Sufi practice in Khartoum and the role of the Shaykh

• Main Author: Alfonso Salerno
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ethnorêma Association 2019-12-01
• Series: Ethnorêma
• Subjects: sufism; tasawwuf; shaykh; khartoum; sudan; dhikr; traditional medicine
• Online Access: http://www.ethnorema.it/pdf/numero%2015/04%20Salerno.pdf

Rosanders and Westerlund refers to Sufism (Tasawwuf) as “African Islam”, contextualizing the large diffusion of Sufi practice all around sub-Saharan Africa and underlining an important point: despite referring to the same generic structure, different elements constitute the local nature of a Sufi community. Indeed, it’s possible to observe that Sufism has a strong presence in the African continent, from the examples of Sufi brotherhoods in Mali described by Amadou Hampatè Ba to the description of Sufism in Somalia by Francesca Declich among the others. Being flanked by the more orthodox pressures coming from the Arabic Peninsula and integrating its practice with social structures already present in the sub-saharan Africa, today’s Sufism in the african continent doesn’t have a monolithic nature. Since the 16th century, continuous and slow penetrations of Arabic merchants into Alodia’s kingdoms led to the fall of the Christian reigns. Sufism especially, managed to gain almost the totality of the population, due to its permeable nature and the usage made by Muslim Ulema to better adapt Islam to local populations, still bonded to the traditional religious nature of the region. After the Wahabi doctrine penetration in the area and the recent political development of the country, it seems difficult to recognize the presence of a traditional or animist component in today’s Sufi Islam. The purpose of this article is to define and transmit to the reader the aspects of today’s Islamic identity of the Sudanese population with a particular focus on Khartoum’s region, to analyse the role of the master of 9 different Turuq in an urban context and how this influences the daily life of the citizens of the area. The materials here presented have been collected for my master’s degree dissertation in Diplomacy and International Cooperation, by the title “Il Sufismo in Sudan. Religione, società, tradizioni e pratiche curative nello Stato di Khartoum.” as a result of one month long field observation conducted from the 1st of August 2018 to the 31st of the same month. During this period, I was able to conduct a session of field research in Khartoum’s state and to engage with Sudanese local religious leaders, inhabitants of the area formally unbonded from the religious sphere and European and Sudanese NGO members, working in the health sector. The interviews collected will be cross-analysed during the course of the text to highlight any differences or points in common between the various interviewees. I have also decided to integrate the relation within religious area and medicine because of some reasons: due to a personal interest, having worked in a health facility aimed at delivering therapies to disabled people, having studied the bond within African traditional medicine and Islam during the course of my master’s degree and having noticed the discrepancy within the declarations of the various Shaykh and those of the local inhabitants not directly bounded to the sphere of influence of the Turuq regarding the relation with medicine and Shaykh