ABSTRACT
The origins of the mawlid celebration are widely considered, both among Muslim and secular scholars, to be well known. Even the most avid supporters of the celebration admit that it is an innovation (bid‘a) that originated centuries after the life of the Prophet; no serious efforts have been made to obfuscate the practice’s belated origins, or to project it into the distant Islamic past. Furthermore, although many details remain obscure, there are a number of historical accounts, contemporary or near-contemporary in origin, that trace several stages of the celebration’s early history.1 These have been exhaustively discussed by N.J.G. Kaptein in his monograph Muhammad’s Birthday Festival. The Fatimid dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 358 AH/969 CE to 567 AH/1171 CE, is known to have celebrated the Prophet’s birthday as a state occasion. The observance, which differed little from other festivals sponsored by the Fatimid dynasty,2 involved the distribution of sweets to state and religious functionaries and a brief ceremonial viewing of the ruling Fatimid imam.3 The celebration’s obvious function, within the religious agenda of the Shi’ite Fatimid state, was simultaneously to exalt the Prophet’s family and to emphasize the Fatimid imams’ status as members and patrons of that lineage. Thus, the birthday of the reigning imam was celebrated along with those of the Prophet’s most important kin. The exact chronological limits of Fatimid celebration of the mawlid are unknown. Kaptein infers that they began no earlier than 415 AH, the end point of his last source that fails to mention them; the earliest preserved descriptions of Fatimid mawlid ceremonies describe events no earlier than the beginning of the sixth century AH/twelfth century CE, the only firm terminus ante quem.4 Whether the celebrations ceased with the fall of the dynasty itself, or had gained sufficient acceptance among the Egyptian population to survive the return to Sunni rule, is unknown.5
