THE INTERPRETATION OF MYTH IN THE CONTEXT OF POPULAR ISLAM
Part II
Wim van Binsbergen
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THE INTERPRETATION OF MYTH IN THE CONTEXT OF POPULAR ISLAM Part II Wim van Binsbergen |
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5. Aspects of the contemporary
social and ritual organization of the region
The hanshir Sidi
Mhammad is one of four valleys which the French colonial
government in the 1880s united to form one chiefdom, cAtatfa. The
other valleys are al Millah, al Mazuz and Shahada. The population
of these valleys belongs to a number of different clans and
lineage segments. The nature of these social groupings is much
too complex for justice to be done to the subject within the
scope of this article. I must limit myself to the following
summary (see van Binsbergen, 1970 and 1971a for fuller accounts).
Every Khumiri places himself or herself in a genealogy based on
patrilineal descent. These genealogies usually have a depth of
four or five generations, and the participants regard them as
repositories of the literal historical truth. In the Khumiri
view, contemporary rural society is still governed by a structure
of segmentary patrilineages, which is supposed to regulate rights
to land, male residence, the nature and intensity of
interpersonal ties, and the relations between people and saints.
Residential units which are clearly visible in the landscape
(from the level of the individual household, via such
higher-level clusters as compounds, neighbourhoods, and hamlets,
up to the valley and chiefdom level) are supposed to correspond
with lineage segments at various levels as defined by the
generation in the lineage genealogy. In the participants’
folk theory, therefore, all inhabitants of a valley, and all the
residential units at various levels, could be fitted into one
large genealogy. Since patrilineal descent uniquely and ideally
defines membership of local residential groups and rights to
local land, people who at a given moment in time happen to live
at a particular spot are under strong ideological pressure to
justify their presence there in terms of patrilineal descent from
the local apical ancestor. At the ideological level the migration
of individuals and groups, and the acquisition of rights to land
by means other than filial inheritance, are not recognized. Yet,
of course, the various patrilineal descent lines that are locally
represented ( I do not call them lineages to avoid confusion with
the participants’ ideologically distorted view of social
groupings) do not, on the level of some analytical, objective
historical truth, converge towards one and the same historical
ancestor. Most local descent lines have only immigrated into the
valley which they are occupying now in the course of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and most have acquired land
rights not through filial inheritance but by other much less
prestigious means: by matrilateral inheritance, gift, patronage,
purchase, violent conquest, collusion with the colonial
authorities, and theft. While there is no reason to assume that
genealogical manipulation is a recent feature in Khumiriya, the
insistence on ideologically acceptable rights to local land
appears to reflect, partly, the dramatic increase in population
pressure on the land since the beginning of the colonial period.
this increase is due to a number of related factors: a five-fold
numerical increase of the population in less than a century (the
valley now supports 60 inhabitants per square kilometre); the
alienation of land for the purpose of state exploitation of cork
forests and for the benefit of a few colonist farmers; the
politically inspired state alienation of pious-endowment land (habus)
attached to shrined and religious brotherhoods; and the
concentration of land in the hands of the chiefly family, which i
shall discuss in more detail in section 7.
At any rate, the existing ideological pressure forces people
constantly to revise their genealogies so as to bring these into
line with the actual residential situation in the valley, and
with the existing social relationships between the inhabitants.
It may be attractive for a recent immigrant to trace descent to
an undisputed local ancestor: but he will only be followed to do
so if his presence is appreciated by those already firmly
established in the valley. Alternatively, negative social and
political relationships are inevitably expressed in terms of
recent immigration: anyone will try to dispute his enemy’s
right to local residence, and to participation in the local
community. There are other reasons why genealogies are not
complete or true reflections of historical relations. When
genealogies serve such a clear purpose defined by the pattern of
relationships that prevails here and now, there is no point in
burdening one’s genealogies with whole series of collateral
relatives who have left the valley long ago and who no longer
take part in local affairs. As a result, genealogies mainly hark
back to those past occupants of a valley who have living
descendants there — unless an informant is strategically
placed, e.g. as the youngest of an otherwise extinct generation
who has personal recollections of the emigrants. Finally,
genealogies are constantly revised so as to reflect the relative
numerical, political and economic strength of contemporary kin
groups who are presented as the descendants of particular
ancestors in the genealogy. So as the relative importance of
various clusters of agnates waxes and wanes on the contemporary
scene, the genealogical relationship said to heave existed
between their ancestors is revised accordingly. Segments
descending from tow brothers (or less closely related segments
that once were equals and allies and for that reason were
considered to be ‘as brothers’) may assume a
genealogical relationship of father and son, or even grandfather
and grandson, if their subsequent fortunes at the local scene
take a substantially different course.
Since genealogies are so manifestly the outcome of shifting
contemporary relations and are only subject to discussion and
alteration at abnormal moments, during open conflicts or
when an anthropologist comes along with intrusive questions, the
manipulation of genealogies by individuals produces genealogical
fictions which seldom dovetail neatly. No two informants, not
even full brothers, produce exactly the same genealogy of their
own line of descent, or of that of their neighbours. And no
genealogy taken down in the field can be said to be historically
correct in all its detail.
In order to serve such ideological purposes the revision of
genealogies has to be covert and, in fact, largely subconscious.
The situation recorded for the West African Tiv (Bohannan, 1952),
of lineage segments publicly revising their genealogies so as to
bring them into line with their altered social relationship, is
unthinkable in Khumiriya. The revision process works at
incredible speed. It is common for a line of descent that has
immigrated into a hamlet as recently as thirty or forty years ago
to find itself firmly attached to the locally dominant genealogy,
provided interpersonal relationships within the hamlet are
harmonious.
Yet there will always be cases of immigrants whose arrival has
been too recent to be included in genealogies in this fashion; or
there will be ties too distant to be encompassed within a single
master genealogy of the sort which the participants themselves
consider historically correct. The main device by which Khumiri
genealogies overcome this difficulty is by attaching one or more
mythical ancestors to the head of each allegedly historical
lineage chart. These ancestors are said to have lived in some
unspecified past and, as founders of clans, allow people to claim
common descent without having to invent specific and connecting
descent lines. The clan name becomes a sort of surname which
people adopt (and sometimes alter) without having to overhaul all
the more recent elements in their genealogical knowledge. Clan
names, and therefore mythical ancestors or clan founders, turn
out to be attached to particular areas, for the most part
irrespective of the specific genealogical position of the people
to which each clan name is attached.
Thus summarized and greatly simplified, the social organization
of contemporary Khumiriya can be said to rest upon three
interconnected principles:
(a)
A structure of shallow segmentary patrilineages,
(b)
A structure of residential units,
(c)
A structure of localized clans
A structure of shallow segmentary
patrilineages
Shallow segmentary patrilineages are
continuously re-defined in the process of migration and fission.
In so far as it serves as an organizing principle in the Khumiri
understanding of their own society, this ideology provides us
with an explanation for the genealogical manipulations and the
distorted perceptions of local residential history which are so
widespread in this area. Therefore, this organizational principle
also allows for the detailed reconstruction of actual historical
events (i.e. actual residential movements of people in the past),
provided we have a sufficient quantity of distorted material at
our disposal to inspect and assess the many possible
permutations. Genealogies are the most readily available, and the
least specialized form of oral-historical evidence in this
region. On the basis of some 200 genealogies collected in the
late 1960s among inhabitants of the valley and adjacent valleys,
supplemented by statements regarding the places of residence of
all the individuals concerned and by more comprehensive
traditions concerning migratory movements and the attendant
social and political repercussions and disputes,[13] I was in fact able to reconstruct,
more or less to my own satisfaction, the residential and
migratory history of the people in the valley of Sidi Mhammad
since c. 1800.
A structure of residential units
Residential units are clearly
identifiable on the ground and, beginning with individual
households, combine in a segmentary. pyramidal fashion to form
compounds, neighbourhoods, hamlets, valleys and chiefdoms. The
everyday social process that determines the economic, social and
political structures in contemporary Khumiri life mainly takes
place within these residential units. At all levels (except that
of the individual households) they are heterogeneous as far as
unilineal descent is concerned. For although these residential
units are named after lineage segments and are considered to be
founded by ancestors belonging to a comprehensive fictive
patrilineage encompassing an entire valley, in fact most
compounds, and all neighbourhoods and hamlets, comprise more than
one patrilineal descent line. The social relationships that
inform the continuous manipulation of genealogical ties so as to
bring them into line with the participants’ patrilineal
ideology are mainly acted out within these residential units.
Moreover, the contemporary local ritual structures can be
adequately described and explained in terms of these residential
structures. From the most inconspicuous mzara concealed somewhere
behind a cactus hedge to the qubbas that are the focus of massive
festivals, the patterns of collective and individual pilgrimages,
offerings and sacrifices, dedication of meals, and burials within
any valley are entirely determined by the fact that each shrine
is attached to a residential unit at one level or another (cf.
van Binsbergen, in press). Thus Sidi Mhammad al Kabir serves as a
characteristic attribute of the residential unit encompassing the
total valley of Sidi Mhammad. The kurbi halfway towards Mayziya,
however, may share the name of Sidi Mhammad, but it is only a
characteristic attribute of one hamlet, that of Mayziya, and does
not feature in the ritual activities of the inhabitants of other
hamlets in the valley. the same applies to Sidi cAbd Allah at
Fidh al Missay. Likewise, at the residential levels below the
hamlet level there are a considerable number of mzaras whose name
I have not mentioned here but which serve as the characteristic
attributes of these lower-level units, and thus as foci for
(typically lesser) dedications and offerings, and small-scale
collective pilgrimages exclusive to the members of one compound
or neighbourhood. In the collective pilgrimages which entire
hamlets direct to a major shrines such as Sidi Mhammad al Kebir,
the impact of these lower-level units becomes eminently visible,
when from the various households women (under the supervision of
one elderly woman from their midst who is referred to as the kabira)
team up to form a group of pilgrims representing their compound;
then various compound groups join into one neighbourhood groups
as they proceed; until the various neighbourhood groups under
their respective kabiras team up into one
massive procession on their way to shrine. On their return home
the same process can be observed in the reverse order. It is in
the contemporary ritual structures that the social organization
of Khumiri society becomes most manifest. Shrines are
the symbols of residential units which pose as kin groups and
desperately revise their genealogies in order to conceal the fact
that they are not kin. This is in fact the underlying
meaning of the participants’ characterization of the saints
as jadudna. But in order to perform this function it seems
imperative that the local saints should never themselves figure
in the genealogies. They are primarily attached to residential
units. If, through the inclusion of local saints in their
genealogies, patrilineages were allowed to lay exclusive claims
by birth-right to these saints, the integrative symbolic function
which the saints now provide for the residential units as a whole
would be jeopardized.[14]
A structure of localized clans
A structure of localized clans loosely
categorizes the population and which is so flexible that it
facilitates the transformation of lineage segments into
residential units, and permits the latter to pose as lineage
segments.
With these summary insights into the
contemporary social organization of the region set against the
background provided by a painstaking reconstruction of the
settlement history of the valley of Sidi Mhammad since c. 1800,
we may now return to the myth of Sidi Mhammad and see if it can
be shown to contain some specific historical information in
addition to the cultural and symbolic messages explored in
section 3. We know that shrines and saints serve as symbolic foci
for the collective identities and activities of contemporary
residential units. They are more than likely to have done so in
the past. If, in the past, the valley of Sidi Mhammad turns out
to have been the scene of continuous migration, and if the
existing residential units have therefore been subject to
continuous alterations in their composition, the shrines and
saints that characterized and symbolized those units are likely
to have been distributed and redistributed as a reflection of
these social processes of fission and fusion. The myth of Sidi
Mhammad speaks of the geographical displacement of a saint, and
of his attaining independence vis-à-vis another saint. Would it
be too far-fetched to read into this myth the record of an actual
migration of a social group that has taken the saint Sidi Mhammad
as its focus, its characteristic attribute, and its symbol? And
would it be possible, on the basis of the information available
on the area, to pin-point this social group? To answer these
questions, we shall now look at other myths which present
relations between saints and explore the historical background of
these myths.
6. Saintly myths and the
history of shrines in Khumiriya
Though the myth of Sidi Mhammad and
Sidi Salima may be the best-known myth in the region, it is by no
means the only myth featuring saints.
One common type of myth seeks to explain the presence, within one
valley or two adjacent valleys, of the shrines of several saints
not having the same name. Although dead and invisible, the saints
are more or less considered to be dwelling in the area, and when
all ordinary human beings inhabiting the same valley should
ideally fit into one genealogy, participants are inclined to
apply the same model to saints. So the presence of lesser shrines
within a valley is often explained in terms of the saints
associated with these shrines being junior relatives of the
valley’s main saint (the one with the most elaborate
festival). the myth usually takes the extremely simple form:
Sidi X was the younger brother/sister/son/etc. of Sidi Y.
It is important to stress that this
myth forms a kind of productive model, in which any minor saint
can be substituted ad libitum; in other
words it is a model which informants are prepared to invoke as a
standard explanation even if they cannot give any more specific,
colourful details concerning the relationship between the saints
involved.
There is another folk explanation of the relationship between
saints which is even more significants because it introduces a
non-kin connection which suggests that strangers or immigrants
have been incorporated: it runs thus:
Sidi X was the friend/servant/herdsman of Sidi Y.
The myth of Sidi Mhammad and Sidi
Salima clearly forms an elaborate version of this type of myth.
But also of Sidi Tuhami of the hamlet of Khamaysiya in the valley
of al Millah, it is said that he was the servant of Sidi cAmara,
that valley’s main saint. Likewise, Lalla Bu Waliya, a
female saint associated with a mzara in
Tra’aya-sud, is said to be the servant of Sidi Mhammad.
Sidi Mhammad and Sidi Salima ultimately became friends and
neighbours. Two saints who according to a local myth, have always
been friends were Sidi cAbd Allah and Sidi Bu Naqa.
So inseparable were they after their
death their servant Hallal put the former on a male camel and the
latter on a female camel (naqa), to travel to a place where he
could bury them. Wherever the animals stopped Hallal would start
to dig graves, but the animals would always get up and continue
their journey before the graves were ready. People living in
those parts would turn the un-finished graves into shrines,
either for Sidi cAbd Allah or for Sidi Bu Naqa. finally the camel
stopped among the Huamdiya clan in the Salul chiefdom south of cAin
Draham. Here Sidi cAbd Allah was buried. the female camel stopped
in the chiefdom of Homran, were Bu Naqa was buried.
This myth explains to the
participants’ satisfaction the occurrence of a number os
shrines having the same name throughout Khumiriya. We have
already encountered Sidi cAbd Allah in Ulad bin Sayid, Fidh al
Missay and Ramal al cAtrus. To this is now added one in Salul,
while a fifth exists in Ulad Musa, in the valley of Babush. All
these places are connected by ancient footpaths, along which
pilgrims, traders and local people going to the regional markets
must have travelled for many centuries. In addition to the major
Sidi Bu Naqa shrine in Homran there is a minor mzara
of that name east of Tra’aya-bidh, and others are likely to
exist a few kilometres further to the east. Incidentally, Hallal
was never raised to sainthood, but instead became the mythical
ancestor of the Ulad Hallal at Huamdiya, another example of the
implicit rule that saints do not appear in genealogies.
There is also a less ornate topographical myth to explain shrines
having the same name. This myth lacks specific references such as
those to the servant Hallal and to the animals, and constitutes
rather a productive model similar to the one discussed above. It
takes the following form:
Sidi Z travelled through the
countryside. Wherever he sat down or slept, people created a
shrine for him. Therefore today we find shrines for him at A, b,
C, D, etc.
That this is in fact a productive model
which people apply to any actual case of a number of shrines
having the same name, irrespective of more specific mythical or
historical knowledge, is clear from the fact that I have heard
this myth applied not only to the multiple shrines of Sidi
Mhammad and Sidi Bu Qasbaya, but also to those of Sidi cAbd
Allah!
Finally, there is a local explanation for a number of shrines
having the same name, which on the one hand forms a productive
model and may be applied, just like the preceding explanation, to
all cases with which an informant is confronted, but which on the
other hand turns out to have very solid foundations in living
memory. When people emigrate from one area and settle in the
next, they cannot take with them the shrine that is the main
characteristic attribute of the residential unity they are
leaving behind. In many cases they will join an existing
residential unit where they will be received as dependents,
clients, herdsmen, etc. In those cases they will not be in a
position to erect their own shrines, and instead will try to
ingratiate themselves with their hosts, and with the
latter’s saints, by directing ritual activities to the
shrines in their new place of residence. when, however, they move
to a relatively unoccupied are, or when they emigrate to an area
not as dependents but as purchasers of land or even as violent
invaders, then they will insist on erecting there a branch of the
shrine of their area of origin — as a sign of their
identity, as a focus for the new residential unit they are in the
process of establishing, and particularly as a symbol
of their recently won independence vis-à-vis the residential
unit they have left behind. From the original shrine
they take a few relics: the bones of the saint if these in fact
can be found there, or else a musba or tassa.
Around these, the new shrine structure is erected. The new shrine
receives the same name as the original shrine; when both are in
the same valley, the latter is distinguished by the addition
‘al Wilda’, the son.
There is ample oral-historical evidence that several of the
shrines having the same name in the valley of Sidi Mhammad have
been created in this fashion during the course of the nineteenth
and the early twentieth centuries. In those case informants could
mention the name of the historical people who actually created
these branches, and could indicate some of the surrounding
circumstances. This might seem paradoxical in the light of my
previous statement that in Khumiri society migration, the
precondition for the creation of filial branches of shrines) was
not cognitively recognized. However, in the course of
oral-historical fieldwork one builds up, with some informants at
least, a level of trust that allows one of penetrate beyond their
formal narrative image of their own society. Particularly if
one’s informants are unusually intelligent and belong to
generations otherwise extinct, and if the researcher can feed
into his interviews bits of information that indicate that he has
already advanced some way towards a more objective truth, and if,
finally, one can play off such tensions and rivalries between
residential units and lineage segments as exist in this highly
competitive society, then, glimpses of the objective truth
concerning events in the last century may yet be revealed. Much
depends also on finding the proper operational translation for a
research question. For instance, informants would not have a
clear picture of the succession of cemeteries in the valley of
Sidi Mhammad. But they would know where, ever since c. 1900,
specific people have been buried; and thus the history of
cemeteries (and the attendant shrines) could be gleaned from
shift in lists of individual burials.
It became fairly well established that of the three shrines named
Sidi Bu Qasbaya in the hamlet of Sidi Mhammad, two have been
created in the early twentieth century, after a European colonist
built his farmhouse on the original shrine and cemetery of that
saint. The Sidi Bu Qasbaya shrine in Fidh al Missay already had
been created in c. 1870 as a filial branch of that same shrine.
Likewise, Sidi cAbd Allah in Ramal al cAtrus was created around
1850 upon relics taken from the shrine of that name in Fidh al
Missay. Similar processes were recorded for some of the minor
shrines in and around the hamlet of Sidi Mhammad. The most
significant case, however, for the interpretation of the myth of
Sidi Mhammad was the creation of Sidi Mhammad al Wilda on the
basis of relics taken from Sidi Mhammad al Kebir. this event took
place around 1900, when two of my informants were small boys and
witnessed this activity. Both of these shrines were then kurbis;
their transformation into qubbas was only
effected in the late 1910s by a European contractor under
contract to a local chief.
This solid piece of evidence suddenly transports the shrine of
Sidi Mhammad al Wilda, and its associated saint, from the
obscurities of antiquity into the more sharply delineated world
of recent events. It strengthens our hope of penetrating the
history of the original shrine of Sidi Mhammad al Kebir, and of
understanding its relationship with the figure of Sidi Salima.[15]
7. The history of Sidi Mhammad
Sidi Mhammad al Wilda was erected on a
flat stretch of land between the cemeteries of Sidi Rahuma and
Sidi Bu Qasbaya following the migration of the shrine-keepers and
their associates to the area one kilometre south of Sidi Mhammad
al Kebir. This migration followed a dramatic and violent conflict
that took place at the festival of Sidi Mhammad. For, before the
migration of the shrine-keepers, the original shrine of this
saint was not a place of death, but the site of one of the most
famous zardas (saint’s festivals) in Khumiriya. On such
occasions not only did the inhabitants of the local residential
unit, and the out-married women who were under obligation to
return annually to their shrine, forgather at the ritual centre,
but they were also joined by pilgrims for the surrounding
valleys; and even when interaction between the Khumiri groups was
characterized by violence and feud, such pilgrims were assured of
safe-conduct by virtue of the sanctions attached to the
supernatural powers of the saint himself. At the same time the
zardas were (and they still remain) the principal occasions when
the local population revealed their strength, their alliances and
the splendour of their saint and shrine. The ensuing sense of
competition has been known to raise tempers, not only in the past
but also in recent years.
During the zarda of Sidi Mhammad, c. 1900, a male pilgrim from
Ulad bin Sayid insulted the local men by making sexual allusions
concerning their wives and daughters. As a result, he was put to
death. this bloodshed triggered further violence and disrupted
social relations in the hamlet of Tra’aya near the shrine,
to such an extent that the hamlet split in two parts,
‘Bidh’ (White) and ‘Sud’ (Black), and a part
of the original population migrated to what is now the hamlet of
Sidi Mhammad. This event by no means forms the explanation of the
myth of Sidi Mhammad; but it indicates the existence of
long-standing tensions between the groups living around the
shrines of Sidi Mhammad and Sidi Salima, and the role which the
shrines and their festivals have played in enhancing these
tensions and bringing them to a critical point.
But who were the people who were in control of the shrine of Sidi
Mhammad around 1900, and who, by the creation of Sidi Mhammad al
Wilda, established the conditions under which the present hamlet
of Sidi Mhammad could emerge, thrive, and become the site of a
major zarda, whereas Sidi Mhammad al Kebir declined and became a
mere cemetery?
It is an indication the great changes that have taken place in
the valley of Sidi Mhammad, and in the chiefdom of cAtatfa as a
whole, that the contemporary situation does not even suggest, at
least on the surface, what I now take to be the correct answer.
Sidi Mhammad today is a hamlet dominated by the Zaghaydi clan.
the Zaghaydiya ultimately trace their descent to the mythical
ancestor Zaghdud, who is claimed to hail from the holy city of
Kayrwan, in Eastern Tunisia. One of the major constituent lines
of descent within this clan has supplied all the chiefs of cAtatfa
since the office was created in the 1880s (with only a short
interruption immediately after Tunisia became independent).
Moreover, the confederation of clans which gave its name to the cAtatfa
chiefdom was created in the 1870s by another member of that same
line of descent. Today the most wealthy people in the valley of
Sidi Mhammad, and indeed in the chiefdom as a whole, belong to
this chiefly family. Most of the land in the valley of Sidi
Mhammad belongs to people of the Zaghaydi clan, and particularly
to the chiefly family. However, the expansion of the Zaghaydiya
is relatively recent; it depended largely on their association
with the French colonial power, and on their ability to convert
this association into lasting economic power and influence
through land ownership, education, and office in independent
Tunisia (where members of this chiefly family are holding posts
in l local government, unemployment relief work, etc).
The Zaghaydiya present a totally different picture from the other
main clan in the chiefdom, the cArfawiya. This clan, an offshoot
of the Drid tribe, traces its origin to the mythical ancestor cArfa.
From times past, they have been associated with the religious
brotherhood of the Shabbiya, and with tax collection. Contrary to
the Zaghaydiya, the cArfawiya have a specific clan myth which
centres upon the head of a partridge that is said (by the cook
who had eaten it) to have been burned in the cooking-fire. The cArfawiya
settled in the valleys of Sidi Mhammad and al Millah around 1800.
In 1870 they created in the latter valley a lodge (zawya) for the
Qadiriya brotherhood which later was moved to the valley of
Shahada. Members of the cArfawi clan still control this lodge,
the only one of its kind in the region of cAin Draham. Moreover,
the cArfawiya are considered to be strongly represented among the
lodge membership, and to be more expert than other groups in the
ecstatic dancing that is the brotherhood’s main ritual in
Khumiriya. Throughout the chiefdom, the cArfawiya command
considerable religious prestige (further enhanced by their claims
to a purer Arab descent than most Khumiris, by their predilection
for horses, etc.); but their economic and political power is,
these days, hardly comparable to that of the Zaghaydiya.
The Zaghaydiya and the cArfawiya ar by no means the only clans in
the chiefdom of cAtatfa. Yet these two clans, whose interactions
have constituted the main political and religious developments in
the chiefdom for the past hundred years, have been so prominent
that they have imposed a moiety-like structure upon all the
valleys in the chiefdom except the southern part of al Millah.
Most people would claim identity as either cArfawi or Zaghaydi
— even those who belong to older descent lines that
traditionally link up with mythical ancestors other than cArfa or
Zaghdud. Their own mythical ancestors (such as Bu Maza, Bu Tara,
Rashab, Bu Dabus) are then treated as descendants of either of
the founders of the two dominants clans; for instance, the
Tra’ayi and Mayzi clans in the valley of Sidi Mhammad today
largely pretend to be members of the Zaghaydi clan.
At present one finds members of both the Zaghaydi and cArfawi
clans residing in the valley of Sidi Mhammad, but the saint Sidi
Mhammad is strongly associated in the popular mind with the
Zaghaydi clan. Within this valley thecArfawiya are now
exclusively associated with the western part of the hamlet of
Sidi Mhammad, and with Fidh al Missay and Ramal al cAtrus; and
here they are associated not with the saint Sidi Mhammad but with
Sidi Bu Qasbaya and Sidi cAbd Allah. Even, since at present the cArfawi
clan is most prominent in the valley of al Millah, whose major
shrine is Sidi cAmara, it is suggested that the main saintly
patronage of the cArfawiya who reside in the valley of Sidi
Mhammad should lie with Sidi cAmara rather than with the saint
Sidi Mhammad.[16] The people of the Zaghaydi clan, on
the other hand, live closest to the four shrines of Sidi Mhammad;
and the wealthy powerful Zaghaydiya in the hamlet of Sidi
Mhammad, including members of the chiefly family, have a major
say in the organization of the zarda. For
the past forty years, the keepers of the shrine have been
Zaghaydiya, close relatives or clients of the chiefs. The
present-day fuqra specializing in the
ecstatic dance for Sidi Mhammad largely have the same
relationship vis-à-vis the chiefly family.
Yet the ecstatic dance, and the Qadiri brotherhood within which
it is loosely incorporated, is primarily an cArfawi affair. What
is more, Sidi Mhammad was originally an cArfawi shrine!
In fact, the present Zaghaydi control over the shrines and the
cult of Sidi Mhammad dates back only to the 1920s. In half a
century the Zaghaydiya, and especially the chiefly family, went
through a dramatic expansion in the valley of Sidi Mhammad, both
numerically and in terms of wealth, political power and ritual
control. their latter-day kinship-based control over the
shrine-keepers and the local fuqra have been the outcome of a
concerted effort on the part of the Zaghaydi chiefs to break the
ritual power of the cArfawiya, and to legitimate their own
political and economic power by whatever symbolic support the
ritual sphere had to offer. It was through the influence of a
Zaghaydi chief that the original festival function of Sidi
Mhammad al Kebir was transferred to Sidi Mhammad al Wilda. That
chief would personally supervise the collective zarda rituals
around al Wilda, which at that time still included the
preparation and consumption of a huge meal for hundreds of
pilgrims. Again, it was he who converted the site of Sidi Mhammad
al Kebir into a cemetery; he even had himself buried directly in
front of the entrance to the shrine of Sidi Mhammad al Kebir. By
these means he drastically altered the ritual organization of the
valley. Before that time the cArfawiya would be buried at the cArfawi
cemetery of Sidi Bu Qasbaya, while the Zaghaydiya would be
allowed to bury their dead at the Mayzi cemetery of Sidi Rahuma.
The creation of the cemetery of Sidi Mhammad al Kebir ended
Zaghaydi dependence on the Mayzi cemetery; it also sealed to
defeat of the cArfawiya by the Zaghaydiya (for burial at Sidi Bu
Qasbaya would be discontinued and henceforth all the cArfawiya
within the hamlet of Sidi Mhammad would bury their dead at the
Zaghaydi cemetery). However, the Zaghaydi chief could only do
this after wrenching cultic control from the hands of the
original cArfawi shrine-keepers, whose line of descent had
created the original shrine of Sidi Mhammad al Kebir, who had
administered the kurbi on the Hill-top until the bloodshed
desecrated the zarda there, who had (as a cultic expression of
the emigration from Tra’aya of both the Arfawi and Zaghaydi
households) then created the shrine of Sidi Mhammad al Wilda, and
who had continued to administer that shrine and the original one
for another twenty years or so until the Zaghaydiya took over.
The change-over is clearly marked in the succession list of
shrine-keepers of Sidi Mhammad: after a number of close agnates
of a cArfawi line of descent which succeeded each other according
to a perfect patrilineal adelphic pattern from the 1870s onwards,
in the 1920s suddenly non-cArfawi keepers crop up, all of whom
have close relations with the chiefly family. This indicates that
the cArfawi keepers lost the control over the cult and were
economically and numerically brought to virtual annihilation
within the valley, as the Zaghaydi chiefly family utilized their
collusion with the colonial authorities to acquire rights over
pious-endowment land that belonged to the shrine of Sidi Mhammad.
The creation of expansion of the colonist’s farm in the
western part of the hamlet of Sidi Mhammad, and the decline,
therefore, of the shrine of Sidi Bu Qasbaya, furthered the
downfall of the cArfawiya in the valley — a process that
reached its culmination in the 1950s when the chiefly family
obtained ownership of this farm as well.
The dominant Zaghaydi group, therefore, have a strong interest in
denying the original cArfawi connection with the shrine of Sidi
Mhammad. They laid a dense smoke-screen of historical distortion
around what I now take to be the objective historical facts. And
significantly, all informants, and, for a long time, I myself,
found it difficult to step out of the illusion that the
present-day associations between local groups and shrines
(shrines that gave the impression of having been there for ever)
should be project wholesale into the distant past.
8. Conclusion: The history of
Sidi Mhammad and Sidi Salima
We are now finally ready to glean the
historical message from the myth of Sidi Mhammad and Sidi Salima.
at this point let me remind the reader of the anti-climax which I
have already anticipated in my introduction.
As my painstaking reconstructions of the residential history of
the valley of Sidi Mhammad during this century and the last bear
out, a number of distinct groups from the cArfawi clan settled
along the Wad al Kebir around 1800 in what today are the hamlets
of Fidh al Missay, the western part of Sidi Mhammad, Ramal al cAtrus,
and both Tra’ayas. They hailed from the area around Sidi cAbd
Allah in Salul, and along with their awareness of belong to the
Drid tribe they brought with them the cArfawi myth of origin
featuring the burned partridge. So closely associated is the cArfawi
clan with the valley of Sidi Mhammad that the mountain slope west
of the Wad al Kebir facing the hamlet of Sidi Mhammad is still
called Raqubat cArfa, after their clan founder. Many informants
make specific reference to this place name in their version of
the myth of Sidi Mhammad and Sidi Salima (elements 6 and 10).
One of these immigrant cArfawi lines of descent was that of the
original pre-Zaghaydi shrine-keepers of Sidi Mhammad. In contrast
with their fellow-clansmen, they were pacifists. On various
occasions during the turbulent nineteenth century, they would
intervene in the battles which the militant and expanding cArfawiya
fought with earlier inhabitants of the region; carrying the flags
of their shrine, the shrine-keepers would come to the battlefield
and exhort the parties to end hostilities. Among all the lines of
descent in the region, these shrine-keepers come closest to the
type of pacifist saintly lineages which Ernest Gellner (1969)[17] describes for the High Atlas, some
1,500 kilometres to the west.
The prominence of the partridge in the myth of Sidi Mhammad and
in the ecstatic song associated with him; the fact that, unlike
the other clans in the area, the self-perceptions of the cArfawi
immigrants supported their identification with the Ulad bin Sayid
on the basis of common affiliation with the Drid tribe; and the
occurrence of shrines for Sidi cAbd Allah both among these cArfawi
groups in the valley of Sidi Mhammad, and among the Ulad bin
Sayid — al these items of evidence lead to the conclusion
that the myth of Sidi Mhammad and Sidi Salima symbolically
embalms the historical interactions that occurred between the cArfawiya
of Tra’aya and their close neighbours, the Ulad bin Sayid of
Khadayriya, during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Their common association with the Drid tribe enabled the
immigrant cArfawiya to find hospitality and patronage among the
Ulad bin Sayid living around the shrine of Sidi Salima. It is
most likely that the early cArfawi immigrants in the Tra’aya
area received not only land to the south of the Wad Ghanaka to
settle on, but also the right to bury their dead in the cemetery
of Sidi Salima. However, as the immigrant group expanded, they
asserted their own distinct identity vis-à-vis their hosts, and
created their own shrine. Partly because of its strategic
location in the ecology of the region and partly because of the
backing with the guardian lineage received from their
non-pacifist clansmen, within a few decades this shrine became
one of the major shrines of Khumiriya, worthy of a myth that is
known throughout the region. This transformation of the cArfawi/Ulad
bin Sayid relations from one of dependence to one of equality
took place in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the
shrine of Sidi Mhammad al Kebir must have been built by about
1850, that is, by the time the eldest remembered cArfawi guardian
of that shrine was born. the bones which, half a century later,
my informants saw dug up and transferred to another site to
create the shrine of Sidi Mhammad al Wilda. , must have been
those of a man, very likely called Mhammad, who lived and died in
Tra’aya in the first half of the last century.[18] True to type, he does not occur in the
genealogies of the guardians line of descent. Nor would he ever
have sat on the Hill-top as a herdsman of Sidi Salima, who by
that times must have long since rested at the cemetery that bears
his name. It is likely that the partridges that alighted on Sidi
Mhammad’s shoulders flew out of the Arfawi clan myth rather
than from Heaven. And the cArfawi connections itself has been all
but concealed in the course of half a century of Zaghaydi
expansion. It is my contention that the devious ‘mountain
paths’ of my historical reconstruction have reconstruction
have brought the myth of Sidi Mhammad and Sidi Salima into the
‘plain’ of history in the sense in which
‘history’ is commonly understood by scholars today.
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(1974), Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam,
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'Íslamic myth'
| Part I
[13] Part of
this material was collected by P. Ernsting, P. Geschiere, C.
Holzappel, G. von Liebenstein, P. Tamsma (deceased), and myself,
in the course of a collective project under supervision of K.W.
van der Veen in March/April 1968. I am grateful to these
colleagues for their permission to use this material. Earlier
accounts of genealogical and oral-historical research in the
chiefdom of cAtatfa include that Hartong (1968), while I also
gleaned some information from Beeker’s (1967) preparatory
study for a housing project (which never materialized) in the
hamlet of Sidi Mhammad.
[14] On the
other hand, when a clan founder who figures in a genealogy has
some association with sainthood (e.g. in the clan of Ulad al Hajj
— ‘Descendants of the Pilgrim’ — in the
valley of al Mazuz), he has no shrine locally and is never the
subject of a cult.
[15] The details
which informants could supply with regard to the history of Sidi
Mhammad al Kabir and Sidi Mhammad al Wilda contrast sharply with
the absolute lack of specific historical information concerning
the two remaining kurbis of the same saint: the one adjacent to
Sidi Mhammad al Wilda, and the one half-way to the hamlet of
Mayziya. Mechanical application of either of the two productive
models for shrines having the same name led some informants to
suggest that Sidi Mhammad might have rested at the sites of these
kurbis in the course of his wanderings through the region. But in
general the informants were remarkably taciturn on the subject.
Elsewhere, I offer a reconstruction of the history of these two
kurbis, suggest that they were originally named after a totally
different saint who was associated with a clan that had prevailed
in the area before the immigrations of the shrine-keepers and
their associates from Tra’aya (van Binsbergen, 1971a: pp.
281 ff.);.
[16] Yet the
fact that Sidi cAmara is not called Sidi cAbd Allah, and my
reconstruction of the valley’s residential history, suggest
that SidicAmara was not originally an cArfawi shrine, but one
created by pre-cArfawi members of the Mayzi clan, to whom the cArfawiya
had come as client immigrants.
[17] Cf. van
Binsbergen (1971b)
[18] Why has not
the shrine of Sidi Mhammad al Kabir been called Sidi cAbd Allah
like the other shrines established by the cArfawiya? The fig-tree
in the ecstatic song of Sidi Mhammad cannot be found on the
Hill-top today, and although there are traditions of it having
been destroyed by lightning at the beginning of this century, it
is most likely a vestige of Sidi cAbd Allah bu Karma, in Ulad bin
Sayid. The shrine of Sidi Mhammad might originally have been
dedicated to Sidi cAbd Allah, only to be renamed after Sidi
Mhammad once the Tra’aya cArfawiya had produced from within
their midst a saintly man of the name of Mhammad.
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'Íslamic myth'
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