Her wrinkled face and the green marks of an old tattoo, which have withstood the challenges of time, tell the story of an old woman’s long history in her favorite corner in the Sufi shrine of ‘Saida Manoubia’.

Sitting distraught on a worn-out chair with a cardboard box filled with ambergris, incense and aloes wood, Manouia—who coincidentally shares the name of the shrine where she works— remembers the days when her merchandise was popular amongst visitors before a crime changed everything.

Masked men

Her wrinkled face and the green marks of an old tattoo, which have withstood the challenges of time, tell the story of an old woman’s long history in her favorite corner in the Sufi shrine of ‘Saida Manoubia’.

Sitting distraught on a worn-out chair with a cardboard box filled with ambergris, incense and aloes wood, Manouia—who coincidentally shares the name of the shrine where she works— remembers the days when her merchandise was popular amongst visitors before a crime changed everything.

Masked men

On the night of the October 16th, five masked men stormed the shrine and burned down the tomb chamber after robbing the shrine’s female caretakers.

“They climbed to the roof of the shrine using a rope and landed directly in the tomb chamber using a rope,” recalled Manoubia, in a voice filled with sadness. “They poured a flammable liquid and set fire after robbing the women’s jewelry. “None of us was hurt because Sayyida Manoubia—the shrine— protected us.”

The Shrine of Saida Manoubia in Tunis is named after Aisha Manoubia who lived in the 18th century during Hafsid rule. She descended from the well-known Arab tribe of Bani Hashem, to which Prophet Muhammad and also the Al Murabitoun movement belonged.

Mutual guards

Manoubia closely watched the restoration with sharp eyes, hoping that her merchandise will become popular again. Her livelihood depends on the charitable gifts and donations by visitors, especially on Sundays, the shrine’s busiest day.

Although she is well aware that the masked men will always pose a threat to her place of residence inside the shrine, Manoubia guards the place armed with her faith that one day Saida Manoubia’s curse will descend upon them.

Attack of the infidels

This was no isolated incident as it came after a series of attacks against similar shrines. In the coastal city of Melloulèche and in the southern city of Matmatah, Sufi shrines were vandalized and the prayer room of Sidi Yaqoub in Bani Zaltan sub-district in Gabès Governorate was destroyed. The shrine of the holy figure Sidi Assilah in Le Bardo near Tunis was vandalized in early April.

Many areas in Sfax Governorate, such as Skhira and Mahrès, witnessed similar attacks on shrines, in addition to the threats against the shrine of the holy figure Sidi Sahabi in Kairouan.

Prior to those attacks, a number of mosques that fell under the control of Salafists launched campaigns against “infidels”, who, according to Salafists, worship deities other than Allah (in reference to the people who visit shrines and prayer rooms of holy men to ask for blessings.)

Militant Salafists are the main suspects due to their hardline stances and since they have actually destroyed many Sufi shrines and called on people to stop visiting them as they consider visiting the shrines tantamount to polytheism.

Ahmad, a young Salafist, denies all that, saying that such accusations are mere fabrications of the media. “The media uses Salafists as a scarecrow in an attempt to drive a wedge between Tunisians.” Ahmad believes, however, that visiting such shrines to ask for blessings is against Sharia and constitutes an act of polytheism.

During his rule, Tunisia’s first president Habib Bourguiba adopted an alternative secular and cultural policy which, to a large extent, weakened the status of holy men, but the deposed president Ben Ali noticeably revived this phenomenon.

Cultural crime

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova condemned the destruction of shrines in Tunisia and underlined the role that could be assumed by the country’s civil society in order to preserve Tunisian heritage for the future generations.

The Minister of Social Affairs’ advisor, Sabri Gharbi, says that Sharia prohibits such shrines and that visiting shrines to ask for blessings, or for invocation or sacrificing sheep is unlawful according to Sharia and is behaviorally wrong.

“It is however illegal for anyone to take matters into their own hands even if the purpose is to change an unlawful practice because destroying the property of others means destroying the property of the state, and such violence is rejected by Sharia and by the law.”

“I personally believe that the destruction of those shrines is an attempt to cause strife and provoke a specific Islamist current in order for that group to respond violently and give the Islamist movement as whole a bad name.”