Public performance of the dawsa, a traditional Sufi ritual, was an inseparable part of the traditional mawlid festival1 held every year in Cairo. Mainly affiliated with and performed by the Saʿdiyya Sufi order, the ritual had several phases. The most striking part of the ritual was when the Shaykh of the Saʿdiyya Sufi order rode his stallion, on his way to his tent, over the backs of hundreds of dervishes (disciples) lying face-down in the streets of Cairo. According to some historical accounts, the Shaykh (Master) was also accompanied by other dervishes who performed various ‘radical’ practices such as piercing their bodies, eating broken glass, or swallowing burning coals.2

Figure 1: Dawsa, in Elbert E. Farman, Egypt and its Betrayal: An Account of the Country during the Periods of Ismail and Tewfik Pashas, and of how England Acquired a New Empire (New York, 1908), plate after p. 58. Photo by Talha Murat.
Expressing his contentment with the abolition of the traditional dawsa3 ritual in British-occupied Egypt in 1881, jurist Elbert E. Farman wrote: ‘Happily, the Dosseh [dawsa] now exists, at least in Cairo, only in history. This marvellous city will henceforth have one less memorable entertainment for the traveller. The lover of barbarous public spectacles must content himself with the bull fights of Spain.‘4 Farman was by no means alone in labelling dawsa as ‘barbarous’, as several of his European contemporaries also pointed out the ‘barbaric’ and ‘inhumane’ aspect of the ritual.5

Figure 2: A Rufai dervish swallowing a red-hot skewer, about 1809, by an anonymous Greek artist (Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum).
From the perspective of Sufis, being subject to criticism and/or restrictions was not a new phenomenon. Scholarship has firmly documented the long history of the anti-Sufi current, and a number of religious and political movements have opposed Sufi doctrine and practices in one way or another in different periods of Islamic history.6 However, it has to be noted that the criticisms and challenges faced by the Sufis of the late nineteenth-century differed depending on local conditions. The Sufis of Istanbul, for example, were not subject to British pressure, as the Sufis of Cairo were, yet they were subject to Sultan Abdülhamid II’s control.
Among many others, Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932), head of the Sufi orders in Egypt (1892–1903, 1903–11), was one of those Sufis who were subject to this hostile atmosphere at the turn of the twentieth century. Tawfīq was born into a Sufi family in Cairo. He acquired several religious and administrative titles, travelled around Europe, including Istanbul, and published on a range of subjects. He also met a number of European statesmen, including the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II, and played a significant role in Sufi reform projects in British-occupied Egypt. As British diplomat Arthur Henry Hardinge wrote in his report to British Foreign Secretary Lord Rosebery, Tawfīq was an ‘intelligent, honest and well-meaning’ young man who was ‘not yet 30 years of age’ but also ‘naturally much respected by Mohammedans’ due to the hereditary authority and considerable revenue he enjoyed.7
However, in the same report, Hardinge also expressed his concerns about the increasing influence of French and Russian consul generals on Tawfīq. And it was not only British officers in Cairo who were concerned about him: Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha, Ottoman Chief Inspector of Egypt, alerted the Ottoman Sultan to the British consul general’s increasing influence on Tawfīq.8 Similar concerns were raised by Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, as he perceived the possible increase in Tawfīq’s influence as a potential threat to his authority.9 Such pressures, relations, and many other factors in the fast-moving history of the late nineteenth century influenced Tawfīq’s as well as other Sufis’ intellectual production, reactions, and (self-)identity.
My Project
The main purpose of my PhD project is to construct an intellectual biography of Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī, who was politically and intellectually active in the aforementioned environment of late nineteenth-century Cairo. By examining his works and political and intellectual activities in and beyond Egypt, the project aims to answer the following key questions: What was the Sufi orientation that Tawfīq adhered to, and how did this influence his thought? How did he envision the future of Islam and Muslims? How did his future projections relate to debates on reform? What impact did the British–Ottoman–Egyptian axis’ transimperial politics have on Tawfīq’s intellectual output? How did he navigate intellectually under the pressure of the Ottoman and British Empires? How did he engage with the traditional and contemporary intellectual capital produced by Muslims and non-Muslims?
By answering these and a number of other relevant questions, the study, first, seeks to situate Tawfīq al-Bakrī within the broader intellectual framework of late Ottoman Egypt. This involves not only establishing his prominence among contemporary Muslim intellectuals but also integrating him into the intellectual history of late Ottoman Egypt, thus paving the way for further research. Second, the project discovers Tawfīq al-Bakrī’s intellectual and political interactions as well as the influence of these interactions on his ideas. In other words, the study does not limit itself to Egypt but extends beyond, examining Tawfīq’s ideas in a broader context.
Thanks to the research scholarship provided by the GHIL, I was able to access a number of documents held at the National Archive. These documents reveal Tawfīq’s complex relationship with the British authorities in Egypt as well as how he was perceived by them.
Feature Image: Ottoman Egyptian author and poet Muhammad Tawfiq al-Bakri. Public Domain.
- The celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muḥammad. [↩]
- Frederick de Jong, Ṭuruq and Ṭuruq-Linked Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: A Historical Study in Organizational Dimensions of Islamic Mysticism (Leiden, 1978), 91. [↩]
- On dawsa, see D. B. MacDonald, ‘Dawsa’, in P. J. Bearman (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Islam New Edition Online (EI-2 English) (Leiden, 2012); Meir Hatina, ‘Religious Culture Contested: The Sufi Ritual of Dawsa in Nineteenth-Century Cairo’, Die Welt Des Islams, 47/1 (2007), 33–62. [↩]
- Elbert E. Farman, Egypt and its Betrayal: An Account of the Country during the Periods of Ismail and Tewfik Pashas, and of how England Acquired a New Empire (New York, 1908), 61. [↩]
- See e.g. Willesden Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1891; The Times, 1 Nov. 1880; Dundee Evening Telegraph, 30 June 1887. [↩]
- See e.g. Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (eds.), Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden, 1999); Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World (London, 1998). [↩]
- The National Archives (TNA), Foreign Office (FO) 407/114. No. 39, Mr A. Hardinge to the Earl of Rosebery, 10 Sept. 1892. [↩]
- Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Y..EE. 130/49 (16 Muharrem 1310, 10 Aug. 1892). [↩]
- TNA, FO 407/114. No. 39, Mr A. Hardinge to the Earl of Rosebery, 10 Sept. 1892. [↩]
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
tmurat (June 13, 2025). An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932). German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved July 17, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/144c2