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, Egyptian city of more than 400,000 inhabitants (1996), the capital of the central Delta and the fourth city of the province. This commercial crossroads, situated 90 km/55 miles to the north of Cairo, occupies an exceptional position, being equidistant from the two branches of the Nile, equidistant from Damietta, Rosetta and Alexandria. The city is definitely of ancient origin: it is constructed on tells, currently obliterated by more modern buildings, where members of the Egyptian Expedition nevertheless identified crude bricks from the Pharaonic era, and where vestiges dating from the XXVIth dynasty have been found. The Egyptologist G. Daressy proposes that the ancient origin of Ṭanṭā is to be identified in the town of Tawa, situated 3 km/2 miles to the northwest. In the Coptic period, as an episcopal city, Ṭanṭā is cited under the name of Tantâtho in the Acts of the Martyrs , and under that of Tanitad in The history of the Patriarchs of Alexandria .
, ville égyptienne de plus de 400 000 habitants (1996), est la capitale du Delta central et la quatrième ville de province. Ce carrefour commercial, situé à 90 km au Nord du Caire, occupe une position exceptionnelle à égale distance des deux branches du Nil, à égale distance de Damiette, Rosette et Alexandrie. L’origine antique de la ville est certaine : la ville est bâtie sur des tells, aujourd’hui entièrement construits, mais où les membres de l’Expédition d’Egypte avaient reconnu des briques crues d’époque pharaonique et où ont été retrouvés des vestiges datant de la XXVIe dynastie. L’égyptologue G. Daressy proposa de reconnaître l’origine antique de Ṭanṭā dans la ville de Tawa, située à 3 km au Nord-ouest. A l’époque copte, Ṭanṭā, ville épiscopale, est attestée sous le nom de Tantâtho dans les Actes des martyrs, et sous celui de Tanitad dans L’Histoire des patriarches d’Alexandrie.
Abstract
In Cairo, near the mosque of al-Azhar and the mausoleum of Ḥusayn, grandson of the Prophet, at the edge of the highway Ṣalāḥ Sālim and facing the mausoleums of the City of the Dead, stands a set of three modern buildings in the neo-Mamluk style. This ensemble, built in the early 2000s, is a demonstrative embodiment of Egyptian institutional Islam: it includes the headquarters of al-Azhar (mashyakhat al-Azhar), the state institution responsible for fatwas (dār al-iftāʾ) and the Union of the Descendants of the Prophet (niqābat al-ashrāf). The niqāba, re-established in 1991, is a very old institution whose recent history is anchored in the construction of the Egyptian state under Muḥammad ʿAlī. But its claimed tradition goes back, by defini-tion, to the Prophet and the beginnings of Islam.
It is easy to neglect this discreet institution, whose existence many Egyptians do not even know of. It is equally easy to make it a mere emanation of Egyptian statehood since the early nineteenth century. However, the subtle autonomy of the niqāba and its main activity, the verification of genealogies, nevertheless refers to implicit links, to local history, to the science of genealogy (ʿilm al-ansāb). Above all, it represents, again and again, the interconnections of a family-oriented Islam in Egypt, still strongly territorialised. Its social and religious dimensions make the niqāba escape the bureaucratic and political world to which it belongs at first sight. It is part of an Egyptian Islam that defies globalisation and insists on endangered continuities. It is ultimately an interpretation of the Prophetic intercession that constitutes the basis of the very constitution of the ashrāf as a privileged group – a claim now disputed by Salafism and ignored by a majority of Egyptians.
After a first visit to the niqāba, we will study the way in which its history in Egypt is told, by comparing the usual narrative – that of the historians and the one of the niqāba itself – with the narrative of the current naqīb. We will then survey the re-foundation of the niqāba in 1991, before examining the functioning of the institution. Finally, we will take a closer look at what is at the heart of the niqāba: the verifica-tion of genealogies and its procedures, ending with a case study.
Abstract
By writing Insān al-ʿuyūn fī sīrat al-nabī al-maʾmūn at the request of Shaykh al-Bakrī, the Egyptian Shaykh ʿAlī al-Ḥalabī (1635) composed a work soon known as Sīra ḥalabiyya. With a learned art of composition, he gives a very personal reading of his immediate sources of the Mamluk period, ʿUyūn al-athar fī l-funūn wa-l-shamāʾil wa-l-siyar from Ibn Sayyid al-Nās and Subul al-hudā wa-l-rashād fī sīrat khayr al-ʿibād, of al-Shāmī al-Ṣāliḥī (otherwise called al-Sīra al-Shāmiyya), while mobilizing an imposing culture of the Mamluk and Ottoman epochs. We will study it by comparing it with the contemporary commentary by al-Qalyūbī (1659?) of the famous qiṣṣat al-isrāʾ wa-l-miʿrāj due to Shaykh al-Ghayṭī (m.). Citing in particular the Shifā’ of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and the Khaṣāʾiṣ of Suyūṭī, the names of Ibn Ḥajar and Shaʿrānī, Ḥalabī tries to come up with a harmonised narrative of different versions that he tries to reconcile, but several stories coexist, opening the way for an endless exegesis of the episodes of the Sīra. Ḥalabī is distinguished from Qalyūbī by a form of historicisation of the Sīra, more attentive to the chronological sequence of events, as well as by a reflection on the providential inscription of the Prophet in the very ancient history of prophecy.