Narrating Tales of Saints Is Making Saints:Three Different Hagiographic Traditons of a Muslim Saint in the Egyptian Desert (original) (raw)
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Orient , 2007
Until recently, many scholars have presupposed inseparable unity between Sufism and saint veneration. It is true that most of the Muslim saints are so-called Sufi saints, although some anthropologists showed cases of non-Sufi Muslim saints. However, the forms of Sufism and saint veneration vary, and the manner in which they are combined is even more diverse. Therefore, we should treat Sufism and saint veneration as distinct phenomena and should ask ourselves what conditions determine the form of combination. In this paper, three different hagiographic traditions of a Muslim saint in the Western Desert of Egypt are introduced. It is shown that Bedouins, settled Bedouins, and non-Bedouins each have their own tales about this saint. Further, it can be seen that each tradition has a particular form of combination of Sufism and saint veneration, corresponding to the social position of its narrators. At the end of this paper, the case of the Sanusi order is examined to suggest that the above notion can be applied to the historical events in which the organization of the Sufi order and that of the tribal people were combined to give birth to the embryonic nationalism in Libya.
Islamic Saints and the Islam of Saints: A Study of Popular Religion
The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies , 2013
Early in the nineteenth century British Orientalist Edward William Lane set off for Egypt, and a three-year sojourn in Cairo produced the remarkable, voluminous An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), a pioneering ethnography of the Middle East. (1) In addition to many other facets of everyday life, Lane gave substantial attention to the popular beliefs and practices of Islam. In one of numerous descriptions concerning the Islamic saints (walī), he wrote: In the first place, if a person were to express a doubt as to the existence of true welees, he would be branded with infidelity, and the following passage of the Kur-án would be adduced to condemn him: "Verily, on the favourites of God no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve." This is considered as sufficient to prove that there is a class of persons distinguished above ordinary human beings. The question then suggests itself, "Who, or of what description, are these persons?" and we are answered, "They are persons wholly devoted to God, and possessed of extraordinary faith; and, according to This paper is produced for this special issue through a major revision of an article titled "The Position of
Presence of Sufi Teachings and Practices in some Tales of The Arabian Nights
Essays on The Arabian Nights, éd. Rizwanur Rahman § Syed Akhtar Husain , India International Centre, Delhi, Primus Book, 2015
This paper explores the presence of sufism in The Arabian Nights. My aim is to identify how this work portrays spirituality in general and sainthood in particular. The present paper does not claim to offer a complete answer to the question, but only to suggest some hitherto little explored lines of thought. Searching for signs of the presence of sufis leads to two main questions. The first is how their presence is expressed; the second is what conclusion can be drawn from their presence without running the risk of unjustifiable interpolations. To answer these questions, this essay will address first sufi masters and other types of mystics; second saints and finally the values and beliefs conveyed by the tales in which they are the players.
2008
Western sociologists have often viewed Sufi saints and Islamic mysticism in general through lenses that obscure the vibrant and multi-faceted sociological role long played by Sufi saints in Islamic societies. The reasons for this are many, complex, and open to debate, some responsibility must be assigned to the great Max Weber (d. 1920) and his disciples, especially Ernest Gellner (d. 1995 CE) and Clifford Geertz (d. 2006 CE), whose ideas have despite the best of intentions often reinforced important misconceptions. A review of the core tenets of Sufism on sainthood through the prism of the great medieval mystics Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. 910 CE)
McGregor Sanctity and Mysticism in Medieval Egypt
2004
On the Wafa'iyya Sufi order of Egypt, originating in the 14th century. Discusses foundations and growth of the tariqa, and the central figures and texts, with special reference to the construction of religious authority of 'walaya'.
Translating Sainthood in Islamic Hagiography
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Islamic Spirituality, 2023
This chapter argues that tarjamat al-awliyāʼ— “the translation of the saints”— the medieval term for hagiography or sacred biography in Islam, is not a metaphor but an actual process of translation. Instead of translation from one language to another, the “translation of the saints” in hagiography is best understood as translation by means of interpretation, which is one of the meanings of the Arabic term tarjama. Theoretical concepts from the field of translation studies significantly enhance our understanding of the ways in which hagiography “translates” sainthood and promotes a sense of spirituality. Three “bridge concepts”— translation as representation, intercultural translation, and intersemiotic translation— are especially important in hagiographical narratives. The translation of sainthood in Islamic hagiography is here illustrated through the example of a thirteenth-century CE work of manāqib (“exploits”) literature on the Amazigh (Berber) saint Abū Yi‘zzā Ilānnūr (d. 1177 CE) of Morocco.
Chapter 6. ´Abdallah b. Salam: Egypt, Late Antiquity and Islamic Sainthood
Historical and Civilizational Perspectives (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam 7), 2007
The general interest with Islam among those who theorised its position with respect to the genealogy of modernity lies with the so called "classical heritage." This question which Franz Rosenthal (1992) pursued in greater detail was inherited from the German or German educated Orientalists like Ignaz Goldziher and C.H. Becker, H.H. Schaeder and later of course in America from G.E. von Grunebaum. Rosenthal speaks of "Fortleben" (survival) which rather seeks for continuities then for Islamic reconstructions based on classical ideas. If one focuses on the importance of the aura of inherited religious narratives and metaphors of thought, one would ask, how far Mecca and Medina were related in their cultural worlds to the higher civilisations which surrounded the Arabian Peninsula. This includes the question, how far Muhammad and Early Islamic religious discourse were influenced by the religious ideas which were prevalent in the Hellenistic world, Gnosticism, Christianism and Judaism and Greek and Roman Philosophy and science. Both ways, Greek and Roman and at the utmost some Persian influence are considered to be predominant. So in both perspectives continuities, whether religious or philosophic, are traced as the dominant sources of later Islamic discourse. A third dimension has recently shaped much of our perspective on Islam, this is the one on the originality of Muhammad's revelation and the type of striking effects this brought in breaking with all types of prevalent cultural constructions. There is more and more convincing ground that the language of revelation in a lost time and location had in itself a stunning revolutionary effect (Ammann 2001). It should be noted, indeed, that this later view comes close to the selfperceived idea of Arabs, acknowledging "that their race did not share in philosophy, although they surpassed other nations in rhetoric and poetry" (El-Elwany 1957: 1). As is with all religions, the myth seems to have been the important ideological motive, not logic or philosophy. The predominant myths in Central Arabia, if not deriving from bare Arab Tribal History, depended largely on Ancient Judaism and Pharaonism. 1 I should admit that Karlheinz Deschner's "Kriminalgeschichte" and specifically his Chapters on Kyrill and Schenute of Alexandria remain stimulating and revealing in this respect (Deschner 1988: 156-212).