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The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta: Egypt's Legendary Sufi Festival. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2019). Pp. 232. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9789774168925
By the nineteenth century, devotion to the master of Tanta was so huge that it united all Egyptians in one single wave, washing away reservations and reluctance in a burst of generalized fervor. Badawi had become the Egyptian saint par excellence, the national saint who embodied all the features of Egyptian hagiography, while the Ahmadiya, spread throughout the country, had become the Egyptian brotherhood. (p.80)
The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta is simultaneously a history of the saint, Ahmad al-Badawi (d.1276), his mawlid (annual celebration of a saint's birth or death), and the mystical brotherhood (tariqa)— the Ahmadiyya—that draw their lineage back to him. Mayeur-Jaouen has chosen to write a study of the longue duree, and the book thus covers the centuries from the time of the saint in the 13th century CE to the present day. She has done this to identify “ruptures and evolution, while acknowledging any continuity” (p. 9). Preceding and succeeding her history, Mayeur-Jaouen uses her training as an anthropologist to provide a vivid description of contemporary practices at the mawlid: from 2002 in the introduction, and from 2012 in the final chapter. The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta is thus divided into six chapters, where the first and last are ethnographical descriptions, and the middle four are histories of the mawlid, the saint, and his followers. The scope of the book is massive, covering everything from the development of the hagiographical literature surrounding the saint and his miracles (Chapter 2), the development of the Ahmadiyya tariqa (Chapter 3), and the emerging relationship between the mawlid and the state (Chapters 4 and 5).Mayeur-Jaouen's primary goal is to stress...