Enchantment In Egypt Essay

My thesis topic will focus on the Islamic religious environment in Egypt between the late 1800s and early 1900s and will furthermore track how Sufism and in particular the figure of the saint (living and deceased) transitioned into modernity. Using Robert Orsi’s theory of “real presence” [a theory, which asserts the real, tangible presence of supernatural beings to peoples’ bodies (supernatural beings, which people interact(ed) and participate(d) with but who also actively interact(ed) and participate(d) with people as well)] as the foundation to my theoretical understanding of enchantment, I ask: how come this social, enchanted, Islamic landscape in Egypt filled with gods, or specifically living and dead saints, jinn, relics, and other not

What is enchantment’s side of the historical narratives of disenchantment, which are then reinforced by disenchanted discourses? I intend to look at the writings of English explorers, prominent Islamic intellectuals, and the government’s institutional reforms, all causes, I argue, facilitating disenchantment in Egypt. To conclude the essay, I also hope to possibly look at contemporary examples of how the saint is treated/talked about today in Egyptian/Islamic circles online (both in English and/or Arabic), potentially pointing my research in a new direction post-master’s program. Overall, I think this project is important first because it helps to reveal and emphasize a crucial aspect of lived experiences/realities that are now, in my opinion, glossed over in current discourses of religion and specifically Sufism, which has watched as its figure of the saint has become denigrated while other manifestations of it have gained international appropriation. Ultimately, humans should not be seen as the only actors capable of action within these temporal, enchanted landscapes, and scholars of Sufism must grasp this in order to understand it more