The Dhikra (Memorial Service) as a Saint's Festival

A Case Study of the Modern Saint Sidi al-Hajj Habib

Abstract

In this article, I focus on the memorial service for the Muslim saint/scholar Sidi al-Hajj Habib al-Bashwari (d. 1976).
This memorial service has been held once a year since 1977 at Madrasa Tanalttya, one of the traditional Islamic schools (madrasa-s) situated in the Sus region (the southern part of Morocco).
Al-Hajj Habib is not only one of the most famous modern saints of this region, he is also a prominent traditional religious scholar. As such, he had instructed many talented students who have become scholars and now manage their own madrasa-s. There are some 60-100 madrasa-s in this region, and it is said that students of al-Hajj Habib manage no fewer than a half of them. They have been the major promoters of and participants in the memorial service for al-Hajj Habib.
This memorial service can be treated as a kind of saint's festival in the sense that the man for whom this assembly is held each year is esteemed as a prominent saint.
Many anthropologists working on the Middle East have focused not only on the Muslim saint worship and saints' festivals, most of which are carried out by tribesmen or by some “popular” religious brotherhood. However, although many anthropologists and historians recognize the overlap of saints and scholars, they consider saint worship as a kind of “popular Islam, ” situated far from the activity of religious scholars.
In contrast to the tendency of previous anthropological studies to study folk or popular saints' festivals, in this article I present an example of a festival which celebrates a man of knowledge and explore its relationship with saint worship.