Living tradition · Iraq

Iraq: the Pîr's country

Every Rifāʿī line begins in the marshlands of southern Iraq, where Sayyid Ahmad al-Rifāʿī lived and is buried. His tomb at Umm ʿUbayda is still a place of pilgrimage. Yet of all the countries on this site, Iraq has the thinnest published evidence of the order's life today.

I. Umm ʿUbayda and the shrine

Umm ʿUbayda is a village of the Baṭīḥa, the marsh country, about a day's journey from Wāsiṭ. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa visited the Pîr's tomb there in the fourteenth century and found a great gathering of the poor. For the Pîr's life, see Sayyid Ahmad al-Rifāʿī.

An archaeological field study by Basim Khalef of the University of Thi-Qar describes the shrine as it stands:

• a north gate of patterned brick under a pointed arch;
• a courtyard with rooms for visitors on two sides;
• a vaulted hall with marble walls and an inscribed mihrab;
• the tomb chamber, its grille of bronze and teak under a dome set with mirror-work and tiles;
• a brick minaret about eight metres high.

Khalef traces three rebuildings: under Nāṣir Pasha al-Saʿdūn, under the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II (whose plaque dates the minaret), and later at the expense of the Rifāʿī order and its benefactors. The visitors' rooms fill on the anniversaries of the Pîr's birth and death, chiefly with members of the order. He warns that unplanned restoration threatens the oldest surviving parts.

In September 2021 the Rifāʿī sheikhdom of Egypt publicly condemned a desecration of the shrine.

II. The order in Iraq today

The surname al-Rifāʿī is common across Iraq and the Levant, so many people named al-Rifāʿī have nothing to do with the order. A figure is placed on this site only when a source ties them to the path itself.