El-Mursi Abul Abbas’ birthday is one of the most important celebrations in Alexandria, attracting thousands of Sufis every year to the commemoration of the ‘Shadhili Tariqah’ sheikh.
Swings, fireworks and candy vendors are everywhere, surrounded by smiling children and women. Men dressed in robes of different colors walk in organized caravans, parading around the mosque yard, led by a group characterized by green insignias over white robes, showing the Sufi orders to which they belong.
El-Mursi Abul Abbas’ birthday is one of the most important celebrations in Alexandria, attracting thousands of Sufis every year to the commemoration of the ‘Shadhili Tariqah’ sheikh.
Swings, fireworks and candy vendors are everywhere, surrounded by smiling children and women. Men dressed in robes of different colors walk in organized caravans, parading around the mosque yard, led by a group characterized by green insignias over white robes, showing the Sufi orders to which they belong.
At the front of the caravan are drummers, pipers and dancers cheering “God is the greatest… God is alive… There is no god but Allah… Our master El-Mursi is God’s beloved.”
For one week each year, Alexandria stands in full swing, as people come from all over the world to celebrate the birthday of El-Mursi Abul Abbas, one of the most prominent holy men of Sufism, who was buried in the coastal city.
The celebration breaks the routine of daily life. Participants take off the uniforms of their occupations and concerns and put on the uniform of one of the tasks accompanying the celebration, whose peak was earlier this summer.
A family tradition
Before the El-Mursi Abul Abbas mosque and shrine, the Sufi procession of the Hamedeiah Shadhili Tariqah stops. In the middle of the procession, a group of the followers of the family of the Prophet hold drums and pipes and dance, led by a stalwart young man holding a big drum, beating it fiercely and repeating the phrases. He appears to be a professional ‘drummer,’ however, Yazir Mustafa Ibrahim says he has been a turner since childhood.
He has inherited this occupation and the love of drums from his father who was, along with his grandfather, a follower of Sufi orders; he used to accompany them to such celebrations when he was a child.
Beating the drum is not an art for him but a way of worship. “When I beat my finger on the drum, I wander with God and feel overwhelmed with his love. I don’t feel anyone around me, like a bird in love with God,” he said.
Yazir stops working completely during the celebration period and sleeps in a tent installed by the Hamedeiah Shadhili Tariqah near El-Mursi Abul Abbas mosque. The food and drink come from the donations – or the so-called gifts in the Sufi terms – of the celebration of wealthy followers.
That gift is the official currency of the celebration, which governs the followers’ relations with each others as they race to host each other and provide support, even if little.
Muhammad Sayed sits at the mosque yard in front of a great white basin full of water surrounded by some cups. “I’m your servant, O Prophet!” he repeats, “I quench people’s thirst, asking for your reward and love…”
The 85-year old Muhammad Sayed, or Sheikh Muhammad as called by the celebration visitors, is a jovial man with a grey beard. He has come from the Beheira Governorate, which is adjacent to Alexandria, where he works as a farmer, to spend the seven days of the celebration near the mosque and make a “simple” contribution to the rituals of exchanging “gifts in consistent with his physical abilities”, as he puts it. He carries drinking water from a tap inside the mosque, adds some rose water to it, and offers it to the thirsty followers.
A noble task
Some Egyptians spend all their life near holy men; thus, their gifts become their basic income and their living close to mosques and shrines turns into a semi-profession they practice in the pursuit of livelihood and also of spirituality.
On a mat laid in front of the mosque sits the 55-year old Abdulrahim Muhammad and his wife, Um Mustafa, both wearing green robes, which are the dresses of the Sufi Dervishes, and eating rice and meat fetched by a follower.
Abdulrahim said the only trade he knew was undertaking. He cleans the shrines and tombs of holy men, perfumes them, collects gifts from the followers and lovers of the family of the Prophet, and maintains the holy men’s coffins through preventing followers from having access to inside it.
Abdulrahim added that he and his wife had come from Luxor seven days earlier. An undertaker never stops travelling from one celebration to another and from one shrine to another, visiting all the 24 governorates of Egypt.
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