Footnotes

"In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art."
― Rumi

In "Moulid", popular Egyptian artist Taha El Korany has achieved a herculean task in his collosall epic rendition of the famed folk carnival celebrating the birth of the Prophet Mohammad. Renowned for his weekly cultural television program, "Atelier" which is adored and watched by millions of Egyptians, Taha El Korany's works capture the popular spirit of Egyptian daily life

About 3,000 moulids are held in Egypt every year. Part pilgrimage, part carnival, part mystical Islamic ceremony, they are a mass phenomenon that is increasingly attracting the attention of the Egyptian authorities.
Tanta, in the Nile Delta, is home to Egypt's biggest moulid attracting up to three million people, some travelling from as far away as Sudan.
The Tanta moulid celebrates the memory Ahmed el-Bedawi, a local 13th Century Sufi saint.

Literally, the word moulid means birth. Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam. Followers perform the zikr, chanting the name of God over and over again, at an ever increasing tempo. Some achieve a trance-like state.

A moulid is also about contemplation and the spiritual focus of the festival is the mosque where Ahmed el-Bedawi is believed to be buried.
At night thousands of families sleep inside the mosque and outside it in brightly coloured tents in the surrounding alleyways.

Moulids are great levellers. High court judges mix with manual labourers, dentists with peasant farmers, street performers with local officials, removing all the usual boundaries of class and wealth.
Islam's usually strict rules of gender segregation for religious events are also suspended for the moulid.


A moulid is also about khidma, or service, and many Sufi orders build tents and offer free food to the poor.Ultimately the moulid is a journey of personal devotion – a love of God and for one's fellow pilgrims.
At the saint's tomb, devotees take a quiet moment away from the frenzied activity outside, to contemplate God and the mystical dimensions of divinity