The Mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi of Tanta. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen

and the sheikhs he met, as well as about his relations with the powerful. Sirat al-Zahir Baybars (The Life of al-Zahir Baybars) makes much of the encounter between Baybars (d. 1277), the Mamluk emir who fought victoriously against the Crusaders, and the saint who was his contemporary. The aim of such tales, which quite frequently involve saints of the thirteenth century, is always to recall where in the end real power is to be found: in the hands of the Pole, the axis of this world. “The true king is he and this earth belongs to him.”¹⁹ The less important Badawi appears, the more he dominates a world that does not notice him.

      The only date in Badawi’s life on which all the hagiographies agree is his death in 675/1276. It is, however, an event of little importance in that the death of a Muslim saint is simply an occultation and not a true demise. The saint has become invisible but is ever present, ever active, speaking from his tomb, coming out of it when necessary, and continuing to meet with his peers in the Council of Saints. Badawi leaves behind no book, no pious foundation, not even a building to perpetuate his memory. His mausoleum did not then exist, nor did the mulid that has established his renown. The brotherhood that today bears his name had not yet been founded. As we have seen, at his death none of his contemporaries thought it worthwhile to mention him in any kind of obituary, and the first, very brief biographical notice that features his name is that of Ibn al-Mulaqqin (1323–1401), which dates to roughly a century after his death. Moreover, it has nothing in common with the flood of legend that will soon wash through the first half of the fifteenth century. To put it briefly, in 1276 the reputation of the sheikh scarcely reached beyond the borders of his home territory. All the names of Egyptian places connected to his biography are located within a very limited perimeter around Tanta: Fisha al-Manara, Nifya, Quhafa, and Mahallat Marhum are all villages an hour’s walk away. A strange man, certainly a foreigner, most probably a Bedouin from Syria with Rifa‘i connections, had lived in Tanta for several decades. Nevertheless, this almost unknown tight-lipped ascetic managed to leave behind a sufficiently strong memory of divinely conferred power that his successor ‘Abd al-‘Al could use it like fertile soil in which to plant a brotherhood, a mausoleum, and a mulid. Although these creations were the later fruits of the fifteenth century, the roots were set in the life and miracles of the Sayyid.