The festival is common throughout the non Wahhabi Muslim world, in Egypt it is the Prophet Mohamed's birthday the little sugar people are made for. The female figure, who always wears a taj/crown, is referred to as "The Bride" or "The Bride of the Saint", the male figure is always on a horse and carries a sword. They are clearly not Islamic (the Salafs are right on that one!) I thought that St George might be involved as he is big in Egyptian Christianity but the Copts don't seem to have anything similar. Tempting to surmise they could be even older. Relatives have confirmed the sugar folk are absent from many of the usual outlets this year.
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On 14 Feb 2012, at 10:58, mandrake <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On 14/02/2012 09:18, Noah Gardiner wrote:
>
> many thanks for info
> adding that to my weblog now : )
>
>> 'Mawlid' (moulid, مولد) means birthday, 'al-nabi' means the prophet, i.e. Muhammad. However, in many places there will also be mawlids celebrating the birthdays of various local Sufi saints (such as the mawlid for Sidi Abu al-Hajjaj in the article you cite). Mawlid traditions go back more than a millenia, but a lot of Salafis regard them as a heretical innovation, so they're controversial these days in some places. Nonetheless, throughout much of the Muslim world mawlids define the local ritual calendar, much as saints' days do in strongly-Catholic parts of Europe.
>>
>> - Noah
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