The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta - Egypt's Legendary Sufi Festival

Every year, in the heart of the Nile Delta, a festival takes place that was for centuries the biggest in the Muslim world: the mulid of al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi of Tanta. Since the thirteenth century millions of believers from neighboring regions and countries have flooded into Tanta, Egypt's fourth-largest city, to pay devotional homage to al-Badawi, a much-loved saint who cures the impotent and renders barren women fertile.This book tells for the first time the history of a mulid that for long overshadowed even the pilgrimage to Mecca. Organized by Sufi brotherhoods, it had, by the nineteenth century, grown to become the scene of a boisterous and rowdy festival that excited the curiosity of European travelers. Their accounts of the indecorous dancing and sacred prostitution that enlivened the mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi fed straight into Orientalist visions of a sensual and atavistic East. Islamic modernists as well as Western observers were quick to criticize the cult of al-Badawi, reducing it to a muddle of superstitions and even a resurgence of anti-Islamic pagan practices. For many pilgrims, however, al-Badawi came to embody the Egyptian saint par excellence, the true link to the Prophet, his hagiographies and mulid standing for the genuine expression of a shared popular culture. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen shows that the mulid does not in fact stand in opposition to religious orthodoxy, but rather acts as a mirror to Egyptian Islam, uniting ordinary believers, peasants, ulama, and heads of Sufi brotherhoods in a shared spiritual fervor. The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta leads us on a discovery of this remarkably colorful and festive manifestation of Islam.

Product details

• Authors: Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen
• Assisted by: Colin Clement (Translation)
• Publisher: American university pr cairo
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9789774168925
• ISBN: 978-977-416-892-5
• No. of pages: 264
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, Regional & national history, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, RELIGION / Cults, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Islamic Studies, RELIGION / Islam / Sufi, RELIGION / Paganism & Neo-Paganism, History of Religion, Islamic worship, rites & ceremonies, Sufism & Islamic Mysticism