Historical Origin

Starting as an individual ascetic movement, Sufism had become regarded as a legitimate part of orthodox Islam by the twelfth century. Great Ṣūfī adepts lived according to strict discipline in their training centers or lodges, where disciples followed the way (ṭarīqah) of training that their master taught them. These gatherings developed into the Ṣūfī orders (also called ṭarīqahs). Drawing recruits mainly from the illiterate masses, who had formerly lacked access to the Islamic teaching that had been largely monopolized by scholars, Ṣūfī orders gradually spread over parts of the Muslim world and had become very popular with the Muslim masses by the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Among them were the Qādirīyah, the Rifāʿīyah, the Shādhilīyah, the Suhrawardīyah, the Mawlawīyah, and the Aḥmadīyah. The first four established many branches in different countries; the Mawlawīyah was centered mainly in Anatolia and the Aḥmadīyah in the Nile Delta.

As the Ṣūfī orders penetrated into common Muslims’ lives and influenced their ritual behaviors, some of the Ṣūfī leaders, usually the founders of orders or the heads of branches, began to develop reputations as saints (awliyāʿ; sg., walī) who had supernatural power or divine blessing (barakah) granted by God. Through this power, it was believed, the saint could work miracles (karāmāt) such as foretelling the future, mind-reading, flying, treating illness, and other extraordinary acts. Devotees from both within and outside the order often visited the saint asking for a small share of divine blessing, so that he gradually began to be venerated as if he were a divine being. When the saint died, it was firmly believed that he would still respond favorably to requests made at his tomb. Therefore followers erected a special building at the site of the tomb.

Two Cases

Ṣūfī saint shrine-culture displays great variation in factors such as the person enshrined, the social categories of devotees, the architectural structure of the shrine, the rituals performed in and around it, its political and economic significance, and the form and activities of the Ṣūfī order that provides its main support. In order to illustrate its historical development, two examples will be discussed. Although both come from Egypt, they exemplify respectively a traditional, rural-based Ṣūfī saint cult and a modern, urban-based one.

Sayyid al-Badawī

Aḥmad al-Badawī, also called Sayyid al-Badawī because of his presumed descent from the Prophet, was born in Fez, Morocco, in 1199 and went to Mecca with his family in his childhood. He later visited Iraq, where he was strongly influenced by the thought of two other great Ṣūfīs, Aḥmad Rifāʿī and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, and by the activities of the Ṣūfī orders that followed these masters, the Rifāʿīyah and the Qādirīyah. Obeying a divine command received in a vision, Aḥmad al-Badawī decided to go to Tanta, a town in the Nile Delta. Situated in the center of a rich agricultural area, Tanta then flourished as a large marketplace for agricultural products, as it still does today. Overcoming challenges from other religious leaders, he won over a great number of followers in and around the town. He was said to have worked many miracles, through one of which his first supporter in the town was able to prosper in his business. He was also paid homage by the great Mamlūk king, Ẓāhir Baybars, and he even fought against the Crusaders.

Sayyid al-Badawī died in 1276. His senior pupil ʿAbd al-ʿĀl assumed responsibility for the Aḥmadīyah and became his successor (khalīfah). The saint’s followers from every district flocked to Tanta to pledge their loyalty to his successor; this is said to be the origin of the annual festival or mawlid of Sayyid al-Badawī. ʿAbd al-ʿĀl commanded that a large building be erected over the Sayyid’s tomb, and this has developed into his shrine together with a large mosque called the Masjid al-Badawī.

The mystical power of the saint began to appeal not only to the peasants and townspeople of the Delta but also to the masses in Cairo and some parts of Upper Egypt, and the devotees of his cult increased greatly. The Aḥmadīyah order in due course developed into one of the four largest Ṣūfī orders in Egypt, and his mawlid came to be something of a national festival.

Salāmah al-Rāḍī

The founder of the Ḥāmidīyah Shādhilīyah order was born in 1867 in a shabby quarter of Cairo and died there in 1939. Unlike traditional saints such as Aḥmad al-Badawī, he was born into a modern Egypt which the Western powers had come to dominate politically and economically. Egyptian society and modern European ideas, both religious and secular, gradually infiltrated into Muslims’ daily lives. For this reason, the Ṣūfī orders, if they wanted to revitalize their movements and find recruits in the emerging modernist sectors of Egyptian society, had to deal with new problems in accommodating themselves to the rapidly changing social and cultural conditions.

Having memorized the whole of the Qurʿān before he was ten, Salāmah found intellectual satisfaction in Ṣūfī scholarship rather than in the formal school system. While working in a government office as a clerk, he led an ascetic life and joined a Ṣūfī order. In response to a divine vision he decided to set up his own ṭarīqah, the Ḥāmidīyah Shādhilīyah, which was officially recognized as an independent ṭarīqah by the supreme Ṣūfī council in 1926–1927.

He became venerated as a saint for his apparent miracles, which included the excellence of his religious knowledge without a formal education, his ability to defeat other eminent scholars in debate, and his supernatural power to see everything, including things hidden from normal people. Some educated members of the order, however, apparently discredited these stories of miracles, or at least hesitated to accept them as factual.

After Salāmah’s death, one of his sons, Ibrāhīm, became the head of the order. Unlike his father, who attracted people with his personal charisma, Ibrāhīm tried to extend the order’s influence by means of structural reform. He aimed to establish a more centralized, hierarchical organization. This reform led to the Ḥāmidīyah Shādhilīyah’ becoming one of the Ṣūfī orders that accommodated most fully to social and cultural changes in modern Egypt; however, it also stirred internal conflicts between the new elite members, recruited mainly from a somewhat modernized middle class, and the senior leaders, who had been attracted by the charisma of the founding saint.

The saint’s tomb became one of the focal points in this conflict. Salāmah’s shrine was first set up in the Būlāq district of Cairo where he was born and where he established the headquarters of his ṭarīqah. After his death, a mawlid celebration for him was held there every year. Ibrāhīm died in 1975, and the new elite members, who organized a committee to manage and control the ṭarīqah, began to build a large new mosque in the Muhandisīn district on the opposite side of the Nile from Būlāq, an attractive residential area for the growing upper and upper-middle classes. Ibrāhīm’s tomb was set up in this new mosque. Beside it they constructed a fine new tomb for Salāmah, though it remained empty in 1987 as the old members refused to move his tomb from Būlāq. Moreover, they recognized Ibrāhīm’s younger brother as head of the ṭarīqah and carried on celebrating Salāma’s mawlid separately in Būlāq; the Muhandisīn faction, of course, held the mawlid celebration at the new mosque.