The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta

Every year, in Tanta, in the heart of the Nile Delta, a festival takes place that was for centuries the biggest in the Muslim world: the mulid of al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi, a much-loved saint who cures the impotent and renders barren women fertile. This study tells the history of a Sufi festival that for long overshadowed even the pilgrimage to Mecca. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen shows that the mulid does not stand in opposition to religious orthodoxy, but rather acts as a mirror to Egyptian Islam, uniting ordinary believers, peasants, ulama, and heads of Sufi brotherhoods in a shared spiritual fervor.