Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932)

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

Continue reading An Intellectual Sufi between Empires: Muhammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870–1932)
  1. The celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Muḥammad. []
  2. Frederick de Jong, Ṭuruq and Ṭuruq-Linked Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: A Historical Study in Organizational Dimensions of Islamic Mysticism (Leiden, 1978), 91. []

From London Fog to Frankfurt Smog: Sensing Anthropogenic Weather Conditions from a Transurban Perspective in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Part 3—Deindustrialization as Pollution Export: From Pittsburgh and Chicago to Baghdad and Delhi

In spring 1960, a senior city councillor from Frankfurt set off on a two-week trip to the USA to study the measures taken there to keep the air clean in industrial cities, and to bring them back to Germany if appropriate.1 From 7 to 23 May, he visited the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cleveland, OH. In New York, he visited the seventy-storey Rockefeller Centre, from where he could see no air pollution from either chemical or heavy industry—all that was visible was the smoke from the power stations. A visit to the city administration revealed that smoke inspections had been in operation since 1935 and had been conducted by an independent office with eleven employees and its own laboratories since 1952. Numerous ordinances and bans regulated inner-city combustion, prohibiting not only smoke, soot, dust, vapours, gases, and fly ash as ‘pollution of the air by noxious or unpleasant substances’, but also ‘odours that are detrimental or cause a nuisance to people.’2 Violations (in 1959 there were almost 5,000) were punished with fines or plant closures.

Continue reading From London Fog to Frankfurt Smog: Sensing Anthropogenic Weather Conditions from a Transurban Perspective in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
  1. See ISG FSA_3705, Hauptakten der Magistrat/Sozialverwaltung der Stadt Frankfurt a.M.: Bekämpfung von Lärm und Luftverunreinigung im Stadtgebiet: Obermagistratsrat Wiegand, ‘Reinhaltung der Luft in den Vereinigten Staaten: Bericht über eine Studienreise’, Frankfurt a. M., 1960. []
  2. Wiegand, ‘Reinhaltung der Luft’, 5. All quotes translated by Marielle Sutherland, GHIL []