Imperium and Officium Working Papers (IOWP)
Telling saints’ life stories – written and oral accounts of holiness
in the Central/Eastern Nile Delta
Version 01
September 2011
Mag. Ursula Bsees, University of Vienna, Institut für Orientalistik
Abstract: This paper presents both the oral and written accounts of a certain hagiography
from today’s rural Eastern Nile Delta and explores the question how the two sources came to
coexist and even contradict each other.
© Ursula Bsees 2011
ursula.bsees@univie.ac.at
2
Mag. Ursula Bsees, University of Vienna, Institut für Orientalistik
Telling saints’ life stories – written and oral accounts of holiness
in the Central/Eastern Nile Delta
First, I would like to say a few words about the setting of the shrine I first visited in
February and March 2008. The shrine of Shaykh al-Ghunēmī is situated at the
graveyard of Ṣafṭ Zarīg (Ṣafṭ Zurayq) in the province Sharqīya in the Eastern Delta
between az-Zagāzīg and al-Manṣūra in the district Dyarb Niǧm. It is a rural, very
traditional region where women, once they are married, automatically adopt the black
dress for going outside.
Based on the results of participating observation and narrative interviews during my
fieldwork in 2008 and on various informal conversations with local people on the
subject of saint veneration, holiness and baraka in general, as well as on a thorough
reading of a scroll presented to me during said fieldwork, I would like to talk about
oral and written ways of transmission for saints’ biographies, how they complement,
but maybe also contradict each other. The shrine of Shaykh al-Ghunēmī shall serve
me as a very conspicuous example for said ways of transmission.
The shrine of Shay
Shaykh
aykh alal-Ghunēmī (Ghunaymī)
(Ghunaymī),
unaymī) the oldest local saint and one of the
most famous in the district of Dyarb Niǧm, located at the cemetery of Ṣafṭ Zurayq
(Ṣafṭ Zarēg in the local dialect), is being looked after by the ʿumda’s family, who
opens the shrine every day, the day for the weekly routine visit is Thursday.
Information on the life of Shaykh al-Ghunēmī can be given by any of the – mostly –
ladies who regularly visit him, by persons looking after the other local shrines or by
the person of the ʿumda’s family currently present. It is said that he was descended
from Khazraǧ tribe and came flying from the Yemen, appearing to the district
governor in his sleep, demanding to be buried in Ṣafṭ Zurayq. Then he appeared to
the family whom he wanted to look after his shrine and demanded that a shrine be
built, even specifying the builder, who happened to live some way off and who
refused at first, having only one daughter and afraid of what might happen to her,
should he leave her at home alone. So Shaykh al-Ghunēmī appeared to the builder
in a dream, telling him not to worry. When the man finally set to work, one of the
bricks suddenly started bleeding. Afraid his daughters’ honour might have been
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Telling saints’ life stories – written and oral accounts of holiness in the Central/Eastern Nile Delta 3
tainted, he ran home to find his daughter well but her aggressor lying on the floor,
bleeding. Thus the shrine was built and no one ever saw the shaykh’s body.
This is what is being told to visitors who ask about Shaykh al-Ghunēmī. Over the
door of his shrine, the following can be read:
‫ ا
ا ا‬
‫ن‬
َ َُ ْ َ ُ‫َ"ِ وَ ه‬#$
َ ٌ‫ْف‬
َ ِ ‫ا إن أوَِْ َء ا‬
%&‫)(ق ا
ا‬
‫م ا&رف‬,- ‫ا‬.‫ه‬
‫ري‬0‫ ا‬12‫ر‬3‫ ا‬145‫ ا‬67‫ا‬
‫ه‬٦٧٤ 6 ‫ر‬8 ‫ن‬9‫ا ا‬.‫ه‬
(
‫( ر>ل ا‬This is not the only written record telling about Shaykh al-Ghunēmī. When I was
asking about the saints and theirs lives, I was presented with a written “account of
holiness,” a scroll with impressive length (4m29), which was said to contain the story
of the saint’s life. In fact, it contains the story of the descendants of Saʿd b. ʿUbāda alKhazraǧī al-ʾAnṣārī who migrated to Egypt during the Islamic Conquest. One of them,
Rashdān b. Salāma b. Idrīs b. Ṭarkhān b. Kāmil b. Zāmil b. Sayf b. ʿUlwī b. ʿUqba b.
Sharafī b. Qays b. Saʿd b. ʿUbāda, a man whose supernatural powers were already
strong at a very young age, is mentioned with the date of Thursday, Ramadan 17th,
647 (AH) for his death day. He died in Upper Egypt, but his grave is unknown
because it was hidden by God from the eyes of man according to Rashdān’s fathers
wish. It is very unlikely that this similarity to the date on Shaykh al-Ghunēmī’s shrine
is pure coincidence. How and when the two lives’ stories were mingled can not be
said with certainty, but it is interesting to know that the only mention of Shaykh alGhunēmī in the scroll is in a short text, barely a paragraph, written on the scroll after
the end of the main text in another hand, containing only his nasab and not even that
is finished, it seems to end in the middle of a sentence without obvious reason.
Moreover, it states that Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Ghunēmī is buried at a place called Kōm
Ḥallīn (in the district of Minyat al-Qamḥ, province ash-Sharqīya) and it is Sīdī Salāma
al-Ghunēmī who is mentioned for Ṣaft al-Qaṭāyiʿ (note the different, old spelling ṣaft,
not ṣafṭ). The only person called Salāma in the scroll’s main text is Ghunaym’s father,
so if he is meant to be the same person he can not be called “al-Ghunēmī” in the
meaning of “descendant of Ghunaym (Ghunēm).” That is not all the confusing
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Mag. Ursula Bsees, University of Vienna, Institut für Orientalistik
information conveyed in the scroll. It furthermore tells about Idrīs, Salāma’s father,
who lived at a place called Ṣaft al-Qaṭāyiʿ. Today, we find that Ṣafṭ Zurayq lies
opposite a village called al-Qaṭāyiʿ, the two villages are only separated by a street. In
the scroll, a later hand underlined the part dealing with Idrīs, in another part
mentioning him, there is a remark on the left margin: maqām as-s[ayyid] idrīs bi-ṣafṭ,
obviously added by a later hand which employed the modern form of ṣafṭ. This can
only mean that there is (was?) a shrine for Idrīs at Ṣafṭ Zurayq.
A bit later in the scroll, the text’s scribe states that he found the necessary
information about Idrīs and his descendants in “an old work of history” for the date 5th
Ramaḍān 647 (AH), so how can it be that Rashdān died on the 17th of Ramaḍān and
knowledge about five generations after his brother can be found for the 5th of the
same month? Maybe the only plausible explanation is that one of the dates is wrong.
Another point of interest is the similarity between the date on the shrine of Shaykh alGhunēmī, 674 A.H. and the date on which Rašdān is said to have died, 647 A.H. It is
extremely unlikely that these two dates describe two independent events and bear
this striking similarity only by coincidence. Since anyone called “al-Ghunēmī” after
Rašdān’s half-brother Ġhunaym must have lived after Rašdān, and Ibrāhīm alGhunēmī whose shrine is at Ṣafṭ Zurayq is several generations after him, cannot
have died or even have a shrine built in 674. When faced with the question how to
deal with these dates, one fortunately receives help from an unexpected side: In his
article on Mamlūk names, David Ayalon writes as follows: “The Shaykhs of the
ʿUrbān of Lower Egypt seem to have fancied the name of Baybars, a name which
had already been dying out amongst the Mamlūks. At least three different ʿUrbān
leaders bore that name. Baybars b. Aḥmad b. Baqr, or Baybars b. Baqr, the Shaykh
of the ʿUrbān of the Sharqiyya (died in 866/1461-2) […]”1 Baybars b. Aḥmad b. Baqr
belonged to another branch of the descendants of Saʿd b. ʿUbāda than Rašdān, but
he lived one generation after Rašdān, that is to say in the generation of Rašdān’s
sons (if he had had any). So how can someone die in 647 and someone the age of
his son in 866? This dichotomy leads to the assumption that one of the dates is
1
Ayalon David, David, Names, titles and ‘nisbas’ of the Mamlūks. Israel Oriental
Studies 5/1975, Tel Aviv University. p.209 and as-Sakhāwī, aḍ-Ḍawʾ al-Lāmiʿ, vol.1,
S.556
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Telling saints’ life stories – written and oral accounts of holiness in the Central/Eastern Nile Delta 5
wrong, although we hesitate to pronounce the decision which one is (more) correct
and which one was confused, mingled with something else or simply made up.
All these confusing facts lead to the assumption that most people do not know what
the scroll, which is kept at the ʿumda’s house, not at the shrine, actually contains (or
even that it exists), which again leads to the question of the scroll’s function. It is
more or less clearly defined as a work of nasab, but why exactly was it written and
how did it come into this family’s possession? According to the local accounts,
Shaykh al-Ghunēmī flew to Ṣafṭ Zurayq to be buried there, which excludes the
possibility of close kinship to the saint as an explanation. The scroll itself tells how
Saʿd b. ʿUbāda’s descendants came to Egypt and also to areas located in the
Sharqīya (as we have mentioned, not for a special saint al-Ghunēmī, but at least for
his ancestor Ghunaym b. Salāma b. Idrīs), a more down-to-earth approach to the
shrine’s origin than the one presented by today’s orally transmitted stories. But since
the scroll, which is kept by the ʿumda’s family, does exist and give such information,
why is the shrine’s visitor told the story of the flying saint? The scroll being kept by
the family who looks after the shrine of Shaykh al-Ghunēmī and the primary
information given by the plate over the door and orally is perhaps an exceptional
case of intermixture between oral and written records and also of their obvious
contradiction. As I have already mentioned, the date given for Shaykh al-Ghunēmī’s
death on the plate corresponds – with a little “mistake (?)” - to a date mentioned in
the scroll meant for another person, which no one has noticed until now, although the
scroll can be borrowed and read by everyone and this is also done to, as was
explained to me, “derive certain information from it”. I was told by a regular visitor that
the scroll contained the story of Shaykh al-Ghunēmī’s life, which is not the case. The
only mention of a person who might be him is in a nasab written after the main text in
another hand, which ends in the middle of the sentence and remains unfinished.
Moreover, the name mentioned on the plate on a building beside the shrine, Ibrāhīm
al-Ghunēmī, appears in the small text, but with Kōm Ḥallīn as his burial place. A
certain Sīdī Salāma al-Ghunēmī is, according to the text, buried at Ṣafṭ Zurayǧ (!),
where there seems to be a shrine for Idrīs, Salāma’s father. It seems that there has
been a grave misreading or misunderstanding not only concerning the dates, but also
concerning the persons involved. Therefore I assume that the scroll and its content,
even its existence itself, are known only to very few people. But how can it be that
the scroll exists, but no one seems to notice the gap between its text and the oral
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Mag. Ursula Bsees, University of Vienna, Institut für Orientalistik
tradition? After all, it can be borrowed and read by anyone ready to pay a small sum
in return. Obviously, there are two strings of tradition existing parallel to each other.
The majority of people knows only the oral one - young men not even that, and this
could lead to at least a partial answer to this dichotomy, that is to a social
phenomenon: Those most diligent in the transmission of the oral one (elder, mostly
illiterate women) have no access to the written counterpart. Those who could read
the written one (young men, those most exposed to the benefits and threats of
modernization) don’t know about it or are not interested in it.
Maybe it is regarded as a kind of legacy or cultural heritage like in a museum. It is
held in high esteem, but one looks at it only from the outside.
The local visitors do not need explicit information to tell about Shaykh al-Ghunēmī’s
holiness, nor do they know about the contents of the scroll said to recount the story
of his life, they are drawn to the shrine because of its nimbus of baraka, which is
attributed to it simply because of its existence as a shrine and also because of the
stories about the saint’s miracles.
In the saints’ biographies, holiness is expressed in many different ways. Written
accounts of course have the privilege to use beautiful and sophisticated expressions
for the šayḫ’s high rank and outstanding supernatural powers, they can also make
use of the most employed means of legitimation, namely family trees tracing back to
noble ancestors and ʾansāb, which are certainly hard to know by heart given their
length, which is already admitted by Samʿānī2 – although one is given information like
“from the Khazraǧ, from the tribe” concerning Shaykh al-Ghunēmī - and which are on
the other hand not necessary for saints with only oral accounts, the reason being that
they are well known to their visitors anyway, of which no one would question their
possession of baraka. One should also bear in mind that the most diligent visitors to
the shrines are illiterate or barely literate women or at least have illiterate mothers
who taught them Islam and were themselves visiting the saints regularly as one of
their main religious practices. They are in no position to question the rituals they have
witnessed from childhood on, nor their origin.
2
as-Samʿānī, Kitāb al-ansāb, p.3. “The chains (of transmitters) […] tended to be
shortened, so the scholars could memorize them more easily […].”
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Telling saints’ life stories – written and oral accounts of holiness in the Central/Eastern Nile Delta 7
Addendum: In the small text added after the end of the scroll’s main text, what is
known today as Ṣafṭ Zurayq is called Ṣafṭ Zurayǧ. The only explanation for this
comes from the field of dialectology. The name is pronounced Zarīg in today’s local
dialect, but other Egyptian dialects have g for ǧ, not for q. They pronounce q as
Hamza (glottal stop). We therefore must suppose that the scribe spoke a dialect in
which consonants were realised as follows: q = ʾ, ǧ = g; unlike the local q = g, ǧ = ǧ,
which tells us that he did not originate from the region, where we even find k = č
today (for example in Ulēla). Since we are thus confronted with a very conspicuous
sign of Middle Arabic, we did not want to let it go unmentioned.
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Mag. Ursula Bsees, University of Vienna, Institut für Orientalistik
Bibliography:
Ayalon David, Names, titles and ‘nisbas’ of the Mamlūks. Israel Oriental Studies
5/1975, Tel Aviv University.
Bsees Ursula Mag., Genealogie und Heiligenkult – Edition und Analyse einer
Schriftrolle aus dem Dorf Ṣafṭ Zurayq im nordöstlichen Nildelta. PhD thesis in
preparation.
as-Sakhāwī, aḍ-Ḍawʾ al-Lāmiʿ. From www.al-mostafa.com, 2011-05-26 2:27 p.m.
as-Samʿānī, Kitāb al-ansāb. From www.al-mostafa.com, 2010-10-29 8:16 a.m.
Narrative interviews in Ṣafṭ Zurayq and ʿIzbat ʿArab Šamraza, conducted by the
author in February/March 2008.
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