Practicing Sufism Sufi Politics and

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Abdelmajid Hannoum
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Practicing Sufism

Islam in Africa is deeply connected with Sufism, and the history of Islam is in a
significant way a history of Sufism. Yet even within this continent, the practice
and role of Sufism varies across the regions.
This interdisciplinary volume brings together histories and experiences of
Sufism in various parts of Africa, offering case studies on several countries that
include Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, Egypt, Sudan, Mali, and Nigeria. It uses a
variety of methodologies ranging from the hermeneutical, through historio-
graphic to ethnographic, in a comprehensive examination of the politics and per-
formance of Sufism in Africa. While the politics of Sufism pertains largely to
historical and textual analysis to highlight paradigms of sanctity in different geo-
graphical areas in Africa, the aspect of performance adopts a decidedly ethno-
graphic approach, combining history, history of art, and discourse analysis.
Together, analysis of these two aspects reveals the many faces of Sufism that
have remained hitherto hidden.
Furthering understanding of the African Islamic religious scene, as well as
contributing to the study of Sufism worldwide, this volume is of key interest to
students and scholars of Middle Eastern, African, and Islamic studies.

Abdelmajid Hannoum teaches anthropology and African studies at the Univer-

sity of Kansas. He is the author of Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories
(2001) and Violent Modernity (2010), and numerous essays and articles on
Islam, colonialism, and secularism.
Routledge Sufi Series
General Editor: Ian Richard Netton
Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

The Routledge Sufi Series provides short introductions to a variety of facets of

the subject, which are accessible both to the general reader and the student and
scholar in the field. Each book will be either a synthesis of existing knowledge
or a distinct contribution to, and extension of, knowledge of the particular topic.
The two major underlying principles of the Series are sound scholarship and
readability.

Previously published by Curzon

Al-­Hallaj Persian Sufi Poetry

Herbert I. W. Mason An Introduction to the Mystical Use of
Classical Poems
Beyond Faith and Infidelity J.T.P. de Bruijn
The Sufi Poetry and Teaching of
Mahmud Shabistari
Aziz Nasafi
Leonard Lewisohn
Lloyd Ridgeon
Ruzbihan Baqli
Mysticism and the Rhetoric of Sufis and Anti-­Sufis
Sainthood in Persian Sufism The Defence, Rethinking and
Carl W. Ernst Rejection of Sufism in the
Modern World
Abdullah Ansari of Herat Elizabeth Sirriyeh
An Early Sufi Master
A.G. Ravan Farhadi
Sufi Ritual
The Parallel Universe
The Concept of Sainthood in Early
Ian Richard Netton
Islamic Mysticism
Bernd Radtke and John O’Kane
Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism
Suhrawardi and the School of The Teachings of al-­Ghâzalî and
Illumination al-­Dabbâgh
Mehdi Amin Razavi Binyamin Abrahamov
Striving for Divine Union
Spiritual Exercises for
Suhrawardi Sufis
Qamar-­ul Huda
Published by Routledge
1 Muslim Saints of South
Africa
The Eleventh to Fifteenth
Centuries
Anna Suvorova
2 A Psychology of Early Sufi
Sama
Listening and Altered States
Kenneth S. Avery
3 Sufi Visionary of Ottoman
Damascus
‘Abd al-­Ghani al-­Nabulusi,
1941–1731
Elizabeth Sirriyeh
4 Early Mystics in Turkish
Literature
Mehmed Fuad Koprulu
Translated, Edited and with an
Introduction by Gary Leiser and
Robert Dankoff
5 Indian Sufism Since the
Seventeenth Century
Saints, Books and Empires in the
Muslim Deccan
Nile Green
6 Sufi Castigator
Ahmad Kasravi and the Iranian
Mystical Tradition
Lloyd Ridgeon
Revelation, Intellectual Intuition
and Reason in the Philosophy of
Mulla Sadra
An Analysis of the al-­hikmah
al-‘arshiyyah
Zailan Moris
7 Popular Sufism in Eastern
Europe
Sufi Brotherhoods and the
Dialogue with Christianity and
‘Heterodoxy’
H. T. Norris
8 The Naqshbandiyya
Orthodoxy and Activism in a
Worldwide Sufi Tradition
Itzchak Weismann
9 Sufis in Western Society
Global Networking and Locality
Edited by Ron Geaves,
Markus Dressler and
Gritt Klinkhammer
10 Morals and Mysticism in
Persian Sufism
A History of Sufi-­Futuwwat in
Iran
Lloyd Ridgeon
11 Spiritual Purification in Islam
The Life and Works of
al-­Muhasibi
Gavin Picken
12 Sufism and Society
Arrangements of the Mystical
in the Muslim World,
1200–1800 CE
Edited by John J. Curry and
Erik S. Ohlander
13 Islamic Mysticism and Abu
Ṭālib al-­Makkī
The Role of the Heart
Saeko Yazaki
14 Gender and Sufism
Female Religiosities in a
Transnational Order
Marta Dominguez Diaz
15 Mullā Ṣadrā and Eschatology
Evolution of Being
Eiyad S. al-­Kutubi
16 Ibn al-­’Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-­ḥikam
An Annotated Translation of
‘The Bezels of Wisdom’
Binyamin Abrahamov
17 Practical Mysticism in Islam
and Christianity
A Comparative Study of Jalal
al-­Din Rumi and Meister Eckhart
Saeed Zarrabi-­Zadeh
18 Ibn al-­’Arabī and Islamic
Intellectual Culture
From Mysticism to Philosophy
Caner K. Dagli
19 Sufism and Jewish-­Muslim
Relations
The Derekh Avraham Order
Yafiah Katherine Randall
20 Practicing Sufism
Sufi Politics and Performance in
Africa
Edited by Abdelmajid Hannoum
Practicing Sufism
Sufi politics and performance in Africa

Edited by Abdelmajid Hannoum

First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their
permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be
grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged
and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of
this book.
© 2016 selection and editorial material, Abdelmajid Hannoum; individual
chapters, the contributors.
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-1-138-64918-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-62593-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents

List of figures ix
Notes on contributors x
Acknowledgments xii

Introduction 1
A bdelmajid H annoum

1 Semiotics of Sufism; or how to become a saint 15

A bdelmajid H annoum

2 The path of sainthood: structure and danger 40

A bdallah H ammoudi

3 Sufi eschatology and hagiography as responses to colonial

repression: an examination of the meanings of Amadu
Bamba’s trial and exiles by the French colonial
administration of Senegal 1895–1907 57
C heick A . B abou

4 Gender and agency in the history of a West African Sufi

community: the followers of Yacouba Sylla 74
S ean H anretta

5 Historical perspectives on the domed shrine in the Nilotic

Sudan 105
N eil M c H ugh

6 Genealogies of “orthodox” Islam: the Moroccan Gnawa

Religious Brotherhood, “Blackness” and the figure of Bilal
ibn Rabah 131
A manda E . R ogers
viii   Contents
7 The promise of sonic translation: performing the festive
sacred in Morocco 150
D eborah A . K apchan

8 The visual performative of Senegalese Sufism 175

A llen F . R oberts and M ary N ooter R oberts

9 A Darfur-­Doha encounter and a Sufi mystic’s whirling

trance for peace 209
R ogaia M ustafa A busharaf

10 Rethinking the distinction between popular and reform

Sufism in Egypt: an examination of the mawlid of
Muhammad Mitwalli Sha‘rawi 226
J ac q uelene B rinton

Index 247
Figures

3.1 Depiction of homecoming celebration in Daaru Salaam

organized by Amadu Bamba’s brother, Shaykh Anta Mbakke,
after Bamba’s return from Gabon  61
3.2 View of the minaret of the mosque Cheikh Ahmadu Bamba
located on “Mountain Saint” in Libreville at the place where
Ahmadu Bamba is said to have escaped a French firing squad 66
5.1 Tomb of ‘Abd Allāh al-‘Arakī at Abū Ḥarāz 117
5.2 Tomb of Muḥammad al-­Tūm b. Bān al-­Naqā (Bānnaqā)
al-­Ya‘qūbābī near ‘Amāra Shaykh Hajū 119
5.3 Tombs of Aḥmad al-­Rayyaḥ, Yūsuf Abū Sharā (rebuilt) and
al-­Ṭirayfī Abū Nāmūs at Abū Ḥarāz 120
5.4 Tomb of Aḥmad al-­Rayyaḥ al-‘Arakī at Abū Ḥarāz 122
5.5 Tomb of Mūsā Abū Quṣṣa al-­Ya‘qūbābī at al-­Ḥumr 123
7.1 Sufism in action: Ahmed Toufiq at the Fes Festival 163
7.2 Sufism in action: Faouzi Skali at the Fes Festival 164
7.3 The “club de Fes”: Mathieu Ricard, Frédéric Lenoir, Thierry
de Montbrial, Idrissa Seck, Jacques Attali 165
8.1 A comfortable living room endowed with Tijani sacred
images. Zone B, Dakar 178
8.2 Serigne Faye’s “imagorium” tucked into a crowded compound
in the Medina, an inner-­city neighborhood of Dakar 180
8.3 Serigne Faye’s imagorium in his new home in the Medina, Dakar 184
8.4 Vignette from the fading mural of Pape Samb (also known as
“Papisto”) in Bel-­Air, depicting Sheikh Amadou Bamba,
Sheikh Ibra Fall, and Bamba’s second caliph, Serigne Falilou 188
8.5 Vignette from Papisto’s Bel-­Air mural showing the soccer star
El Hadji Diouf, Moses, and former president Jimmy Carter 190
8.6 The compound of Serigne Omar Sy as encountered in 1994 194
8.7 Serigne Omar Sy’s compound after the first arson 199
8.8 Detail of Serigne Sy’s compound in 2009 200
9.1 Diagram 1: 1957–1990 215
9.2 Diagram 2: 1993–2000 215
9.3 Diagram 3: 2003–2008 216
9.4 Diagram 4: levels of dialogue 223
Contributors

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at

George­town University in Doha, Qatar. Her books include Transforming Dis-
placed Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement
(2009), Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives (ed.) (2006), and
Wanderings: Sudanese Migrants and Exiles in North America (2002).
Cheick A. Babou is an Associate Professor of History at University of Pennsyl-
vania. He is the author of Fighting the Greater Jihad (2007) and numerous
articles and essays on Sufi groups and their networks.
Jacqueline Brinton teaches religious studies at the University of Kansas. Her
most recent book is Preaching Islamic Renewal: Religious Authority and
Media in Modern Egypt (2015).
Abdallah Hammoudi is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University.
He is author of The Victims and its Masks (1993), Master and Disciple
(1997), and Season in Mecca (2005).
Abdelmajid Hannoum is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and African
Studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Colonial Histories,
Post-­Colonial Memories (2001) and Violent Modernity (2010).
Sean Hanretta is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University.
He is the author of Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History
of an Emancipatory (2009).
Deborah A. Kapchan is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at New
York University. Her books include Gender on the Market: Moroccan
Women and the Revoicing of Tradition (1996) and Traveling Spirit Masters:
Moroccan Music and Trance in the Global Marketplace (2007).
Neil McHugh is an independent scholar (Emeritus Professor of History, Fort
Lewis College). He is the author of Holymen of the Blue Nile: The Making of
an Arab Islamic Community in the Nilotic Sudan, 1500–1850 (1994).
Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts are both Professors in the UCLA
Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Mary Roberts also serves as
 Contributors   xi
Consulting Curator of African Arts at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art. The Robertses conduct research, write, and organize museum exhibitions
together, including the NEH-­funded A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban
Senegal that traveled to six U.S. museums from 2003 to 2008. The
accompanying book was recognized with the African Studies Association’s
Herskovits Prize as the best volume on African Studies of 2003, and the
Rubin Outstanding Publication Award as the best work on African arts of
2001–2003.
Amanda E. Rogers is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Transcul-
tural Violence Initiative at Georgia State University. Previously an Andrew
W. Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin-­Madison, she holds a PhD from Emory University
(2013), with primary specialties in Visual Culture/Art History, as well as
Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian Studies.
Acknowledgments

The idea of this volume originated in a conference I co-­organized with my col-

leagues at the Kansas Center for African Studies at the University of Kansas in
February 2007. Since that date, most of the contributors except three pursued
publishing their papers somewhere else. My co-­organizers too pursued other pro-
jects and I was left with what I believed was an important topic—Sufi practices in
Africa. I would like first to express special thanks to Gitti Salami and Garth
Myers who co-­organized the conference and later, with Peter Ukpokodu, encour-
aged me to pursue the topic on my own. My special thanks also to the Kansas
Center for African Studies for having provided the funds to organize and host the
conference. My sincere thanks to all the contributors of this volume. Allen
Roberts suggested other possible contributors and provided encouragements all
along. I am grateful for Abdallah Hammoudi, Sean Hanretta, and Deborah
Kapchan not only for permission to reproduce previously published articles, but
also for having generously made sure that the fees for such reproduction were
waived or reduced to a minimum that I could afford. My thanks are due to: the
American Anthropological Association for permission to reproduce the article by
Deborah Kapchan (first appeared in American Anthropologist, Vol. 11, No. 4
(2008): 467–483); Marcus Wiener for permission to reproduce the article by
Abdallah Hammoudi (first appeared in Princeton Papers, Vol. 3 (1994): 71–88);
Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce the article by Sean Han-
retta (first appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 50, No. 2
(2008): 478–508); and Black Renaissance/Noire for permission to reproduce the
article by Rogaia Abusharaf (first published in Black Renaissance/Noire, Vol. 11,
No. 1 (2011): 146–158). Funds were also provided by Northwestern University,
University of Kansas, Middle Eastern Studies Program, and the Anthropology
department at the University of Kansas generously supported this project.
Other colleagues provided advice, suggestions, criticism, and poof-­reading of
parts of the manuscript. I would like to thanks especially my late friend Shahab
Ahmed, Bart Dean, Jacqueline Brinton, and Adam Sabra. I thank all the contrib-
utors for their patience especially with this project that took several years to
materialize.
I would also like to express my warm thanks to two mentors under whom my
own contribution was first written as a thesis at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
 Acknowledgments   xiii
Sciences Sociales in Paris: Lucette Valensi and the late Daniel Reig. The first
introduced me to historical research, the second to semiotic analysis. Even
though much of the thesis was summed up, rewritten, and updated, the chapter is
still in crucial ways a product of their mentorship.
My special thanks to Ian Netton for his support for this project, but also for
his advice to make it more substantial. Without him, surely the book would have
been much shorter. Holly Jones and Emma Critchley were patient and always
helpful. I am also grateful to Steve Turrington for his meticulous editing.
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
Abdelmajid Hannoum

If Islam is to be understood as part of a local culture—a culture that shapes it and

is shaped by it—we can certainly say that what is often called popular Islam in
Africa is mostly Sufism, with its variety of cultural forms. This Sufism grew out
of diverse locations, and out of a multiplicity of Sufi schools and doctrines that
traveled to these places. Indeed, the African continent, including the region com-
monly called the Maghreb, has been transformed by Sufism and has undoubtedly
transformed Sufism, too. It is this fact that makes some historians argue that the
history of Islam in Africa is mainly a history of Sufism, and that Sufism in Africa
differs in practices as well in doctrines from Sufism elsewhere. Put simply, one
usually refers to African Sufism not as a different brand of Islam, but as a distinct
form of Sufism. Sufism in Africa has histories and cultural specificities. In this
volume we speak more about African Sufism than about Sufism in Africa, pre-
cisely to highlight its historical and cultural specificities.
Our volume proposes a study of African Sufism in texts and contexts, in dis-
course and in action, in performance and in imagination. The volume covers
several countries that include Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, Egypt, Sudan, Mali,
and Nigeria. By bringing together in a single volume different histories and
experiences of Sufism in various parts of the continent, we intend to bring a new
understanding of aspects of Sufism in Africa and shed lights on facets that have
remained hitherto ignored and others under-­studied.
This volume concentrates on two main aspects of Sufism, as the title itself
indicates: politics and performance. It has also two main scholarly orientations.
While the aspect of the politics of Sufism pertains largely to historical and
textual analysis to highlight paradigms of sanctity in different geographical areas
in Africa, the aspect of performance adopts decidedly an ethnographic approach.
The volume offers a perspective on Sufism that combines history, art history,
discourse analysis, performance, and ethnography to offer a multidisciplinary
understanding of Sufism in Africa.
By politics, we mean the very complex human relations that one entertains with
others—be it ordinary people or state officials.1 We also mean the ensemble of
strategies and tactics one deploys to manage these relations that are always chang-
ing. These strategies and tactics are not an end in themselves, but rather often, if
not always, revolve around the contest for authority and resources—materials as
2   A. Hannoum
well as symbolic. That the adepts of Sufism, masters and disciples, had to manage
a whole set of relations within the Sufi order and beyond it makes Sufism not only
a spiritual enterprise the purpose of which is piety, taqwâ (the closeness to the
Divine), but also a highly political enterprise the domain of which is precisely a
human one.
The concept of performance in this volume comes from a variety of vantage
points. Performance refers to the actualization of competence in linguistics and
semiotics.2 In cultural studies, cultural performance indicates the very interaction
between performers and audience3 that include: “prayers, ritual readings and rec-
itations, rites and ceremonies, festivals, and all those things we usually class
under religion and ritual rather than with the cultural and artistic.”4 Furthermore,
since the performance in question in this volume pertains to religion, that is, to
Islam in its Sufi version, the various performances of Sufis are also discussed in
terms of transformation of the self (the Sufi disciple or the Sufi saint) and a
Muslim audience. Thus Sufi rituals are considered as “multisemiotic modes of
cultural expression,” in Turner’s phrase.5 More specifically, the question of per-
formance in this volume pertains to art performance—namely music and visual
art. But the importance of performance lies not in the fact that the analyst focuses
on the message or the meaning of an artistic creation, but rather s/he looks into
an array of elements that constitute it, “the performance situation, involving per-
former, art form, audience, and setting.”6
That Sufis in Africa have built shrines, danced dances, sung songs, played
music, composed poems, invented maxims, written prose is not only largely
known and witnessed, but more importantly these buildings, dances, songs,
poems, maxims, music, and prose are precisely what makes them and confirms
that they are Sufis. To say it differently, one is not a Sufi in ordinary everyday
life, neither is one a Sufi by the sheer belief in a Sufi theology, but one is a Sufi in
acts of creation. Furthermore, these forms of creation are not only expression that
construct and convey meanings, but they are also performances in and of them-
selves, the actualization of a competence, that is of norms, rules, beliefs, etc.,
learned in society. As Bauman put it, “performance as a mode of spoken verbal
communication consists in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a
display of communicative competence.”7 It is through performance that the
subject creates her own identity and affirms herself as a subject in the first place.
However, the audience, the group, or society does not only participate by “a
display of communicative competence,” as Bauman and others have argued, but
it is also the instance of recognition itself—that which judges the performance
successful and the identity formed—or not. And in the case of an Islamic society,
re/cognition itself is granted on the basis of what is already part of cognition,
which is the life of the Prophet as a model. But first what is Sufism?
Sufism (tasawwuf) in Africa usually refers to a variety of beliefs and practices
that constitute what Western scholars have identified as mystical Islam.8 What is
also commonly called popular Islam in Africa is deeply connected with Sufism in
its various forms, because the history of Islam in the continent is in a significant
way a history of Sufism. The African continent was exposed to Islam even before
 Introduction   3
the foundation of the state of Medina by Mohamed in 622, already in the seventh
century in Ethiopia, considered by Muslims as the first hijra (migration) of 615.
But Islam started to be integrated in African life by the eighth century in the North
(initially via conquest)9 and in the East via trade by the fourteenth century (in
Somalia) despite early existence dating to the eighth century (in Ethiopia).10
However, Sufism flourished in northern Africa in the sixteenth century becoming
the real factor of both Islamization and Arabization of the region.11 In East Africa
it had reached full expansion only in the nineteenth century and even by the early
twentieth century, in the aftermath of the First World War. In West Africa, Islam
made its appearance in the fifteenth century and with great force by the nineteenth
century.12 While in eastern and western Africa, Islam remained initially the affair
of African courts and trade networks, its spread to encompass large areas and reach
significant segments of societies was largely the work of Sufi saints and their dis-
ciplines mainly through the institution of tariqa or Sufi brotherhood.13
The tariqas constituted an important political institution not only amongst
African Muslim communities, but in the Islamic world by and large. Their egal-
itarian character, their adaptability, and their simplicity made them an effective
way for Islam to spread throughout the African continent.14 But tariqas are not
only political institutions in the strict sense of the word; they are also institutions
of faith and Islamic learning. They function both as spiritual realms—places for
ritual and worship, as well as intellectual domains—institutions of Islamic know-
ledge and cultural productions. The question that begs an answer is the follow-
ing: Why was Sufism attractive to Africa even at the moment when it was facing
tenacious and strong competition from Christianity at the very peak of colonial
triumph? And since Sufism itself spread via the institutions of the tariqa, one
might ask: What is about the tariqas that made them such powerful forces to
“Islamize Africa” even in the midst of the most challenging times due to repres-
sive colonial rule and missionary proselytizing?
The answers to these historical questions cannot be simple ones. While on
one hand, Sufism and Islam generally offered the population a means of resist-
ance against colonial domination, there must have been things about Sufism
itself as a system of belief and as a religious institution expressed through
tariqas that made it appealing to the masses. In fact, it is even believed that
Sufism found more fertile soil for growth and development in Africa during this
period than anywhere and anytime in the Islamic world.15 It has also been argued
that the success of Sufism against serious odds and its appeal to Africans may
have to do with the system of beliefs itself and the ensemble of practices that
come with it.16 Hence the importance of another question: what is Sufism?
Sufis and scholars of Sufism, classical and modern, have provided definitions
that remain essentialist because they attempt to account for a system of belief
and set of practices that are profoundly diverse throughout time and space—
from the seventh century to today and almost in every corner of the globe,
including today in Europe and the Americas.17 For Sufism entails a system of
belief that stresses the texts of the Quran and the hadith as its foundational texts,
and thus Sufism claims itself not only as a brand of Islam, but as an orthodox
4   A. Hannoum
Islam in and of itself. Their use of the term tasawwuf itself is claimed to
originate from the foundational experience of Islam, it is said to be the attribute
of poverty that was largely shared by the migrants in the time of Mohamed. It
also refers to a hadith according to which Moses wore wool (souf ) when address-
ing God.18 Thus, Ibn Khaldun categorizes it as ‘ilm (science):

Its origin is that the way [tarîqa] of these people remains [the way] of the
predecessors [Salaf] and the senior companions, their successors and their
descendants, the way of truth and guidance, its origin is to devote oneself to
worship and to God, Almighty, the avoidance of the lure and the false splen-
dor of life, and abstinence from pleasure, money, and prestige that concern
commoners, isolating oneself for worship. All of this was common amongst
the Companions [of the Prophet] and the early Muslims.19

In modern times, Sufism is defined by a European Sufi as: “the vocation and
the discipline and the science of plunging into the web of one of these waves [of
Revelation] and being drawn back with it to its Eternal and Infinite Source.” He
then continues, “Sufism is a kind of mysticism [. . .]” concerned above all with
“the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.”20 Scholarly definition seems to
always adopt the definition of Sufis themselves and often cites foundational texts
by Abu Madyan, Ghazali, Ibn Arabi, Rumi to account for what is now also
known as Islamic mysticism. The entry of the Encyclopedia of Islam says:

They [Sufis] developed views about the love of God, and for this they could
quote the Quran v. 54, “He loves them, and they love Him.” They also have
a means to intensify this relation and to give it an artistic expression by
playing music and worldly poetry, in particular love poetry, and by listening
to this [samâ‘].21

However, Sufism, because of the wide range of systems of beliefs and practices
that it has covered through time and space, cannot be reduced to an a priori defini-
tion. It needs to be approached as a discursive tradition, like Islam itself, in the
understanding of Talal Asad.22 Aware of this, scholars such as Carl Ernst and Bruce
Lawrence argued that Sufism is a “vast cumulative tradition” and concluded that
“we need to enlarge the concept of Sufism to include wider and institutional con-
texts.”23 And these contexts should, I contend, also include practices such as sama‘
(listening) as well as ghinâ’ (singing), building as well as dancing, healing as well
as praying; in short what several contributors for this volume call performance.
But Sufism is not only a system of belief to be understood as “discursive
tradition,” it is also a system of belief incorporated within a tariqa that defines its
meanings and decides on its practices and rituals. Yet, tariqa also remains a prob-
lematic institution to define. Here, we have to make the distinction between a
tariqa and a zawiya. Tariqa itself is a way, a doctrine so to speak, a corpus of
knowledge with a system of authorities (called silsila) that is learned, taught, and
transmitted often within (and sometimes without) the formal institution of the
zawiya. Tariqa has a founder, a shaykr.24 Zawiya is a house (or sometimes a room
 Introduction   5
in a house) where a Sufi master initiates his disciples to a specific tariqa.25 In
other words, zawiya is the very institution where a tariqa is taught and practiced.
But zawiya is not reduced to its tariqa, since the zawiya functions also as an eco-
nomic, cultural, and social institution—and not just as a way of being in the
world. Tariqa itself preceded the zawiya. As Jamil Abun-­Nasr argues, “the expan-
sion of the tariqa since the thirteenth century took the form of the foundation of
zawiya for them in new lands, usually by local Sufis shaykhs initiated into
them.”26 Thus, while one finds only one tariqa, say Qadiriya or Tijaniya, every-
where in Africa, and in the Middle East, one finds a significant number of zawiya
(plural: zawâya) claiming affiliations with the tariqas Qadiriya and Tijaniya.
Thus, it is the zawiya themselves that operate like political, spiritual, economic,
and even cultural institutions that became important factors to spread Sufism (or
rather their tariqas, their Ways) and to resist colonial rule. A quick glance, even
today, at the maps of major zawiyas such as Qadiriya, Tijaniya, Shadiliya, demon-
strates their defiance of national and ethnic borders since they exist in North,
South, East, West, and even in the Middle East, and in Central Asia.27
Nevertheless, tariqas with their zawiyas implemented across the continent
proved themselves to be an important factor of connecting parts of the continent
to each other, and thus contributing to what historians call the Islamization of
Africa.28 Tariqas also connect the African continent itself to the Middle East and
to Asia. Furthermore, it is within these tariqas themselves that Sufism took on a
form of their own usually referred to as African Islam. It is argued that Sufism is
an African Islam insofar as Sufism implemented and developed in Africa by
local leaders in institutions of tariqa upon which they had total control.29
The connections created and cemented by Sufi orders in and beyond Africa
were a primary target for colonial regimes that practiced the famous “divide and
rule policy” in the colonies. Colonial authorities sought to oppose and under-
mine Sufi practices, control, manipulate, and sometimes utterly destroy zawiyas,
but it also generated narratives about them as part of its strategy of adversity
against them. Colonial scholarship throughout the nineteenth century focused
largely on Islam and more specifically on Sufism because of the challenge it
imposed on the colonial enterprise. Part of this scholarship was an attempt to
understand the Sufi system of beliefs, the political and social role of the tariqas,
and part of it was also to instrumentalize this knowledge for colonial rule and
conquest. Whether it was Louis Rinn in Algeria, Paul Marty in Senegal, P. J.
André in West Africa, or later Trimingham in West Africa,30 Sufism was con-
sidered to be an Islamic specificity of Africa; it was also considered to be dif-
ferent from scriptural Islam, that of the ‘ulama’, and lastly it was by and large
considered to be a threat to the then dominant colonial enterprise.31
The advent of colonialism in the name of the project of modernity was
undoubtedly the greatest challenge to Sufism.32 Not only because modernity
itself negated “religion” as unmodern and thus an expression of a premodern and
backward development, but also because colonialism as a project of conquest
threatened the very existence of Sufism itself—its system of beliefs, its institu-
tions, and its cultural heritage. Hence, quickly Sufi saints and lodges were to
6   A. Hannoum
become the main sources of anti-­colonial resistance and also the main protectors
of Islamic heritage and its traditions.33
It is interesting to note that the encounter of Europe with Islam in Africa was
an encounter in crucial ways with Sufism itself—save to a certain extent for the
case of Egypt.34 And upon this encounter that was conflictual if not utterly
violent, a discursive formation on Sufism had developed. It is then that a number
of categories were invented to create divisions, undermine Sufi connections, and
racialize Islam. Hence the birth of a number of names such as Arab Islam, Black
Islam, Islam of the Center, Islam of the Periphery, and even later between “scrip-
tural Islam” and “Sufi Islam”—the first is said to be urban, the domain of the
‘ulema’, the second rural, the realm of Sufis.35
In the middle of colonial rule, Sufism faced another enemy—nationalism, a
child of colonialism, that sought to eliminate it as a political enemy both by har-
boring the idea of progress against it and by casting its adaptability and its
strategy of survival as “collaboration.”36 By the time of the independence of
African nations in the 1960s, Sufism on the continent was perceived as the rem-
nants of an earlier age that was not only doomed to vanish, but also that the
ideology of progress worked to hasten its disappearance.
However, except for phases of nationalist fervor (that were rather short) Sufism
has proved today to be an important (lodestar and) moral compass for millions of
African Muslims from Morocco to Egypt, to the east African coast, and back west
to Senegal.37 Nowadays, Sufism is called on even publicly by nationalist govern-
ments to play a role in curbing the spread of political Islam. That political Islam is
making gains in the nationalist domain is beyond doubt, even before the so-­called
Arab Spring.38 In Morocco and in Egypt, Sufi orders benefited from strong govern-
ment support, as manifested by the several international festivals organized annu-
ally with great flourish and fanfare. In Algeria, after over a decade of bloodshed
fighting militant Islam, the government publicly encourages Sufism as a way of
life, and provides financial and political support of Sufi lodges.39 In Somalia, a
country that has been torn apart by civil war, in March 2010 Sufis were asked to
join government fights against the Shabâb, a political movement believed to be
linked to the famous infamous al-­Qaida.40 In several African countries state-­
sponsored festivals promote Sufism, often to curb the rising influence of Salafi
movements. Some Sunni institutions of ‘ulama’ themselves strategically allied
with Sufi tariqas in ways that totally blur the old divide between ‘ulama’ and Sufis.
The chapters in this volume are not a history of Sufism in the usual sense of
the use of the term “history”—a linear development, a genealogy of ideas, a
story with a beginning and end. Rather the volume offers case studies of Sufism
in Africa. It has a decidedly important historical dimensional in that it tackles
Sufism from a variety of historical moments, from the eighteenth century to the
present, in a variety of places from Sudan and Egypt to Senegal and Nigeria with
a heavy focus on the Maghreb region. The point is that by examining Sufi
experiences in these regions, a new understanding of Sufism in Africa will be
conveyed. The volume aims indeed at providing an understanding of Sufism in
Africa through a variety of examples that will in turn show that Sufi practices
 Introduction   7
and doctrines in Africa are diverse and varied. This diversity of Sufi experiences
is approached in this volume by experts in different fields working on a variety
of materials in Arabic, Wolof, French, and English.
By exploring the cultural dimension of Sufism in Africa, this volume seeks to
create a deeper understanding of the religion and perhaps to inspire consideration
of Islam as something other than an opposing world view. Sufism is already the
object of tremendous Euro-­American scholarship, but many of these studies focus
on the Middle East and Central Asia (so many are focused on Central Asia). The
several volumes that have appeared about Sufism in Africa since the 1970s make
important contributions to our understanding of the numerous discourses and
practices of one variety of Islam. Yet most of the scholarship on Sufism in Africa
consists of religious genealogies attempting to understand the spiritual ontology
of Sufism, or its colonial politics, but rarely do these works treat the wider cul-
tural practices of Sufism in the arts, rituals, and performance.41
It should be noted that this volume does not intend to participate in the more
recent efforts to rehabilitate Sufism or to defend its “return.” Its goal is academic
and therefore educational; it is an attempt to understand, in the context of intense
debate on Islam, a kind of Islam that is spiritual in its claims and highly artistic
and creative in its practices. The volume consists of chapters by experts on Islam
in Africa, and addresses Sufi arts and ritual performances. The contributions are
mostly anthropological in orientation. Each contributor tackles Sufism in a spe-
cific geographical area, focusing on one or more aspects. The authors share the
view that Sufism consists not only of an ensemble of core beliefs, but also of
cultural practices that revolve around the arts, rituals, and performance. The
volume does not intend to contribute solely to a religious history of Sufism, but
rather attempts to make use of this history to understand the practice and the pol-
itics of African Sufism.
The quest of Sufism is always political, as demonstrated by several chapters
in this volume. The quest of Sufism does indeed not only require a rupture
between the student of Sufism and his family and entourage, but also the begin-
ning of an institutional relation between the student and an institution of know­
ledge—be it a madrassa, a zawiya, a mosque, or any other form of relation
articulated on the model, described by Hammoudi in this volume, of master and
disciple. To say it differently, if as stated at the outset of this Introduction, the
history of Islam in Africa is mostly a history of Sufism, the history of Sufism is
also in large part a history of modern politics in Africa. Several chapters in this
volume examine these various politics: politics of tariqas, politics with and
within the nation state, politics with colonialism, and, of course, politics of per-
formance which are themselves performance of politics.
Sufism reached sub-­Saharan regions mostly by way of the Maghreb (that is,
the northern African region that constitutes the link between sub-­Saharan Africa
and the Middle East). It is thus imperative to examine Sufism in this region of
the North to understand its paradigms and cultural foundations.42 To this end,
both the contributions of Abdelmajid Hannoum and Abdallah Hammoudi
examine the hagiographic discourse and the practices of major Sufi saints.
8   A. Hannoum
Hannoum looks at the paradigm of sanctity in Sufi practices by analyzing a hagi-
ographic text of the eighteenth century only to show how the ideal type of the
Sufi saint is constructed via displacement: that is, travel to specific places (a
travel performance, so to speak), regulated by cultural norms. Some places are
imagined as closer to the origin of the Islamic faith than others, and thus purify
the Sufi saint himself till he reaches a supreme stage that makes him capable of
performing miracles such as uttering poetry and revelation. Hannoum argues that
in this transformation, the Sufi saint follows the Prophetic model that begins
with initiation and when successful, ends with ascension (mi’râj). The spiritual
enterprise, when completed, tends to develop into a political project and often
competes with the established political order. Hence the classical theme in hagi-
ographic literature of the opposition between the Saint and the Sultan. Ham-
moudi extends his analysis to include several Sufi practices throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth century that also demonstrate how Sufi practices per-
formed according to cultural rules significantly participate in the construction of
the self and transform the ordinary person, usually a child, into a holy man
whose enterprise is surely spiritual, but is also undoubtedly political. Hammoudi
points to the centrality of the Sufi model of master and disciple as a dichotomy
foundational to North African political culture. Therefore, he concludes that
refers “Arab authoritarianism” has its cultural origin in this relation.
The politics of Sufism is also clearly articulated in the chapter by Cheick
Babou using the case of Amadu Bamba. In it, the author examines Sufism in
relation to colonial politics. Indeed, in the very midst of the colonial period in
the late nineteenth century, the Sufi saint Amadu Bamba, founder of the Murid
Muslim order in Senegal, disturbed the French with his anticolonial politics—so
much so that they exiled him to Gabon from August 1895 to November 1902.
Babou not only discusses the interaction of Sufi politics and colonial powers, but
also examines how this Sufi narrative of anticolonial resistance continues to play
an important role in national imagination even today. This narrative, Babou
argues, “turn setbacks into victories” and thus makes of the colonial past a
national narrative of the present in which the Murid Sufi order has a major part.
The chapter by Hanretta examines a similar case of a Sufi Saint, Yacouba
Sylla, and his opposition to French colonial rule in Mauritania. However, Han-
retta opts not to focus on the colonial episode itself, but on the female followers
of Yacouba Sylla in West Africa that represent the majority in this Sufi move-
ment. Hanretta discusses the social and economic conditions in which women
joined and became an important group of Yacoubists. Seeing the crisis of 1929,
Hanretta argues, Yacouba Sylla engaged in daring reforms that changed some
important Islamic practices in west Africa that appealed not only to women, but
also to poor men, such as abolishing dowries, allowing women to participate in
dikhr and haidara, and urging marriages between the community irresponsive of
social status. Hanretta shows how these Sufi quasi female movements introduce
not only an Islamic vision of equality amongst its members (male and female,
nobility and poor people, free men and women and salves), but also likened its
beliefs and practices to the story of Fatema (the Prophet’s daughter). Dreaming
 Introduction   9
of the Prophet giving both recognition and instruction to the new saint is para-
digmatic in Islamic hagiographic literature, but Sylla received both interestingly
enough not from the Prophet, but from his daughter.
Jacqueline Brinton examines the politics of Sufism in contemporary Egypt by
looking first at the dichotomy that opposes Sufis to ‘ulama’ and then at the one
that opposes high Sufism to low Sufism. If Sufism was targeted as a proof of back-
wardness by Colonial rulers and as a sign of deviation from true Islam by modern-
ist reformists, it has been officially reintegrated into official Islam by the highly
authoritative institution that is Al Azhar. Brinton shows how the rise of Salafism in
Egypt and the activism of the Muslim Brotherhood (that too denigrates Sufism as
non-­Islamic) made the government, especially through the institution of the Azhar,
ally itself with Sufism in order to foster a type of Islam congruent with government
politics of moderate (even apolitical) Islam. Sufism itself, Brinton argues, has been
reinvented to “supplement more conventional practices and beliefs.” She examines
the new brand of Sufism to show not only how it is different from the Sufi prac-
tices, but also how certain practices (such as tomb visitations) were reintegrated
into its practice using the language of their critiques. Brinton takes on as an
example the highly charismatic figure Mutwali Sha‘rawi, a ‘âlim, and a television
preacher who is seen as a government mouthpiece by his critics, the least of whom
are the Muslim Brotherhoods. Yet, Sha‘rawi’s disciples, followers, and admirers,
especially after his death, also considered him a saintly figure or an “eventual
saint,” as Brinton puts it. This is to say, that this ‘âlim, who was a television celeb-
rity, is now the object of a hagiography that has turned him into a holy man and
that stresses the esoteric dimension of his teaching. Brinton focuses on the celebra-
tion of the mawlid in Sha‘rawi’s hometown and his honor as an example of how
mawlid (which is originally a Shia practice) has become part of the legacy of
Sha‘rawi now celebrated both as a ‘âlim and a friend of God, a “legacy of accept-
able, intellectual Egyptian Sufism,” Brinton says.
The chapter by Rogaia Abusharaf also addresses the question of Sufi politics,
but in the Sudan, and more specifically in Darfur, a region that has been the theater
of spectacular violence that has became world news since 2003. Abusharaf exam-
ines the call for peace in Darfur by Sheikh Musa, a Sufi member of the Tijaniya
order. Her field site is the meeting that takes place in Qatar. What one sees in this
fascinating example is how the teaching of Sufism appears to ethnography as an
effective form of mediation and conflict resolution. Abusharaf argues indeed that,
given that “the divine benevolence and clemency is the central ingredient of their
systems of beliefs,” the work of Sheikh Musa was remarkable. Tensions were
reduced as a result of his call. Part of this was also the historical role Sufism played
in feud mediation, especially in the case of Darfur in which 90 percent of the
Muslim population follows Sufi Islam. However, Abusharaf shows that the call for
peace by this Sufi leader not only reached the various ethnic groups in Darfur, it
even reached the Salafi groups as well. Through this Sheikh, the Tijaniya tariqa
showed that Sufism is capable of managing the most difficult wounds in the most
diverse circumstances. In other words, as in the past, Sufism matters, and matters
even more because of its world view, and its embrace of unity.
10   A. Hannoum
Several chapters tackle the question of performance in Sufism to draw atten-
tion to the fact that it is not only a doctrine, a set of beliefs, or an attitude that
makes it less scriptural and less ritualistic (as some canonical texts in anthropol-
ogy have for a long time argued)43 and more a mood. Rather, these chapters
stress the fact that Sufism consists also of a set of rituals and practices that set it
apart from orthodox Islam. Furthermore, given the fact that what is loosely
called Sufism in Africa refers to a variety of beliefs, rituals, and practices, the
concept of performance is also intended to explain and highlight the diversity of
rituals and practices commonly referred to as African Sufism, primarily amongst
them music, architecture, and visual arts.
It is this crucially important dimension that several chapters articulate in this
volume. Most notably are the chapters by Deborah Kapchan and Amanda
Rogers. The contributions of both Amanda Rodgers and Deborah Kapchan
investigate Sufi musical practices by focusing on the Sufi Gnawa group in
Morocco. They offer a link between the Maghreb and Africa since the Gnawa
were historically black slaves brought to the region from the sixteenth century,
precisely during the golden age of Sufism in the region.
Amanda Rogers shows how the Sufi Gnawa were able to invent an entire rep-
ertoire. This was in part the result of the North African conquest of the sub-­
Saharan region, especially Mali, and in part the result of forced migration—that
is, slavery. This musical repertoire is made of pre-­Islamic bori practices integ-
rated with Islamic practices. It is anchored in the foundational history of Islam
itself through the narrative of one of the earliest converts, a Black slave by the
name of Bilal, who is believed by some to have been adopted as a son by the
Prophet. Rogers’ contribution illustrates the dynamics of a new Islamic Sufi tra-
dition within the diversity of Islam. This new Sufism is orthodox, despite the
incorporation of what appear to be elements of non-­Islamic practices.
Deborah Kapchan examines how Sufi performance participates in the creation
of the sacred in a global audience composed of people from different faiths,
nationalities, and social milieus in the Moroccan city of Fes. She focuses on the
same Sufi group Rogers discusses, but instead of looking for origins, she looks at
sacred music festivals in Fes. More specifically, she examines the “affect
economy” of the artistic, acoustic performance. In Fes audiences are as diverse
and varied as the performances, linked together by an experience of what
Kapchan calls the “festive sacred,” an experience that makes oneness out of
multiplicity, and uniqueness out of diversity. The “sacred festive” in Fes creates a
transnational community and turns tourism into a pilgrimage. As Kapchan puts it:

[D]rawing together heterodox (multi-­faith) audiences from all over the globe,
these festivals create public sentiment through the re-­appropriation and fet-
ishization of the category of the “sacred,” creating in the process a new form of
pilgrimage in sacred tourism and a new kind of liturgy in world sacred music.

Sufis are also known for their architectural design; they are great builders of
mosques, shrines, and even cities. Throughout Muslim Africa, Sufi shrines
 Introduction   11
express faith via various types of building and designs. As Neil McHugh argues
in his chapter on Sufi shrines in the Sudan, these shrines are the result of
exchanges between different areas of the Muslim world, and also between the
Sudan and other non-­Islamic traditions, including Christian and animist. Sufi
shrines in the Sudan, Neil maintains, express their system of beliefs through their
form. This system includes an ecumenical ideology in which the self and the
other are part and parcel of the same entity. They can be separated only by an
exclusive ideology, but they can also reunite, using Sufi knowledge that intuit-
ively sees the connections where the mind may not. The same shrines are not
only monuments recounting the deeds of bygone saints and Sufis; they are places
of pilgrimage as well as sites of healing.
In their chapter, Allen Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts examine the visual
performativity of Sufi culture in Senegal. Against the idea that Islam disapproves
of representation, they demonstrate that Sufi orders in Senegal place a great
emphasis on visual representation. They analyze three sites to show how visual
representation, especially of Sufis, constitute an important dimension for Sufi fol-
lowers and artists associated with Mourides, Layennes, and Tijaniya. Roberts
examine a wall graced with portraits where followers interact with the image of
the saint to benefit from his baraka. However, what is interesting about this first
site is the fact that pictures of a Tijani saint are adjacent to portraits of world
leaders in politics and arts, bringing thus, as Roberts argues, “the word to his
informal community.” Roberts also examines the visual performativity of what he
calls “domestic devotional environment.” This is a second site where again por-
traits of saints are “performed and perform,” they are drawn as a presence of the
saint and yet here too the interaction as well as the very space in which they are
performed bring blessing and promote well-­being. But the visual performativity is
not only limited to portraits of saints, it also encompasses (in the third site of
Roberts’ fieldwork) words, especially the sacred name of Allah and His Prophet.
For indeed, calligraphy is an important art in Islam whose focuses are precisely the
names of the Creator, His messenger, as well as His words from the Quran.
Roberts argues that by focusing on writing, on performing the sacred writing that
people have “found a way to live within a text so mystical that few can hope to
read its letters and phrases, yet all can benefit from its blessing.” In any case,
through a “thick description” of Sufi arts in various sites, Roberts demonstrate that
images (and words) of Sufi saints are “optic and haptic,” in their own phrasing.
This volume is not just another volume to be added to the already rich liter-
ature about Sufism. By focusing on the practices of Sufism in Africa, this volume
aims at filling an important gap in the studies of Sufism in general and the study
of Sufism in Africa in particular. Because of the various disciplines of its con-
tributors, the volume offers an interesting interdisciplinary approach to Sufism.
Our volume is distinguished by the fact that it is informed by the most recent
debates on the anthropology of religion and performance studies. And because it
is so, we hope the volume will be of interest not only to students and scholars in
African and Islamic studies, but also students of religious studies as well as per-
formances studies.
12   A. Hannoum
Notes
1 This perspective is different from that suggested by Paul Heck who argues “it is best to
speak of the politics of Sufism in terms of engaged distance—engaged with society but
in principle distant from worldly power” (“The Politics of Sufism, Is there One?” p. 14).
Heck uses the concept of politics in a strict sense—and thus overlooks the important
fact that Sufism itself, by its very distance from a certain Islam, sometimes by its very
disengagement from the state, by its very organization in tariqas, is political.
2 Austin, How to Make Things with Words; Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique
générale; Greimas, Sémantique Structurale. See chapter 1.
3 Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernizes.
4 Ibid.
5 Turner, Forest of Symbols.
6 Bauman, “Verbal Art as Performance,” p. 290.
7 Bauman, Verbal Arts as Performance, p. 11.
8 See article “Tasawwuf ” by Louis Massignon in Encylopaedia of Islam. Also, article
“Soufisme” by Jacqueline Chabbi in Encylopedia Universalis, Vol. 21. For more
detailed studies, see Ernst, Teaching of Sufism. Also, Lings, What is Sufism?
9 For a general history of the Maghreb, see Jamal Abun-­Nasr, History of the Maghreb.
Also, Laroui, L’histoire du Maghreb. For a detailed study about Sufism in North
Africa in the Middle Ages, see Amri, Al-­tasawwuf bi ifrîqiya fî al‘asr al-­wasît, p. 23.
10 Nimtz, Islam and Politics in East Africa, especially pp. 3–15.
11 Laroui, L’histoire du Maghreb.
12 Seemann, “Sufism in West Africa.”
13 For this history, see Levtzion and Pouwels, The History of Islam in Africa. See also
Hunwick, West Africa, Islam, and the Arab World.
14 Nimtz, Islam and Politics in East Africa, pp. 56, 71.
15 See article “Soufisme” by Jacqueline Chabbi in Encylopedia Universalis.
16 Nimtz, Islam and Politics in East Africa, pp. 55–71.
17 Westerlund, Sufism in Europe and North America.
18 Sahroudi, Awârif, p. 59, cited by Amri, Al-­tasawwuf bi ifrîqiya fî al‘asr al-­wasît, p. 23.
19 Ibn Khaldun, Târîkh al’ibar, p. 514.
20 Lings, What is Sufism?
21 Massignon, “Tasawwuf.”
22 See the work of Talal Asad, especially Genealogies of Religion and Formations of the
Secular.
23 Ernst and Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love, p. 13.
24 Knot, “Sufi Brotherhoods in Africa.”
25 Abun-­Nasr, Muslim Communities of Grace, p. 179. The term “zawiya” was first asso-
ciated with the term ribât which were religious hostels supported by the revenue of
awqâf (pious foundations). Ibid., pp. 61–62.
26 Ibid., p. 178.
27 For an example, see Basu and Werbner, Embodying Charisma. See also for the case
of Tijaniya, the monograph of Jamil Abun-­Nasr, The Tijaniyya.
28 Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History; Nimtz, Islam and Politics in East Africa.
29 Nimtz, Islam and Politics in East Africa, pp. 70–71.
30 Rinn, Marabouts et Khouan; Mary, Etude sur l’Islam au Sénegal; André, L’islam
noir; Trimingham, The Christian Approach to Islam in the Sudan, Islam in the Sudan,
Islam in Ethiopia, and Islam in West Africa.
31 See Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth Century Africa. Also, Roman Loi-
meier, Muslim Societies in Africa.
32 See Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-­Century Africa.
33 The scholarship on this topic is abundant. For a general view, see Abun-­Nasr, Com-
munity of Grace. Also, Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-­Century Africa.
 Introduction   13
In this volume, Chapter 3 by Cheick Babou. For the case of Algeria, see Clancy
Smith, Rebel and Saint.
34 In the case of Egypt, Napoleon’s encounter was mainly, but not exclusively, with
orthodox Islam through its institutions. See al-­Jabarti’s Napoleon in Egypt. For the
encounter with Sufism at the time of Napoleon’s expedition, see Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt.
35 The most eloquent articulation of this dichotomy can be found in Gellner, Muslim
Society.
36 For an interesting case study, see Clancy Smith, Rebel and Saint.
37 See Levtzion and Pouwels, The History of Islam in Africa; Reese, The Transmission
of Learning in Islamic Africa.
38 See Abun-­Nasr, Muslim Communities of Grace, especially pp. 237–255.
39 Muedini, Sponsoring Sufism.
40 Aljazeera, March 16, 2010. www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2010/03/2010316541691
9724.html, last accessed August 5, 2015.
41 One of the few cases is the more recent volume by Allen Roberts and Mary Nooter
Roberts, A Saint in the City.
42 For the notion of paradigm first applied by Abdallah Hammoudi on sainthood in
Morocco, see his article “Sainteté, pouvoir et société: Tamgrout aux XVIIe et XVIIIe
siècles” in Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, Vol. 35, Nos 3–4: 615–641.
See also its application on religion and politics in his Master and Disciple, Chicago
University Press, 1997. For the reworking of the notion, see Abdelmajid Hannoum,
chapter 1 in this volume.
43 Notably Geertz, Islam Observed. More so, Gellner, Saints of the Atlas.

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Another random document with
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grande sforzo, vi sarete capacitati del vero stato e delle condizioni di
Pompei al momento della sua distruzione.
A me, sorretto dalla memoria delle antiche storie e de’ classici
scrittori e de’ poeti di Roma antica, percorrendo fra i più concitati
sussulti del cuore le vie dissepolte di Pompei, davanti le macerie e
gli avanzi solenni di questi pubblici edificj, quest’opera di
immaginosa ricostruzione riuscì agevole e spontanea. Fu per poco,
se nel varcar la soglia della Basilica, non udissi le arringhe degli
avvocati, nel rasentar le colonne del Foro non mi togliessi per
reverenza il cappello al passar delle maestose figure di Pansa e di
Olconio e non mi commovessi alla passione di questo giovane
innamorato, che lungi dall’aver guasto il cuore dalla general
corruzione, così io credessi vedere graffire sentimentalmente sulla
muraglia:

Scribenti mi dictat amor monstratque Cupido

Ah! peream sine te si Deus esse velim [315].

FINE DEL PRIMO VOLUME

 INDICE

Dedica Pag. V
Intendimenti dell’Opera VII
Introduzione 1

CAPITOLO I. — Il Vesuvio. — La carrozzella

napoletana — La scommessa d’un Inglese
— Il valore d’uno schiaffo — Pompei! —
Prime impressioni — Il Vesuvio — Temerità
giustificata — Topografia del Vesuvio — La
storia delle sue principali eruzioni — Ercole
nella Campania — Vi fonda Ercolano — Se
questa città venisse distrutta
contemporaneamente a Pompei — I popoli
dell’Italia Centrale al Vesuvio —
Combattimento di Spartaco — L’eruzione
del 79 — Le posteriori — L’eruzione del
1631 e quella del 1632 — L’eruzione del
1861, e un’iscrizione di V. Fornari —
L’eruzione del 1868 — Il Vesuvio ministro
di morte e rovina, di vita e ricchezza —
Mineralogia — Minuterie — Ascensioni sul
Vesuvio — Temerità punita —
Pompejorama 15

CAPITOLO II. — Storia. Primo periodo. — 41

Divisione della storia — Origini di Pompei
— Ercole e i buoi di Gerione — Oschi e
Pelasgi — I Sanniti — Occupano la
Campania — Dedizione di questa a Roma
 — I Feciali Romani indicon guerra a’
Sanniti — Vittoria dell’armi romane — Lega
de’ Campani co’ Latini contro i Romani —
L. Annio Setino e T. Manlio Torquato —
Disciplina militare — Battaglia al Vesuvio
— Le Forche Caudine — Rivincita de’
Romani — Cospirazioni campane contro
Roma — I Pompejani battono i soldati della
flotta romana — Ultima guerra de’ Sanniti
contro i Romani

CAPITOLO III. — Storia. Periodo secondo.

— La legione Campana a Reggio — È
vinta e giustiziata a Roma — Guerra
sociale — Beneficj di essa — Lucio Silla
assedia Stabia e la smantella — Battaglia
di Silla e Cluenzio sotto Pompei — Minazio
Magio — Cluenzio è sconfitto a Nola —
Silla e Mario — Vendette Sillane — Pompei
eretto in municipio — Silla manda una
colonia a Pompei — Che e quante fossero
le colonie romane — Pompei si noma
Colonia Veneria Cornelia — Resistenza di
Pompei ai Coloni — Seconda guerra
servile — Morte di Spartaco — Congiura di
Catilina — P. Silla patrono di Pompei
accusato a Roma — Difeso da Cicerone e
assolto — Ninnio Mulo — I patroni di
Pompei — Augusto vi aggiunge il Pagus
Augustus Felix — Druso muore in Pompei
— Contesa di Pompejani e Nocerini —
Nerone e Agrippina — Tremuoto del 63
che distrugge parte di Pompei 61

CAPITOLO IV. — Storia. Periodo secondo. 91

 — Leggi, Monete, Offici e Costume — Il
Municipio — Ordini cittadini — Decurioni,
Duumviri, Quinquennale, Edili, Questore —
Il flamine Valente — Sollecitazioni elettorali
— I cavalieri — Gli Augustali — Condizioni
fatte alle Colonie — Il Bisellium — Dogane
in Pompei — Pesi e misure — Monete —
La Hausse e la Baisse — Posta —
Invenzione della Posta — I portalettere
romani — Lingua parlata in Pompei —
Lingua scritta — Papiri — Modo di scrivere
— Codicilli e Pugillares — Lusso in Pompei
— Il leone di Marco Aurelio — Schiavi —
Schiavi agricoltori — Vini pompejani —
Camangiari rinvenuti negli scavi — Il garo
o caviale liquido pompejano — Malati
mandati a Pompei

CAPITOLO V. — Storia. Periodo secondo.

— Il Cataclisma — T. Svedio Clemente
compone le differenze tra Pompejani e
Coloni — Pompei si rinnova — Affissi
pubblici — La flotta romana e Plinio il
Vecchio ammiraglio — Sua vita — La
Storia Naturale e altre sue opere — Il
novissimo giorno — Morte di Plinio il
Vecchio — Prima lettera di Plinio il Giovane
a Tacito — Diversa pretesa morte di Plinio
il Vecchio — Seconda lettera di Plinio il
Giovane a Tacito — Provvedimenti inutili di
Tito Vespasiano 127

CAPITOLO VI. — Gli Scavi e la Topografia. 161

— I Guardiani — Un inconveniente a
riparare — Ladri antichi — Vi fu una
 seconda Pompei? — Scoperta della città
— Rinvenimento d’Ercolano — Preziosità
ercolanesi — Possibilità d’un’intera
rivendicazione alla luce di Ercolano —
Scavi regolari in Pompei — Disordini e
provvedimenti — Scuola d’antichità in
Pompei — C. A. Vecchi — Topografia di
Pompei — Le Saline e le Cave di pomici —
Il Sarno

CAPITOLO VII. — Le Mura — Le Porte —

Le Vie. — Le Mura, loro misura e
costruzione — Fortificazioni — Torri —
Terrapieno e Casematte — Le Porte — Le
Regioni e le Isole — Le Vie — I
Marciapiedi — Il lastrico e la manutenzione
delle vie — La via Consolare e le vie
principali — Vie minori — Fontane
pubbliche — Tabernacoli sulle vie —
Amuleti contro la jettatura — Iscrizioni
scritte o graffite sulle muraglie —
Provvedimenti edili contro le immondezze
— Botteghe — Archi — Carrozze — Cura
delle vie 181

CAPITOLO VIII. — I Templi. — Fede e 219

superstizione — Architettura generale de’
templi — Collocazione degli altari — Are
ed altari — Della scelta dei luoghi —
Tempio di Venere — Le due Veneri —
Culto a Venere Fisica — Processione —
Descrizione del tempio di Venere in
Pompei — Oggetti d’arte e iscrizioni in
esso — Jus luminum opstruendorum —
Tempio di Giove — I sacri principj —
 Tempio d’Iside — Culto d’Iside — Bandito
da Roma, rimesso dopo in maggior onore
— Tibullo e Properzio — Notti isiache —
Origini — Leggenda egizia — Chiave della
leggenda — Gerarchia Sacerdotale — Riti
— Descrizione del tempio d’Iside in
Pompei — Oggetti rinvenuti — Curia Isiaca
— Voltaire e gli Zingari — Tempio
d’Esculapio — Controversie — Cenni
mitologici — Il Calendario Ovidiano concilia
le differenze — Descrizione — Tempio di
Mercurio — Descrizione del tempio —
Tempio della Fortuna — Venerata questa
dea in Roma e in Grecia — Descrizione del
suo tempio — Antistites, Sacerdotes,
Ministri — Tempio d’Augusto — Sodales
Augustales — Descrizione e Pittura,
Monete — Tempio di Ercole o di Nettuno —
Detto anche tempio greco — Descrizione
— Bidental e Puteal — Tempio di Cerere
— Presunzioni di sua esistenza — Favole
— I Misteri della Dea Bona e P. Clodio — Il
Calcidico era il tempio di Cerere? — Priapo
— Lari e Penati — Cristianesimo — Ebrei e
Cristiani

CAPITOLO IX. — I Fori. — Cosa fossero i

Fori — Agora Greco — Fori di Roma —
Civili e venali — Foro Romano — Comizj
— Centuriati e tributi — Procedimento in
essi per le elezioni de’ magistrati, per le
leggi, per i giudizii — Foro Civile
Pompejano — Foro Nundinario o
Triangolare — Le Nundine —
Hecatonstylon — Orologio Solare 305
CAPITOLO X. — La Basilica. — Origine
della denominazione di Basilica — Sua
destinazione in Roma — Poeti e cantanti
— Distribuzione della giornata — Interno
ed esterno delle Basiliche — Perchè
conservatone il nome alle chiese cristiane
— Basiliche principali cristiane — Basilica
di Pompei — Amministrazione della
giustizia, procedura civile e penale —
Magistrati speciali per le persone di vil
condizione — Episodio giudiziario di Ovidio
— Giurisprudenza criminale — Pene —
Del supplizio della croce — La pena
dell’adulterio — Avvocati e Causidici 325

CAPITOLO XI. — Le Curie, il Caldicico, le

Prigioni. — Origine ed uso delle Curie —
Curie di Pompei — Curia o Sala del Senato
— Il Calcidico — Congetture di sua
destinazione — Forse tempio — Passaggio
per gli avvocati — Di un passo dell’Odissea
d’Omero — Eumachia sacerdotessa
fabbrica il Calcidico in Pompei —
Descrizione — Cripta e statua della
fondatrice — Le prigioni di Pompei —
Sistema carcerario romano — Le Carceri
Mamertine — Ergastuli per gli schiavi —
Carnifex e Carnificina — Ipotiposi 365
 ERRORI CORREZIONI

Pag. lin.
4 17, vi morisse e Stazio e Silio
Italico e altri
illustri vi si
ispirassero
6 ultima linea: S’intromette il S’intromette il
Tirreno. Tirreno infuriato
13 19, mi do dovea mi dovea
28 12, dice chè dice che
41 17, horrendum, horrendum,
ingens informe, ingens
44 24, dovendo dovendo
poggiare appoggiarsi
71 5, soggetta ligia persona
persona
74 6, Lucio Lucio Cornelio
Cornelio congiunto
parente
76 11, non veridiche non sempre
veridiche
79 9, la dissenzione la dissensione
81 22, patrizii e i patrizii e i plebei
plebei
203 15, distici di distici che
Ovidio erroneamente
alcuni dissero di
Ovidio
325 in fine del La pena
sommario dell’adulterio —
Avvocati e
Causidici
 NOTE:

1. Epist. Ex Ponto. Lib. II. ep. III.

Il primo ei fu che me sì audace rese

Da commettere i miei carmi alla Fama;
Egli all’ingegno mio guida cortese.

2. Veggasi al Canto XII l’Odissea d’Omero, così egregiamente tradotta in

versi dal chiarissimo cav. dottor Paolo Maspero, da oscurar di molto la
fama della versione di Ippolito Pindemonte.

3. Già Casina Reale, avente a lato sinistro il Castel dell’Ovo che si avanza
in mare, donata da Garibaldi dittatore ad Alessandro Dumas; ma
rivendicata poscia — non da Garibaldi — venne venduta e convertita
nell’attuale Albergo di Washington, tra i primarj della città.

4. Naturalis Historiæ, Lib. III.

5. Hortensii villa quæ est ad Baulos, Cicero Acad. Quæst. Lib. 4.

6. Ενθα διὲ Κιμμερἰων ανδρων δῆμοστε πὀλιστε, che si tradurrebbe

letteralmente: Qui poi sono degli uomini Cimmerj, il popolo e la città.

7. Lib. 1. 6; Dionigi d’Alicarnasso, IV; Aulo Gellio, 1. 19.

8. Georgica L. II. v. 161. Questi versi suonerebbero nel nostro idioma:

O fia che il porto qui rammenti e l’opre

Al Lucrin lago aggiunte, e il corrucciato
Flutto ch’alto vi mugge; ove lontano
Respinto il mar, la Giulia onda risuona
E dove dentro dell’Averno i gorghi
S’intromette il Tirreno infuriato.

9. Virgil. Georg. L. I. v. 468.

10. Monumenta epigraphica pompejana ad fidem archetyporum expressa.

Napoli 1854. Edizione di soli cento esemplari fatta a spesa di Alberto
 Detken.

11. Le Case ed i Monumenti di Pompei disegnati e descritti. Napoli, in corso

di publicazione.

12. Pompei. Seconda edizione, Firenze 1868. Successori Le Monnier.

13. Inscriptions gravée au trait sur les murs de Pompei.

14. Sono gli uomini di questo villaggio che vengono più specialmente
reclutati per la difficile e perigliosa pesca del corallo sulle coste di
Barberia, e così possono ricondursi di poi in patria con un bel gruzzolo
di danaro.

15. La misurazione dell’elevazione del Vesuvio sopra il livello del mare varia
nelle scritture dei dotti che la vollero fissare. Nollet nel 1749 la disse di
593 tese; Poli nel 1791 di 608 tese; il colonnello Visconti nel 1816 di
621; Humboldt dopo l’eruzione del 1822 la rinvenne di 607 tese, e nel
settembre 1831 l’altezza della punta più alta del cono risultò di tese 618.
La tesa, antica misura di Francia, era lunga sei piedi; la nuova tesa
francese si chiama doppio metro e per conseguenza contiene 6 piedi, 1
pollice, 10 linee. Siffatta varietà di misure non da altro procede che dagli
elevamenti e dalle depressioni, le quali si avvicendano secondo le
diverse eruzioni.

16. «Ricerche filosofico istoriche sull’antico stato dell’estremo ramo degli

Appennini che termina dirimpetto l’isola di Capri.»

17. «Partito Ercole di poi dal Tevere, seguendo il lido italiano si condusse al
Campo Cumeo, nel quale è fama essere stati uomini assai forti, ed a
cagione di loro scelleratezze, appellati giganti. Lo stesso Campo del
resto, denominato Flegreo, dal colle che vomitando sovente fuoco a
guisa dell’Etna sicula, ora si chiama Vesuvio, e conserva molte vestigia
delle antiche arsioni.»

18. Storia degli Italiani, Tom. 1, pag. 99. Torino 1857.

19. Nella vita di Marco Crasso.

20. Anno 1674, pag. 146.

21. Ragguaglio dell’incendio del Vesuvio. Napoli 1694.

22. L’eguale fenomeno si avverò sul Vesuvio nella eruzione del 79. Ecco le
parole di Plinio: Nubes (incertum procul intuentibus ex quo monte;
 Vesuvium fuisse postea cognitum est) oriebatur: cujus similitudinem et
formam non alia magis arbor, quam pinus expresserit. Nam longissimo
velut trunco elato in altum, quibusdam ramis diffundebatur, etc. Epist.
XVI. Lib. VI.

23. Prodromo della Mineralogia Vesuviana. Napoli 1825.

24. Horatius, Lib. 1. Od. 3. In Virgilium Athenas proficiscentem. Gargallo

traduce, o a meglio dire, parafrasa così:

Ov’è maggior l’ostacolo,

Più impetuosa ed avida
L’umana razza avventasi
Ad ogni rischio impavida.

25. Vedi i dispacci telegrafici e giornali dell’ultima settimana del dicembre

1869.

26. Vedi Descrizione del Vesuvio di Logan Lobley.

27. Sylv. 2

«Nè allettin più del Pompejano Sarno

Gli ozii.»

28. Satir. Lib. II. Sat. 1. v. 35. Così traduce Tommaso Gargallo:

Io, che s’appulo son, se non lucano,

Dir non saprei, perchè tra due confini
L’aratro volga il venosin colono,
Colà spedito (come è vecchia fama)
Cacciatine i Sabini.

29. Secondo Esiodo, Gerione era il più forte di tutti gli uomini nell’isola
d’Eritia presso Gade o Cadice sulla costa della Spagna. I poeti venuti di
poi ne hanno fatto un gigante con tre corpi, che Ercole combattendo
uccise, menandone seco i buoi. Coloro i quali ridur vorrebbero tutta la
scienza mitologica ad un solo principio, cioè, al culto antico della natura,
pretesero Ercole un essere allegorico e non significar altro che il Sole.
Questa impresa vinta su Gerione sarebbe il decimo segno che il sole
trascorre, vale a dire i benefizj d’esso che, giunto al segno equinoziale
del Toro, avviva tutta la natura e consola tutte le genti. Vedi Dizionario
della Mitologia di tutti i Popoli di Gio. Pozzoli e Felice Romani. Milano
presso Gio. Pirotta.
30. La Mitologia chiama i Dioscuri figliuoli di Giove e afferma essere il
soprannome di Castore e Polluce. Glauco fu il primo che così li chiamò,
quando apparve agli Argonauti nella Propontide (Filostr. Paus.). È stato
dato questo nome anche agli Anaci, ai Cabiri, e ai tre fratelli che
Cicerone (De Natura Deorum 3, c. 53) chiama Alcone, Melampo ed
Eumolo. Sanconiatone conserva l’identità dei Dioscuri coi Cabiri, che
Cicerone vuol figli di Proserpina. Ritornerò su tale argomento nel
capitolo I Templi.

31. Titi Livii Historiarum. Lib. VII c. XXIX.

32. I Feciali erano sacerdoti, l’uffizio de’ quali corrispondeva a un di presso

a quello degli Araldi d’armi. Essi dovevano trovarsi particolarmente
presenti alle dichiarazioni di guerra, ai trattati di pace che si facevano,
ed avvertivano a che i Romani non intraprendessero guerre illegittime.
Allorchè qualche popolo avea offeso la Republica, uno de’ Feciali si
portava da quello per chiedergli riparazione: se questa non era
accordata subito, gli si concedevano trenta dì a deliberare, dopo i quali
legittima si teneva la guerra. E questa dichiaravasi col ritornare il Feciale
sulla frontiera nemica e piantarvi una picca tinta di sangue. Anche i
trattati si facevano da un Feciale, che durante le negoziazioni veniva
appellato pater patratus, per l’autorità che egli aveva di giurare pel
popolo. Vegliavano pure al rispetto degli alleati, annullavano i trattati di
pace che giudicavano nocivi alla Republica, e davano in mano ai nemici
coloro che li avevano stipulati.

33. Secondo la più probabile opinione, Caudio era situato dove ora il borgo
Arpaja, e le Forche Caudine in quell’angusto passo donde si discende
ad Arienzo, specialmente nel sito che si chiama pur oggi le Furchie.

34. Ora Lucera delli Pagani, nella Puglia Daunia, volgarmente Capitanata,
provincia di Foggia, nel già reame di Napoli.

35. Tito Livio; Lib. IX, c. XXXVIII.

36. Dante, Paradiso c. VII. 47. Qui parla il Poeta di Manlio Torquato che
comandò, come più sopra narrai, la morte del figliuolo per inobbedienza,
e parla di Quinzio Cincinnato.

37. Vellei Paterculi, Historiæ Lib. II. c. XIII.

38. Bell. Civ. Lib. I. c. 94.

39. De Legibus, II. 2.

40. Roma Illustrata, Ant. Thisli J. C. Amstelodami.

41. Veglie storiche. Milano 1869, presso A. Maglia.

42. Sallustio, Bellum Catilinarium, c. XVII: «Lucio Tullo, Marco Lepido

consulibus, Publius Autronius et Publius Sulla, designati consules,
legibus ambitus interrogati, pœnas dederunt. Post paullo, Catilina
pecuniarum repetundarum reus, prohibitus erat consulatum petere, quod
inter legitimas dies profiteri nequiverit». La legge Calpurnia dell’àmbito,
prodotta dal console Calpurnio Pisone nell’anno 686, era che chi avesse
colle largizioni o capziosamente conseguito il magistrato, dovesse
lasciarlo e pagare una multa pecuniaria. Catilina era stato escluso dal
chiedere il consolato, perchè reo repetundarum, che noi diremmo di
concussione, cioè di ripetizione di cose, la cui restituzione si esige da
colui che, magistrato, abbia spogliato la provincia. Essendosi i legati
d’Africa querelati assai gravemente di Catilina, ne veniva pubblicamente
accusato da Publio Clodio.

43. Quid ergo indicat, aut quid affert, aut ipse Cornelius, aut vos, qui ab eo
hæc mandata defertis? Gladiatores emptos esse, Fausti simulatione, ad
cœdem, ac tumultum. Ita prorsus: interpositi sunt gladiatores, quos
testamento patris videmus deberi. Cic. Pro. P. Sulla cap. XIX.

44. Id. ibid. cap. XXI.

45. Questi erano i triumviri deputati a trasportare, o come meglio direbbesi

con frase latina, a dedurre le colonie, chiamati perciò patroni di esse.

46. La Clientela venne istituita da Romolo, onde avvincere in nodo d’affetto

maggiore e d’interessi i patrizi e i plebei. Questi eleggevano i loro patres
per esserne protetti, e ai patres correva debito di proteggere i colentes;
interdetto ad entrambi di accusarsi avanti i tribunali, nè mai essere
nemici; pena a chi infrangesse la legge di aver mozzo il capo, vittima
sacra a Plutone. La purezza dì questa istituzione durò buona pezza: poi
degenerò come ogni umana cosa.

47. In Toscana l’aveva alle falde degli Appennini e dalla regione in cui era
situata si dicea Tusci; in Romagna l’aveva sul litorale del Mediterraneo
fra le due città di Laurento e di Ostia, e per esser più vicina a quella città
chiamavala Laurentino e l’abitava nel verno; in Lombardia due ne
possedeva lungo le ridenti sponde del Lario una nel paesello di Villa e si
nomava Commedia, e l’Amoretti nel suo Viaggio ai tre laghi credette
riconoscerla nel luogo ove v’ha la villeggiatura dei signori Caroe,
pretendendosi persino di vederne tuttora i ruderi contro l’onde del lago;
 l’altra, detta Tragedia, in altra località che forse fu presso Bellagio. Lo
che valga a rettifica dell’opinione volgare che crede la Commedia fosse
dove ora è la Pliniana, così detta unicamente perchè vi si trovi la fonte
da lui descritta nell’ultima Epistola del libro IV e dell’opinioni di taluni
scrittori che la assegnano in altra parte del lago. Alla Pliniana, venne
fabbricato da Giovanni Anguissola, altro degli uccisori di Pier Luigi
Farnese, nè prima di lui vi si riscontrarono ruderi che accusassero
antecedenti edificazioni. Della prima, in Toscana, fa una magnifica
descrizione nella lettera 6 del lib. V; della seconda in Romagna, nella
lettera 17 del lib. II.

48. Plures iisdem in locis villas possidebcat, adamatisque novis, priora

negligebat. Lett. 7 a Caccinio, lib. III. Silio Italico morì anzi in una sua
villa sul tenere di Napoli.

49. Da una fiera e passionata invettiva contro Cicerone, che Quintiliano

attribuisce senz’altro a Sallustio di lui nemico (Instit. lib. IV), tolgo il
seguente brano che ricorda appunto le villa sua in Pompei: «Vantarti
della congiura soffocata? Meglio dovresti arrossire che, te console, sia
stata messa la republica sottosopra. Tu in casa con Terenzia tua
deliberavi ogni cosa e chi dannare nel capo e chi multar con denaro, a
seconda del capriccio. Un cittadino ti fabbricava la casa, un altro la villa
di Tusculo, un altro quella di Pompei, e costoro ti parevano buoni; chi pel
contrario non ti avesse giovato, era quegli un malvagio che ti tramava
insidie nel Senato, che t’assaliva in casa, che minacciava incendiar la
città. E vaglia il vero, qual fortuna avevi e quale or possiedi? quanto
arricchisti col procacciarti cause? Come ti procurasti le splendide ville?
col sangue e colle viscere de’ cittadini; supplichevole coi nemici, altero
cogli amici, riprovevole in ogni fatto. Ed hai cuore di dire o fortunata
Roma nata te console? Infelicissima che patì pessima persecuzione,
quando nelle mani avesti giudizi e leggi. E nondimeno non ti stanchi di
rintronarci le orecchie cedan l’armi alla toga, alla favella i lauri, tu che
della Republica pensi altra cosa in piedi ed altra seduto, banderuola non
fedele a vento alcuno.» Ognuno comprenderà quanta ira partigiana
ispirasse questa invereconda tirata. Fra’ luoghi in cui Cicerone parla del
suo Casino, ve ne ha uno nell’epistola 3, lib. 7 al suo amico M. Mario,
che villeggiava in Pompei.

50. Ovidio nei Fasti, I. 614, canta:

Sancta vocant augusta patres; augusta vocantur

Templa, sacerdotum rite dicata manu
Hujus et augurium dependet origine verbi,
 Et quodcumque sua Jupiter auget ope.

51. Cap. XVII.

52. Tacito nel libro XV degli Annali c. XVII non fa che accennare sotto
quest’anno un tanto disastro: «Un terremoto in Terra di Lavoro rovinò
gran parte di Pompeja, terra grossa.»

53. Canto VI. v. 45 e segg.

54. Aulo Gellio trova la etimologia del municipio a munere capessendo; più
propriamente forse il giureconsulto Paolo: quia munia civilia capiant. E
l’uno e l’altro accennano al diritto o dono conferito della cittadinanza, a
differenza di quelle altre località che erano solo fœderatæ, ricevute dopo
vinte e a condizione inferiore, che non acquistavano la podestà patria,
nè le nozze alla romana, nè la capacità di testare a pro’ d’un romano
cittadino, o d’ereditarne, nè l’inviolabilità della persona.

55. Gargallo traduce al solito infedelmente:

Manchin seimila o sette al censo equestre,

E prode, onesto sii, probo, facondo,
Plebe sarai.

Orazio nel suo primo verso non disse censo equestre, ma sì

quadringentis: perchè il Gargallo non potè dire quattrocento? Avrebbe
egli pure fatto sapere come il poeta che traduceva, che il censo
equestre era di quattrocentomila.

56. Il laticlavo era una striscia di porpora che orlava la toga di porpora,
scendendo dal petto fino a’ ginocchi. Essa era alquanto larga a
distinzione della striscia de’ cavalieri, che però dicevasi augusticlavo.
Come basterebbe oggi dire porporato per intendersi cardinale, allora
dicevasi laticlavius per senatore; onde leggesi in Svetonio (in August., c.
38): binos laticlavios præposuit, per dire due senatori.

57. Trattato dell’Onore del Bisellio.

58. Fabretti, Inscr. 3. 324. e 601. Gruter., 475, 3.

59.

D’oro lucente altri ricchezze aduni

E molti di terreno jugeri tenga.
Lib. 1 Eleg. 1.
60. Vol. I. Appendice VI.

61. Tutti i mulattieri con Agato Vajo si raccomandano a C. Cuspio Pansa

Edile. — Il Collega Giulio Polibio fece.

62. Vedi Plinio epistola 12 del lib. II: Implevi promissum, priorisque epistolæ
fidem exsolvi, quam ex spatio temporis jam recipisse te colligo. Nam et
festinanti et diligenti tabellario dedi. Vedi anche dello stesso Plinio
l’epistola 17 del lib. III e 12 del VII e la nota alla prima lettera del suo
volgarizzatore Pier Alessandro Paravia. Venezia Tip. del Commercio
1831.

63. Storia della decadenza e rovina dell’Impero Romano di Edoardo Gibbon.

Cap. II. — Vedi anche Plin. Stor. Natur. III. 5. S. Agostino De Civitate Dei
XIX. 7. Giusto Lipsio De Pronuntiatione linguæ latinæ, c. 3.

64. Vita di Claudio, c. 6.

65. Op. cit. cap. II.

66. Tra i papiri latini si conta un frammento di poema sulla guerra di Azio.

67. Milano, 1822.

68. Ad retia sedebam: erant in proximo non venabulum aut lancea, sed
stilus et pugillares. Così Plin. loc. cit. Vedi anche Boldetti, Osserv. sopra
i Cimelii, l. 2, c. 2.

69.

Sardoniche, smeraldi, diamanti,

E diaspri egli porta in un sol dito.
V. II.

70. Svetonio, in Nerone, II.

71. Plutarco, Vita di Lucullo.

72. Plin. XIV. 6.

73. Eccone la traduzione del cav. P. Magenta:

Ecco il Vesuvio, di pampinose

Frondi or or verde, ed ove in tumidi
Vasi spremeansi uve famose.
 Ecco il bel clivo, che anteponea
Sin Bacco a Niso, su cui de’ Satiri
Lo stuol le danze testè movea.

Desso era il seggio più a Vener caro

Dello Spartano, desso era il poggio
Che col suo nome Ercol fe’ chiaro.

74.

Questa che ognor di verde erba si veste,

Che agli olmi avvince le festanti viti,
D’ulivi attrice, alla coltura, al gregge
Troverai pronta e al vomere paziente,
Questa terra ubertosa ara la ricca
Capua e l’abitator delle fiorenti
Del Vesèvo pendici.

75. Histor. Natur. Lib. XXXI, c. 7.

76. Id. ib., c. 8. Laudantur et Clazomenæ garo, Pompeiique, et Leptis.

77. Satir. Lib. II. sat. 8.

78.

Ma ingente il cucinier mucchio consumi

Di pepe e aggiunga indi falerno vino
Al garo arcano.
Lib. 7. epig. 27.

Sostituii la mia versione a quella del Magenta, perchè non comprese

che cosa fosse il garo, ch’ei tradusse per aceto, non avvertendo che ad
esso mal si sarebbe allora potuto applicare l’aggettivo secreto.

79.

Del nobil garo ora lasciva ho sete.

Lib. 13. ep. 77.

80. Avuta autorità dall’imperatore Cesare Vespasiano Augusto i luoghi

pubblici da’ privati posseduti Tito Svedio Clemente tribuno, ventilate le
cause ed eseguite le misure, restituì alla republica de’ Pompejani.

81. Guida di Pompei, pag. 27.

82. Giorn. degli Scavi. Luglio e Agosto 1863, pag. 228.

83. Ne’ possedimenti di Giulia Felice, figlia di Spurio, si affittano dalle prime
idi di agosto alle seste idi per cinque anni continui un bagno, un
venereo, e novecento botteghe colle pergole e co’ cenacoli. Se taluno
esercitasse in casa (o il condannato) lenocinio, non è ammesso alla
conduzione.
La formula invece, quale è ristabilita dal sen. Fiorelli, vorrebbe dire: se
trascorrerà il quinquennio, la locazione ai riterrà tacitamente rinnovata.
Altri poi, leggendo aggiunta alla iscrizione surriferita anche le parole
SMETTIVM . VERVM . ADE, pretendono interpretare le sigle in
questione nella seguente maniera: si quis dominum loci ejus non
cognoverit, — se alcuno non conosca il padrone di questo luogo, si
rivolga a Smettio Vero.

84. Veggasi: Della Patria dei due Plinii, Dissertazione di Pier Alessandro
Paravia indirizzata al cav. Ippolito Pindemonte, edita nell’appendice al
Volgarizzamento delle Lettere di Plinio il Giovane dello stesso Paravia,
già altre volte da noi citato. Il Paravia prova, a non più lasciar ombra di
dubbio, i Plinii essere stati di Como.

85. Essai de Zoologie Générale, par. I. 1, 5.

86. De Viris Illustribus.

87. «Le mofete, scrive Giuseppe Maria Galanti, formano molti fenomeni
curiosi. Terminate le grandi eruzioni sogliono esse manifestarsi sotto le
antiche lave e ne’ sotterranei, e qualche volta hanno infettata tutta
l’atmosfera. Non sono che uno sviluppamento di acido carbonico. Circa
quaranta giorni dopo l’ultima grande eruzione del 1822 comparvero le
mofete nelle cantine ed altri luoghi sotterranei delle adiacenze del
Vulcano. L’aria mofetica cominciava all’altezza del suolo superiore, e
spesso infettava anche l’aria esterna. In alcuni sotterranei si
manifestarono rapidamente, in altri lentamente: dove durarono pochi
giorni e dove sino a due mesi. Dopo l’eruzione del 1794 molte persone
perirono per mancanza di precauzione contro queste mofete. Esse si
sviluppano più assai nei luoghi dove terminano le antiche lave, cioè nei
luoghi prossimi alla pedementina del Vulcano, forse perchè il gas acido
carbonico che si svolge in copia nell’interno del Vulcano, si fa strada
negli interstizi delle lave, le quali partono tutte dal focolare vulcanico.»
Napoli e Contorni, 1829. — Vedi anche La storia de’ fenomeni del
Vesuvio di Monticelli e Covelli. Napoli, 1843.