Rituals of folk and mystical art in Upper Egypt .. Long nights and joys never ending

Hoda Omran-Assiut

Medieval Assiut, Upper Egypt, known for its distinct composition of several Arab migrant tribes, most notably the Bani Hilal and the tribe of Hawara and children of Zaid, slaves and others, and oral art occupies a large area of ​​the lives of the people of Assiut, accompanied by songs, tales or proverbs from birth to death.

The poet and the collector of heritage Darwish Assiouti emphasizes the great diversity of oral literary art in Upper Egypt, there is poetry and the most important heritage singing, which deals with the biography of man from birth to death, and "many" accompanying the death, wedding songs, songs for children toys, work songs, and nostalgic pilgrims , And others.

Al-Assyouti adds to Al-Jazeera Net that there are also "poetic narratives such as Sir and poetic poems formulated in the form of squares, but they tell a drama, and from the prose folk heritage we have tales, proverbs, spells and others."

Ritual occasions
The rituals of any occasion in Upper Egypt begin to prepare for days, and every night witnesses a different weather, for example, the wedding begins days before the wedding night, where the joys slaughter cattle, and invite the people of the village to joy, and before it a large table where all the people, men and women alone, are held. The nights of women are far from the eyes of men, singing with drum-users alone, firing Zagarid and every woman takes her part in the dance.

The songs that boast the origin Saidi "We Saaaida who say, if Jozona small Sadina .." Or songs that advise the bride to take care of her groom On overtones and on interpretations of meanings.

Mawawil and popular heroes
In the house of Khalaf Abdul Basit, leaning on his old wooden couch, he said he was following the radio, which repeated all the songs of Umm Kulthum, Abdul Wahab and Farid al-Atrash.

He began his conversation with Al Jazeera Net with money, "God, my God, O Khalij of the clay of the children of Adam," and remembers the rituals that accompanied the singing sessions that he attended as a child. Al-Azzab and his innate talent in writing and distorting Muwa'il, and then came the singers of Rababah who were focusing on the popular biographies, the most famous of which is Abu Zeid Al-Hilali.

Khalaf is aware of the intelligence of the popular singer, who is interested in winning the hearts of his fans, he hears them what they want to hear, and cites the village of Bani Zeid, who loved the hero Abu Zeid Hilali Salama, was deliberately to make him win in his battle against the ruler of Tunisia "Khalifa", and in other villages loyal to Khalifa defeated Where the singer Abu Zeid in his story so happy recipient and lavish money.

He cuts behind his conversation with us to start singing another loyal in which he laments his condition in which he became poor without money and consolation, and sees that the form of wedding now recognized did not exist, men were lining up in a long row and cheering "the love of the Prophet arrived, O son of Rumi Yashuji it ".

Headed by someone shouting behind him, swaying, dressing in women's-like clothes and holding an umbrella they rotate, Khalaf's description refers to a complete ritual of the Sufi skirt founded by Rumi, which was so prominent in Upper Egypt that it was the basis for the men to sing at the wedding.

Sufism of the Sa'idis
Khalaf belongs to the Merghani Sufi tariq, and says that he gathered the people of the tariqa every week in his house, residing the salary, the council of dhikr and the Hadra, reciting the praises of the Prophet using slavery, and singing the most famous poems of the Sufis in the love of the Prophet, such as Burda by Imam al-Bousiri, Ahmad on the scene of the scene, "and the poems of Ibn al-Farid, which occupies a great place in all the Sufi ways.

Khalaf believes that the Sufi meeting is simple and inexpensive, as women make basbousa and tea, men gather in Mandara, and beat slavery as they sing.

From the village of Bani Zeid the Kurds to the center of Abnob in the village of Kum Abu Shil, which includes one of the largest shrines of the Shazly way in Assiut of Sheikh "Imran", where he wrote on the mosque "Sheikh Sultan Mosque."

The story of Sheikh Sultan, who believes the villagers that he was a good man with dignities, and when his death and funeral stopped his motorcade at this spot and did not want to move, he was buried there and became a place of Sheikh Sultan visited by people to bless, and buried Sheikh Imran and Sheikh Abu Hassan Ibn Sheikh Imran in the same mosque Contains three shrines.

Sufism
We asked the sheikh of the mosque and the imam of the way to depict the Hadra, which began by reading the Qur'an and then reciting the dhikr in a loop, and then singing the crowd standing by cheering the word “Allah” in a slow rhythm then accelerating the rhythm and tangling hands and swaying forward and backward and then the rhythm slows to enter the chanting.

The presence of the Prophet (PBUH) depends on the recitation of each sentence in a certain rhythm and the word of His Majesty at the end of each quadrant. Suffering in love and spiritual salvation.

Biography of Sheikh Imran
Osman Yusuf Fadil, an Arabic teacher from the Shazlya way of the island, told the biography of Sheikh Omran Ahmed Omran, who was born in the village of Al-Mutiaa in Assiut, before moving to the village of Kom Abushail in 1922.He studied in Al-Azhar and was the owner of the sect, then he turned to Sufism. Before it grew in popularity and spread from Alexandria to Aswan, the Meridians came to visit his tomb each year on the anniversary of his birth.

Osman adds that they do not use tambourine or musical instruments in their chanting in contrast to other ways, stressing the values ​​of poems they want, such as the love of the divine self and praise Mohammedan and asceticism and others.

Osiouti believes that the number of people joining the Sufi orders began to decline because of the lack of inspirational sheikhs, Salafist prohibition and accusation of superstition. Assiouti stresses that the Egyptian popular group did not differentiate between singing for the Christian saint and singing for the Muslim sheikh, and the introduction and use of technology has led to the loss of many heritage and rituals of events, such as concerts. Wedding, replaced by recorded audio devices that spread noise without a singer and meaningless.