Badawiyya

The Badawiyyah is a Sufi tariqah founded in thirteenth century Egypt by Ahmad al-Badawi, who lived from 1199 to 1276. As a tariqah it holds no distinct doctrines of its own, but it was extremely popular during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, when Mamluk sultans supported elaborate mawlid celebrations at al-Badawi's resting place in the Nile Delta town of Tanta. During the Ottoman period the order spread to Turkey, where it maintained tekkes in Istanbul that survived until the founding of the Turkish republic, and the mawlid of Sayyid Badawi is still celebrated in Tanta every year with tents, Qur'an recitations and sermons from scholars of al-Azhar.