The Perils of Joy: Contesting Mulid Festivals in Contemporary Egypt

Notes

213 Notes 1. Introduction 1. Usama Mahdi, “Muhafazat al-Qahira tuwasil izalat khiyam mawlid al-Sayyida wa al-shurta ta‘taqil ‘adad min al-muridin,” Al-Masri al-yawm, 17 July 2009, at http://www .almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=219312, accessed 17 July 2009. 2. See Helena Hallenberg, Ibrahim al-Dasuqi (1255–96)—a Saint Invented (Helsinki: Department of Asian and African Studies, Univ. of Helsinki, 1997). 3. “La tushadd al-rihal illa ila thalathati masajid: Al-Masjid al-Haram, al-Masjid alAqsa , wa-masjidi ana,” Muslim, Sahih: Kitab al-hajj, hadith 511. 4. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, translated by William Weaver (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1974), 63. 5. Asef Bayat, “Islamism and the Politics of Fun,” Public Culture 19, no. 3 (2007), 435. 6. See, for example, Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu, eds., Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality, and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (London: Routledge, 1998); and Christian W. Troll, ed., Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History, and Significance (Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992). 7. See, for example, Myriam Ababsa, “Les mausolées invisibles: Raqqa, ville de pèlerinage chiite ou pôle étatique en Jazîra syrienne?” Annales de Géographie 622 (2001): 647–64; Anne H. Betteridge, “Women and Shrines in Shiraz,” in Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East, edited by Donna Lee Bowen and Evelyn A. Early, 276–89 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993); Paulo G. Pinto, “Pilgrimage, Commodities, and Religious Objectification: The Making of Transnational Shiism Between Iran and Syria,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 27, no. 1 (2007): 109–25. 8. See, for example, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi: Un grand saint de l’islam égyptien (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1994); Nadia Abu-Zahra, The Pure and Powerful: Studies in Contemporary Muslim Society (Berkshire, UK: Ithaca Press, 1997). 9. But see Henri Chambert-Loir and Claude Guillot, eds., Le culte des saints dans le monde musulman (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1995). 10. Edward William Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1895; reprint, London: East-West, 1989), 241–49, 436–62. 214  Notes to Pages 9–13 11. ‘Ali Mubarak, ‘Alam al-din, vol. 1 (Alexandria: Matba‘at jaridat al-Mahrusa, 1299/1882), 139–63; ‘Ali Basha Mubarak, Al-Khitat al-jadida li-Misr al-Qahira wa-muduniha wa-biladiha alqadima wa-l-shahira, vol. 13 (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-kubra al-amiriya, 1305/1886), 50–51. 12. J. W. McPherson, The Moulids of Egypt (Egyptian Saint-Days) (Cairo: n.p., 1941). 13. Nicolaas H. Biegman, Egypt: Moulids, Saints, Sufis (The Hague: Schwarz and Kegan, 1990). 14. Ignaz Goldziher, Mohammedanische Studien, vol. 2 (Halle, Germany: Niemeyer, 1889), 338 and 275–378 in general. 15. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, “Égypte,” in Chambert-Loir and Guillot, eds., Le culte des saints dans le monde musulman, 71. 16. Goldziher, Mohammedanische Studien, 2:277–90. 17. This approach has become increasingly questioned in recent studies, notably AbuZahra , The Pure and Powerful, 37–49, and Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Histoire d’un pèlerinage légendaire en Islam: Le mouled de Tantâ du XIIIe siècle a nos jours (Paris: Aubier, 2004), 15–23. 18. Muhammad Fahmi ‘Abd al-Latif, Al-Sayyid al-Badawi wa-dawlat al-darawish fi Misr (1948; Cairo: al-Hay’a al-misriya al-‘amma li-l-kitab, 1999); Sayyid ‘Uways, Min malahim almujtama ‘ al-Misri al-mu‘asir: Zahirat irsal al-rasa’il ila darih al-imam al-Shafi‘i, in Al-A‘mal alkamila li-l-duktur Sayyid ‘Uways, 1:9–316 (Cairo: Markaz al-mahrusa, 1998); Sayyid ‘Uways, Al-Izdiwajiya fi t-turath al-dini al-misri: Dirasa thaqafiya ijtima‘iya tarikhiya, in Al-A‘mal al-kamila li-l-duktur Sayyid ‘Uways, 1:625–99; Faruq Ahmad Mustafa, Al-Mawalid: Dirasa li-l-‘adat wa-ttaqalid al-sha‘biya fi Misr, 2nd ed. (Alexandria: al-Hay’a al-misriya al-‘amma li-l-kitab, 1981). 19. In 1965, an al-Azhar sheikh, Mahmud Shaltut, issued a fatwa condemning the celebration of mulids. Abu-Zahra, The Pure and Powerful, 205. 20. See, for example, Aviva Schussman, “The Legitimacy and Nature of Mulid al-Nabi,” Islamic Law and Society 5 (1998): 214–34. 21. See Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown Univ., 1986). 22. Itzchak Weismann, Taste of Modernity: Sufism, Salafiyya, and Arabism in Late Ottoman...