Ritual Activities.
The Ṣūfī saint’s shrine is one of the focal points of rituals carried out not only by the members of the Ṣūfī order that has a special spiritual relationship with the saint but also by common Muslims who simply admire the mystical power of the saint and venerate him. There are three important types of ritual: visiting the shrine, dhikr rituals conducted there, and the annual festival of the saint.
Visitation.
Many devotees of a Ṣūfī saint make frequent visits to his shrine to perform such rituals as special prayers to the saint, circumambulation of his tomb, and kissing its cloth cover. Some of them remain there for a longer period. The main aim of their visit, as with ordinary supplication (duʿāʿ), is to ask for divine blessing in general, as well as for more specific benefits such as success in business or study, or recovery from an illness. They may make a vow (nadhr) to give a suitable donation to the saint if their wishes are satisfactorily realized; many of the items belonging to the shrine are donations from supplicants. If they break the vow and give nothing to the saint as a reward, it is presumed that there will be divine retribution for their negligence.
Visits to some shrines can be regarded as a substitute for the pilgrimage to Mecca. Indeed, a visit to the shrine of Sayyid al-Badawī has been called “the pauper’s ḥajj.” The shrine of al-Shādhilī (d. 1465), the founder of the widespread Shādhilīyah Ṣūfī order, is in a town on the Red Sea coast in southern Egypt. It is said that five visits to his shrine have an effect similar to that of one ḥajj. It is noteworthy, however, that the visit is not called ḥajj but ziyārah. Visitors apparently make an essential distinction between the two, even though they may think that repeated visits to a shrine may give them almost the same benefits as the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Dhikr.
On the basis of the Qurʿān (sūrah33:41–42), the dhikr ritual, in which participants devoutly repeat the names of God or some formula such as “Allāh ḥayy” (God is the Eternal One) with prescribed gestures, has become one of the fundamental rituals for most Ṣūfīs. A gathering to perform the ritual, usually called ḥaḍrah, usually takes place in the afternoon or at night in the court of a private house, in a public square in a neighborhood, at a lodge, or in an open space near a saint’ shrine.
In some cases a dhikr is conducted after the communal prayers on Friday. For instance, the Hamad al-Nīl Ṣūfī order, a Sudanese branch of the Qādarīyah, regularly holds a dhikr gathering on Friday afternoon in an open space in front of the shrine of its founding Ṣūfī in a cemetery in a suburb of Omdurman. After the ʿaṣr prayer, members of the order march to the place from their nearby mosque and start to perform the dhikr rituals. Repeating the formulas to the rhythm of drums and religious songs, they line up in several rows and move around a pole set up in the center of the space. The ritual lasts until the sunset (maghrib) prayer.
Dhikr rituals, like visits to the shrine, can be carried out at any time. They are, however, enthusiastically conducted on a grand scale on the occasion of the annual festival of the saint.
Annual festival.
The yearly celebration in honor of a saint has several different names in Arab countries. In Egypt it is called a mawlid; the word mawsim(season, i.e., for celebrating a saint) is used in the case of a marabout in Morocco as well as for the festival of the prophet Moses in Palestine. Members of the Ṣūfī orders in Sudan hold annual celebrations of their founders called ḥūlīyah in commemoration not of their birthdays but of the anniversaries of their deaths. These festivals vary greatly in the way in which they are held, the number of participants, and the rituals performed; we will concentrate on the Egyptian cases.
Unlike for the mawlid of the Prophet, whose tomb is in Medina, Egyptian mawlid feasts for the Ṣūfī or other saints are celebrated in and around their shrines. The time when these rites are held is an interesting issue. Because the word mawlid originally meant “time and place of birth,” the date of the celebration would appear to be fixed by the birthday of the saint concerned. Many mawlids for famous holy people, including the Prophet and his family, do occur on or about the days of their birth according to the Islamic lunar calendar, although the feasts themselves generally start several days or weeks before the birthday: the Prophet’s mawlid is on 12 Rabīʿ al-Awwal, Ḥusayn’s on a Wednesday in the latter half of Rabīʿ al-Thānī, Zaynab’s on the middle Wednesday of Rajab, and Shāfiʿī’s on the middle Thursday of Shaʿbān. By contrast, the dates of some mawlids are fixed according to the solar calendar and may change according to historical and social conditions. The mawlid of Aḥmad al-Badawī is a typical case.
In the early nineteenth century there were three feasts in honor of al- Badawī. The largest of these was held a month after the summer solstice, which was then the slack season for the peasants in the area. In the second or third decade of the twentieth century, the date of this mawlid was moved to the latter half of October. The development of the irrigation system in the intervening period had resulted in fundamental changes in the annual agricultural cycle of the Nile Delta. Thus October in the Gregorian calendar became the slack season for the peasants, many of whom were enthusiastic devotees of the saint. The date of the great mawlid of Sayyid al- Badawī, therefore, is based not on his actual birthday but on the convenience of his devotees.
The space around the shrine of the saint being celebrated naturally becomes a center for the feast and is crowded with visitors to the tomb. There are a number of stands for food and drinks, amusements, and sideshows. Clusters of tents are pitched where Ṣūfīs conduct dhikrrituals during the feast days. The number of visitors hoping to receive divine blessing increases remarkably during this period.
In addition to the dhikr rituals, Ṣūfīs of various orders take part in other events during the feast. Members of some orders used to demonstrate their miraculous powers in front of crowds in performances involving eating live serpents or piercing their bodies with spikes. This kind of bizarre performance has often been criticized for deviation from orthodox belief and proper Sufism. Recently they have tended to disappear, especially in the large cities.
The attractions of a festival also include a procession (mawkib or zaffah) for which various Ṣūfī orders assemble, forming lines and marching around the town or village. They perform dhikr and other rituals in their own styles, as a demonstration to the local people. The saint’s shrine is often the starting point and/or the destination of these processions.
Political and Economic Functions.
Like Sayyid al-Badawī, said to have led soldiers against Crusaders, a number of leading Ṣūfīs have played the role of military commanders fighting tyrannical rulers, ignorant heretics, and invading infidels. Among them was the leader of the Sanūsīyah movement, which fought against the Italian invasion of Libya. Founded by Muḥammad al-Sanūsī, the Sanūsīyah successfully propagated its beliefs among the bedouin tribes of Cyrenaica in the early stages of its development, by intentionally setting up lodges in the boundary areas between tribal territories. Thus the Ṣūfīs of the order could play the role of mediators in tribal conflicts, and this gave them great authority.
Saintly families in the High Atlas also arbitrate disputes among Berber tribesmen. Moreover, a collective oath, which is a customary legal procedure for judging the truth or falsity of an accusation, has to be made at a saint’s shrine if it relates to a serious issue. The shrine is also the place where a special ritual alliance between two tribes is contracted. In Boujad in Morocco, al-Sharqāwah, a maraboutic family, plays almost the same role as do the saints of the Atlas.A number of saints’ shrines can function as sites for conflict resolution and judicial decisions, although they seldom have the military power to enforce them. Because of the divine blessing saints have been granted by God, shrines can become holy places where people are subjected to mystical authority. Some of them have become not only asylums where killers involved in tribal feuds can come to ask for relief, but also sanctuaries where all bloodshed is prohibited.
Because people continually come and go, and the area around the shrine is relatively peaceful, the place may develop as a market center for the area; or, conversely, an existing market may also become a center for religious training, so that a saint’s shrine is eventually built there. Such towns as Tanta in Egypt (the Aḥmadīyah order), Boujad in Morocco (the al-Sharqāwah marabout family), and El-Damer in the Sudan (the Majdhūbīyah order) are local centers for production, storage, and marketing. While the regular weekly market held in these towns has prospered, the annual saint’s festival has become an occasion on which the town bustles with massive crowds and a large-scale fair is held, so that the festival has considerable economic effect.The saint and his family may be able to maintain the economic importance of their town by emphasizing their mystical power. In the eighteenth century the Majādhib family was said to escort trading caravans from Shendi to Berber via El-Damer, its home town. They ensured safe travel for the tribesmen and consequently contributed to the prosperity of towns other than their own. Similar cases exist in other areas.
Criticism.
As mentioned earlier, criticisms of the Ṣūfī saint shrine culture, or at least at certain elements of it, have been expressed by theologians and politicians ever since it developed. Ibn Taymīyah (d. 1328), a strict jurist affiliated with the Ḥanbalī school of Islamic law, was one of the most distinguished critics in the premodern era, although he did not condemn all the activities of the Ṣūfī orders. He stressed that the veneration of a saint would probably lead to the worship of a divine being other than God—to loathsome polytheism—and that showy attractions during feasts were definitely contrary to Islamic law and should therefore be prohibited.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1791), one of the theological successors of Ibn Taymīyah, condemned not only the folk customs of saint veneration but the whole of Sufism. The Wahhābī campaign was led militarily by the Saʿūd family, powerful supporters of Ibn ʿAbd al- Wahhāb’s doctrines, who started from a small oasis in the Nejd and gradually expanded their influence in the Arabian Peninsula. In the end they conquered the Hejaz and gained control of Mecca and Medina by 1804. During this campaign, whenever they encountered Ṣūfī saints’ shrines or other holy places they did not hesitate to demolish them. Even the dome erected on the spot where the Prophet was born was destroyed. This strong hostility toward saints and Ṣūfīs has been maintained by the contemporary regime in Saudi Arabia, which follows Wahhābism as its state doctrine; officially, no Ṣūfī activity is permitted there.
Exponents of the Salafīyah movement, such as Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, openly criticized many elements of Ṣūfī saint culture. They insisted that a saint could not intercede with God for people in earthly matters and therefore did not have the mystical power to grant good fortune. Riḍā sternly rebuked participants in the mawlid of Sayyid al-Badawī for committing bidʿah (heretical innovation) through activities such as prayers to the saint’s tomb and circumambulation of it, asking for worldly benefits, whistling, clapping, fortune-telling, selling charms and amulets, noisy music, the assembly of both sexes, and the practice of transvestism; however, he recognized the mawliditself as legal.
The hostile attitude toward Ṣūfī saint shrine culture has been taken over by Islamic reformist movements, including so-called fundamentalist groups like the Muslim Brothers. Not only strict fundamentalists but also secular modernists have intensified their opposition to it. Generally speaking, the more widespread public education has become, the more general has been the criticism of shrine cults as mere superstition. Most contemporary devotees of the cult of saints are recruited from the less-educated urban and rural masses. It is noteworthy that some Ṣūfīs, especially those advocating neo-Ṣūfī trends, actively criticize some elements of popular Sufism as bidʿah, just as Islamic scholars from outside Ṣūfī circles do.