Debating Divine Madness: Sanctity, Sanity, and the State in North African Sufism

In North Africa, the majdhūb saint is colloquially known as the “mad saint”: a figure pulled to God so quickly that it loses control of its rational faculties. Debates about the categorization of the majdhūb emerge in seventeenth-century hagiographic compendia yet also echo in everyday Sufi discussions of spiritual training and authenticity today. The circulation and interplay of similar transgressive acts, discursive arguments, and linguistic phrases attributed to past and living majdhūbs construct what I term “lived intertextuality.” In this presentation, I examine how the lived intertextuality of two majdhūb saints, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Majdhūb (d. 1569) and ‘Umar al-Fayyāsh (d. 1968), illuminates the reworking of the classical genre of Sufi biographical dictionaries. By tracing the interplay of sixteenth and seventeenth narratives with Facebook hagiographies, aphorisms, and pious television shows, I demonstrate how ongoing discussions of the majdhūb’s contested subjecthood renegotiate notions of sanctity, sanity, and the state.