. Midway between the neighborhoods, he would be
met by the leader of the other neighborhood followed by his people to the
 MERCHANTS AND MUJAHIDIN | 173

fight. Fighting would go on until the police came and dispersed the two par-
ties. Sufi turuq tried to put an end to those fights and to change them into
popular celebrations during which the inhabitants of a neighbourhood would
come together with others in the celebration of their wali.
Sufi turuq had largely dominated popular thought until the end of the 19th
century. At the beginning of the 20th century Sufi thought was seen by many
to be marginal to the scientific approaches needed by the Egyptian society,
while fundamentalist trends retreated. In the second half of the 20th century
fundamentalist trends became active anew and overwhelmed the Egyptian so-
ciety. These trends reached their climax in 1980s, when the clash between
Sufi and Islamist groups was clear throughout of the Egyptian society. Shrines
were demolished to build mosques in their places. The mosque of the Salafi
organization al-Jam‘iyya al-shar‘iya in Port Said Street was first established
beside the shrine of Sidi al-Masri who was a hero of the Crusade wars. In a
recent enlargement of the mosque, the shrine was demolisched. Sometimes
places were made for shrines at the back of mosques, and in some other case
rebuilding the shrine was completely ignored. In some cases a shrine was de-
stroyed to build a complex containing a clinic, a place for social services, and
a place for memorizing the Qur’an and religious guidance through lectures for
men and women.
Despite that campaign made by the Islamist groups against shrines, Sufi
turuq had their own means to defend the shrines, and they have also built a
number of new shrines in the second half of the 20th century. They have rein-
terpreted the biographies of saints to give them more legitimacy in face of the
Islamists. Furthermore, they developed old shrines and attached to them asso-
ciations providing social and health services, notably to orphans and widows.

Mediaeval Saints: From Mystics to Martyrs

Sidi Mashhur

The shrine of Sidi Mashhur is located in the Gidayla suburb east of the city. It
is a new suburb that used to be dwelled by lower class families living from
odd jobs beside working in the agriculture. Today it is known for its high per-
centage of educated people, as well as the activity of Islamist groups. In the
past there were some shrines in this suburb, but the fundamentalist thought
led to their demolition and the construction of mosques in their places. Those
mosques carry names of the awliya’ whose shrines used to be in those places.
Nevertheless, the relatively new shrine of Sidi Mashhur, built in 1980, stands
in the middle of the district. This shrine is visited by inhabitants of the district,
especially on Fridays, when they offer votives of candles to light the shrine.
174 | SOUZAN EL SAIED YOUSEF MOSA

Who is Sidi Mashhur and how could his shrine be built in a time when
many others were being destroyed? When the troops of the ninth Crusade en-
tered Al-Mansura from the east in 1249 A.D. they built their camp in al-
Gadila. Sidi Mashur was one of the heroes of the struggle against the Crusad-
ers of whom many local tales are told. According to the story the people of al-
Mansura bravely fought the invaders with palm tree trunks. Sidi Mashhour
was a leader of the popular struggle and died as a martyr in the battle.
Many shrines are built years, even centuries after the death of the saint on
the basis of dreams (see Mittermaier in this volume), and it was through such
a dream vision that the mujahid Sidi Mashhur was to become a venerated
saint of his district, legitimized against the Islamists by his status as a martyr.
In 1980, a follower of the Ahmadiya Sufi tariqa built a a new shrine for Sidi
Mashhour. It is said that the wali came to him in a dream and asked him to re-
build the shrine. He rebuilt the shrine as a part of his house. He used red
bricks as construction material, a construction material of high social status in
a time when most of the houses were built with mud bricks. But with the
growth of the city and the labor migration of many inhabitants to the Persian
Gulf countries, big economic changes took place. With influx of money from
the migrants most of old houses were demolished and replaced by high build-
ings, and the shrine lies now between two of them. It remains the site of visits
and veneration, and is lit on Friday nights in memory of the soul of the martyr
wali.

Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir

The shrine of Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir is located in the Hasaniya neighborhood in

the street carrying his name (Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir Street). Except of his Moroc-
can origin, little is known about Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir’s life. In the past, the
celebration of his mulid was an important event which continued for a week.
The inhabitants of the neighborhood used to offer votives of food (bread, mu-
lukhiyah, meat, cheese, lupine seeds, and chickpeas). At the night of the big
celebration (laylat al-mawlid), a dhikr is held, poems are read, and verses of
the Qur’an are recited. The mulid was organized mainly by inhabitants of
neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods. The procession was led by the
‘Arusiya tariqa, followers of Sidi Abd al-Salam al-Asmar who ended their
celebration with beating tambourines. With the development of the neighbor-
hoods and the construction of new buildings and schools, the celebration be-
came a source of disturbance for the neighboring schools in particular. Nowa-
days, the celebration is therefore carried out inside the shrine and only lasts
one day.
At the shrine of Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir at the neighborhood carrying his name
in Al-Mansura there is at the top of the shrine a hexagonal star, and in front of
 MERCHANTS AND MUJAHIDIN | 175

it there is a place for offering votives. The hexagonal star, which has a long
history in Islamic ornament, has mistakenly been interpreted as a Jewish sym-
bol by fundamentalists who have repeatedly attempted to burn the shrine.
The shrine occupies a very small place, which made impossible for the in-
habitants to turn it into a mosque. Originally surrounded by a small open areal,
the shrine has become surrounded by buildings over the time. And because of
the high price of the land in that area, some people wanted to demolish it. It
has become a very contested site, with many people opposed to its existence.
Some neighbors regularly attack it by throwing garbage on it. It was repeatedly
destroyed and burnt. But every time Sufi turuq were able to rebuild it and
cover the tomb with a new green cloth (kiswa) carrying the names of the four
Rightly-guided Caliphs (Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman and Ali). And as the
place is narrow, a structure was built outside the door of the shrine where the
celebrants can put their votives.
In the recent years Islamist groups began a new attack on the shrine be-
cause there is a hexagonal star above the shrine. Gossip began to relate that
star with the symbol of State of Israel, and rumours claimed the shrine be-
longs to a Jewish merchant. In fact hexagonal stars have a long history in Is-
lamic architecture, and are found on many shrines and Islamic monuments.
The point of interconnection between the two triangles represents justice and
balance between heaven and the material world. Sultan Qalawun of the
Ayubid dynasty used this star as his symbol. It also prevailed on popular
products because of beliefs about the power of the hexagonal star engraved on
the ring of king Solomon. In our days, however, the hexagonal star is almost
exclusively associated with Judaism and Zionism, and the Islamic history of
the symbol is unknown to most people.
Another reason given by opponents of the shrine for attacking it is that the
square structure in front of it looks like an altar. But it is in fact the very exis-
tence of the shrine itself that incites the anger of its fundamentalist opponents.
When I visited Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir Street in 2006, I asked a fundamentalist
about the shrine, and he answered, “There is nothing called a shrine! It only
contains a person who died a long time ago.”
Despite this campaign, Sufi groups have successfully maintained the
shrine. In recent years, they began to take care of a nearby shrine which was
unknown because it was located inside a house. It is the shrine of Sidi Taybaq.
The shrine was restored, repainted and decorated with verses from the Qur’an.
New saintly legends emerged that began to connect between the history of
Sidi Taybak, Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir and the Crusades. Rather than a Jewish mer-
chant as sometimes claimed by the fundamentalist, Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir thus
made an appearance as a mujahid defending Islam against the Crusaders—a
role which gave him a new kind of legitimacy in a neighborhood dominated
by an Islamist movement.
176 | SOUZAN EL SAIED YOUSEF MOSA

Saints of the Market: From Protectors to Providers of Services

Sheikh Hasanayn al-Shahawi

Sheikh Hasanayn (d. 1883) is an example of those shrines which were built in
old market places which occupied vast areas among houses. Tales about this
wali represent a part of the history of rich families in Al-Mansura, and how
those families were related to Sufi turuq and believed in the karamat of the
awliya’. Some members of those families built Qur’an schools which offered
education for the children of poor householdsm and shrines for themselves to be
buried in them after death beside those awliya’, thus developing the shrines into
complex social sites of Divine protection of the market, identity of merchant
families, and religious education.
The story of Sheikh Hasanayn is closely intertwined with the history of
the merchant family of al-Qura‘i Pasha. Folk tales about Sheikh Hasanayn
represent a popular reading of history which depends on the name of ‘Al-
Qura‘’, a person whose head is hairless. They wove a myth related to the pal-
ace of the Pasha, King al-‘Adil, and the history of mixed courts in Al-
Mansura. After Sheikh Hasanayn’s death, the family of al-Qura‘i built his
shrine with a kuttab (Qur’an school) beside it. Al-Qura‘i Pasha himself was
buried after his death beside the Sheikh, following the style of the Royal Fam-
ily who built their tombs beside the shrine of Abu Shibbak (now inside al-
Rifa‘i mosque) in Cairo.
Sheikh Hasanayn’s lineage can be traced to Musa Ibn ‘Umran, the brother
of Sidi Ibrahim al-Disuqi. He was a follower of the Burhamiyya-Shahawiyah
tariqa which is stands in the spiritual lineage of Ibrahim al-Disuqi. Born in a
village of Gharbiya Governorate, he was a weaver who got married and had
one son called Mohammad. He traveled from village to village accompanied
by two Sufi brethren called Sidi Abu Nawwar who died in Banha, and Sidi
Ahmad al-Shishtawi whose famous shrine is located in al-Mahalla al-Kubra.
Sheikh Hasanayn finally settled in Al-Mansura where he died in 1883.
When Sheikh Hasanayn came to the city, he built a hut in front of the
house of a rich merchant Ali Pasha al-Qura‘i in the place now known as Ga-
zirat al-Ward. It is believed that it was the same place where King al-‘Adil
built his palace when he came to the city. Many tales exist about that palace
on the banks of the Nile, on the site of which the villa of Dr. Ghayth has re-
cently been built.
When the gardener saw Sheikh Hasanayn building the hut in front of the
palace, he informed his master who, in turn, asked the gardener about the
character and qualities of that man. The gardener told him that he was always
glorifying God and praying. And amazingly enough he would put his praying
rug on the surface of the water and pray on it—and the rug never sank. The
 MERCHANTS AND MUJAHIDIN | 177

owner of the palace sent new clothes to him, and ordered his men to take
meals to him daily. He occasionally went to sit with him. On one occasion
when the pasha visited the sheikh he looked upset. The sheikh asked him why.
He told him that an English officer wanted to steal his palace with the pretext
of it being a state property that he had stolen. At that time Egypt was under the
British occupation and the foreign communities in Egypt enjoyed protection
and had special tribunals known as mixed courts. The lawsuit was seen there
and the judge was a Frenchman. The sheikh said to the pasha, “You will be
victorious, Qura‘i.” Then he tapped his head delicately and compassionately.
In result, all the hair from his head fell down. Since then he was called
Qurai’y, as he had not been bald-headed before. The sentence was in favour of
the pasha who swore to build a mosque carrying the name of the sheikh. He
also built a tomb for him to be buried in after his death. He also ordered in his
will to be buried beside the sheikh. When the sheikh died, he was buried in
that tomb which became a shrine visited by people to get blessing.
The shrine of Sidi Hasanayn is located in the neighborhood carrying his
name, in the middle of the marketplace. His mulid is held every year in mid-
August and is attended, in addition to common people, by the Governor, no-
tables of the city, and members of Sufi turuq. During the mulid, the sheikhs of
the Sufi turuq gather with their banners and drums and go around the city in a
big procession wearing their best clothes and reciting prayers. They are pre-
ceded by people carrying flags and followed by the naqib al-ashraf (the rep-
resentative of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad). The procession
goes on until they reach the space beside the shrine. Dhikr and Qur’an recita-
tion go on, while young men indulge in amusement, women buy things from
the market and children buy sweets and play in swings.
The original shrine was a typical representative of shrines constructed in
the Ottoman period, built in Mamluk style with domes and pillars. But after
the decline of most rich families in the cities, there was a need to rebuild the
old shrine in a way that was felt to be consistent with modern thought and the
encroaching modern buildings on market places. ‘Rebuilding’ in Egyptian
jargon of urban planning means demolition and the construction of a new
building. Furthermore, with the spread of the Islamist trends and fundamental-
ist thought shrines standing by themselves were more vulnerable, and so the
old shrine was demolished and the Mosque of Sheikh Hasanayn was built in
its place. The new Sheikh Hasanayn Complex contains the shrine, a mosque,
a clinic, and educational services.

Sheikh Al Bayya‘

Sheikh Al Bayya‘ was the chief of merchants in Al-Mansura. Until early 20th
century, there was a guild for each trade. No one could practice any trade
178 | SOUZAN EL SAIED YOUSEF MOSA

without being certified by the sheikh of the guild (note that in the guild sys-
tem, the term sheikh had a secular meaning of leadership which, however,
could be conflated with the religious meaning of the same word in other con-
texts). That system of specialization led to the coherence of the members of
each guild. The sheikhs of the guilds had an important role in the Egyptian
towns and villages, a position which they could not reach without the accep-
tance of old workers of each trade. A sheikh occupied his position for life. But
if the members did not accept his behavior they could ask him to step down.
He was assisted by a naqib whose job was to implement the orders of the
sheikh and to organize social events (Abu Sudayra 1990: 381).
Sons rarely practiced a trade different from that of their fathers. Craftsmen
and merchants also used to marry women whose fathers practice their own
trades. This must have led to a degree of social separation between different
trades, and a strong social identity among the practitioners of each craft. The
intervention of the state under Mohammad Ali in the first half of the 19th cen-
tury led to some loosening of that structure. But the guild remained the central
social and economic unit of the craftsmen until the First World War (Ray-
mond 2005: 589).
Trades and industries never prevented those who practiced them from
gaining knowledge in the field of religion, and some craftsmen were famous
in the field of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), while some others practiced teach-
ing. Craftsmen also had—and continue to have—a remarkable role in the or-
ganization of mawalid in the cities of Egypt. In the Middle Ages, beginning
from the Ayoubid Period, and the Mamluk Period, each guild used to belong
to a certain Sufi tariqa. The craftsmen’s traditions in Al-Mansura were not
different from those in Cairo. Most trades concentrated in al-Abbasi and al-
Tumayhi areas, where neighborhoods were known by the trades practiced in
them: Suq al-Haddadin (the blacksmiths’ market), Suq al-Naggarin (Carpen-
ters’ Market), and so on (Ghunaym 1996).
Sheikh al-Bayya‘ was sheikh of the merchants’ guild in al-Hasaniya
neighborhood and a follower of the Rifa‘iyya Sufi tariqa. After his death a
shrine was built for him in the cemetery. But with the growth of the city in the
20th century, the cemetery turned into a residential area. In a way parallel to the
reconstruction of the shrine of Sheikh Hasanayn, his shrine was turned into
into al-Bayya’ Complex. The ground floor houses the shrine and a mosque.
The first and second floors house a charity association for orphans and an Az-
hari elementary school.
 MERCHANTS AND MUJAHIDIN | 179

Sheikh al-‘Isawi

Sheikh al-‘Isawi (1904-1965) was a follower of the ‘Isawiya Sufi tariqa

which traces its spiritual lineage to the Moroccan Ibn ’Isa (Mubarak 1990:
222). Sheikh al-‘Isawi was also the sheikh of blacksmiths in Suq al-Haddadin
in the ‘Abbasi neighborhood. His portrait still hangs in the blacksmiths’
workshops. Although the guild system is now defunct, most of former guild
members still practice blacksmithing. Sheikh al-‘Isawi never married, and his
nephews inherited his workshop.
Sheikh al-‘Isawi was called ‘the axis of sainthood’ (Qutb al-Wilaya) by
his followers. Many miracles (karamat) were attributed to him already during
lifetime. When he prophesied something, it would come true. He could be
present in different places at the same time. He could walk on the surface of
water. His followers came from different regions to learn about religion and
to memorize the Qur’an.
After his death he was buried at Sandub cemetery, and his tomb was vis-
ited by men and women who ask him to realize their hopes and offer votives
on the window of his shrine. A mulid is held for him in March. A mosque was
built next to the shrine at the entrance of the cemetery now known as al-‘Isawi
Cemetery. The mosque is used for the prayers for the dead before burying
them. A clinic and a place for the memorization of the Qur’an are attached to
the mosque. In Ramadan, a ma’idat ar-Rahman, (service of free food for fast-
breaking), is held beside the mosque. Inside the shrine there are two big post-
ers depicting the Ka’aba (in Mecca) and the Mosque of al-Husayn in Cairo.
The tomb is decorated with green and white pieces of silk cloth on which ‘Al-
lah’ is embroidered and covered with a green kiswa on which seven copies of
the Koran are placed. There are four lanterns at the corners of the tombs. The
floor is covered with green carpet.

Conclusions

The history of al-Mansura as told through the stories of awliya’ may not stand
in any direct relationship to the real events that took place in the past. They
do, however, tell us very much about the group identities, the growth of the
city, local values and struggles as they have been imagined and described by
the people who speak of the awliya’: Be it with the fundamentalists depicting
a Muslim saint as a Jewish merchant, Sufis turning mystics into mujahidin, or
merchants and craftsmen uniting social with spiritual leadership—in all cases
people arrange stories and meanings in a way that fits with values they hold
important. The folklore they thus create—the heroes, the festivals, the popular
architecture—tells us of the group identities and local histories people tell to
themselves. Take, for example, the mulid (saints-day festival), a phenomenon
180 | SOUZAN EL SAIED YOUSEF MOSA

rich with all the elements of popular culture. It is a means to boast of identity
and coherence of a community, the bond created between its members by
shared values and experiences, and its continuous existence over time and
place. Each group of people adheres to some elements of the tradition that
may not be shared by others. These elements become the folklore distinguish-
ing that group. But as a street festival open to everybody, the mulid also pre-
sents a site of exchange where different groups, styles, beliefs and points of
view meet. On one level creating strong local bonds, the festive culture of
saints-day festivals, continuously developing as districts and their inhabitants
change, also allows for a dynamic character of the folkloric imagination.
Although the tales of Awliya’ can be considered myths or popular imagi-
nation, they still are sources of social history, especially in small towns where
no one cared to record their social history in writing. More importantly, they
are an important form of collective memory in a time when all old structures
are demolished in order to construct new buildings, especially with the high
prices of the land and the need to use those places for providing services to
the inhabitants.
The struggle over the shrines between Sufi and Islamist groups is one way
of contesting and telling the history of the town. In their campaign against
shrines and Sufi turuq Islamist groups have invented new folklore, borrowed
from the sands of the Arabian Peninsula and juxtaposed to the culture of the
Nile valley. Holding to an ahistorical interpretation of religion that excludes
notions of historical development and growth, the Islamists attempt to flatten
out both the physical landscape and the historical imaginary of the city, reduc-
ing it to a simple opposition of Islam and non-Islam. The shrines, for them,
are not only an improper form of religiosity, but an annoying reminder of a
history much more complex than they imagine. The Sufis defending the
shrines, in turn, are compelled to partially take over the Islamist imagination
to legitimize the cult of saints. Turning mystics into mujahidin and shrines
into complexes with mosques and social services, they embed the saints into
the modern imagination of contemporary history as struggle, social develop-
ment and public education.
This strategy has turned out largely successful. The shrines which are still
attacked by Islamist groups are those which form separate buildings inside
residential areas. But those shrines which are located in cemeteries are not at-
tacked, nor are the mosques attached to shrines, be it in cemeteries or in the
market. Building mosques on the sites of shrines does, however, often lead to
a shift of focus. With the mosque and the social services becoming more cen-
tral, people sometimes pay less attention to the shrines. In some cases people
no longer celebrate the memory of the owner of a shrine, or the celebration
has become a very small event.
 MERCHANTS AND MUJAHIDIN | 181

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Abstracts

Sufi Regional Cults in South Asia and Indonesia:

Towards a Comparative Analysis
Pnina Werbner

This chapter examines the spread of Sufism from the Near East to South Asia.
It then moves on to consider whether Sufism in Indonesia, which has been
analysed using vernacular rather than analytic concepts, in fact bears signifi-
cant similarities in its organizational, ritual and symbolic forms and processes
to Sufi practices elsewhere. So too, the chapter argues, the legends and mira-
cles of North African, South Asian and Indonesia holy men and Sufi saints,
though set in entirely different historical and ecological contexts, contain re-
markable ‘deep’ mythic structural similarities. In this sense, the chapter ar-
gues against Clifford Geertz’s comparative analysis of the differences be-
tween local Moroccan and Indonesian Islam, that there may be underlying re-
semblances between the ideological underpinnings of Sufi orders and sacred
centers in widely separated geographical localities, which a generate similar
symbolic and organizational logics. Taking a fresh look at recent ethno-
graphic studies of Sufi orders and cults in Indonesia, the paper compares them
analytically and ethnographically with modes of Sufi thought and religious
organization in South Asia, mainly India and Pakistan. In both countries the
veneration of saints has come under attack from reformists, but continues to
be a living, vital tradition in its reformist modes.

(Re)Imagining Space: Dreams and Saint Shrines in Egypt

Amira Mittermaier

The order of modernity in Egypt intersects with many other spaces, among
them the order of the saint shrine and the order of the dream. This chapter in-
vites to a re-imagining of space through considering interplays and tensions
between these three different orders. Adopting Lefebvre’s notion that neither
imaginary nor material spaces can be understood in isolation, it examines how
dream spaces spill over into, and are shaped by, material spaces and concrete
spatial practices. While both the saint shrine and the dream seemingly subvert
the order of modernity, the paper challenges materialist readings which view
dreams as a form of false consciousness or which prioritize saint shrines as
sites of resistance. Instead it suggests that understandings of saint shrines are
incomplete unless they are conceptualized within a space which includes both
the material and the imaginary. Also dream stories do not so much resist the
184 | DIMENSIONS OF LOCALITY

hegemonic order of reality but rather create an alternative, but not purposively
contrary, space within it.

Remixing Songs, Remaking Mulids:

The Merging Spaces of Dance Music and Saint Festivals in Egypt
Jennifer Peterson

‘Mulid’ dance music is a popular current that draws musically and lyrically
from Sufi spiritual songs performed at Egyptian saint festivals (mulids).
Amplified on large speakers at mulids as part of their carnival-like atmos-
phere, it is also established in other, more mundane, social realms, such as the
bootleg cassette tape market, internet forums, and cell phone ring tones, as
well as at ubiquitous events such as weddings, small business openings, and
evening strolls along the Nile promenade.
The festive time and space of mulids is ephemeral, and they are further
being gradually marginalized by various forms of Islamic and modernist dis-
course and policy. Yet this current of dance music has successfully drawn on
them as a dynamic cultural source and, thanks to it fluid nature, enabled rep-
resentative aspects of them to seep into other, seemingly disparate social
realms. This music trend relocates mulids into social spaces far removed
from the physical domain of the saint, extending the very idea of a mulid
through time, space, and lived experience into forms and concepts arguably
more permanent than those of the mulid itself. And, in the opposite direc-
tion, this music current is furthermore contributing to reshaping the features
of actual mulids, offering an alternative ‘modern’ approach to celebrating
these festive occasions and meanwhile reinforcing their social significance.
This study explores how the remixing of Sufi spiritual songs has led to a
remaking of mulids, by shaping them into cultural metaphors found in a va-
riety of social spaces as well as through contributing to an alternative ‘mod-
ernization’ of mulids themselves. In doing so, it follows the trajectory of this
music current’s developments and examines what meanings are conveyed
when its social context is changed from the ‘otherworldliness’ of the mulid
to the ‘everydayness’ of contemporary Egyptian life.

Notes on Locality, Connectedness, and Saintliness

Armando Salvatore

This chapter offers a few critical notes reflecting the experience of the Year-
book of the Sociology of Islam from a theoretical viewpoint, based on the
Yearbook’s goal of facilitating an understanding of the ambivalent position-
ing of Islam in the global construction of society, and using the subject of
saintliness as an entry point into the discussion.
 ABSTRACTS | 185

Since its inception, the validity of a Weberian categorization of the issue

of modernity with regard to Islam appeared as an inevitable starting point for
the Yearbook project, yet also as one that needed a critical revision. This
chapter departs from the issue of saintliness and discusses the interplay in it of
locality and connectedness, in particular to the extent they are related to the
Weberian concept of ‘charisma’.
Weber’s charisma as first personalized or localized and then diluted into
routine practices contrasts with the knowledge we can gain from exploring Is-
lamic traditions. The chapter mentions the example of the enigmatic character
of Khidr, who plays a key role in both scholarly and popular traditions varia-
bly related to Muslim saintliness, in order to unveil Weber’s notion of cha-
risma as the outcome of a post-Protestant secularization of the chemistry of
the social bond that misreads its relational nature in favor of an ongoing dia-
lectics of inwardness (Innerlichkeit) and publicness (Öffentlichkeit). This is
not a wrong genealogy or a plain anachronism, but rather a self-genealogy of
hegemonic Western views. It is useful as such but can scarcely account for
global modernity and the role that revitalized or reformed traditions play in it.

Saints (awliya’), Public Places and Modernity in Egypt

Ahmed A. Zayed

This chapter attempts to cast light on the transformations that occur in places
surrounding the shrines of saints in Egypt considering them public places, and
specifically to analyze the influences of modernity on them. The main questions
to be addressed here are: How had the traditional mind built a sacred image for
such places? How did they transform into spiritual and cultural places? How had
such images structured the traditional society? What are the modes of transfor-
mation of such places and images in modern Egypt? And how do modern Egyp-
tians reproduce local society in the festivals and rituals related to saints in differ-
ent parts of Egypt. In conclusion the paper claims that the modern public sphere
created at the saint’s square is in many ways ever more contested and frag-
mented. This is due to ideological and religious struggles, urban expansion,
modern economy, and the state. There are also attempts to impose fences, police
surveillance, and other physical restrictions on the use of the saints’ place. The
chapter includes data from different places and regions in Egypt and gives spe-
cific reference to social change in the local public sphere and interweaving as-
pects between traditional and communal culture on the one hand and new forms
of state and consumer culture on the other.
186 | DIMENSIONS OF LOCALITY

Islam on both Sides: Religion and Locality in Western Burkina Faso

Katja Werthmann

This chapter is about two sacred or saintly places in present-day Burkina Faso.
It compares the sacrificial site of Dafra and the Muslim village of Darsalamy
in the vicinity of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second-largest city which is
predominantly Muslim. These two places appear to epitomize the difference
between non-Islam and Islam. Dafra is seen by many Muslims as a quintessen-
tially pagan place where people sacrifice animals on a shrine. However, ac-
cording to stories of origin Dafra was created or discovered by a Muslim saint.
The village of Darsalamy was intentionally founded by Muslims from Bobo-
Dioulasso in order to create a saintly place where pagan practices such as
masks and dances are forbidden. The comparison of these two localities shows
that they do not correspond to a neat dichotomy between Islam and paganism,
but rather represent two cases of ‘Islam on both sides’. For Muslims and non-
Muslims alike, Islam is an important element for the constitution of collective
identities or the legitimization of authority.

The Making of a ‘Harari’ City in Ethiopia:

Constructing and Contesting Saintly Places in Harar
Patrick Desplat

The East Ethiopian town of Harar is considered the most important centre of
Islam in the Horn of Africa. Its symbolic capital is reflected in its local repre-
sentation as madinat al-awliya, the city of saints, which emphasizes the spiri-
tual value of the hundreds of saintly places within its old walls and the many
shrines in the countryside beyond them. The associated saints, their legends,
and practices of veneration still play a significant role in the religious life of
the town of Harar. This tradition is currently the focus of debates, in which
some groups consider the local veneration of saints as an out-dated ‘cul-
tural’—and sometimes un-Islamic—practice, while others hold more ambigu-
ous views.
Against this background, this paper concentrates on the contemporary role
of locality and saintly tradition and the question as to how are they con-
structed and negotiated among the Muslims of Harar. The adopted approach
explores changes which are expressed in phenomena of both decline and revi-
talization. One of the main theses of the paper is that a shift in meaning re-
garding the role of saints and their sites took place in context of modernity:
i.e. from the more classical model of intercession between God and Muslims
to the production of local and collective identity.
 ABSTRACTS | 187

Merchants and Mujahidin:

Beliefs about Muslim Saints and the History of Towns in Egypt
Souzan El Saied Yousef Mosa

This chapter looks at the tales about a wali (saint) as ways of telling the his-
tory of the northern Egyptian city of al-Mansura. Different districts and social
groups in the town have created different wali characters and related to them a
special historical imagination. Be it with the fundamentalists depicting a Mus-
lim saint as a Jewish merchant, Sufis turning mystics into mujahidin, or mer-
chants and craftsmen uniting social with spiritual leadership—in all cases
people arrange stories and meanings in a way that fits with values they hold
important. The folklore they thus create—the heroes, the festivals, the popular
architecture—tells us of the group identities and local histories people tell to
themselves.
On the Authors and Editors
of the Yearbook

Patrick Desplat is a researcher at the Colloborative Research Centre 295 in

Mainz, with focus on the anthropological study of Islam in Africa.

Amira Mittermaier is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Religion

and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Her
present research explores the ethical, political, and religious dimensions of
Egypt’s dream landscapes.

Souzan El Saied Yousef Mosa is Professor of Folklore at the Academy of

Arts in Cairo, Egypt.

Jennifer Peterson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology and Near

Eastern Languages and Cultures from Indiana University, and a Master of
Science degree in Arabic Language, Literature, and Linguistics from George-
town University. She resides in Cairo, Egypt, where she conducts independent
research while working as a freelance translator and writer.

Armando Salvatore is Associate Professor of Sociology of Culture and

Communication, University of NaplesʊL’Orientale, and Heisenberg Fellow,
Dept. of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin, and Institute for Ad-
vanced Study in the Humanities, Essen. His present research explores the so-
ciological, political and practical significance of religious traditions and secu-
lar formations in comparative perspective.

Samuli Schielke is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Joensuu,

Finland, and the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern
World (ISIM), Leiden, Netherlands.

Georg Stauth teaches Sociology of Islam at the University of Bielefeld and

leads a research group on ‘Saintly Places’ in the DFG Collaborative Research
Centre 295 at the University of Mainz.

Pnina Werbner is Professor of Social Anthropology at Keele. Her fieldwork

has included research in Britain, Pakistan, and Botswana where she is cur-
rently studying a manual workers union, and women in the changing public
sphere.
190 | DIMENSIONS OF LOCALITY

Katja Werthmann is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology

and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz and did field
work in Nigeria about Hausa women and in Burkina Faso about land rights,
settlement histories, interethnic relations, gold mining, and Islam.

Ahmed A. Zayed is Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo Uni-

versity.
 Globaler lokaler Islam

Sabine Berghahn, Abbas Poya,

Petra Rostock (Hg.) Maurus Reinkowski (Hg.)
Der Stoff, aus dem Das Unbehagen in der
Konflikte sind Islamwissenschaft
Debatten um das Kopftuch Ein klassisches Fach
in Deutschland, Österreich im Scheinwerferlicht
und der Schweiz der Politik und der Medien
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Georg Stauth, Der Kopftuchstreit in
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and Space (Yearbook of ISBN: 978-3-89942-410-2
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Georg Stauth Historical and Civilizational
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 Globaler lokaler Islam
Georg Stauth Levent Tezcan
Ägyptische heilige Orte I: Religiöse Strategien der
Konstruktionen, »machbaren« Gesellschaft
Inszenierungen und Verwaltete Religion
Landschaften der und islamistische Utopie
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’Abdallah b. Salam 2003, 232 Seiten,
Fotografische Begleitung kart., 26,80 €,
von Axel Krause ISBN: 978-3-89942-106-4
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kart., zahlr. Abb., 24,80 €, Gerdien Jonker
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Nilüfer Göle, Kulturzentren in Europa«
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Islam in Sicht kart., 25,80 €,
Der Auftritt von Muslimen ISBN: 978-3-933127-99-0
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ISBN: 978-3-89942-237-5 Konzepte authentischer
Lebensführung junger
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Mechtild M. Jansen (Hg.) in der Diaspora
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ISBN: 978-3-89942-153-8 und der Islam
Zur Soziologie alltagsweltlicher
Heiner Bielefeldt Anerkennungspolitiken.
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