Tunis et la naissance de la Shādhiliyya. Hagiographie et conflits de mémoire dans le Manāqib al-shaykh ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Mzūghī

Abstract

The present study sheds light on the possible contribution of the Manāqib al-shaykh ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Mzūghī, a Tunisian hagiographic source datable to the 7th/14th century and partially edited by Nelly Amri in 2013, to the ongoing historiographical renewal on the origins of the Sufi way of the Shādhiliyya. In particular, the article aims at valorizing the heuristic potential of these Manāqib in relation to the "conflicts of memories" between Egyptian and North African currents of the Shādhiliyya recently highlighted by historians. The central thesis of the article is that the anonymous hagiographer of Shaykh al-Mzūghī (the latter being a Tunisian companion of the eponymous master al-Shādhilī), is the interpreter of an entirely Tuniso-centric representation of the Shādhiliyya and its origins, which differs from the competing systems of representations so far identified by researchers : the Egyptian-centric vision of the Alexandrian Shaykh Ibn ʿAṭā 'Allāh al-Iskandarī, which was long hegemonic both in Islamic countries and in the West, and the "multipolar" representations produced, respectively, by North African Shaykhs Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh and al-Fāsī and recently highlighted by Vincent Cornell, Kenneth Honerkamp, Nathan Hofer and others

Keywords

• Tunisia
• Egypt
• Maghreb
• Sufism
• Shādhiliyya
• medieval Muslim hagiography