ABSTRACT

The present article is one topic of my field research on ”The relationships between the death rituals and the urbanization of Cairo’s City of the Dead”. In this context I analysed its particular sacred role as midpoint of pilgrimages. I observed the contemporary pilgrimages, comparing them with the earliest shrines, particularly regarding the pilgrims’ attitudes through the centuries and the relationship with the Hajj. Cairo's City of the Dead is interesting because in its urbanized areas Careens still continue to bury their deceased. This cohabitation is historically deep-rooted. The necropolis lies between two dimensions, the sacred and the profane and between two worlds, the earth and the hereafter, the Dead and the Living. Nowadays some transformations occurred: the loss of its transnational fame; a process of self intimacy during the pilgrimage, assuming a more individual character. However the two distinct forms of pilgrimage, the individual ziyara to the saint’s tomb and the collective mawlid, still locate some focus in Cairo’s City of the Dead in the mind of Egyptians.

 

KEYWORDS: international past midpoint of pilgrimages, relationship with the Hajj, cohabitation between the Dead and the Living.