Author's note: From October 1987 hrough June 1988 this research was supported by a grant from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars under the Islamic Civilization program. I was able to continue my research in Egypt until May 1989 thanks to the financial support of my husband, Steve Ladd, family, and friends.

¹ The most recent and faithful study of contemporary Egyptian Sufism (Earle, H. Waugh, The Munshidin of Egypt: Their World and Their Song [Columbia, S.C., 1989]), says that the goal of the individual in dhikr is fanāʾ, which he interprets as trance, a highly individualistic striving for union with God, whereas contemporary Egyptian Sufism is much more communalistic in its interpretation and goals, and associates fanāʾ with love and identification, not with trance.Google Scholar

² This tendency, extremely common among Muslim authors, is also reflected in Western writings, such as Elwell-Sutton, L. P., “Sufism and Pseudo-Sufism,” in Islam in the Modern World, ed. Denis, MacEoin and Ahmed, al-Shahi (New York, 1983), 49–56.Google Scholar

³ Michael, D. Gilsenan, “Some Factors in the Decline of the Sufi Orders in Modern Egypt,” Muslim World 57 (1967): 11–18.Google Scholar

⁴ Marshall, G. S. Hodgson, “How Did the Early Shiʿa Become Sectarian?” Journal of the American Oriental Society 75, 1(1955): 2.Google Scholar

⁵ It is significant, I believe, that Sufis all around Egypt frequently expressed, either to me or in conversations with each other in my presence, their contempt for the supreme council, and their belief that its leaders were men whose knowledge of Sufism was derived entirely from books, not from genuine spiritual experience.

⁶ As Marshall, Hodgson wrote, the Shiʿites “believed that their love for the suffering imams would win them forgiveness for their own sins and a share in the victory of the righteous in the end,” The Venture of Islam (Chicago, 1974), 1:378.Google Scholar Further down on the same page, Hodgson notes that the Sunnis, while rejecting major aspects of Shiʿtic devotion, did respond to the glorification of its main figures: “ʿAli became a major hero and Muhammad was given metaphysical status, while Husayn has been bewailed by many Sunnis almost as much as by Shiʿs.” For a glimpse at the variety in popular understanding and acceptance of the redemptive quality of love for the imams in Twelver Shiʿsm, see Reinhold, Loeffler, Islam in Practice: Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village (Albany, 1988).Google Scholar

⁷ On the connections between Sufism and Shiʿsm, see Kāmil, Muṣṭafāal-Shaybi, Al-ṣila bayn altaṣawwuf wa' ltashayyuʿ (Cairo, 1969);Google ScholarSeyyed, Hossein Nasr, “Shiʿism and Sufism” in Shiʿism: Doctrines, Thought and Spirituality, ed. Seyyed, Hossein Nasr, Hamed, Dabashi, and Seyyed, Vali Reza Nasr (Albany, 1988), 104–20;Google ScholarMichel, M. Mazzaoui, The Origins of the Ṣafawids: Šiʿsm, ṢŨfism, and the Gulāt (Wiesbaden, 1972);Google ScholarMoojan, Momen, An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam (London, 1985), 90–104, 209;Google ScholarMarjan, Mole, “Les Kubrawiyya entre Sunnisme et Shiʿisme aux huitiÈme et neuviÈme siÈcles de l'Hégire,” Revue des études islamiques 29 (1961): 61–142.Google Scholar One pivotal figure in the connection between Sufism and Shiʿism is Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, sixth imam for both the Twelver Shiʿa and the Ismaʿi1iyya, an acknowledged transmitter of hadith by Sunni and Shiʿite collectors alike, and author of an exegesis of the Qurʾan that is strongly Sufi in orientation. See Paul, Nwyia, ExégÈse coranique et lan-gage mystique (Beirut, 1970). 159–76.Google Scholar

⁸ The word khidma, which literally means “service,” signifies here a place where people sleep and serve food and drinks at various mawlids. The khidamāt are often in special tents set up for the mawlids, but they may also be set up on the sidewalk or in a building.

⁹ For example, McPherson, J. W., The Moulids of Egypt (Cairo, 1941);Google ScholarFrederick, de Jong, “Cairene Ziyâra-Days: A Contribution to the Study of Saint Veneration in Islam,” Die Welt des Islams 17 (1976): 26–43;Google ScholarMichael, Gilsenan, Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion (Oxford, 1973), 47–64;Google ScholarWaugh, , Munshisidīn of Egypt, 52–59.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Commentators on the famous “light passage” of the Qurʾan (24:35) identified the light of God with Muhammad as early as Muqatil (d. 767), a Zaydi Shiʿte. Nwyia, ExégÈse coranique et langage mystique, 95. Among Sufis, the Muhammadan light theory was first fully expounded by Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896). See Annemarie, Schimmel. Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC., 1975), 215;Google ScholarMuḥammad, Kamāl Jaʿfar, Min al-turāth al-ṣŨfi: Sahi ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Tustari (Cairo, 1974), 1:296–310.Google Scholar

¹¹ Discussion is confined in this section to the beliefs common among Sufis in contemporary Egypt. Belief in the preexistent Muhammadan light, shared by Sufis and Shiʿites, indicates probable Hellenistic and Gnostic influences. See Ignaz, Goldziher, “Neuplatonische und gnostische Elemente im Hadith,” Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 22 (1908): 317–44;Google ScholarTor, Andrae, Die Person Muhammads in Lehre und Glaube seiner Gemeinde (Stockholm, 1918);Google Scholar Henry Corbin's many works connect light mysticism with Hellenism and Gnosticism, e.g., Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ʿArabi, trans. Ralph, Manheim (Princeton, N.J., 1969);Google ScholarThe Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, trans. Nancy, Pearson (Boulder, Colo., 1978);Google ScholarSpiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shiʿite Iran, trans. Nancy, Pearson (Princeton, N.J., 1977).Google Scholar

¹² Al-Nafaḥāt al-rabbāniyya (a collection of the sayings and teachings of Sheikh Ahmad Muhammad Radwan), 3rd ed. (Kom Omho, 1986), 177. Ahmad Radwan was particularly respected by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who visited his sāḥa and built the Radwaniyya train station nearby.Google Scholar

¹³ ʿāmir, al-Najjār, Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨfiyya fi miṣr: nash'atuhā wa nuẓumuhā wa ruwwāduha (Cairo,1978), 280.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Najjār, , Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨfiyya, 282.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿīsā ibn ʿlyād, Al-maf¯akhir al-ʿaliyya (Cairo, 1961), 105;Google Scholar quoted in Najjār, , Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨfiyya, 200.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ibid., 200−201.

¹⁷ The four recognized quṭbs (founders of the Sufi orders in Egypt) are ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166) of Iraq, founder of the Qadiriyya; Ahmad al-Rifaʿi of Iraq, founder of the Rifaʿiyya; Ahmad al-Badawi of Morocco, founder of the Ahmadiyya; and Ibrahim al-Dasuqi, from Dasuq in the Egyptian Delta, founder of the Burhamiyya. Equally important in the history of Egyptian Sufism is Abu'l-Hasan al-Shadhili of Morocco, founder of the Shadhiliyya. ʿāmir al-Najjār outlines the interconnectedness of the Orders in their origins, and comments that one cannot speak of a local Sufism in Egypt until Dasuqi. Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨufiyya, 181–83, 249-50.Google Scholar

¹⁸ A1-Islām waṭan, 19 (11 1988), 15, 56–58.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The Qurʾanic verse, “Do not hasten to deliver the Qurʾan before its revelation to you is completed” (20:114), was taken by Muḥammad ʿUthmān al-Burhānī (d. 1983), who, according to an internal census in 1976, claimed three million followers in Egypt, to indicate that Muhammad had the Qurʾan before Gabriel brought it in detailed form. Indeed, according to a hadith, he is the source of the revelation transmitted by Gabriel, . Tabriʾat al-dhimma fi nuṣḥ al-umma (Khartoum, 1974), 10–17.Google Scholar ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī, citing the hadith, “The Qurʾan was revealed to me in one piece,” had previously written that the perfect man, or Muhammadan reality, is coequal with umm al-kirāb, the archetype of the Qurʾan, since both are manifestations of the divine essence. Al-Insān al-kāmil fi maʿrifar al-awākhir wa 'l-awāʾil (Cairo, 1402/1980), 1:94,Google Scholar cited in Vincent, J. Cornell, “Mirrors of Prophethood: The Evolving Image of the Spiritual Master in the Western Maghrib from the Origins of Sufism to the End of the Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1989),573.Google Scholar

²⁰ Al-Ibrīz, a collection of the teachings of Sidi ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Dabbagh of Fez as written by Aḥmad ibn al-Mubārak al-Sijilmāsi (Cairo, n.d.), 54. This book is well known among educated Sufis in Egypt, and was recommended to me by a sheikh in the province of Qena as the best introduction to Sufism. This was also preached in a Friday sermon in a village in Asyut by Sheikh ʿlzz al-ʿArab al-Hawār¯i.

²¹ All of these statements are taken from public addresses given at mawlids or other Sufi gatherings.

²² Zakī, Mubārak, Al-madāʾiḥ al-ʿnabawiyya fi 'l-adab al-ʿrarabī (Cairo, 1935), 154–55. Al-Buṣīrī was an Egyptian of the province now known as Beni Suef, who lived 1211–94.Google Scholar

²³ Maʿa taḥiyyāt al-ṭarīqa 'l-jāzŨliyya 'l-ḥusayniyya 'l-shādhiliyya, a small handbook for members of the Jazuliyya Husayniyya Shadhiliyya order founded by Sheikh Gabir Husayn Ahmad al-Jazuli, 169.

²⁴ Fanāʾ is rarely discussed openly, and it was only my association with a sheikh that encouraged other sheikhs to speak of this subject with me. In the works of Dr. ʿAbd al-Halim Mahmud and other recent Egyptian scholars of Sufism, fanāʾ is discussed only through the definition found in classical Sufi writings, but in contemporary Sufi practice one rarely hears of fanāʾ in God; instead, one speaks of fanāʾ in one's sheikh and fanāʾ in the Prophet. J. Spencer Trimingham believes that the concept of annihilation in the Messenger, and spiritual concentration upon the Prophetic essence as regular discipline for Sufi disciples, emerged in what is known as the “Muhammadan Path” (al-ṭarīqa 'l-muḥammadiyya) in the teachings of Ahmad al-Tijani (1737–1815) in the Maghrib (which were also influential in Sudan) and of Ahmad ibn Idris (1760–1837), the influential teacher in Mecca from whom sprang a number of different orders. As he put it, “The two Ahmads both stressed that the purpose of dhikr was union with the spirit of the Prophet, rather than union with God—a change which affected the basis of the mystical life”; The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford, 1971), 106.Google Scholar Vincent Cornell attributes the emergence of this trend to the Moroccan sheikh, Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-JazŨlī (d. 1465), whose popular devotional handbook, Dalāʾ al-khayrāt wa-shawāriq al-anwār fi dhikr al-ṣalāt ʿalā 'l-nabī al-mukhiār, a guide to the invocation of blessings on the Prophet and his family, became widely used throughout the Muslim world. However, he acknowledges that a similar book by the same title was said to have been written in Iran at about the same time, indicating the currency of his ideas; “Mirrors of Prophethood,” 477–479, 507. In Tabriʾat al-dhimma fi nuṣḥ al-umma, 36–57, Muhammad ʿUthman reproduces a lengthy segment of al-Jīlī's Al-nāmŨs al-aʿẓam Wa 'l-qāmŨs al-aqdam fi maʿrifat qadr al-nabī ṣall¯ Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam. This text was allegedly in forty parts, but Muhammad ʿUthmafl says he found only pts. 10–12. He reproduces pt. 10, entitled Qāb qawsayn wa mulraqā 'l-nāmŨsayn, based on three different manuscripts—in Medina, Cairo, and Aleppo. In this text, Jili says that by loving Muhammad one enters the secrets of existence and enters annihilation (fanāʾ). “The Messenger is in you as a substitute for you, so you may take on the disposition of his noble reality.” Annihilation in the Prophet is the way to true mystical experience. Jili ends with instructions concerning the manner of concentrating on the Prophet, picturing him before the eyes, as the means to this end. If this text is genuine, meditation on the Prophet as a mystical experience predates the Muhammadan path, and predates Ibn Idris, Sanusi, and Tijani, by several centuries.

²⁵ This ḥadfīth qudsi has usually been taken to mean that the hearts of all believing servants contain God.

²⁶ Maʾa taḥiyyāt al-ṭarīqa 'l-jāŨliyya, 118.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid., 118.

²⁹ Ibid., 206.

³⁰ Al-Nafaḥātal-rabbā niyya, 178.Google Scholar

³¹ Ibid., 183.

³² Ibid.

³³ Poem quoted by Sheikh, Ahmad Radwan, Al-nafaḥāt al-rabbāniyya, 185.Google Scholar

³⁴ Al-Nafaḥāt al-rabbāniyya, 179–80. Similar statements are given in the handbook of the Jazuliyya Order. 17–20.Google Scholar

³⁵ Al-Nafaḥātal-rabbān iyya, 180.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Sakandarī, Laṭā if al-minan; cited in Maʿa taḥiyyāt al-ṭarīqa 'l-jāzŨliyya, 20.Google Scholar

³⁷ Recent books on the special status of the ahl al-bayt include: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-ʿāyidī al-Tijānī, Ahi al-qurbā hum ahl Allah wa-khāṣṣatuhu (Cairo, 1984);Google Scholar Ibrāh¯im Ramaḍān ʿAli [Sheikh Fāris], Minfaḍāʿil wa-khaṣāʿiṣ āl al-bayt (Cairo, 1985);Google Scholar and many books focusing on individuals in the Prophet's family, e.g., Tawfīq, AbŨ ʿAlam, Ahl al-bayt: Fāṭima al-Zahrāʿ (Cairo, 1972),Google Scholar the first of a series of books on the Prophet's family; and MŨsā, Muḥammad ʿAlī, ʿAqīlat al-ṭuhr wa 'l-karam, al-Sayyida Zaynab, radiya Allāh ʿanhā (Cairo, 1984).Google Scholar Muḥammad Zakī lbrāhīm, sheikh of the Muhammadiyya Shadhiliyya order and founder of the large voluntary association, al.ʿAshira 'l-Muhammadiyya, is a respected “reformed” Sufi sheikh who has nonetheless spent a good deal of energy defending the Sufi practices of saint shrine visitation and veneration of the ahl al-bayt. See Al-tabṣir bi-mushāhid shah¯irāt āl al-bayt bi 'l-Qāhira, 2nd ed. (Cairo, 1980).Google Scholar

³⁸ Sheikh, Faris, Min faḍāʾil wa-khaṣāʾiṣ āl al-bayt, 6.Google Scholar

³⁹ According to one version of the hadith, this event occurred in the apartment of the Prophet's wife Umm Salama, and she reportedly asked if she were not to be included in this. In most versions the Prophet affirms that Umm Salama also has her special status as his wife, but she is not included in the ahl al-bayt; one version implies that the wives of the Prophet are also included. For a discussion of some of the versions of this hadith accepted in Sunni Islam, see Ibnāhīm, , Al-tabṣīr, 5.Google Scholar Ibn Taymiyya wrote that since hadith clarifies and explains the Qurʾan, although the context of the Qurʾanic text would seem to imply that the ahl al-bayyt include Muhammad's wives, for they are indeed of his house, the hadith specifies that only ʿAli, Fatima, Hasan, , and Husayn, are meant, “for the bond of kinship is stronger than the bond of marriage” ḤuqŨq āl al-bayt bayn al-sunna wa 'l-bidʿa (Cairo, 1981), 10.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For example, the commentary given by Ali, A. Yusuf in his translation of the Qurʾan, The Meaning of the Glorious Qurʾan (Cairo, nd.), 2:1312, n. 4560.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibn, al-Khaṭīb, Awḍaḥ al-tafāsīr (Cairo, Ca. 1935), 594, says that although love for the Prophet's family is an obligation on all believers, this is not meant by the verse because it would imply a reward for delivering the message.Google Scholar

⁴² For example, Ibrāhīm, , Al-tabṣīr, 5–6;Google ScholarAbu, ʿAlam, Ahl al-bayt: Fāṭima 'l-Zahrāʾ, 9;Google ScholarSheikh, ʿAbd al-ṭamīd al-Ṣayfī, “Manzilat al-rasül bayn al-rusul wa 'l-wājib ʿala 'l-umma naḥwahu,” in Al-Islām waṭan (magazine of the ʿAzmiyya) (11 1988), 58;Google ScholarSheikh, Fāris, Min faḍāʾil wa-khaṣāʾiṣs āl al-bayt, 46.Google Scholar

⁴³ This is known as ḥadīth al-thaqalayn, various versions of which may be found. See Ibrāhīm, , Altabṣīr, 37–39.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Sheikh, Faris, Minfaḍāʾil wa-khaṣāl al-bayt, 24.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Al-ʿurwa 'l-wuthqā, here translated as “most trustworthy hand-hold,” is found in two verses in the Qurʾan: “Whoever rejects evil and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold that never breaks” (2:256), and “Whoever submits his whole self to God and is a doer of good has indeed grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold” (31:22). Although there is nothing in these verses to indicate this, the ahl al-bayt are frequently called al-ʿurwa 'l-wuthqā.

⁴⁶ Sheikh, Faris, āl al-bayt, 7.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See n. 6.

⁴⁸ It has often been asserted that the mawlids have their origin from Fatimid times, because the Fatimids celebrated the anniversaries of the Prophet, ʿAli Fatima, and the ruling imam. Although the Fatimids may in fact have initiated this observance, H. Fuchs points out that the Fatimid mawlids took place only at the court in broad daylight and bore little resemblance to the contemporary nocturnal carnivals (“Mawlid,” El 1, 3:420). Of these four mawlids, the only one that continues to be observed is that of the Prophet, which is, despite considerable official support, the least spectacular of the major mawlids, since it is celebrated all over the country in various locations and even on different dates, rather than being concentrated around a shrine-tomb like the other mawlids. The physical presence of the saint's body is vital, and has contributed to the importance of the mawlids of Husayn, Sayyida Zaynab, ʿAli Zayn al-ʿAbidin, Fatima al-Nabawiyya, and other members of the ahl al-bayt allegedly buried in Egypt, and the complete absence of the celebration of mawlids for ʾAli and Fatima. Sunni historians and theologians trace the origin of the mawlid to a Prophet's birthday celebration in Arbela, southeast of Mosul, in 1207, arranged by Muzaffar al-Din Kökböri/Kökbürü, a brother-in-law of Saladin. This celebration, influenced by Christian rites, bore many of the features of the modern-day mawlid (lbn, Khallikan, cited in Fuchs, “Mawlid,” 420).Google ScholarGustave, E. von Grunebaum, in Muhammadan Festivals (New York, 1951). p. 73,Google Scholar says that with the growth of Sufism in Egypt under the Ayyubids, the mawlid took root there and spread from there throughout the Muslim world. This would seem to indicate that Fatimid influence on the popular religion of the Egyptian masses was limited. The glorification of the Prophet, resulting in the doctrines of the eternal Muhammadan reality, has a very long history, culminating in the teachings of lbn al-ʿArabi and Abd al-Karim al-Jili. The influence of lbn al-ʿArabi on popular Sufism across the Muslim world is still quite palpable. Concerning lbn al-ʿArabi's deep knowledge of Shiʿism, see al-Shaybi, , Al-Ṣila bayn al-taṣawwuf wa 'l-tashayyuʿ, 377–78.Google Scholar Cornell attributes the mystical version of the imitatio Muhammadi to both Shiʿtic antecedents and the pre-Islamic Arab and Berber tendencies to venerate tribal ancestors and heroes, which had become projected onto the Prophet's family (“Mirrors of Prophethood,” 557–59).Google Scholar Some scholars have suggested that the strongly ʿAlid leanings in the Sunni world can be partially attributed to the growth in urban areas, often in association with the trade guilds, of the futuwwa orders, for whom ʿAli was the exemplaryfataz, or brave young man, Louis, Massignon, “Ṣinf,” El l; Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 2: 130, 283–84;Google ScholarMomen, , Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, 90.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ One anonymous reviewer of this article asked whether the Sufis are, in Hodgson's terms, textualists or traditionalists (Venture of Islam, 1:63–66).Google Scholar They are not exclusively one or the other. Many of their teaching stories and poems are left entirely vague as to their origin, but on the other hand the authority of the Qurʾan and hadith is brought to bear, especially on controversial issues. The reformers have forced the Sufis to become more “textualist” than they would otherwise have been.

⁵⁰ Momen, , Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, 96.Google Scholar On the amorphous nature of political and dogmatic boundaries in the region from Anatolia to Iran at this time, see Mazzaoui, , The Origins of the Ṣafawids.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Sufi veneration of the twelve imams is not uncommon in certain orders, such as the Bektashiyya of Turkey and the Chishtiyya and Qadiriyya of India, despite antagonism between Sunnis and Shiʿtes in those countries.

⁵² Ibid., 108–9. This last point of view is also shared by Ibn, Taymiyya, ḤuqŨq āl al-bayt, 19.Google Scholar

⁵³ Muslim extremists in Egypt are often called sunniyyīn in popular usage. Given our tendency to see the Muslim world as comprised largely of Sunnis and Shiʿites, it is amusing for the outsider to hear Egyptian Muslims denouncing both al-sunniyyīn and al-shiʿa.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 103.

⁵⁵ lbid., 118–19. Ibn Taymiyya also believes that God honored members of the ahl al-bayt by granting them martyrdom, “for only the people of affliction (ahi al-balaʾ) get the highest reward,” ḤuqŨq āl al-bayt, 31.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Sheikh, Fāis, āl al-bayt, 104–9;Google ScholarIbrāhīm, , Al-tabṣir, 34;Google ScholarIbn, Taymiyya, ḤuqŨq āl al-bayt, 31.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Hadith quoted in Sheikh, Fāris, āl al-Bayt, pp. 109–10.Google Scholar Ibn Taymiyya also calls them by this title, ḤuqŨq āl al-bayt, 12.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Hamid, Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought, 2nd printing (Austin, Tex., 1988), 183.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid., 182. On individual expressions of this belief—and examples of skepticism—in the redemptive quality of Husayn's suffering, see Loeffler, , Islam in Practice, 40–42, 75, 82, 99.Google Scholar Also on this subject, see Mahmoud, Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of ʿAshuraʾ in Twelver Shiʿism (The Hague, 1978).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Enayat, , Modern Islamic Political Thought, 181.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Mubārak, , Al-madāʾiḥ al-nabawiyya, 55. He describes his own incredulity when, as a student at al Azhar, he heard that these processions took place in Cairo. He normally went to his home village during ʿAshuraʾ, but one year he remained in the capital specifically to observe these ceremonies, and found that they did indeed occur. He calls those who engaged in these practices Shiʿites.Google Scholar

⁶² With the possible exception of the mawlid of Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi in Tanta.

⁶³ There is a similar saying of the Prophet pertaining to ʿAli, but the proximity of Husayn's shrine and his special position as martyr no doubt contribute to make the saying with regard to Husayn the more frequently quoted in Egypt.

⁶⁴ In fact, Sheikh ʾIzz al-Hawārī denied altogether the reality of Husayn's martyrdom, in a teaching spontaneously given in a tent during the mawlid of Husayn in December 1987, before a small audience of about twenty men, who joyfully embraced this new teaching. According to Sheikh ʾIzz, Husayn, like Jesus, had a body of pure light, so, like Jesus, Husayn's death was an illusion. The proof that Jesus was of light was that the Qurʾan says God purified Mary over other women, and ritual purity entails an absence of menstrual and postpartum blood. Hence, the child she bore could not have been flesh and blood. Likewise, Fatima is said to have prayed the maghrib prayer directly after giving birth to Husayn, which implied that she had no postpartum blood. Husayn, therefore, could not have been flesh and blood. On the correspondence of Fatima to Mary and Husayn to Jesus in popular Shiʿsm, see Ayoub, , Redemptive Suffering, 35–36.Google Scholar According to a hadith, ʿUmar asked the Prophet why he called Fatima and Mary batŨl (virgin), and the Prophet replied that the batŨl is she who has never seen any blood. In another hadith, the Prophet calls Fatima a “human houri,” Abu ʿAlam, Ahl al-Bayt: Fāṭima 'l-Zahrāʾ, 72–73. I have not heard any sheikh other than Sheikh ʿIzz deny the martyrdom of Husayn, and he says this is acknowledged by only an elite among gnostics. The denial of the martyrdom is consistent with Sunni expectations of the victory of the righteous, but is not consistent with Twelver Shiʿte piety.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Concerning the historicity of the legends concerning these saints, see Yusuf, Ragib, “Al-Sayyida Nafisa, sa légende, son culte et son cimetiére,” Studia Islamica 44 (1976): 61–86;Google Scholaribid., 45 (1977): 27–55.

⁶⁶ For example, lbrāhim, , Al-tabṣir, 9. Tales concerning the jubilant welcome accorded to Sayyida Zaynab and Sayyida Nafisa indicate the veneration of the ahl al-bayt in Egypt.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Sayyid, ʿUways, Al-Ibdāʿ al-thaqāfi ʿalā 'l-ṭariqa 'l-miṣriyya: dirāsa ʿan baʿḍ al-qiddīsīn wa 'l-awliyā fi miṣr (Cairo, 1980), 22–23.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ ʿAlī, ʿAqīlat al-ṭuhr, 8.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ This particular expression, taken literally, might lead to a disregard for a Muslim's obligatory acts of worship, and Sheikh Ahmad al-Sharqawi of Najʿ Hammadi—son of the famous Khalwati sheikh, Abu 'l-Wafaʾ al-Sharqawi (d. 1961)—gently expressed his disapproval of this line during an interview (April 1988), for it might promote extremism. Lines of poetry or song, however, frequently express levels of love and devotion that exceed what might be expected from theological discourse. I have not heard any sheikh condone abandoning one's religious obligations for the sake of devotion to the saints. Rather, devotion to the saints should cause the devotee to imitate their lifestyle, which was typically one of great piety and correct religious observance.

⁷⁰ Nonetheless the madad of the saints is thought to produce tangible results, for God helps those who love His saints and fights those who hate them. When we were visiting the shrine of Abu 'l-Hasan al-Shadhili on the Red Sea with an excursion of the followers of Sheikh Ahmad Radwan, my fifteen- month-old daughter had severe diarrhea, a problem exacerbated by the lack of water. Sheikh ʿIzz rebuked me, saying, “If you had said, ‘Madad, Sidi Abu 'l-Hasan al-Shadhili,’ she would not have had diarrhea.”

⁷¹ Tijānī, , Ahl al-qurbā, 80, 89.Google Scholar

⁷² Ibid.

⁷³ This occurs with non-Sufis as well as Sufis. Among the many stories I heard while in the field, one of them stands out as an example of the seriousness of spiritual adoption. A Coptic woman who was unable to bear children was taken by a Muslim neighbor to the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab, after which she conceived and bore a daughter. Later, however, the child became inexplicably paralyzed, and the physicians were unable to help her. The woman's Muslim neighbor said that since the child had been given by Sayyida Zaynab, she was the daughter of Sayyida Zaynab, and must be taken to her regularly. The woman took her daughter to the shrine, and the girl was healed. After the girl was fully grown and married, by virtue of a series of visions and miracles, she converted to Islam.

⁷⁴ According to one such story, a man who was especially devoted to Sayyida Zaynab became angry when during one of his visits to her shrine she did not return his greeting as usual. He left like a spurned lover, vowing never to return. But she appeared to him in a dream to tell him that behind him she had seen the Prophet, in whose presence she dared not speak, and this is why she had not returned his greeting. So they were reconciled.

⁷⁵ As Goldziher noted, “In Muslim belief [according to hadith] ‘God forbade the soil to consume the bodies of prophets buried in it,’ i.e., to let them decay, and this belief was extended to the bodies of martyrs, theologians and muezzins”—and saints, “Veneration of Saints in Islam,” Muslim Studies, trans. Barber, C. R. and Stern, S. M. (London, 1971), 2:286. He goes on to say that legends abound concerning saintly prevention of people from exhuming their bodies in order to transfer them to new graves, as this was considered a desecration, but I heard many stories of successful recent exhumations, among both Muslims and Copts, upon which the saint was discovered still alive, “asleep,” after hundreds of years. The Copts have a particularly grisly custom of preserving the “living flesh” of dismembered martyrs from the Roman era; the receptacles containing these fragments are sometimes opened during the mawlid of the saint for public view.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Abu, ʿAlam, Ahl al-bayt: Fāṭima 'l-Zahrā, 9.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Interview with the author, 07 1988. His perspective largely conforms to what Seyyed Hossein Nasr calls the Shiʿitic point of view: “From the Sunni point of view,” wrote Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Sufism presents similarities to Shiʿism and has even assimilated aspects thereof. … From the Shiʿi point of view Shiʿism is the origin of what later came to be known as Sufism. But here by Shiʿism is meant the esoteric instructions of the Prophet, the asrār which many Shiʿ authors have identified with the Shiʿi ‘concealment,’ taqiyya,” “Shiʿism and Sufism,” 102.Google ScholarHenry, Corbin went even further by saying, “True Shiʿism is the same as taṣawwuf, and similarly, genuine and real taṣawwuf cannot be anything other than Shiʿism.” “Sih guftār dar bāb-i tārīkh-i maʿnawiyyat-i īrān,” Majalla-yi Dānishkada-yi Adabiyyāt 5 (1959): 46–51, 52–57, 58–63;Google Scholar cited in Mazzauoi, , The Origins of the Ṣafawids, 83.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ E.g., Najjār, , Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨfiyya, 213. Throughout his book, Najjār defends Sufism from accusations of Shiʿitic influence, and claims that blood descent is irrelevant in Islam, as proven by the fact that many foreigners, especially Moroccans, were recognized as saints in Egypt. However, he fails to consider the importance of the claim by most or all of these saints of descent from the Prophet, which outweighed their status as non-natives.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Sidi ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Dabbagh gives a long list of sheikhs whose secrets he claimed to have inherited, Al-Ibrīz, 8–14.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Samiya, daughter of the Burhami sheikh Abu 'l-Maʿati, and Fatima, known as Hagga Layla, daughter of Sheikh Ibrahim of the Musallamiyya Khalwatiyya, are two examples of women who are acknowledged by the order as having inherited a greater share of the spiritual secrets of their fathers than their brothers, although the brothers inherited the position of sheikh.

⁸¹ ʿAbd al-Wahhab al-Shaʿrani, the 16th-century Egyptian mystic, argued that the ashrāaf should be venerated, without fear of creating suspicions of being Shiʿite. The ashrāf were highly respected on a popular level in his time, but later in the 18th and 19th centuries acquired as a class great wealth and power. Michael, Winter, Society and Religion in Early Ottoman Egypt: Studies in the Writings of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (New Brunswick, 1982), 278–82. Already in the last quarter of the 14th century, the Mamluk sultan ordered the ashrāf to wear distinctive clothing. Sheikh ʿIzz al-Hawari claimed that once while he was approaching the tent of the Burhami sheikh, Abu'l-Maʿati, at a mawlid in the Delta, the latter rose to greet him despite his infirmity, telling his disciples, “I will not sit when the grandson of my lord the Prophet approaches.” Since he had never previously met Sheikh Abu'l-Maʿati, and since the ashrāf no longer wear distinctive dress, Sheikh ʿIzz sees this as indication of the sheikh's spiritual insight. The story also indicates the extreme veneration given to descendants of the Prophet in Egyptian Sufi piety.Google Scholar

⁸² Aḥmad, Subḥi, “Baḥth ʿan al-taṣawwuf: ījābiyyatuhu wa-salbiyyatuhu,” Majallat al-fikr al-ʿarabi; cited in Najjār, Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨfiyya, 43.Google Scholar

⁸³ Najjār, , Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨfiyya, 44.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Article in Al-Siyāsa 'l-usbŨʿiyya, quoted in Muhammad, Fahmi ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, Al-Sayyid al-Badawī aw dawlat al-darāwīsh fī miṣr (Cairo, 1948), 45.Google ScholarDrʿAbd, al-Ḥalīm MaḥmŨd defended Ahmad al-Badawi against accusations that he was Shiʿite in Al-Sayyid Aḥmad al-Badawī, raḍiya 'llāhu ʿanhu (Cairo, 1969), 30, 32.Google Scholar Najjār points Out that Badawi lived for forty years in Egypt without ever being accused of being a Fatimid propagandist, and says that contemporary historians suspect him because nine of the twelve imams were among his ancestors, Al-ṭuruq al-ṣŨfiyya, 163.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Najjār, , Al-ṭuruq al-ṣufiyya, 32;Google Scholaral-Sayyid, Muḥammad Māḍi AbŨ 'l-ʿAzāʾim, sheikh of the ʿAzmiyya, Mudhakkirat al-murshidīn wa 'l-mustarshidīn, 2nd ed. (Cairo, 1983), 57;Google ScholarAl-Nafaḥāt al-rabbāniyya, 181–82.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ This statement might appear controversial to some, but this was affirmed repeatedly in my presence by sheikhs from various orders, including Shadhili, Khalwati, and Rifaʿi orders.

⁸⁷ I was assured of this by various Sufis regarding my own attachment to a sheikh, despite the fact that I had not converted to Islam. My sheikh also said, regarding a living Coptic woman saint who was known for her miracles of healing, that she had entered into the Muhammadan presence by virtue of her belief in and attachment to a Sufi sheikh. She herself denied this.

⁸⁸ These remarks were made during an interview in a village in Qena province with Sheikh Wafi Muhammad Wafi, head of the Rifaʿiyya in Asyut, Suhaj, and Qena, 25 May 1988. It is interesting that Sheikh Wafi, a Rifaʿi, asked Sheikh ʿIzz a Shadhili, to elaborate to me the concept of fanāʾ in the sheikh as a prerequisite of fanā in the Prophet. Sheikh ʿIzz considers himself a Shadhili because his “inner oath” (ʿahd bāṭinī) was to Abu 'l-Hasan al-Shadhili through visions, although his original teacher, Sheikh Ahmad Radwan, was a Khalwati. He later studied under Dr. ʿAbd al-Halim Mahmud, a Shadhili. There is no real difference in Sufi doctrine among the main Sufi orders, only a difference of mashrab (“drinking place”), that is, source of guidance in a chain leading back to the Prophet, and a difference in the daily recitation of prayers (awrād) and dhikr.

⁸⁹ Al-Nafaḥa: al-rabbāniyya, 181.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ AbŨ, Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn YaʿqŨb ibn Isḥāq al-Kulaynī, Al-UṣŨl min al-Kāfī, 3rd ed., ed. ʿAlī, Ak- bar al-Ghaffārī (Tehran, 1388/1968), 1:376–77;Google ScholarMuḥammad, Bāqir al-Khwansārī, Rawḍat al-janna fī aḥwāl al-ʿulamā wa 'l-sādāt, 2nd ed., ed. Muḥammad, ʿAlī Hawzatī (Tehran lithograph, 1367/1947), 703;Google Scholar cited in Matti, Moosa, Extremist Shiʿites: The Ghutat Sects (Syracuse, N.Y., 1988), 53.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Watt, W. Montgomery, trans., The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali (London, 1956), 53.Google Scholar

⁹² Marshall, G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismaʿilis Against the Islamic World (The Hague, 1955), 130–31.Google Scholar

⁹³ Watt, , Faith and Patience, 54.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Nonetheless, lsmaʿili teaching did involve tutoring in hidden truths, which were intended, like Sufi teaching, to result in spiritual purification and refinement. Stern, S. M., Studies in Early Ismaʿilism (Jerusalem, 1983). 60–61.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Nasr, , “Shiʿsm and Sufism,” 106–7.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Considering the importance of the tomb-shrine of saints in popular devotion in Egypt, we might hypothesize that a similar devotion to the family of the Prophet would be more likely to occur in Sunni countries that possessed such shrines. In Iraq, the most likely candidate, Sunni–Shiʿte antipathies in the context of a strong Shiʿite population appear to suppress ʿAlid enthusiasm among Sunnis, according to a member of the audience at the annual MESA meeting in Toronto where I presented an original version of this paper (November 1989). Another person said that in Turkey devotion to the Prophet is strong, but not in his family. B. G. Martin, however, attests to the strength of ʿAlid sentiments in the Turkish Khalwatiyya, an order with strong Shiʿitic connections in its origins. “A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis, ed. Nikki, R. Keddie (Berkeley, Calif., 1972), 275–305. In Pakistan and India, there appears to be a strong devotion to the ahl al-bayt among Sunni Sufis, similar to what I have documented for Egypt, according to Vernon Schubel, in personal communications as well as in his presentation at the November 1989 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Anaheim, California, “Narrative and Ritual in Sufi Pilgrimage.”Google Scholar