collection of spiritual songs entitled Gül Deste
(Bouquet of roses). This level of gender intermixing
and equality is certainly not the case with other Sufi
orders in the region, and has been used by certain
Sunnìs to slander Bektàshìmorality.
Despite the lack of direct participation in other
Sufi orders, however, women have adopted and
adapted to Sufi teachings in a variety of ways. One
interesting development linked to Sufi influence is
the ritual of tevhid(Arabic taw™ìd) practiced by
women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Tevhidis primarily
the ritual of mourning, performed on several occa-
sions: the day of the burial (d∆enaza), the seventh
day, the fortieth day after death, and subsequently
six months and one year after death. Tevhidis led
by professional bulas, the women educated in the
religious school for women (∆enska medresa) that
has operated in Sarajevo with interruptions since- Among their various responsibilities is to
attend ceremonies and family rituals, but their most
central duty lies with the tevhidand mevlud(Ara-
bic mawlid, a festive occasion). When the medresa
was closed down between 1949 and 1978, the
tevhidritual underwent a crisis as a new generation
of women had to be trained either by older bulas or
by their husbands who worked as Islamic teachers
and community leaders. Tevhids are attended by
the female relatives, neighbors, and friends of the
deceased, and are commonly held at his/her home,
though they can take place in a mosque. The bulas
lead the prayers, recite appropriate verses from the
Qur±àn, and appoint other women to carry on the
recitation. Every recital is followed by a collective
prayer and the mention of the deceased, as well as
of other dead relatives, who thereby receive “gifts”
in the afterlife. During the final prayer, women col-
lectively recall the names of God and the Prophet
Mu™ammad. Ritually, tevhidis likened to the Sufi
dhikr in that it emulates some of its aspects, includ-
ing, in some cases, the use of large rosaries (tespih)
similar to those used in Sufi tekkes, and a rhythmic
swaying of the body. One theory holds that in
Ottoman times Sufi masters were invited to per-
form mourning rituals at the house of the deceased.
While the men attended the burial, the women who
stayed at home followed the Sufi way of ritual
mourning and gradually adopted it as their own
practice. Nowadays, tevhidis certainly the most
common ritual in Bosnia and one that bears an
important witness to the influence of Sufi practices
on women’s religious life.
Bibliography
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tion, Berlin 1985, 240–54.
A. Softiƒ, Tevhids in Sarajevo [in Bosnian] Sarajevo 1984.Amila ButurovicEgyptMedieval historians were uninterested in record-
ing women’s participation in Sufi orders which
must be inferred from incidental references to
shaykhs in Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt who
catered to women and admitted them into their
orders – controversial topics among Sufi men – and
from denunciations of women’s participation in
dhikr, the ritual “remembrance” of God through
repeated chanting of some of His Names. There are
rare notations of women who became shaykhas,
such as Zaynab Fà†ima bt. al-≠Abbàs (d. 1394),
head of a women’s retreat house in Cairo founded
in 1285 by Princess Tadhkaray for Zaynab bt. Abù
al-Barakàt “al-Baghdàdiyya” and her women.
Most of these women were widows or divorcees.
Some men’s Sufi retreat houses may have included
women; the historian Maqrìzìmentions that one of
them had a separate bathroom for women.
Traditional male disregard for women’s partici-
pation in Sufism continues in the official denial by
the government-sponsored Supreme Council of Sufi
Orders that any women are members in the more
than 70 registered Sufi orders. In reality, women
participate in the orders, and a few women are de
factoshaykhs of orders, though officially unrecog-
nized. The policies of individual orders toward
women vary a great deal; some orders exclude them
altogether, while others create space for them. Some
shaykhs instruct their disciples primarily through
visions, and this may be particularly important for
women, whom social conventions often bar from
direct interaction with a shaykh.