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WOMEN'S MAWLID PERFORMANCES IN SANAA AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF “POPULAR ISLAM”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2008

Marion Holmes Katz
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Extract

It has long been recognized that much of the richness of Muslim women's ritual lives has been found outside of both the mosque and the “five pillars of Islam,” in a wide set of devotional practices that have met with varying degrees of affirmation and censure from male religious scholars. This recognition has given rise to a valuable literature on such practices as shrine visitation, spirit-possession rituals, and Twelver Shiʿi women's domestic ceremonies. The prevalence of such noncanonical rituals in Muslim women's lives, although waning in many parts of the contemporary world, raises questions about the relationship between women's religious practices and the constitution of Islamic orthodoxies. Have women, often given lesser access to mosque-based and canonical rituals, historically resorted to autonomous and rewarding religious practices that are, nevertheless, fated to be marginalized in the male-dominated construction of Islamic normativity—a normativity that women may ultimately internalize and master only at great cost to their religious lives?

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 467 - 484
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

NOTES

Author's note: This article is based on research done in Yemen in 2000–2001 on a grant from the American Institute of Yemeni Studies (AIYS). I am grateful to AIYS, particularly to Christopher Edens, and to the Yemenis who generously helped me in my research, including Qasim Zubayda, Bushra Qasim Zubayda, Islah and ʿAtika al-Sayyaghi, and Muhammad Jaʾdan. I also thank Bernard Haykel, who kindly brought to my attention al-Shawkani's fatwa, and Michael Feener and David Buchman, who commented on earlier drafts of the article.

1 Since the 1980s, large numbers of women have become involved in mosque-based forms of piety in places such as Egypt; for an outstanding recent discussion, see Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Piety (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. The corresponding displacement of other (and often more autonomous) women's ritual practices is a subject that has not yet been fully studied.

2 See, for instance, Betteridge, Anne, “Muslim Women and Shrines in Shiraz,” in Mormons and Muslims, ed. Palmer, Spencer J. (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1983), 127–38Google Scholar; Abu-Zahra, Nadia, The Pure and Powerful (Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 1997), 145–70Google Scholar.

3 See, for instance, Boddy, Janice, Wombs and Alien Spirits (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Sengers, Gerda, Women and Demons: Cult Healing in Contemporary Egypt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003)Google Scholar.

4 Betteridge, Anne H., “The Controversial Vows of Urban Muslim Women in Iran,” in Unspoken Worlds, ed. Falk, Nancy Auer and Gross, Rita R. (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980), 141–55Google Scholar; Jamzadeh, Laal and Mills, Margaret, “Iranian Sofreh: From Collective to Female Ritual,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Bynum, Caroline Walker et al. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 23–65Google Scholar; Kamalkhani, Zahra, Women's Islam: Religious Practice among Women in Today's Iran (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998)Google Scholar; Torab, Azam, “Piety as Gendered Agency: A Study of Jalaseh Ritual Discourse in an Urban Neighborhood in Iran,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2 (1996): 235–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., Performing Islam: Gender and Ritual in Iran (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007).

5 Mary Elaine Hegland suggests that Muslim “[w]omen developed modified religious beliefs and practices meaningful to themselves, but were then criticized for those religious activities.” Hegland, Mary Elaine, “Gender and Religion in the Middle East and South Asia,” in Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East, ed. Meriwether, Margaret. L. and Tucker, Judith E. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), 179Google Scholar. Eleanor Doumato provides a vivid picture of this double bind in the early 20th century on the Arabian Peninsula, where it was exacerbated by restrictive Wahhabi concepts of ritual legitimacy. Doumato, Eleanor Abdella, Getting God's Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), especially 111–29Google Scholar.

6 Tapper, Nancy and Tapper, Richard, “The Birth of the Prophet: Ritual and Gender in Turkish Islam,” Man, n.s. 22 (1987): 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shoshan, Boaz, Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 6–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, Brian, Religion and Anthropology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 96–98Google Scholar.

7 Answering the question of whether “popular religion” was “a distinctive phenomenon susceptible to analysis as such” in the medieval Middle East, Jonathan Berkey concludes, “There was certainly a category of religious experiences which some scholars at the time perceived as deriving their inspiration from the people generally, that is, from those not widely recognized as members of the ulama. . .” Berkey, Jonathan, The Formation of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 248Google Scholar; emphasis in original. In addition to (cautiously) using this fact as evidence for the social realities of the period, as Berkey does, I draw attention to the production of this category as an important rhetorical strategy in the construction of scholarly orthodoxy.

8 A very valuable study of the changing significance of women's mawlid performances is provided by Sorabji, Cornelia, “Mixed Motives: Islam, Nationalism and Mevluds in an Unstable Yugoslavia,” in Muslim Women's Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality, ed. El-Solh, Camillia Fawzi and Mabro, Judy (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 108–27Google Scholar.

9 Fatwa by Taj al-Din al-Fakihani (d. 1331), in al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Din, Husn al-Maqsid fi ʿAmal al-Mawlid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1985), 48Google Scholar, translated in Kaptein, N. J. G., Muhammad's Birthday Festival (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 53Google Scholar; Ibn al-Hajj, al-Madkhal (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1960), 2:12–15.

10 Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Tawq, Al-Taʿliq (Damascus, al-Maʿhad al-Faransi li-l-Dirasat al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq, 2000), 1:60, 239, 243; Ibn al-Himsi, Hawadith al-Zaman wa-Wafayat al-Shuyukh wa-l-Aqran, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salam Tadmuri (Sayda/Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAsriyya, 1999), 2:281; al-Hallaq, Ahmad al-Budayri, Hawadith Dimashq al-Yawmiya (Cairo: al-Jamʿiyya al-Misriyya li-l-Dirasat al-Taʾrikhiyya, 1959), 112Google Scholar.

11 See Kaptein, Birthday, passim; Katz, Marion, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad (London: Routledge, 2007), 63–65, 104–10, and passimGoogle Scholar.

12 Asad, Talal, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington, D.C.: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1986), 14Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 15–16.

14 Ibid., 15.

15 Ms. Berlin, Ahlwardt no. 9546, 287b.

16 al-Hijrasi, Muhammad, Kitab al-Manẓar al-Bahi fi Taliʿ Mawlid al-Nabi (Cairo: al-Matbaʿ al-ʿIlmi, [1895]), 17–18Google Scholar.

17 Arwa ʿAbduhʿ Uthman, “Religious Mawlids. . . . A Religio-Cultural Heritage. . .Must Be Preserved” (Al-Mawalid al-Diniyya. . .Turathi Dini-Thaqafi. . .Yajib al-Hifaẓ ʿAlayhi), al-Thawra, 17 Rabiʿ al-Awwal 1421, al-Malaff al-Thaqafi, 15.

18 Asad, Idea, 16.

19 See Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Sakhawi, Al-Dawʿ al-Lamiʿ li-Ahl al-Qarn al-Tasiʿ (Cairo: Maktabat al-Quds, 1925–26), 11:61.

20 For al-Sakhawi's biography, see The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Sakhawi, Shams al-Din.”

21 ʿAbd al-Qadir ibn Shaykh al-ʿAydarusi, Al-Nur al-Safirʿan Akhbar al-Qarn al-ʿAshir (Cairo: n.p., n.d.), 220; text available in Nura Abu al-Fath, al-Mutah min al-Mawalid wa-l-Anashid al-Milah (n.p.: Dar al-Shadi, 1995), 1:125–42. Two other Yemeni authors of preserved mawlid works, al-Husayn ibn al-Siddiq al-Ahdal (d. 1498) and Muhammad Bahraq (d. 1524), also studied with al-Sakhawi. See al-ʿAydarusi, Nur, 27, 146. Copies of al-Ahdal's mawlid are preserved in Cairo (Dar al-Kutub, Hadith no. 1418) and in the Ahqaf Library, Tarim, Yemen. For Bahraq's mawlid, see Khalid al-Rayyan, Fihris Makhtutat Dar al-Kutub al-Zahiriya, vol. 2, al-Taʾrikh wa-Mulhaqatuhu (Damascus: Matbuʿat Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq, 1973), 2:496–97.

22 al-Daybaʿ, ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn ʿAli, Bughyat al-Mustafid fi Tarikh Madinat Zabid, ed. al-Habshi, ʿAbd Allah Muhammad (Sanaa: Markaz al-Dirasat wa-l-Buhuth, 1979), 174Google Scholar.

23 For the context and content of al-Shawkani's thought, see Haykel, Bernard, Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

24 Muhammad ibn ʿAli al-Shawkani, Kitab al-Fath al-Rabbani min Fatawa al-Imam al-Shawkani, ed. Abu Musʿab Muhammad Subhi Hallaq (Sanaa: Maktabat al-Jil al-Jadid, 2002), 2:1083.

25 Ibid., 2:1083, 1085.

26 Ibn Manẓur defines sūqa as subjects (raʾiya) as opposed to the king, people who do not exercise authority, but notes that “many people imagine that the sūqa are the people of the markets [ahl al-aswāq]” (Ibn Manzur, Lisan al-ʿArab, s.v. s-w-q).

27 Shawkani, Fath, 1090. He also mentions the influence of Sufis, another important issue.

28 Ibid., 1083–86.

29 Ibid., 1083.

30 Messick, Brinkley, “Kissing Hands and Knees: Hegemony and Hierarchy in Shariʿa Discourse,” Law & Society Review 22 (1988): 647–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Shawkani, Fath, 1089–90.

32 Ibid., 1084.

33 Ibid., 1090.

34 Haykel, Revival and Reform, 5; idem., “Dissembling Dissent, or How the Barber Lost His Turban,” Islamic Law and Society 9 (2002), 207.

35 Ibid., 208.

36 Messick, “Kissing Hands and Knees,” 647.

37 Shawkani, Fath, 1090.

38 This description covers the general outline of the celebration as I encountered it in households of widely varying social and economic strata, although (because I attended numerous mawlids with a relatively small number of chanters) there may certainly be social milieus where the mawlid is observed differently. Overall, my Shiʿa informants did not see any connection between their mawlid practices and their Zaydi identity, nor did I observe any clear differences between mawlids held by or for Zaydi versus Sunni women.

39 For the use of this song in mawlids in the Hijaz in the 1880s, see Hurgronje, C. Snouck, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century, ed. Monahan, J. H. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 118Google Scholar. For a description of its use within the marriage ceremony, see Chelhod, Joseph, “Les ceremonies du mariage au Yemen,” Objects et Mondes 13 (1973): 18Google Scholar.

40 See Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, Fath al-Bari bi-Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari (Cairo: Maktabat al-Kulliyat al-Azhariyya, 1978), 15: 120 (with expressions of skepticism). The Yemeni mawlids tend to use the text of “Talaʿ al-Badr ʿalayna” as it appears in classical sources, unlike printed versions of the verse mawlid of Barzanji and of Sharaf al-Anam, which use a related piece of poetry beginning with “Ashraqa al-badr ʿalaynā.”

41 See, for instance, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihyaʾ ʿUlum al-Din (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1994), 2:301–2.

42 The names of the individual chanters discussed here have been changed to protect their privacy.

43 J. Knappert states that Sharaf al-Anam is popular in Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Somalia and describes it as “the single best-known prayer book in Islam.” “The Mawlid,” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 19 (1988): 212. Knappert, however, inaccurately believes that Sharaf al-Anam is an alternative title for the mawlid of Barzanji.

44 ʿAydarusi, Nur, 218.

45 For the text of Sharaf al-Anam, see Abu al-Fath, al-Mutah, 2:255–76.

46 Tapper and Tapper, “Birth,” 84.

47 Nadia Abu-Zahra, “Rites of Spiritual Passage and the Anthropology of Islam: A Response to Tapper and Tapper,” Revue d'Histoire Maghrébine 65–66 (1992): 9–30.

48 Marcus, Julie, A World of Difference: Islam and Gender Hierarchy in Turkey (London: Zed Books, 1992), 126, 128–29Google Scholar.

49 For the varying roles of ritual purity, hierarchy, and bodily control in rituals performed by male Shadhili sufis in Sanaa (with canonical prayer at one end of the spectrum and the mawlid at the other), see David Buchman, “The Pedagogy of Perfection” (PhD diss., State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1998), 213–14.

50 In 2000, a successful chanter expected to receive at least 2,000–2,500 riyals (about US$13–16) for a performance. There were no prearranged fees (payment took the form of a discretely tissue-wrapped “gift”), and even prominent chanters were willing to accept modest fees from less affluent families.

51 For the concept of the “culture broker,” see Antoun, Richard T., Muslim Preacher in the Modern World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 13–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In our case, the mediation is between learned elites and urban nonlearned women rather than between learned elites and villagers.

52 See Katz, Birth, chap. 2.

53 al-Sakhawi, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman, al-Qawl al-Badiʿ fi al-Salaa ʿala al-Habib al-Shafiʿ (Medina: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiya, 1977), 112Google Scholar.

54 Ibid., 118, 123.

55 See Katz, Birth, 174–81.

56 Copies of two modern manuscripts of this mawlid (one copied by him and another—longer—version copied by a teacher) were graciously supplied to me by Muhammad Jaʿdan. The Halima narrative summarized here is from the larger and older of the two manuscripts.

57 Meneley, Anne, Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 169Google Scholar.

58 Edib, Halide, The Clown and His Daughter (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1935), 214, 222, 231, 232Google Scholar.

59 Such categorizations can have a substantial practical impact. In the Soviet period, the authorities tolerated and even encouraged the performance of mawlids by women in Uzbekistan. This was a direct result of their understanding of mawlids as a folk custom and a manifestation of Uzbek identity (in which capacity it was subject to benevolent consideration) rather than as a religious ceremony and a manifestation of “Islam” (in which capacity it presumably would have been suppressed). Nazif Shahrani, personal communication.