{"product_id":"the-mulid-of-al-sayyid-al-badawi-of-tanta","title":"The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta: Egypt's Legendary Sufi Festival","description":"Every year, 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 of Tanta. Since the thirteenth century millions of believers from neighboring regions and countries have flooded into Tanta, Egypt’s fourth-largest city, to pay devotional homage to al-Badawi, a much-loved saint who cures the impotent and renders barren women fertile.\r\n\r\nThis book tells for the first time the history of a mulid that for long overshadowed even the pilgrimage to Mecca. Organized by Sufi brotherhoods, it had, by the nineteenth century, grown to become the scene of a boisterous and rowdy festival that excited the curiosity of European travelers. Their accounts of the indecorous dancing and sacred prostitution that enlivened the mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi fed straight into Orientalist visions of a sensual and atavistic East. Islamic modernists as well as Western observers were quick to criticize the cult of al-Badawi, reducing it to a muddle of superstitions and even a resurgence of anti-Islamic pagan practices. For many pilgrims, however, al-Badawi came to embody the Egyptian saint par excellence, the true link to the Prophet, his hagiographies and mulid standing for the genuine expression of a shared popular culture.  \r\n\r\nCatherine Mayeur-Jaouen shows that the mulid does not in fact 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. The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta leads us on a discovery of this remarkably colorful and festive manifestation of Islam.","brand":"None","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":46213149884626,"sku":"9789774168925","price":64.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Kobo eBook","offer_id":46213149917394,"sku":"0886168a-8b1a-3768-9273-357d608323db","price":51.19,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0655\/8980\/5233\/files\/1_f6ec9a0c-e6da-4551-be3a-6dc4ed916e4c.jpg?v=1763630856","url":"https:\/\/www.indigo.ca\/products\/the-mulid-of-al-sayyid-al-badawi-of-tanta","provider":"Indigo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}